IGF 2020 WS #105 Designing inclusion policies in Internet Governance

Information

Session

Thematic Track:

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

Description:

Structure: The session will start with the short introduction of the speakers where they will speak on key points of their countries’ region in terms of inclusion; followed by break out discussion groups. These break out discussion groups will discuss: 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 break out discussions, the outcomes of each group will be shared to the audience. In the last 20 minutes, we will address key outcomes of each group, which will be part of our online campaign 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 10 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 break out discussion groups. Each breakout group will be composed of speakers with relevant previous experience on Gender, Rural and Indigenous Communities, Disabilities & Policies, Economic Inequalities; and Human Rights. These break out groups will be monitored by the onsite moderator in terms to ensure that each break out discussion addresses the policy questions in an equitable way; as well as online in the same way in which the moderator will do by facilitating through the IGF platform. The 5 speakers will be leading the 5 breakout groups by facilitating their discussion 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. The same process is applied also to remote participants, which are going to be separated in digital breakout rooms using the tool provided by the “Zoom”application . For the online rooms, the group leaders are selected among the participants, with the online moderator supporting the moderation of the discussion among the 5 online group leaders. This discussion will take 20 minutes, while each speaker is going to design a brief report on the main points discussed in the break out groups summarising them as bullet points. The online reports will be shared to the online moderator and they will be added to the report of the onsite speakers. Afterwards, the 5 group leaders will have 5 minutes each (25 minutes) to read out the conclusions from onsite and online break out discussions. Following the sharing of results, 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 discussions collectively, besides open the floor to online and onsite attendees to suggest ideas related to the content of the online campaign. 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.

Issues:

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 5 break-out groups, 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.

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?

Expected Outcomes:

We would like to organise an online campaign by taking the inputs of online and onsite attendees to the workshop. This online campaign would ideally be launched 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:

The breakout discussion groups 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 (discussion facilitators). While onsite moderators will be monitoring onsite participation, the online moderator will be looking after the online participants, watching closely inputs, the role of the leaders in online breakout groups discussion , and finally allowing closing comments of online moderators on the draft of the online campaign. 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 leaders of the online breakout groups can put the key points of their discussions in plain text (no links, no photos allowed to avoid content not related to the session).

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