IGF 2020 WS #105 Designing inclusion policies in Internet Governance

Information

Session

Time:

Monday, 9 November, 2020 - 12:10 to 13:40 UTC

Room:

Room 2

About this Session:

The session will have 3 segments: 1) Introduction of speakers 2) Collective discussion on the 5 topics, dividing the analysis in 3 blocks, using a collective document we will share during the session. 3) Online campaign: after the collective discussion, we will start drafting the online campaign at a mind map. This link will be also provided during the session.

Area:

Inclusion

Topic(s):

Capacity Building
Connecting the Unconnected
digital literacy

Organizer 1: Civil Society, African Group
Organizer 2: Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Organizer 3: Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Organizer 4: Private Sector, Eastern European Group
Organizer 5: Civil Society, African Group

Speaker 1: Mamadou Lo , Civil Society, African Group
Speaker 2: Eileen Cejas , Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Speaker 3: Mohammand N. Azizi, Government, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 4: Meri Baghdasaryan, Civil Society, Eastern European Group
Speaker 5: Debora Barletta, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)

Format:

Break-out Group Discussions - Round Tables - 90 Min

Policy Question(s):

1) Accessibility & Policy for Social Inclusion Topics: Reducing Inequalities, Connecting the Unconnected Example: What policies can ensure fair prices for internet Access while ensuring sustainable connectivity by using Community Networks?

2) Capacity Building, Gender Inclusion & Policy Topics: Gender, Capacity Building, Minorities, Design for Inclusion Example: How can we bring capacity building tools to women and diverse gender people in order to foster their involvement in the Internet?

3) Accessibility & Policy for Social Inclusion Topics: Disability, Design for Inclusion Example: How can we ensure that Internet policies would include people with disabilities? Which are the best approaches to accomplish that?

4) Accessibility & Policy Topics: Rural & Indigenous People, Minorities Example: How youth initiatives, educational institutions and governments can design adequate plans to include rural and indigenous people in Internet?

5) Human Rights & Policy Topics: Government, Reducing Inequalities, Example:Which are the measures governments can take into consideration to regulate content online without affecting digital citizens’ rights?

Issues, Challenges and Opportunities addressed:

We want to address the most common challenges faced by minorities and by people who are excluded from the digital revolution and constitute the so-called “digital divide”, trying to take into account the wide range of opinions and life experiences surrounding digital inclusion in order to have a global perspective on the issue. Through the 5 topics that are covered in the discussions among the collective discussion document, we want to point out the possibility to develop capacity building strategies and tools that could support the people who are usually underrepresented in the online world including young people, who are usually outside the policy making processes at local, national and international level. Among the main challenges we want to address there are:

-Low quality of access and lack of available services in rural and remote areas.

-Gender inequality (men having more internet access than women; censorship online towards girls, cis gender women and LGBT community)

-Disability rights (Inclusive design and universal access)

-Affordability (cost of infrastructure and of internet access)

-Policy making processes aka how can policies enable or help addressing these issues (ex. effective management of spectrum, access to funds, policymakers providing infrastructure, low taxes on equipment)

Finally, the session will bring us the opportunity to prepare the online campaign that will be produced with the assistance of Youth Observatory members to be launched online, in order to encourage more young people into Internet Governance and to become key policy making actors.

SDGs:

GOAL 4: Quality Education
GOAL 5: Gender Equality
GOAL 10: Reduced Inequalities
GOAL 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
GOAL 17: Partnerships for the Goals

Description:

[Outline of the session]

“Designing Inclusion Policies” is not just the title of the session. It is the intention of create a narrative for the design of inclusion policies in the Internet Governance. At this session we will analyse different aspects of Inclusion:

1- Gender matters in Internet Governance

2- Connect the unconnected communities

3- Inclusion of people with disabilities

4-Economic inequalities

5-Governments and Human Rights: the role in Internet Governance

Structure:

The session will start with the short introduction of the speakers (20 minutes) where they will speak on key points of their countries’ region in terms of inclusion; followed by a group discussion in blocks regarding the 5 topics.

The discussion will include

1-. Gender perspectives impact on Internet matters related to policy drafting

2- Techniques to include people from rural, indigenous and remote areas into digital literacy.

3- Policy making processes centred around people with disabilities

4- Markets and Economic inequalities: when prices & taxes prevent people from being connected

5- Governments & human rights: guaranteeing our digital rights to include more voices connected.

After the presentation of each speaker, we will share a document where we will introduce 3 blocks with 2 topics (40 minutes).

Firstly, we will address the topic of “Gender perspectives in Internet Governance matters” and “Economic inequalities” where we will make 4 policy questions for each sub-theme;
then the second block we will discuss “the role of governments and human rights” and “digital literacy for marginalised communities”;
and the final block will be “analysing policies in disabilities matters” and a generally summary on “policy making processes in general”

Once we finish the second segment of the session, we will continue with the collective design of the online campaign, using a mind map the last 20 minutes of the session.This mind map will help us to design the campaign and therefore produce the outcome some weeks after the IGF2020 . The online campaign will be extremely important to raise awareness on young people towards inclusion in Internet Governance

Methodology

The session will use an active engagement of attendees as they will be the main component of the session. The 20 minutes introduction will be the starting point to boost attendees to share experiences and ideas on the 5 topics that will be addressed in the common discussion using a shared document we will provide the link after the presentation of the speakers.

At this shared document using Etherpad application, we will discuss the policy questions in 3 different blocks. The speakers who have relevant experience on Gender, Rural and Indigenous Communities, Disabilities & Policies, Economic Inequalities; and Human Rights will bring up to a common group discussion the policy questions to the participants, in order to brainstorm collectively on their experiences and the challenges we are facing towards achieving a real social inclusion.

At the shared document the online moderator will read the policy questions and help the speakers to check the inputs of the participants at the Zoom chat and YouTube live chat: one online moderator at the Zoom platform will make sure that each discussion in blocks addresses the policy questions in an equitable way at the Etherpad; and second online moderator will be assisting the first online moderator with the comments made at the Etherpad platform, as long as help reading the comments made at the YouTube chat by the YouTube viewers of the session.

The 5 speakers will be leading at their assigned block (1-2-3) with the exception of the third block, when all speakers will give inputs alongside with the participants on the “policy making processes”. As above said, the speakers will boost the discussion at the assigned blocks by using 3-4 policy questions per topic, and asking attendees policy questions related to the topic under analysis.

In this way they could obtain a general picture for each area and get valuable feedback from attendees on their experiences related to the specific topic of inclusion. This discussion will take 40 minutes, while one of the online moderator will start designing the mind map we will use for the third segment of the session.

Following the discussion at the shared document , we will focus this part of the session on the online campaign. At this stage, the last 20 minutes will start to draft the main points taken from the collective discussion, besides opening the floor to online attendees to suggest ideas related to the content of the online campaign using a mind map. This online campaign, will be a joint effort of Young people and other stakeholders, will be shared on social media and the general report of the session along with the content of the session at Youth Observatory’s website, under Creative Commons License.

Policy Discussions:

The policy discussion that will take place at the session will count on the participation of various stakeholders, as well as mixing Young people and non-youth experts in order to ensure a better diversity also in terms of age and gender. The selection of the policy questions will count with these 5 topics within Digital Inclusion, that have been part of the topics addressed by youth initiatives around the world when it comes to policy making.

Expected Outcomes:

We would like to organise an online campaign by taking the inputs of online attendees to the workshop; and we will also receive inputs by the youth community for a 2 weeks period. This online campaign would ideally be launched a few weeks after the IGF, using social media platforms and websites, highlighting the main points and showing some of the inputs provided by young and non-young people working on inclusion-related topics. The content used in the campaign will be enriched by the inputs of attendees and Youth Observatory members, being the last ones who will help to design the online campaign content under Creative Commons Licence. It is expected to be shared to non-youth stakeholders as well in their networks. The idea is to engage more young people in internet governance and into policy making processes, supporting their meaningful participation in the spaces where these are taking place. For this reason we aim to reach international organizations and legislative bodies advocating for the inclusion of young voices where they can positively influence the designing of an open and inclusive Internet

Relevance to Internet Governance: Since the last meeting of the Youth IGF Summit in 2019, we have been actively discussing the role Young individuals should have in Internet Governance. Several times we have drafted youth messages and declarations on how we want to change policies to include more voices into Internet Governance and for this reason we want to have a concrete follow-up for those discussions. The workshop will be a key step towards joining efforts among youth and non-youth stakeholders to create those policies and to ensure they cover the long variety of issues related to Inclusion we are going to analyse in the session.

Relevance to Theme: Internet Governance core relies on an open Internet, and it was IGF 2019’s slogan “one world, one net, one vision”, it implies the Internet is an open environment where all voices should be listened to and taken into account. Especially when it comes to the thematic area of Inclusion, youth has been one of the key actors promoting inclusion tools such as capacity building webinars, courses and more. Youth has accomplished a lot, with the assistance of other stakeholders such as Academia, Technical Community and others; for this reason our session is focused on demonstrating how youth is a relevant change maker together with non-youth sectors, and how the collaboration between stakeholders is essential to keep promoting core values of Internet, promoting an horizontal multi stakeholder approach, to make sure that “one world, one net, one vision” is truly referring to a world where everybody belongs and where we all have a say. This proposed workshop will be a relevant tool to ensure the role of youth as a stakeholder in Internet Governance initiatives, as well as providing an online campaign that will prove essential points to engage more youth into Internet Governance and into the policy-making processes

Discussion Facilitation:

Discussion Facilitation:

The collective discussion will ensure attendees will have an equal amount of time to share ideas during the discussions, as the moderators will be paying close attention to the participants and the speakers inputs, in order to draft the mind map, our basis of the online campaign we will launch some weeks after the IGF. The engagement of the attendees will be essential to develop the key points regarding the 5 selected topics, and the draft of the main points of the online campaign to encourage youth involvement in Internet Governance, with the support of non-youth stakeholders. Attendees will also be part of the online campaign once it is published and shared on social media and on the Youth Observatory’s website, and they will be invited to share the content of the campaign within their social media networks.

Online Participation:

Usage of IGF Official Tool. Additional Tools proposed: Yes, we will be using an Etherpad where the speakers can put the key points of their group discussions in plain text (no links, no photos allowed to avoid content not related to the session) and a main map (Pletica, Miro, or similar platform).

Agenda:

1. Introduction by speakers (20 minutes)

2. Collective discussion in 3 blocks (40 minutes)

3. Drafting Online Campaign on Inclusion (20 minutes)

Report

1. Key Policy Questions and related issues:

How can we bring capacity building tools to women and diverse gender people in order to foster their involvement in the Internet Governance? How can we bring capacity building tools to women and diverse gender people in order to foster their involvement in the Internet Governance? How can we bring capacity building tools to women and diverse gender people in order to foster their involvement in the Internet Governance? How can we bring capacity building tools to women and gender diverse people in order to foster their involvement in Internet Governance?

How can we ensure that Internet policies would take into consideration low-income populations, people with disabilities?

Which are the three main points needed to design inclusion policies in Internet Governance?

2. Summary of Issues Discussed:

At our session there was a common agreement to address urgently the inclusion of women and gender diverse communities in Internet Governance through the implementation of several strategies: a. develop digital literacy programs, b. anti-harassment policies; which will have an impact on c. amplifying the list of topics discussed at the IGF. There was an interesting point mentioned at the session: take into consideration the inclusion of people with disabilities at the IGF especially hear impaired persons, persons with dyslexia; and keeping in mind the crossover between gender diversity and cognitive disabilities. One participant also mentioned we should work on possible solutions regarding multilingualism such as having at each session interpretation into the 5 UN official languages besides the inclusion of a sign interpreter. Another participant mentioned it is need to tackle the tokenism problem when it comes to the inclusion of youth in IG.

In relation to the digital literacy for rural, remote and indigenous areas; it was remarked there should be a joint effort to foster their inclusion as their voices are crucial in the policy making processes.

Regarding the economic aspect of inclusion, due the lack of time we could only obtained one input saying there should be some mechanisms like programs to help small businesses in making their operations online.

About measures that can be taken to ensure digital rights, there was a common agreement on: a. having an ombudsman to make sure of the accountability of principles; b. necessary and proportional intervention in accordance to International Human Rights Law; c. algorithm transparency in policies.

Finally, we discussed shortly the design of the online campaign with accessibility features, however we will publish a call for inputs on the campaign after the IGF at the Youth SIG in order to request further ideas.

3. Key Takeaways:

High level policy makers should address inclusion from a holistic way, as in the current situation inclusion is analysed and delimited towards specific target groups (women, girls, rural) though it is not consider multicultural backgrounds and diverse perspectives of each community.

In the case of of gender diverse people, governments should design policies that creates a welcome space for them in order to participate fully in the Internet Governance ecosystem: digital literacy programs, anti harassment policies and a broad discussion of gender topics including transparency in AI programs.

Regarding accessibility, governments should support other stakeholders on the design and application of accessibility-by-default policies: there are several communities part of the persons with disabilities with different requirements that should be taken in consideration for the improvement of societies.

Participants of the session realised inclusion frame a wide range of issues, although they agreed we can start the conversation from the 5 selected topics we chose for the session: women and gender diverse; persons with disabilities; rural and urban communities; governments and human rights. The conclusion emerged from the session was the relevance of ensuring the protection of digital rights, helping people understand their digital rights and how to advocate for them.

4. Policy Recommendations or Suggestions for the Way Forward:

What policy sector(s) does this fall under? (leave blank if not sure):

Economic

Social-cultural

Overarching governance issues

Issue and Recommendation:

Issues: Necessity to work stronger towards the Inclusion of marginalized communities (women and gender diverse); Affordability aspects that implies a breach to access to the Internet (data packets and devices'prices); Lack of capacity building for rural communities (Digital Literacy); Governments restricting access to human rights; Design-by-default for persons with disabilities. Recommendation: -Share awareness on what internet governance is to various gender diverse groups and their online communities. -Create safe spaces for women to express themselves such as newcomer sessions targeted at gender groups. -Organize LGBTQ related and led sessions to encourage more participants to be in this space and meaningfully engage. -Avoid tokenism of groups such as women, youth and LGBTQ groups. -Form mentoring discussions within various multi stakeholder circles to bring in more participants into the discussion. -Lower prices of data and digital taxes levied on internet infrastructure to promote digital inclusion

Who should take it?:

-Government through legislation -Civil society groups through advocacy for inclusion -Private sector and tech companies that enforce affordable internet -The IGF should work towards inclusion of gender diverse people, starting from registration forms. Also, it was mentioned the IGF should incorporate more accessibility tools for people with disabilities like a sign interpreter; colours adapted for persons within the autistic spectrum; and address the multilingual approach regarding access to the sessions and such.

5. Other Initiatives Addressing the Session Issues:

Initiative:

1) Inclusion discussions: UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction sets the broader scope for inclusion: https://www.preventionweb.net/files/43291_sendaiframeworkfordrren.pdf#page=22 2) Gender Groups for awareness : Women Who Code, Girl Scouts "We envision a world where women are proportionally represented as technical leaders, executives, founders, VCs, board members, and software engineers." https://www.womenwhocode.com/ 3) Digital Taxation : Moratorium on digital taxation that stopped the levying of customs duty on items such as software. https://www.wto.org/index.htm

6. Final Speakers:

Speaker 1: Mamadou Lo , Civil Society, African Group
Speaker 2: Eileen Cejas , Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Speaker 3: Meri Baghdasaryan, Civil Society, Eastern European Group
Speaker 4: Debora Barletta, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)

7. Reflection to Gender Issues:

It focused on the implementation of mechanisms like: a) formation of mentoring spaces in order to bring more participants into the IG discussion. These mentoring spaces would help to encourage participation from all levels, demographics, and genders to organize gender sessions in order to display openness towards gender diverse people ; b) applying anti-harassment policies at online and onsite meetings; c) adapting the registration system at the IGF taking in consideration gender diverse people with the use of pronouns; d) keeping in mind the crossover between gender diversity and cognitive disabilities; e) avoiding tokenism of youth, women and LGBTQ groups.

8. Session Outputs:

Link at Geneva Internet Platform: https://dig.watch/resources/igf-2020-ws-105-designing-inclusion-policies...

9. Group Photo:

screenshot-participants-session-designing-inclusion-policies-internet-governance 2020

Main menu

IGF 2020 WS #105 Designing inclusion policies in Internet Governance

Information