IGF 2019 WS #98 Emerging Youth

Information

Session

Thematic Track:

Topic(s):

Organizer 1: Civil Society, African Group
Organizer 2: Civil Society, African Group
Organizer 3: Civil Society, African Group
Organizer 4: Technical Community, Eastern European Group
Organizer 5: Technical Community, African Group

Speaker 1: Daniel Bill Opio, Civil Society, African Group
Speaker 2: Lisa nyamadzawo, Civil Society, African Group
Speaker 3: Imane Bello, Technical Community, Eastern European Group

Format:

Round Table - Circle - 60 Min

Description: The Session will start with monologues prepared by the speakers covering areas of access and inclusion, digital rights, the position of youth in multistakeholder approach and relevancy of the internet to young people and economies.
The main agenda will be how we could boost more digital inclusion to young people being the demographic that covers most of the world population with higher aptitudes of technology use and the responsible leaders to create a consolidated. more open internet.
Issues discussed will be connectivity issue to areas not connected, affordability issue, the barriers of expression on the internet (shutdowns and censorships) how they increase the divide, polarity in emerging technologies and ways to streamline them to relevant based formats and equal transfer of technology. Each dialogue will be backed by experiences as young people who have had experience in IGF and the barriers we face in and how we overcome them in raising our voices and contributing to a better internet.
Q&A sessions will follow, discussion on our policy questions and collection of recommendations to be compiled to a report to be submitted about our collected views from the dialogue on how to boost digital literacy, Open discussions will be the format in forms of controlled and majorly dialogue format

Expected Outcomes: A detailed recommendation report on the position of youth in matters of the internet and internet governance and how to increase more digital inclusion
Experience Share among attendees through dialogue and testimonials on personal situations of the internet in prospective communities
An action plan and advocacy workgroup to carry out a digital literacy programme led by young people aimed at increasing digital inclusion and awareness on emerging technologies

Policy Question(s):

What incentives should be given to young people to fully adopt as valuable assets in the multistakeholder approach?
How do we raise awareness about emerging technologies, digital rights equally with accessible opportunities and resources in a language young people can understand and participate in utilization?
what schemes should be made as alternatives ways to fund internet access and affordability to young communities and economies?
Should digital literacy and technological competence education become mandatory and adopted from early learning age?
How to streamline emerging technologies to foster relevancy to young communities as a method to breach the digital divide?
What are the thoughts of youth on the internet as a human right, internet for all who want it?
The importance of internet and technologies to young people in the 21st-century era of innovation?

Relevance to Theme: This session is youth-led from a dynamic diverse sharing our experiences, initiatives, recommendations, and advisory insights post-IGF 2018, Access and inclusion is a topic of interest especially starting with the fact connecting the next billion will include most people who are working to rise up the economic ladder and the youth constitute almost 60% of the world population. This means the next innovators, utilizers, and leaders of the internet are young people since we also constitute the majority of people online today.
Being responsible for this it is vital that we young people today foster a simultaneous intergenerational relationship that can help us understand the roles we take as internet leaders and activists, as relevant examples first we need to create an infrastructure and ecosystem that each young person can at least access basic internet connection and use it for prosperity, this has to be brought hand in hand with an effective digital literacy program localized and open to aid young people to understand and become netizens that can effectively participate online and use the resources to drive innovation through the internet invariants.
Interaction has shifted dynamically so is the economy of the world that technocracies are emerging fast and they are the future of our economies and work, without being adapted to this wagon polarity will increase and eventually a large gap in the digital division, young people today we are more tolerant and have the aptitudes of interacting and innovating in the digital sphere an area that we contribute to its sustainability, yet without having access to the available network that we can afford and understand, difficulties arise in utilizing these technologies. The potent matter is to collective use young minds in sharing our ideas, experiences as internet users and come up with proposals in connecting the next billion and how youth inclusion and participation is a key to realizing this

Relevance to Internet Governance: Collective participation to a multistakeholder approach with authentic youth experiences and proposals, characteristically the internet invariants and attributes of openness, decentralization, and end to end delivery have made it a haven for young people to have a safe place of innovation and expression that has seen the growth of companies like Facebook, Uber, Google all led with a young culture, the problem arises is when we have to deal with the generation gap due to lack of an intergenerational relationship among different sections of the multistakeholder approach. This leads to things like government censorship and internet shutdowns that lead to massive drawbacks economically and in terms of development especially for most young people dependant on the internet for life to be sustained this already creates the tension of coexistence of the multistakeholder approach coming together inclusively to build the internet, relevant case study is what's happening in Sudan, OTT tax in Uganda, the growing trend of internet being seen as the enemy, and growing the digital divide . This is because the relevant narratives of digital inclusion among all people have not seen a consolidates platform that's why expression, media pluralism and democracy is threatened. Seats at the table are being removed and chances not given due to a mindset problem in some areas especially Government collaboration with other sectors of civil society when it comes to developing the internet, hence a massive infringement of digital rights, access to the internet, development of affordable resource and widespread internet infrastructure stagnates because the relevancy narrative of digital inclusion has not been given a platform to be listened to and its benefits realized.
Digital inclusion cannot be sustained without digital literacy for all people, access to the internet and its consolidating as a healthy trusted asset network of collaboration and interoperability and this is brought when internet governance creates values to follow and blueprints to attain this cooperation. Youth are the ones exposed to a more open procedure and aptitude of experimental based decision making that can help boost more equitable decision making once we are given the table to share and implement our thoughts and philosophies as leaders pushing for an open, safe internet for all. Shaped by the build of internet governance

Discussion Facilitation:

we are all young people from the YOUTHIGF 2018 fellowship and aim to use our experiences to motivate participation, first by being ambassadors of the IGF, our diverse ability to command participation through the application of youth lively rhetoric, the different lens of expression through the use of artistic imagery, poetry, riddles and multimedia content to embrace more participate n discussing our message

Online Participation:

We plan to run effective live streams with Q&A support to generate more participation in our dialogue

SDGs:

GOAL 4: Quality Education
GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
GOAL 10: Reduced Inequalities
GOAL 17: Partnerships for the Goals