IGF 2010
Vilnius, Lithuania
16 September 10
INTERNET GOVERNANCE FOR DEVELOPMENT – IG4D
15:00
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Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during Fifth Meeting of the IGF, in Vilnius. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> VYTAUTAS GRUBLIASKAS: Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, we'll now resume the meeting and I pronounce this afternoon's session called Internet Governance for Development open.
It is an honour to show confidence in me to be Chairman of this session. In addition, it's a responsibility that I feel and value a great deal. My name is Vytautas Grubliauskas. I am a member of the Parliament of Republic of Lithuania. And my position is Chairman of the Committee on development of information society. I look forward to our discussion about this important issues that have been at the heart of the dialogue at the IGF in the past years.
I hope and invite you to actively participate in this session. Unfortunately, I have to remind you that our time is limited, 3 hours at most, so I ask you to give your clear and brief viewpoints and positions about the development of the Governance on the Internet.
As all of us already know Internet Governance for Development has been a cross cutting theme at the IGF since the first meeting in Athens in 2006. In my opinion, for the past two years, a series of really successful workshops have brought out the notion that development should be more central to the IGF, and that the relationship of the Internet Governance to development has not been widely explored.
Since extremely our session this afternoon is a result of this need. Our panelists will explore links between local Internet Governance, mechanisms and development. We ask them to consider the institutional arrangements for Internet Governance, and the resulting policy procedures and policy outcomes generated at the global level and how to relate to development consensus.
It is my understanding that in most Internet Governance discussions outside of the IGF, the topic of development is rarely covered and the question of the relevance of policies to development is rarely asked. We shall begin our discussion by asking the question: What does Internet Governance for Development really mean? Furthermore, we shall also consider the regulatory issues and investment relevant to the development. Our overall goal should be to consider how to take the agenda for Internet Governance for Development forward in the IGF and other international settings.
The IGF must be relevant to the needs of developing countries. It's my pleasure to introduce our moderator this afternoon, and let me invite Mr. Nitin Desai, special adviser to the Secretary General for Internet Governance, and Mr. Nitin Desai is from Delhi, India. We have, too, the floor moderators. It is so nice, two beautiful ladies will take care in that position. Let me introduce them.
It's Ms. Christine Arida from tire row, the Director of Telecom planning and services National Telecom Regulatory Authority of Egypt. And Ms. Ayesha Hassan, senior policy Manager e business, IT and Telecom executive in charge of information and communication technologies policy, international Chamber of Commerce, Paris.
They will have you make your comments and the moderator for remote participation is Mr. Olivier Crepin Leblond, so we have six expert panelists but Mr. Nitin Desai will introduce them, so Mr. Desai the floor is yours.
>> NITIN DESAI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Vytautas Grubliauskas. He has also given me permission that I don't need to pronounce his name more than once, and that if the need arises I can use his jazz nickname which is Congo. I will tell him it is very good for us because Congo in the U.N. also means the Congress of Nongovernmental Organizations, a major institution in the U.N. so I'm very happy to use that name because this is a Forum which is very particularly a particular favorite of Nongovernmental Organizations.
Our Chairman has given us a very good sense of what we need to do in this session. There's always been the discussion which says that you people talk about intent Governance but you're not talking about development. And I think the intention behind the session is to see: Are there issues where Internet Governance impinges on development, which we have not addressed adequately either in the IGF or in the various Forums that are involved in the management of the global Internet.
And we should look here at institutional processes as well as the substantial policy outputs of the Governmental arrangements and ask ourselves the question: Is there something we can do there which would enhance the possibilities of the Internet being supportive of development, the particularly in the developing countries.
As you know, four questions have been posed: What do we really mean by Internet Governance for Development? What do we have in mind when we say we want to talk about Internet Governance for Development? And let's not forget, the word Governance is there. You're not talking about Internet for development not the educational health as such. What we're really concerned with is: Are there issues in the way in which Internet Governance is managed which does have an impact on the possibility of development?
And let's spend a little time on that initial exploratory question.
The second question that will come up from that is to try give examples of specific Governance issues that may have relevance and there are many which have been listed in that including the Governance of names and numbers, the technical standardization, issues about security, about international interconnection, about intellectual property, about issues about transnational consumer protection. Having listed as possible examples but I hope in our second question, people will come up with what they had in mind when they wanted to discuss Internet Governance and development in more specific terms.
Third is a slightly different question, and that question is that after all the Internet is a global infrastructure, and everybody who uses it in some form or one form or another has to participate in its management and Governance, and how developing and other countries organise and manage their National level engagement in global Internet Governance? This is an issue which perhaps there are many here who may have views on this, particularly people from developing countries.
Now, having done this, having had a better sense of what do we mean by Internet Governance for Development, some examples, issues of how developing countries and other countries can connect with global institutional arrangement, we come to our final and fourth question, which is, given all of this, how can we take this agenda of Internet Governance for Development forward in the IGF and in other international meetings?
Our intention is that we will proceed with the four questions sequentially, and we will I will therefore first pose each question to the panelists, ask for some guidance from them on how do they see that question. Then turn to you, and I hope you will be very active in interacting with the panel, and once we have explored one question, then we will move on to the next.
So I would request you to write your questions down quickly, and hand them to the two lovely moderators we have, Christine and Ayesha, who are standing there. I also requested the two of them to be proactive in going to people and requesting them to intervene if they feel that is necessary. But let us try and keep to the four part structure. We have about a total of 2, 2.5 hours, let's say 2.5 hours, leaving time for a little bit of summarizing at the end. And that's 150 minutes, so roughly let's say we have about 30 to 40 minutes for each of the questions. But we don't have to spend 30 to 40 minutes on every question. If there's some things we dispose of faster we'll have more time for other things.
So let me turn to the first question, and that is what we really mean by Internet Governance. And I'm going to introduce the panelists and as they come around and I'm going to move from that end downwards. All of the panelists have been very active in this process. They're very familiar with all of the issues that are involved in this. And I'm really happy to be with them because I've been working with them for so many years now.
Beginning from the first person on my right, that is Ndeye Maimouna Diop Diagne. She's from Dakar, Senegal, the Director of Communication Technology in the Ministry of Telecommunications and ICT in Senegal. You'll find a more detailed biography of her, the work she's done, on the Internet site where the session has been described.
Next over is Everton Frask Lucero. Everton was with us in the Internet Forum but now he's decamped to Washington but I'm very happy to see him again once more in this process. He's at the moment counselor for science, technology and environment in the embassy of Brazil in Washington and as I said earlier, he was very involved in this whole process.
Next here is Zahid Jamil. He is from Pakistan, he's a lawyer. He's senior partner in Jamil and Jamil and Chairman of the Domain Name dispute resolution centre in Pakistan. And once again you'll find more details about his involvement in this area of work in the website. He also has been a very active member of our multistakeholder advisory group.
Next to him is Raul Echebberia. Raul is from Montevideo. The Executive Director, the Chief Executive Officer of LAPNIC, the Latin American Caribbean Internet logistics. He's been a great supporter of this process for many, many years and I'm really happy to see him here, and he has also been very innovative in the way in which the organisation has interacted with Internet users. Next to him we have William Drake. William Drake is our resident intellectual and academic. He's the one who helps us edit all the books we produce and he himself has also been a prolific writer on this subject.
He's also a lawyer and at the moment a Senior Associate in the centre for International Governance at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, and he has played a very crucial role in getting this whole issue of Internet Governance for Development more focused, more organised for debate, particularly in this session.
And finally, we have Anriette Esterhuysen. She's the Executive Director of the Association for Progressive Communications, and international network which was established in 1990, which of the organisations which are involved in using ICT to support social justice and development.
These are the panelists that we have. I'm going to pose to these panelists my first question, how do they interpret this phrase: Internet Governance for Development, IG4D? What is it that they would like to see discussed under this heading?
May I first turn to our first panelist here.
>> NDEYE DIOP-DIAGNE: Thank you, Chair. I will answer in French, if you allow me. The question of Internet Governance for Development in my opinion should be seen from the viewpoint of sustainable development. If we look at the usual definition of durable development, that meets the needs for giving capacity for future generations to respond to their own needs and sustainable development should meet three essential needs: Social equity, preserving the environment, and economic efficacy. In order to see the impact of good Internet Governance, I can give you just one example, and that is the example of my country, with which on the 6th of August last, underwent a complete breakdown in services of the operator.
That break in service led to National losses of more than 50 billion CFA Francs, 60 billion U.S. dollars. If we base ourselves on that observation, the question which arises is: In the context of Governance, how does Internet Governance currently affect economic activities, in particular generating employment and wealth? The second question we may ask ourselves is: What should be improved in the current Governance to create optimum conditions for the sustainable development of nations.
Since 2003, the first phase of the summit enabled us to conclude that Governance related to a number of questions, particularly names and numbers. So how can the decisions taken in connection with a broader series of questions have a lasting impact on the sustainable development of nations? I wish to remind you here, as we were told by Mike Connor 3 years ago at the workshop on Internet Governance in Dakar, West Africa, that 80% of Internet Governance aspects are local aspects, National aspects. Only 20% are dealt with internationally.
And that is why I believe that this debate concerning Internet Governance for Development will enable us to reframe our National policies this enables us to ask the right questions in the right places. I think in this international Forum, we are not truly going to be able to solve National development issues, but we are, nevertheless, going to ask the right questions, and then enable Governments to apply themselves better and to find out how to include these Governance aspects in their development policies.
In Senegal, I have the pleasure of saying we have defined our new economic and social policy document. In the definition contained for our new economic and social policy document, we have taken up Information Technology and communication as a development tool for the other economic sectors, thereby enabling ourselves to create wealth and employment as also to repo poverty. Against that background we may well ask ourselves what the stakes are currently for development within the framework of Internet Governance: I think that access to information and to knowledge
>> NITIN DESAI: We have a definition and then we'll come to the examples and get into the it in a little more depth.
>> NDEYE DIOP-DIAGNE: Thank you, okay.
>> EVERTON FRASK LUCERO: Thank you, Mr. Desai. Mr. Chairman it's an honour to be with Mr. Desai and in Vilnius for the 5th Internet Governance Forum. On your specific first question I'd like to reply with another question which I believe embodies the answer to what is the meaning of IG4D. The question is: Is the developing world adequately represented and heard at the global mechanisms in which decisions are taken to shape the use and the future of the Internet? Do the existing processes correspond to the share that developing countries have in terms of Internet users Internet growth, in terms of traffic flow, domain names, content production? What we're seeing today I think everybody knows is that the demography of the Internet is changing.
The Internet is growing much faster in the developing world, and it became one of the most important tools for development policies in the developing world. The economy of the Internet, as well, is changing. And what we believe is that those institutions that were created in a different time before this phenomenon, they need to respond to it, they need to evolve, as well, in order to take into account the new configuration of how the Internet is used and is distributed in the world.
I believe that there is another question that is a symbol of how important the Internet Governance is for development and that perhaps should guide our debate. I got this in one of the workshops I participated yesterday as a panelist and I promised the lady that posed this question Walda Roseman that I'd bring it up here because I think this is such high importance and seriousness that it's the centre of our attention so Ms. Roseman asked me: How can Internet Governance mechanisms impact the life of that woman who's living in a rural area in a developing country? She's probably raising her kids, does not speak English, does not have access to the Internet and perhaps can barely express herself in writing in her own language.
So I didn't give her a reply. I told her that the seriousness of the question requires us to keep it floating perhaps for some time for us to analyze it and be clear about what is the effect of all of the decisions that are taken be it in ICANN or IETF or at the ECOSOC or CSTD or whatever mechanism that is created relate to Internet, and those who are taking those decisions, are they aware that they may make a difference to the life of that poor woman?
This is how I would frame the debate. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
>> NITIN DESAI: Three basic things have come across. I'll just put them down for reference as to what is IG4D, for one. The Internet is clearly crucial for development and therefore Internet Governance matters for development, examples which were given by both of them.
Two, that the demographics of the Internet are changing. It involves the developing countries and that the whole question of seeing that their voice is heard in the way in which Internet is managed and governed is one of the key issues that has been brought up.
And the third issue that has come up is that Internet Governance for Development in the context of the impact that it would have on the lives of ordinary people, I'm just going to try and summarize as we go along so you can pose your questions later in a focused pay.
>> ZAHID JAMIL: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd rather start with initially yes, it creates a little bit of difficulty. Take a slightly different approach to the topic of IG4D. One of the things we were conscious of at least I was and some others that this should not become ICT for development per say and be sort of that sort of focus and maybe talking more in the development general aspect but more related to basically what and I agree with the first speaker about the National and international impacts that Governance has that is related to Internet, both at National and international levels.
Now, how can does development, for instance, solve or work at or develop new innovations, creativity, to impact development not only in developing countries, but also in developed countries? So it maybe broadens the definition slightly a little more than just look at developing countries. For instance let's look at the wireless broadband which is an issue not only for developing but developed countries also so maybe look at the IG4D as developing the Internet, the issues surrounding that, work at it to solve them, and not to forget the developing countries. obviously, that's part of it. To make sure that they are a part of the process, that they're also being served but slightly broader issues.
So things like developing a greater enabling environment that will have innovation, creativity, give rise to investment, so that then infrastructure can be invested upon and brought to the developing countries as well as the developed countries and capacity building for instance, a very important part of developing Internet Governance across the Board in most places. To take basically the Internet to the next billion. What does it take? How do we develop that? How do we develop the Internet and what IG can do to develop that to the next billion and to the allow developing countries as well to basically take advantage of it. So these are the challenges. It's important to see at this level and these international fora how to set frame works for better Internet Governance so that National and local rules as the first speaker obviously mentioned can actually be impacted that lead to development and the use of the Internet, and all services related to that Internet.
So maybe my definition would be slightly different and a little broader.
>> NITIN DESAI: What you're saying is also bring in the focus on --
on innovation, et cetera. Not just focus on environment and -- by
itself, but also the way in which the governance arrangements work for
or against the possibilities of innovation. Which impacts on
development.
Now --
>> RAÚL ESCHEBERRIA: I would like the opportunity to -- of course
this is a pleasure for me to be once again working with you and with
this prestigious group of colleagues with whom we have shared many --
many other time working in this IGF process.
I think responding to your question about what is IGF for
development. We had recently originally an IGF meeting in Quito, in
Ecuador, this is one of the questions that was raised during the
meeting. And I think that's -- I will answer the same, that I say
there that is, for me there are two perspectives of the Internet
governance for development. As one perspective is the -- how the
current governance -- Internet governance mechanism of course adopt the
convention of development in the daily work. And I think that we have
made huge progresses in this area in the last few years. Probably --
not probably, I'm sure that as a result also of the debates that have
been held during IGF. And this is one of the positive consequences of
IGF.
And so for example in LACNIC, that is one of the organizations in
which I am involved with, we are doing many things. I will not list
all the things that we do. But since providing France and promoting
research in the region, funding demonstration projects to apply ICTs
for -- in different aspects of the life of the people in the region,
and to support training; this had is -- the most important thing is to
remark that this is something that we have in mind all the time when we
design our work plans and we are trying to figure out not only how to
do our work better, but also how to impact in the development of the
region.
As to transform our organizations that could make the difference, as
I think it was the expression that was used by Everton before. Make
the difference in the development of the region.
The second perspective of Internet governance for development is the
impact of the Internet governance initiatives in -- in development.
This is something that I would like to expand a bit more later is
answering other of your questions. But I think that we -- this is
probably the most interesting part; is how the different initiatives
that are being discussed impact the life of the people. So how we can
have all the time in mind when we discuss the Internet governance
proposals, as we should have in mind how they impact in the development
of not only developing countries, as has been said before. I have
little distinction in this second perspective about something that has
been also mentioned by our colleague from Senegal, that is we should
also explore what Internet Governance initiatives are needed for
support of development. Not only have the current -- the initiatives
that have been discussed impacting development, but also what IGF
initiatives are needed in order to support the development in different
fronts.
Thank you.
>> NITIN DESAI: That was an interesting -- because we got a
perspective from somebody who is involve involved in Internet
governance. It was interesting to see a perspective so to speak from
the side of a person who's involved on the governance side.
Bill.
>> WILLIAM DRAKE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's interesting that in
walking over here I ran into several long-time participants in the IGF,
and they said, what is this session about? What is Internet Governance
for development?
And I thought, isn't that curious had. The first two Internet
Governance had as their overarching theme Internet Governance for
development.
We have been invoking this term for years. But yet in reality we
have never actually tried to nail down in any kind of systematic way
what it is the term might mean.
In some ways that's -- it reminds me where we were with the term
Internet Governance during the WSIS process in 2003 when you had a lot
of people walking around saying, it means this to me, it means that to
me, and so on. And the different parties were talking past each other.
And sort of failing to connect. And it was only through a process when
we sat down in the working group on Internet governance, in the larger
WSIS process and worked through a definition, a conception and came to
a consensus that we were able to really make sense of the topic.
And I think that has to be born in mind. Because we are in this
case, I would say, breaking new ground. We're at the front end of a
discussion hopefully that doesn't just end at the end of this session.
It would be important, I think, to the IGF and to Internet Governance
more generally if we could have some sustained ongoing attention to the
question of development, because it's absolutely central to the reasons
Everton and others have already suggested.
I guess in abstract terms if you say what is Internet Governance for
development, it's Internet Governance that advances the development of
the Internet in developing and transitional countries, and promotes
Internet enabled development. Which may not be exactly the same thing
as just having the Internet, because it's possible to roll out the
Internet and still not fully leverage the benefits of it if the use or
access to it is constrained by improper policies and other conditions.
We kind of know, I think, as has been alluded to by Zahid and others
what has been done at the national level. There's been a lot of work
done over the years of what kinds of national policies sustain the
Internet development. Having the right mix with regard to the
licensing of independent ISPs, composition of telecom, all those kind
of things. But what does it mean with regard to the global IGF
arrangements?
That's the kind of connection that we generally have not tried to
make. We had a workshop yesterday on development issues where I
suggested that Internet Governance is kind of a complex multi
dimensional phenomenon. You take any given issue and you can look at
it from many different angles. Like a three-dimensional prism. And if
you look at it from this direction it will foreground certain issues.
If you look at it from the angle of law enforcements, certain
considerations are in front, others, civil liberty, so on, would be in
the back. You can look at Internet Governance from a variety of angle,
economic, political, other.
To me Internet Governance for development is fundamentally about
turning the prism around a little bit and putting development at the
foreground for a moment and asking the question, okay, how do these
institutions and processes and policy outlets relate to development?
Either in a positive way or in a negative way.
So in the first instance it's about asking the question. Because we
don't often ask the question. In many Internet governance processes
we're talking about very detailed solutions to particular functional
problems without putting it on the table, oh, what might this mean in
the developing world? How easily would this play out?
How would people within countries that don't have perhaps the same
access to information, technological capabilities and so on, how would
they be impacted?
So I think, you know, this is an important exercise to go through.
And I think it's -- I hope it's just the beginning of the dialogue
about how we actually do that.
>> NITIN DESAI: Anriette?
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you, Nitin. There's not a lot to
add, I'll try to add nuance rather than more content. I agree with
what Bill said. I think it really is about the recognition among the
people in this room and the people in the workshops that this is a real
issue.
In my experience unless you actually live in a developing country and
experience the daily difficulties of dealing with the matters of
improving governance, dealing with poverty, and dealing with lack of
infrastructure, then this development doesn't feel very real to you.
And I certainly feel like that in the IGF. I feel that I have to speak
a certain language and project my concerns in a particular way for it
to be taken seriously. Because it's not a very developing country or
developing world experience-friendly space. And I say that not meaning
to be offensive, and I know that's not the intention of participants,
but that is how it feels.
So getting to recognize that it is real and that the differences and
perspective and consequences are real.
And secondly, I think it's important to remember that it's about the
inclusion of the needs of users, of people who cannot be users because
they don't have access, of governments, and of other stakeholders. I
think often in international forums when decision-making processes take
place, there's a conception of inclusion of development and a
developing country concerns as being equal to inclusion of developing
country governments. It's much more than that. We need other
stakeholders involved.
And thirdly, I think it is about more broadly developing a common
understanding of what development is. I don't think we can pretend
that we are not going to deal with having to problematize, in the same
way that forums dealing with development, there are debates about what
we mean by development. Is development growth or is development
something more, like sustainable development?
We're going to have to deal with that same challenge of building a
common understanding in the IGF.
I think what's interesting about doing it in the IGF is that we can
do it and should do it not just as a developing country or not just
from a developing country perspective but from a global perspective.
Because the issue in the longer term of sustainable development looking
at social as was said, looking at social development, economic
development and impacts on the environment. That ultimately is going
to apply as much to developed countries as it's going to apply to how
we approach development in developing countries.
>> NITIN DESAI: So are you -- I hope you have been -- I hope you are
sufficiently confused to be able to pose questions about what all this
is all about, you see.
Zahid, with a what did you want to --
>> ZAHID JAMIL: I guess I should have done more thinking before I
got to the panel. I'm listening to different views, is IG4 D of what?
IG4D for the Internet. And then I hear for whom?
For developing countries, for developed countries?
I think what some people are saying, it's for developing countries.
And I'm saying it's also for developed and developing countries. And
maybe the second blank is globally. Which I think has just been
mentioned in the last intervention. So IG4D for the Internet for the
global community is the way I look at it. What does that mean? It
means where Internet governance led to the Web 1.0, I guess, and what
do Internet governance rules and frameworks do to allow 2.0 come? And
where do we have to go from here to make sure that Internet Governance
frameworks allow the next evolution of the Internet to maybe the other
level. That includes -- I'm not excluding -- that includes how the
person on -- in a developing country, say in my country, in Pakistan, a
woman who wants to send money through the use of a mobile phone or
access to Internet protocol services, things, would also be included in
that. Again, I think that we can probably give it a broader definition
as well. Just a thought of a point.
>> NITIN DESAI: Can we just skip for a bit and I'll come back to
you. Ayesha.
>> AYESHA HASSAN: I think we have our first contributor, or what is
IG for development, and another from what is science and technology
from Portugal.
>> AVA CRISTINA NEVÉS: Thank you. Well, it's good to have this
debate because I think that is the very first time that we are
discussing development here. In fact, the mandate of -- was to discuss
the development through Internet. But in fact these last years we have
had very good, very interesting discussions but about technical issues
of Internet. Having said that, we have a very good discussion during
the meeting of IGF in Geneva for this session. And I asked whether we
were talking about ICT for development or development for ICT.
So I couldn't agree more with Zahid Jamil, because really what we are
talking here is about the development for both developing and developed
countries. Because the developed countries, they have lot of
constraints as well.
And that's why it's possible these dialogue.
And that -- I would like to emphasize another thing. The basics for
this discussion is location. It's training, it's open access to
knowledge.
Because if these are the main components because with human
resources, we will have the change of the paradigm. We cannot change
the paradigm without human resources. And to have these human
resources with -- we have to work on the capacity building. Thank you.
>> AYESHA HASSAN: I think we have a second comment here from Qusai,
who was coming from the developing region of the world.
Qusai.
>> QUSAI AL-SHATTI: Thank you. Qusai Al-Shatti from Kuwait
Information Technology Society, civil society located in Kuwait. I'm
honoured to be here among you and addressing the panel and my comments.
It's important to differentiate between the Internet as a development
tool and between Internet governance. And I agree with my colleague
Zahid on this. There is a difference between the two.
There is no doubt that the Internet is a tool that can be used for
development especially for developing country and the least developing
country. But the issue here is what is an in IG that is related to --
for development and what -- how it is linked to development issue.
In that sense when we look at paragraph 29 of the Tunis Agenda, when
it said that IEG should be multi lateral, transparent, democratic,
that's issues can contribute to development. It asks for a
participatory Internet. The fact that it ask for a multistakeholder
involvement when we are discussing issues related to Internet
governance.
The fact that when we talk about enhanced cooperation, it asks
government to coordinate the effort for policy development that may
affect several aspects of life and civil, social and economy factor,
but may relate to IG activities. In this sense IG is definitely
contribute to the agent of development. And there is a lot to do.
The issue that the previous speaker said, the access to information;
and governing the access to information.
We have talked in the last four meetings about building a trust and
using the electronic media and the Internet and how we take measures to
improve this trust. These are all issues, really, that were all
discussed within the Internet governance framework during all the last
meeting. And it is directly related to the issue of development.
So it is important to differentiate between the two issues, between
Internet as a tool for development, and between the topics that we
have -- we are discussing within the framework of Internet governance
that relates and support the development of the developing countries
and the least developed. Thank you, sir.
>> NITIN DESAI: You wanted to comment on this, Raúl?
>> RAÚL ECHEBERRIA: Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think that he
brought up a very interesting point, that -- in which I had not
reflected very much about before. That is, Internet governance for
development of what?
As listened -- listening the comments from the audience and the
interventions from other colleagues from the panel, I think that's --
my answer to that is that it is Internet governance for human
development. And it comprise developing and developed countries, of
course.
You know, Mr. Chairman, I'm the chair of the Internet society, an
organisation that spend most of its energies in working in the
development of the Internet around the world, but also in trying to
turn the Internet as a tool for improving the life of all the humanity.
I think that this is the -- the point. Of course, in -- in developing
countries are probably -- not probably, in most cases are bigger than
in developing countries. But we have to think in the -- in all the
humanity. Thank you.
>> NITIN DESAI: Everton, there have been several references to this
whole issue of is it something for developing countries, or what's
developing and developed?
You place a lot of emphasis on one interpretation, which is the
participation of development. How do you react to what you heard on
this?
>> EVERTON FRASK LUCERO: Thank you, Mr. Desai. On the question of
IG4D I must say first it never occurred to me any doubt about whether a
would be a reply to that question. Because it's so obvious. The
beauty of this kind of exercise is that we come from different
perspectives and each one bring its own experience here. And by
bringing the experience -- perhaps and that's what I want the most as a
result of this, is that we will be able to kind of construct a common
ground of understanding around this concept. Because to me since the
beginning I didn't even care to explain that Internet governance for
development is for development of people.
Because the whole world summit on information society was about the
creation of information society that was people centred. Development
oriented, and inclusive. So what we are doing when we talk about
Internet governance specifically is that are the mechanisms adequate to
take into account that basic mandate that resulted from WSIS?
This is the comment I have. Thank, Mr. Chair.
>> NITIN DESAI: One question and we move to the next. Do we have
more?
>> AYESHA HASSAN: Viola Krebs, Executive Director of ICS volunteers.
>> VIOLA KREBS: Thank you. Working in ICT for development, I'm very happy to see this panel, and I think it's a very important discussion. We just had over lunch a discussion of the Dynamic Coalition for linguistic diversity, and many of the issues that were discussed during this very vibrant meeting are very much connected to development, and so one of the things that was outlined and mentioned multiple times by different speakers was the fact that at the end of the day it needs to with be around the people centred approach and reflecting cultures, access to those in particular who do not have necessarily the possibility to write but being innovative to develop bridges between all communities and maybe use innovative technologies to reflect the cultural heritage and the needs of people who may look for jobs or may have very day to day kinds of preoccupations, and so as was said by the representative from Senegal, the local Governance question seems to be very important. So to the panel, my question would be, of course, we have talked about linguistic diversity maybe more in this IGF and the two previous ones than before, but there are still many questions to be resolved. We have 6,000 languages, maybe 350 of those are represented in cyberspace and this question is very much connected to development and getting the next billion on the Internet.
So how do we best tackle that?
>> NITIN DESAI: Can I suggest that we did have think we did have a fairly extensive discussion under diversity. What we're trying to do here is something which is not that detailed, and I'll come back to this and we'll come to that in the next question when we start getting to grips with what other specific issues on Governance which are most salient from this.
But Bill, quick, quick, quick because I need to move on.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Maybe we do agree Internet Governance is not about ICT for development but is it not about the relationship between Internet Governance at a global level and ICT for development? There are Governance decisions that are made globally that can impact on how ICTs can be used for development. We've had an example from our representative from Portugal looking at access to knowledge. There's viola's example about linguistic diversity so looking at how those two modalities relate to one another is probably the simplest and quickest way of getting to it.
>> NITIN DESAI: That's what we're going to get to next when we start trying to be more precise, what are the specific elements which are most relevant and salient from this perspective. Bill, you wanted a word?
>> WILLIAM DRAKE: Just on the question of what kind of development are we talking about? Of course human development. I'd wanted to give you a quote from Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate economist who wrote a nice book called, "Development as Freedom." He says development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency. It involves the promotion of crucial instrumental freedoms including economic opportunity, political freedom, social facilities, transparency guarantees, and protective security. Those are things that you can look at the relationship between Governance arrangements and economic opportunity and political freedom and so on and start to try to make connections. Of course that's not limited to developing countries. Nobody was suggesting that it is but from an operational standpoint it seems to me that the challenge for the IGF in particular is to try to foreground somewhat the concerns of developing countries, the kinds of issues that particularly arise in developing countries precisely because we have not given them central attention in this Forum and they're not given central attention in most of the other Internet Governance processes and that's the challenge.
There's a political as well as a normative and operational reason to say: Yes, development occurs everywhere, but we want to try to really take seriously the question of: What are the particular concerns that apply in developing and transitional countries. Thank you.
>> NITIN DESAI: Can I move on to the next question. As I see it, in some ways this is a non question. Imagine for a moment that this was a meeting not of people involved in Internet Governance, but Governance of the electricity system. Imagine that this was a gathering of people who are involved in the regulation of the electricity industry.
Would this question even arise? Would I not certainly pose to the electricity regulators that should you not be looking at the, for instance, your regulations on entry, your regulations on access to the grid, your regulations on tariffs? Would you not ask that those be examined from the point of view of the impact on development? It would be almost foolish not to ask that question. The whole purpose of this infrastructure is in the end is development. If you don't ask the question how it impacts on development, then it certainly would be rather pointless.
But you would not ask the electricity regulator questions which are beyond that regulator's domain. For instance, which involving industry processes, which involve a whole manner of other things which will decide and define how that electricity gets used. That's the only distinction one has to make.
But the idea that we have to ask this question as to how does how do these arrangement help or hinder development does require us to ask what development is. But probably not in as much detail as you'd have to do there but certainly means in terms of the spread of the Internet, the ease with which Internet can be used by people whose primary language is not English, the ease with which it can be used by people for purposes of their everyday life and so on. That's certainly issues we that will arise.
That's the question which is our next question really. Our next question is: Okay, this is what we mean. Now, what are the specific elements of Internet Governance which are most relevant from this perspective? One or two have been mentioned. The question of linguistic diversity, the capacity of the Internet to handle diversity is one of the things which has been mentioned. Issues of access have been mentioned.
Are there other dimensions of things that we have talked of under the heading Governance which do impinge on development in the sense they help or hinder? If you do it right they will help. If we do not do it right they will hinder the possibility of development. And that's the next question that we should come to. We have to be a little bit more precise.
I only urge the panel when they respond to keep in mind that we've had a fairly broad definition of what constitutes Governance. We have included issues of access, of diversity, of security and openness. All of these are deemed to be and of course the critical Internet infrastructure, all of these in our understanding are part of Governance.
So my question to you is: In these 5 things that we have, critical Internet infrastructure, Governance issues relating to access, to diversity, to security and to openness, what is it that you deem to be most relevant and significant from the perspective of IG for development?
Maybe you can switch around a little and this time maybe I'll start with Bill Drake since he's the one who's been writing and talking most about this subject. I want him to be precise. List the things which you think are most relevant from the perspective of development.
>> WILLIAM DRAKE: Well, we had the planning group that put together this session had identified a few issues that they thought were particularly relevant, were thinking about from a development perspective, where you could see both positive effects that are quite clear, but then you might also in some cases see problems, where potentially the existing procedures or policies might not be completely optimal from a development standpoint, and you might want to consider making some tweaks, some changes. So this is the kind of discussion that one has to have to go through the issues and sort of identify: Where does it work well? And where are the potential issues that we can tackle?
Now, the list that we had talked about in the group was, for example, to address questions of names and numbers, technical standards, security, intellectual property. I forget all the other ones that were on that list. I don't know that I can rank and say which I think are the most important to development, but I can say that it's useful to look at the whole range of Governance arrangements and try and figure out: Are there issues that arise in each of these spaces?
For example, if you take names and numbers, quite obviously, the whole question of IDNs has been very important to developing countries for a long time, and many people felt for a long time that the progress on that needed to be accelerated. Now of course, things are rolling, so we can say: Here's a case where things are moving along.
There are, of course, discussions about IPv4 exhaustion and IPv6 rollout, how that transition will be handled, how that could affect developing countries is again a distinctive issue that one could drill down and try and talk through.
New gTLDs. There was a workshop the other day that looked at this in some detail, and we talked about it yesterday in another workshop that I organised. There is, of course, a process now within ICANN to try to think about how to assist potential applicants from developing countries and other needy groupings, if you want to use that term, to deal with new gTLDs, because of the cost involved of applying but not just applying because that's really just a part of the story, of actually operating a gTLD.
Because, you know, many people I have heard it said by some developing country folks, that perhaps new gTLDs would raise a problem for our new ccTLDs that are still trying to get their footing and we should worry about this. I think expanding the name space is pro development. I think it would be good for developing countries but it has to be approached in the right way and it's simply a question of asking the question and saying: Are there particular concerns that might arise from the standpoint of the market structure, market access entry, and so on, for developing countries that perhaps we could take into account more fully.
And the reason, indeed, that this process is happening now in ICANN was I think the feeling among some people that it hadn't been given due consideration the first time around, when the process for applying for new gTLDs was first conceived, including with $185,000 application fee, the view was, there were no special concerns that had to be addressed that would be too complex, too difficult. Will have the same standards, the same approach for everybody. When we were in the Nairobi ICANN meeting a number of people started to say perhaps that will raise some the difficulties for developing countries. Let's give this a second thought.
A group was formed within the community to try and think it through. That's the kind of process I think is healthy is to take a second look sometimes, say, gee, we hadn't really thought about the development aspect. Is there something there? Are there any things we can do to make this work for effectively? So I'm just mentioning a few quick examples to start.
>> NITIN DESAI: Can I ask just the question: Is there any gTLD where there are registries located in a developing country? Just one?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: My name is Olga Cavalli, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Argentina, and I very like your comment because I would like to add to what Bill was saying that what I find relevant for development is having a healthy competitive environment for all of the things that you mention. Say for example about the name space. I would rather see many actors in countries coming from the local perspective and from gTLDs and ccTLDs competing in a competitive environment which is fair for both, so I would like those rules being applied too. Say for example in Latin America, we only have six registrars in the whole region. Why do we have such a very few and so limited name space competitive environment? Why we don't have that more developed?
Say, for example, infrastructure. Do we have enough infrastructure for ISPs? Do we have really good prices of international connectivity for the developing regions? Well, the answer is: No. It's because we don't have many actors investing there. Prance we should look at all perhaps we should look at all these issues that Bill really very good detailed, and try to find the ways that make them work in a competitive environment.
So we have many actors, and your comment about having a registry in a developing country I think is relevant. I don't have the answer for that but I should think about it. I think we have more ccTLDs in developing countries which is good. I would like to see also a G market because there are space for all the names. We all should have our name in the Internet. Thank you.
>> NITIN DESAI: Who wants to comment? Now I want you to focus and be precise and sort of drill down to specifics.
>> Jamil: I think this is a good discussion we're having on this. I'm going to go back to a point I made about new gTLDs. When you look at the new gTLD process and applying for the new gTLD it's an issue. How does that impact developing economies and the businesses in developing economies? I'm commenting on behalf of business so the question again to be asked is did we do a markets assessment, an economic analysis before we said we should go ahead and do this? Did we do an assessment of the economic analysis before we set the rules, before we set the barriers, before we created the complexity, before we set the prices and the answer is no. The economic analysis has come out now and you know that. So maybe we need to also ask the second question. If you look at the economic analysis it's focused on markets. But the next question is does it focus also on developing country markets? Maybe that's a question that should be part of the economic strategy as well. I sort of quickly put together something and drilled down.
I think that both the developed as well as developing countries on this issue of new gTLDs have common grounds. If you listen to a lot of developed countries they have issues on cost, so do developing countries. They have issues on complexity as do developing countries. They have issues who will go first, how will they choose. So do developing countries. They have issues on intellectual properties. So do developing businesses because they have to buy more names at the second level. It will be more impactful for them and user confusion and many other issues so I completely agree with you. You need a level playing field so that not only can the developed countries continue to innovate and create, but also the developing countries can do that and they need an environment to do that as well. Many of the things that are coming together as one humanity, taken together. Thank you.
>> NITIN DESAI: Can I just Olivier, what's happening on the remote participation?
>> OLIVIER CREPIN-LEBLOND: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There hasn't been that much discussion yet. I think people are quite interested in listening and seeing how the discussion is taking place here. I just wand wanted to mention one thing. You can also have remote participation from the back of the room since the distances are quite large so if anybody is a little uncomfortable with asking questions on the microphone they can also send them through the remote participation platform and we'll be able to relay them over. Thank you.
>> EVERTON FRASK LUCERO: From the perspective I initiated my participation here, we should aim at the institutional aspect I believe if we want to consider how the gTLD policy making process is relevant to development, if it is at all, what we have to do is to check where these policies are defined at the GNSO at ICANN, when they are defining the policies if they have criteria that take into account the need of the developing world. If they don't, then it is about time to have. And how are we going to do that? Just by opening a market for gTLDs at the developing world? I have doubts about that. I believe that in some cases or perhaps in many cases, it will actually create some undue, may create some undue competition with the existing ccTLDs that very hardly are fighting to establish themselves and it's not just a question of opening the market and then contributing to the development.
So there are some things that require a deeper analysis and what is most important of all is that developing countries are part of the decision making process on equal footing, because we should not presume that a group of people, we will be able to choose what is more and what is less important in terms of development without listening and bringing in the decision making process those that are from developing countries.
By the way, developing countries people and Government and industry, they know very well, what they want, and what they need. It's just a question of listening and allowing them to participate at the decision making process and we will get there together.
>> NITIN DESAI: Maimouna and then the audience and then to Raul.
>> NDEYE DIOP-DIAGNE: Thank you. As far as the new gTLDs are concerned, I think we've done a lot of work on this in ICANN for categorizing the new gTLDs in order to make it possible for communities and geographical areas to be able to create content in their languages and to be able to create new gTLDs. I think it's important for this categorization to take place and to look at commercial and non commercial gTLDs, and for them to meet the needs of developing countries, because we don't necessarily have a market oriented approach.
As to prospects in Africa, I stressed what Internet Governance can enable our countries to do thanks to IGF. Thanks to Internet Governance. I think there's a considerable impact on sustainable development and that this is becoming a need increasingly. We've talked about gTLD but there are also several routes.
You need better worldwide distribution of highways. This means that we need to have better infrastructures locally and Nationally for us to be able to aggregate our efforts. And I think we have to look at the redistribution of these other routes to enable better traffic flow amongst the various regions.
I think also we need to create security and stability for networks. This is especially important for developing countries because we're more vulnerable. We are more vulnerable because it is harder for us to make our networks secure.
I think that it's very important today to be aware of everything that is being done with mobiles, and with e banking and so on and so forth. We can do better with more secure systems but we have to move forward and carry out this transition as quickly as possible. I think against this background, the Internet Governance Forum can help developing countries to take the step and to move towards IPVCs directly. As my colleague from Portugal said, capacity strengthening is important, training is important. Above all in these new technologies, in these new means of encouraging steps to be taken forward.
In 1998, I was present at iNet training about network management to enable people in the avant garde to train others internally. By way of conclusion we immediate to promote open technologies and open standards. Above all, we have to improve the participation of Governments from developing countries in this process. Thank you.
>> NITIN DESAI: That's a long list, Maimouna. Christine?
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Here we have a question.
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Parminder from IT for Change. With the permission of the Chair I was the last person in Q4 intervention on what is IG4D so can I address that issue also briefly before I go to the specifics? Thank you.
I think what is IG4D should come from our understanding of what development is and it has been spoken by a few people here that it's a complex issue, it's very complicated. Once we at least start accepting that as a complex issue the complication is on the side of development as much or as more on the side of technology. We would have made a start and then we might be more room to the views, perhaps more power to influence the decision to people who work in the development field which is as difficult, as specialized as the technical field and I think there should be a balance there.
And that in that context there was those references we need to be talking of development in both developing and developed countries and we understand the fact that there are poor people in developed countries but development has traditionally been a sort of structural conditions generally associated with certain societies, while there is time that there's opportunity to keep on changing our definitions but we should be careful about what we're proceeding on. That in itself would be a good thing to focus on, that there is a manner in which development is constructed and there are many complications. There's human development, there's sustainable development, there's economic growth, there's development of freedom, all of them very different, every issue about Internet Governance would have different implications or different models, it will have different implications for different groups of people within developing countries. If we start appreciating the complexity, start understanding development we would start understanding Internet for development.
What we need to do here is that for me we have to define Internet Governance for development would be that Internet Governance which is substantially driven by people who seriously involved in development, development actors who represent people, who represent those constituencies which are typically called development constituencies, marginalized groups, marginalized people and marginalized countries, and then actors, those actors are driving IG, then it is IG for development.
One side IG for development can be a set of issues as we are listing up in the second question, which is much more of a technical and expertise based it's obvious that these issues are important, but second side is what Mr. Lucero said, participation. If you allow them to substantively determine the agenda, they will tell you what it is. It is a moving agenda. But the point is participation.
In that context, what probably happens in many Internet Governance open Forums is that there is devaluation of politics of representation. Anyone who comes represents himself or herself and that makes the representation of those people who would not come, who would probably never become difficult and we have to accept those modalities of representation not only through Government but also the deepening Democratic concept where it comes through different interest groups. If we're talking about participation of those groups we're talking about Internet Governance for development.
Well, the issue and I would like to go out of CIRs which have been talked about a lot and I must say that I understand ICANN and CIR issues are important but they do not greatly excite those constituencies directly. They're really not very bothered I know there are issues and I'm more concerned about the Governance model around CIRs rather than the outcome of CIR related issues. And if I have to identify one issue which is most important for development today, it is the network neutrality issue.
The most important development issue during this was interconnection regimes. It simply disappeared, it never got discussed around that because we could not frame a response to a complete mechanism that market is the only way traffic would get exchanged. Any kind of public frame works which could complement that market framework could enable it, could cover up the residual parts were simply not acceptable. And therefore the issue disappeared.
Now it's the same issue, there's a global network neutrality. Earlier it was whether traffic would be exchanged on equitable terms but now the issue is whether globally the traffic would flow in equally paid for channels, or there would be faster channels of traffic flow across the globe, and if network neutrality is not observed basically and it's not being observed we would see a distortion of flow of content, of application, of businesses, of cultures across the globe.
That has started to happen and that's the biggest developing country concern, that's the biggest global issue relating to development, and at the local level, increasingly, the mobile Internet is no longer net neutral. In India, we have the top Telecom which gives Facebook free, free not as it is free for all of us but free that there are no download charges. If you want to go to Facebook it's free. The rest of the Internet is paid for.
This is a violation of network neutrality. There's another carrier which gives 10 services, Twitter, Google, et cetera, for about a dollar, but not the rest of the Internet. The rest of the Internet is higher priced. So these kind of definitions have started so we're shaping Internet for the poor.
You want this Internet? Take this. This is a compromised Internet you get and we are pushing mobile phones as the final frontier of final panacea for development so both from the global level and the local level, network neutrality is a major issue which is distorting the shape of the Internet against the interests of the marginalized groups, rather than giving them protective discrimination which is normally the rule when we talk about the marginalized communities. Thank you.
>> NITIN DESAI: That's a very precise focus which is a test for Internet Governance for development is the impact that it has on the capacity of people who would otherwise get left out. Use that and his identifies one very specific issue which arises out of that.
Can I move first before I go to Raul has been wanting to comment for some time.
>> RAUL ECHEBBERIA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think that all the issues that we're discussing in this Forum related to Internet Governance has an impact on development but I have to agree 100% with Parminder, I think that some of the issues that we're discussing has a limited impact in development. And there are others that are very important and have a huge impact.
As Parminder said, and thank you, Parminder, because I will have to spend less time speaking, but the first issue in my net is network neutrality, too. I think that this is the most important. I think that as a rule it's that I'm more concerned about those issues that could affect the equitable conditions of access not only to the network by itself, but to the services and the information.
As network neutrality is by definition is one problem that will be in one of the most hottest topics in the forums in the next few years. I think it is important remark that the neutrality of the network is, the problems and the lack the loss of the neutrality of the network could be caused for different reasons. One of the reasons is obviously the difference in business interests of different players of the Internet. But there is also other reasons, there is political reasons.
And I think that in some cases, in some places, the network has not been neutral for a long time. Probably we have not been dealing properly with this issue in IGF and this is one of the things that we have to focus on so now that the discussions in the field bring more clearly the importance of the neutrality of the network, so we can see how some people have had problems for a long time. As far as having free access to having the freer flow of information from point to point.
In the same category of problems, what are they, the most important Internet Governance topics related with development, I think that access is obviously one of the most important points. But also access by itself and also the development of regional infrastructure, and regional interconnection. And this is something that has been discussed at many but I will not explain what the topic is.
As I said before, I think that those issues that could affect the possibility of the people of using the Internet are most important in its relation with development, and so I think that all the aspects that are related with Human Rights are very important, and probably just for remarking one, I choose freedom of expression in the network, because it is the use of the network is very limited if I cannot express myself freely, I cannot express myself freely and I don't have freedom also to access anything in the network.
Last but not least, I think that language diversity is also a key issue, and it has been mentioned many, many times in this week in IGF, in different workshops and in main sessions, but it seems that this one point which the numbers that we see every year when we come back to IGF are more alarming than the previous year so I think that this is a topic in which we're not making a lot of progress.
And of course related with language diversity is also the point of content development. Thank you, Chair.
>> AYESHA HASSAN: Thank you. We actually have two questions that I think are
linked. Christina will call on the next person. We have Jaime from
dot VR.
>> JAIME WAGNER: My name -- I'd like to come back to the gTLD
question that -- brought about by Olga.
And my name is Jaime Wagner, I'm in the Internet steering committee
of Brazil where I represent 11 ISP associations that have more than
2,000 associates, private companies of different sizes, from very small
companies to companies in the -- house up to 500 million dollars a
year.
Maybe we are underdeveloped in our business skills. But I would like
to be very frank.
It's a businessman for many years of my life. And I never -- and in
the Internet business. And I never felt a need for new gTLDs. And
also I cannot make a -- speak formally in the name of the 2,000
companies, but I a made an informal consultation with many of them.
And none of them feels that need for increase their business and to
develop their -- our country. Well, still is there a business there?
I don't know. I have doubts.
I see that there is a business for consultants and lawyers in
trademark protection.
By the way, this is the kind of people I see around these ICANN
meetings and IGF meetings a lot.
But real businessmen that are the ones that forge the real
development of these developing countries, well, I think they don't see
a business here, Olga. At least I don't.
And I think the real divide is not the one -- well, it's still -- we
have a real divide ahead of us. The inclusion of access to all.
But we will face another divide. The divide between providers of
information and tools and the users and consumers of information and
tools.
>> NITIN DESAI: Did you have something there?
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Yeah, we have a question here.
>> NITIN DESAI: Give there then I'll come to Zahid.
>> ROMUALDAS KRUKAUKAS: I'm Romualdas Krukaukas, I'm from Vilnius,
Lithuania, and I'm representing Lithuanian Computer Society.
First of all, I would like to say that Internet is age is about 15
years. And all of its 15 years Internet -- a paradox of success of
Internet was that he was not government-centred. And now after 45
years in 2005, we have Internet governance forum. And maybe my first
statement is that we must -- to govern not too much and not too less.
And I only talk -- I'm talking now how not to list, what kind of
areas or issues -- answering to your questions, we must -- to govern.
Internet governance for the development of Internet of himself, is
governing of technological issues.
Talking about this, remembering that paradox, we must not govern all
these areas, maybe -- I can say maybe we must govern very important
areas. Identity on Internet, as electronic signature, what must, from
my point of view, band -- be connected to technological. Fingerprints
or other aspects. And maybe leaps.
If you remember, definition of Internet is global system,
interconnected computer networks that use protocol centres, service for
billion users.
And generally computer system with software, as you remember, it
is -- we have in software -- system software and application software.
Now, this aspect for Internet what I was talking is in general is
defined as system software. But now we are coming to the applications.
As you remember we had in 90s, or 70s, applications for package for
statistical -- some statistical works, we had some application packages
for metallurgy.
In some areas, it can be developed some applications for -- packages
for a government solutions or for e-publishing solutions or for e-trade
or for entertainment, as we know it in -- after four years we will have
in 2014 about 90 percent of all this. Information on Internet and
video.
And finally, I would like to say that -- to second issue what I was
talking, these application solutions on Internet, in general it is
solutions for the businessman, what now was talking before now, for the
peoples, citizens, and this is for the government.
Having these two areas, like technological area for Internet and --
what general goal, what must be resulted is interoperability of
Internet and all these issues.
I think we can achieve the good results, not only all time
remembering that the best paradox of Internet is that Internet was
developed very well without governance at all.
Thank you.
>> NITIN DESAI: See, drop the governance. Good.
Zahid, and then --
>> ZAHID JAMIL: Thank you very much. I wanted to comment on Jaime's
comment. I couldn't agree with you more. The amount we talked in
ICANN and -- integration or malicious abuse -- the amount of time we're
consuming doing this. The question is how helpful, how essential, how
much of a priority is it?
And I wish that we'd had an economic analysis before we'd embarked on
this. I wish that that economic analysis had been a little more
focused also on developing countries before we embarked on this. So
maybe we could have actually set our priorities.
So the question would arise from basically the question -- how many
do we really need?
I mean, what is the global demand for it?
From developing, how many do we really need?
Do we really need a mass roll out of 300 gTLDs a year?
This is the question, I agree, should have been addressed at that
time. Thank you.
>> WILLIAM DRAKE: Thank you. I guess I have a slight concern. I
agree with Parminder and Raúl, that if you were to ask the question the
way the chair did, which is the most important, to development, which
issues are the most important, then of course I would probably say that
everything pertaining to access, including interconnection, the
changing economics of the -- the underlying telecom and ISP industry,
peering, all those questions, neutrality, ensure freedom of expression,
these are more important to development, probably, than whether or not
there's substantial developing country participation in the global
registry market.
But the problem is I feel like that's kind of a false choice. It
reminds me of the kinds of debates we had back in the early 2000s and
199s when people were first raising the issue of the global digital
divide. And the response you would get from some folks would be do
developing countries really need networks?
What they need is bread.
Of course people need to eat more than they have to have Internet.
Fine. But that's a false choice.
I would rather not take things off the table at the front end by
saying the priorities are only issues 1, 2, 3, and we don't need them
to think about 4 or 5 and 6. To me I would rather arrive at priorities
after having done a sort of panoptic assessment of the range of issues.
For example if you do it in a way that takes things off the agenda,
then you would never even ask the question about the pricing and the
access to new ccTLDs and it was precisely because people turned around
and asked that question in ICANN that we now have a process where
people are trying to work it threw.
Let's not sort things out and narrow the field too early without at
least exploring whether there are legitimate issues in any -- in either
direction associated with the range of different questions: Privacy,
intellectual property. There's a whole range of Internet governance
mechanisms.
And quite frankly, most of the stuff pertaining to the underlying
infrastructure and service provisioning are more to do with national
policies and private contracts than global arrangements. That isn't to
say that maybe we shouldn't talk about them. But my concern was to not
have the global arrangements fall off the radar as something that's
legitimate.
And I make one more point on that. And that is the answer to
Everton's question. He asked does the GNSO talk about development when
it does this?
I have been at the GNSO only two years. So I'm probably not the
right person to say. But I can tell you in my two years we've never
had development issues being raised as a consideration in trying to
figure out all these issues that Zahid just mentioned. That's
precisely piss point. In many cases you may not need to. In many
cases you're trying to sort out a complex issue of domain recovery or
something. And there isn't a substantially unique development
dimension. In which case, fine. But it's important that the issue at
least be on the table and that somebody ask it. And if there is
something, then we try to figure out how to approach.
>> NITIN DESAI: Before I ask Everton, I think --
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: I think we have a comment from Pied, it's about
north Africa and the need for new gTLDs for the developing world. So
Pierre, if you can...
>> PIERRE DANDJIMOU: Thanks. Pierre Dandjinou, Strategic Consulting
Group, formally with UNDP. I just wanted to briefly comment on this
idea. I mean what the need for IGF for development. And I would like
us to actually link, you know, the idea of development to growth,
prosperity, and inclusiveness. And especially when -- it concern
developing countries such as Africa. And to come to specifics, for
instance, I was thinking that particularly Africa as domain name and we
are discussing the new gTLDs has happened to me that this would be an
opportunity to build. What we might call the African Internet
industry.
I mean, industry, I mean business. I'm not just meaning corporation
or assistance to Africa.
It's about building capacity so that people from Africa be also
included in the work of the Internet. Which is not really the case
today, just consuming from Africa and not producing.
So I think that Africa, for instance, will pull some of the Internets
that is there from the small and medium size, you know, businesses.
Also this should have promote some of the cultural thing and tourism
and the rest of them. Especially also will boost the national -- the
gTLDs in most places are still finding their way, as you said. But I
do believe that Africa, as region and community domain name will really
boost this.
And finally, when I was talking about inclusiveness, we are seeing
more and more people from the communities, local communities now using
the social networks to link up with people outside their region. I
think this is one of the places where I think IGF could really help.
Because it also bring some other issues about the accessibility to
Broadband and thing like that. So if that would help especially
African decision-makers to build the appropriate environment, that
really leads to competition, that really leads to building capacity of
the local business, I suspect this will really mean creating
opportunities, you know, to the big masses there.
So briefly, that's what I thought we should say include in the
discussion. Thank you.
>> NITIN DESAI: Everton and then Anriette.
>> EVERTON FRASK LUCERO: Thank you, Mr. Desai, on the question that
was raised from the gentleman Lithuania, I agree. It's hard to believe
that had a complex network would work 24 hours 7 days a week without
stop, connected globally without any kind of arrangement to which all
the actors involved in this very complex system would converge and
respect and make decisions that would coordinate all this whole thing.
So governance, I believe, in one way or the other is present to the
Internet since its inception. Since one computer was connected to the
other and to the other and then to the 10th and then to the 10,000th
and 10 millionth. And I have also to remember that it's not about
connectivity of machines, it is about connectivity of human beings that
we are talking about.
I would like also to stress, I think it cannot be stressed enough,
the importance of considering the issue of net neutrality for
development, in this perspective of development. Why?
Because of the barriers of entry. If you go away from the network
neutrality approach and if you abandon the end principle, you may very
easily elevate the barriers of entry for new actors. And where are the
new actors now?
In the developing world where the Internet is growing more.
And this is also very closely related to the remark that was made
previously by Wagner, because if we are serious about development, we
should not see the developing world as a big Marquette to explore, of
million, billions of new consumers and users of digital data. If we
are serious enough, we have to look at that part of the world as
potential contributors. Producers, developers of applications.
That is development. That is when we will be raised to a standard
that we could consider ourselves also part of -- I believe what all we
want is a completely fully developed world that will provide conditions
for every citizen in the world to express their own potential and their
creativity using this wonderful tool that we have.
Now, on the last comment by Mr. Pierre, I believe it only reinforces
my point that it is very difficult to get to a prioritization or a
decision about gTLDs. Are they important for development, new ones?
Are they or not?
Because it has to do with specific needs. Perhaps the situation of
Africa is different from Latin America. And therefore what we need is
to have them both expressing themselves, not through an open mic.
Because open mic we have here. Ms. Diop-Diagne speaking on behalf of
Senegal. I can speak on behalf of Brazilian government. What we need
is power that corresponds to new economy and new demography, of the
Internet that is evolving over time. I would like also to agree with
Bill, that if we come to the -- a list of priorities and see what is
more important and less important, some let's say more technical
organizations will very easily conclude, okay, this thing of
development is not related to me, you continue discussing it, but I,
let's say -- ICANN or others may just -- it doesn't have -- I don't
have anything to do with that. And then we'll continue business as
usual.
I believe that development is a transversal and holistic approach
that needs to be present in any policy, in any decision that is taken
at any Internet governance forum all over the world. Thank you.
(Applause.)
>> NITIN DESAI: Anriette?
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I would agree with Everton. But I'd like
to come back to some of the specific issues posed by -- and how people
in developing countries are increasingly using the Internet. I think
as was said earlier the issue of net neutrality in mobile has specific
challenges. The realities that most people in developing countries are
using the Internet primarily through mobile phones.
Now, there are differences. There are different governance
challenges that arises from that. It's also how people use it. For
example if you don't have a personal bank account but you are using a
mobile phone for money transfers, there are particular consumer
protection issues. You're not covered by financial services
legislation, so what are you protected by?
That's something we need to talk about.
When people are using SMS for political protest, there's anonymity
issues there. It's hard to be anonymous on a mobile phone or through a
mobile phone if you're criticizing your government. How do we deal
with that?
Similarly, user-generated content, which is what's created so much
energy and diversity on the Internet, how do people who primarily
interact with the Internet through mobile phones that are increasingly
not very neutral and that have very limited opportunity for the
creation of local content, how is that going to affect the development
of Internet in those countries?
And how introduction of the Internet affects human and social and
cultural development.
Media diversity, for example. Access to a computer, it's very easy
to create a local newspaper. How do you do that if your only access is
through mobile phone and if you tie it into Facebook through one
particular provider, and that's your only way of sending content onto
the Internet.
Competition and opportunity, sharply we're seeing developing
countries that mobile operators make, deal with development operations,
with governments to provide services and applications to citizens. And
it's all owned by one company. And developed by one company.
What about the economic opportunity that this technology can offer
for diversifying those -- that invention?
And we need to deal with regulation in a particular way to create the
kind of openness and competition that we want in the mobile Internet
industry.
So these are the types of things. And then I think that brings us
back to some more generic issues such as intellectual property and own
standards. How can we look at this and use more open standard
enforcement in the industry to help counter some of these effects of
closing up in the mobile Internet space?
>> NITIN DESAI: Did you have -- one more question and then we
will -- I want to move on. Because it's five o'clock already.
>> AYESHA HASSAN: We have two short comments if that's okay. The
first one is from Leslie Martinkovics, of Horizon.
>> LESLIE MARTINKOVICS: Thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Chairman. This has been a very, very interesting and very good discussion. If I may just have a quick comment on the issue of infrastructure buildout and access. I believe that this is an area that we would be well served to focus on some more in the future.
Two brief observations, if I may.
I had the opportunity over the last several years to work in a part
of subSaharan Africa that was among the least connected regions of the
world. And that region is East Africa, which until recently, until the
arrival of the new undersea cables was really only connected to the
global Internet via satellite connectivity. This is all changing now.
That region now has three undersea cables that are lit, a fourth is on
its way. These cables have been financed some by private investments,
some by government investments.
What these cables are now doing is they are putting forward an
opportunity for the regulators of the five East African countries to
put fort new policies encouraging investments into the region that were
not there earlier. These investments in turn are building out fiber
rings that are connecting those countries that are landlocked and do
not have immediate access to these undersea cables.
These fiber rings in turn are putting forward new opportunities for
the construction and implementation of Internet exchange points.
ISPs are critical to lower the costs of access and also are
tremendously important to help local content. And we know that local
content is one of the very significant building blocks of access and of
interest to look at various different roles that Internet governance
has and can play.
I believe that if we have the privilege of having an IGF in East
Africa in the future, I think it would be a very good idea to spend
some time and looking at the factual data from the region as well as
from other parts of subSaharan America and even perhaps Latin America
and southeast Asia of what these new networks look like, what do they
provide?
How is the demographics of access changing? What does this mean to
the various business models that are being contemplated, that are being
used?
How are the regulatory structures changing, and how are these
structures impacting the way Internet governance will be discussed
years and years from now?
So I believe that that would present us with a very good opportunity
to have a further discussion on this point, which I think is extremely
important. And your excellent panel has done a very, very good job in
pulling together some of the key aspects to it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
>> NITIN DESAI: Has not finished this work, still has a lot to do.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Our second question here is from Bertránd.
>> BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: Thank you for the opportunity. A few comments following some of the remarks that have been made before. I heard Parminder raise a very important question which is sort of the legitimation of the representative mechanisms. I would like to disagree in the following way: This is not about replacing one mechanism by another. It is not about replacing what we're doing in Internet Governance and multistakeholder processes. It's not about replacing the representative democracy model by another one. This would be, for instance, the equivalent of replacing the Ptolemaic model with the earth at the middle of the universe to the Copernican model of the sun in the middle. It's either one or the other.
In this case this is that knot what we're talking about. We're talking about enhancing and strengthening democracy and adding layers of decision shaping, agenda setting, better implementation to the mechanism of representative democracy that allow decision making and validation.
In all countries that have a democracy or representative democracy model there's a distinction between the elaboration of the law that is usually done by Parliament and the moment when the executive has the responsibility of signing the law into force. Or it's probably not the case everywhere, I'm sorry. I'm generalizing.
But in certain countries and certainly in France, there is a need to sign. If you look at what happened during the World Summit on the information society and the creation of this very IGF, the drafting, the preparation, the discussion was done in a multistakeholder format. But the Governments endorsed. At the end of October, the representative of the Governments in New York will decide on the continuation or not
>> NITIN DESAI: But we're not having a discussion on that right now. Can I ask you to be a little briefer because we need to move on? Because I will can come to this question next. So move on to the other part.
>> BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: I was trying to raise the question of legitimation of the mechanism which was raised by Parminder and it's a very important question. I can quit on that one.
Very quickly on the other issues: The new gTLD question is clearly an important debate and I don't want to delve into it too much but there's one element that has been raised that deserves attention is that the current mechanism of vertical integration that requires to use registrars that are accredited, whereas in many countries the registrars do not necessarily exist, that set criteria for technical competence at a level that a lot of ccTLDs even the best ones in Europe, are not meeting today, and raises a price that is obviously beyond the reach of most developing countries is a problem, and why is it a problem? Because there is one fundamental flaw, which is the single model, or the single rule for all TLD applications so we're setting a standard, and it is hard to go beyond, but we're setting a standard that is the same for all TLDs, those who would be competing with .com with hundreds of millions hopefully for them with registration as the small ones.
The last element regarding the need, I'm sympathetic to what Jaime Wagner is saying. However if we had asked anybody in 1991 or in 1980, do you really think that all companies will need a Domain Name to have their activity on the Internet? 99% of the companies would have said: What is the Internet? The opening up of the Domain Name space is not bad or good in itself. It depends how we do it. I do strongly believe that there's a benefit in terms of enabling innovation, in opening the Domain Name space, and the new GLDs and I take on one example regarding cultural diversity. The example of this small TLD which .cat I've been mentioning over and over again shows you can promote local languages through a TLD, that facilitates the existence of a community. So the introduction of IDNs, the introduction of TLDs that's will serve communities is one element that can help development. But the bottom line is that if countries do not do the necessary investments to have the connectivity and the necessary investments to allow the social spaces that emerge on the Internet to be fully accessible, then there's no way they will benefit from the development.
So freedom of access, flow of information, is as important for the development as just connectivity.
>> NITIN DESAI: One last comment and then I want to move to the next question.
>> RAUL ECHEBBERIA: Thank you. This is really a very exciting topic. It is difficult to refrain of speaking. I think I agree strongly agree and endorse the last sentence from the last intervention when he say that the development is something that has to be considered in every decision that is taken in Internet Governance and I also agree very much with what Bill Drake is saying, that while there are points that could be clearly one, two, three in importance, in the impact that they have on development, we have also to look at four, five, six, but it implies that we have prioritization so we cannot lose the focus on what are the most impacting topics because those are the topics in with which we have to put more attention because it's where we will get a bigger impact. This is just on economic issue is we have to deal with we have to optimize the effort in order to get better results.
So while I strongly agree and I don't want to be misinterpreted, I strongly agree we have to look at all the issues and I think that it is important to have the development dimension considered in every decision that is taken in Internet Governance, I think that we with have to recognize that there are prioritizations and that there are issues in which we have made progress, others in which we're in the same situation than five years ago and others in which we have we are facing the risk of going back.
And so this is something that has to be present at the time of taking decisions. Thank you.
>> NITIN DESAI: I think we've had a fairly useful discussion on the second question. We've tried to be a little more precise on what are the elements that we talk of under Governance which have the greatest salience for this issue of development, and a variety of suggestions have been made.
We list all of them to cover most items but I think what has been useful is that the basic theme that has come across is not necessarily just a matter of saying: A, B, C, D, E, F, G. But ensuring under each of these the question is asked, how does this impinge on development, is not saying this is very important this does matter, that does not matter, but really, is there a procedure which actually asks that question and proposes that question more clearly? Nevertheless, there have been clearly some suggestions on what are the priorities that should govern. It's a little bit like there are many parts of my behavior which my wife finds annoying and I can tell her I can't change all of it. Can you give me priorities, what is more important for you that I should change, then maybe I'll do that.
So the question of priorities is not that some things are unimportant. It's simply if you had to sequence something, then where would you like to begin? And where would you like to focus? It's a point which will come up in our fourth question, when would like to see something, but how shall we handle this in the future? What will we do next time we have a meeting of the IGF where we're to talk of Internet Governance for development? How should we handle that? We can't just to have this general discussion every time. It will have to be a little more precise. Is there an issue we should take up there? Is there a theme we should take up there? So I'd like you to start thinking about it because in between I'll interpose a question, the third question, which has been implicit in a lot of things which have been said here.
In fact, one theme that came out of this discussion was: It isn't a question of what are the elements? The real question is, the procedure. How decisions are taken, and who has a seat at the table when the decision is taken? That is what really matters. If the people whose development you're most concerned about have a seat at the table, then rest assured that their concerns will be reflect and that's really our third question in a different way.
Our third question is really what it says. I'll read it out: How developing and other countries organise and manage their National-level engagement with global Internet Governance in the context of their wider National ICT strategy? So I have a National ICT strategy which focuses on a certain type of development and the question that has been posed here is: How effectively can I ensure that these priorities of my National ICT strategy can be reflected in the way in which the global Internet Governance system is managed?
This is where issues of representation, et cetera, which have come up in our discussion do arise. So I'm going to begin this discussion on the third by asking the person who perhaps raised it first and that is Everton to lead off on this.
>> EVERTON FRASK LUCERO: Thank you, Mr. Desai. If I understood well, you want me to comment on National experiences, right?
>> NITIN DESAI: And participation in the global process.
>> EVERTON FRASK LUCERO: And participation in the global process, yes. I'm very glad that you made this question to me because I am from a country as you know, Brazil, that has a multistakeholder model embodied in its structure for managing the Internet and it is not a heavy structure at all. It's actually just representatives from Civil Society, the business community, the Government, and the academia, and so it is it makes things really easier both to discuss and coordinate and get to common grounds and understandings related to National issues that should be raised internationally, as well as to support the participation at international events and conferences like this one. That's what explains, for instance, why we have such a big delegation to IGF meetings.
I would say that from the first day after the conclusion of WSIS, we took very seriously at the National level the recommendations and the principles that were embodied at the Tunis agenda are related to Internet Governance. We are now in our own process of establishing some legal framework, civil framework, for the Internet, and we have we think this mechanism that I described, we have developed certain principles that are not casting stones. They are actually a reference for anyone who's dealing with the subject, to be clearer about what it is about, and we even brought these principles as a contribution from our side to be considered by anyone who's interested on that.
And if by the way anyone hasn't received this little leaflet with the 10 principles, just ask one of our colleagues from the Brazilian delegation. They will be glad to distribute it. And so I believe that by following the multistakeholder approach at home, it made things really easier for us to channel our expectations and our needs at the international fora. That's why we always have a very strong delegation and many arrangements for decision making at ICANN and the GAC, and we also are represented here, and we are also at the other fora, where the subject arises.
So I believe that again, the kind of setting of institutional setting that you establish will be a very important and determinant factor. And I would also say one thing more about it, it doesn't require public funds to allow for this kind of participation, because the Committee is actually oversees the work of NIC.br, an NGO that manages .br on a day to day basis and the procedures from collecting the contribution for those who subscribe to domain names under .br help fund the including the participation at the international level fora. That's why for instance that we were able to help with the organisation of the second IGF in Rio de Janeiro and that's why also we have funds at that within that mechanism to support other initiatives, like statistics and IXP deployment and other matters that aren't relevant to development.
That is the experience that I can bring to you, because that's what I know, and I would also like to stress also that within our region of Latin America and the Caribbean, in what refers to numbers, LACNIC has done an extraordinarily wonderful job by being transparent, inclusive, bottom up, by reaching out as Raul has already explained and that is really an example of how people should look at those who are the potential beneficiaries of their actions, and try to engage them positively in the process. We're very glad to be part of LACNIC and to support it as well.
On the question of prioritization, I totally understood the view that Raul presented that it is important to have a value for money and then know what you could do first that would impact more at the level of each organisation.
What we cannot do is to get the conclusion that we can have this list, let's say, here at this global open environment, because some organisations may just feel like that it is an issue that does not concern them, and that is wrong. Development is an issue that should be in the agenda of each and every organisation related to Internet Governance and that is the message that I believe everybody should take home after this meeting. Thank you.
>> NITIN DESAI: Thank you.
>> NDEYE DIOP-DIAGNE: Thank you, Chair, for giving me the opportunity to talk about the National IGF and also the regional one. We hosted two weeks ago in Dakar. At the National level as you know we have a Head of State which is very involved in ICT, and on the WSIS process, so like what's happened in Brazil, we also promote the multistakeholder approach. In our delegation, we have Government, civil society, private sector and youth.
And what we try to promote is building infrastructure, the broadband infrastructure. We started years and years ago and we have one of the best infrastructures in West Africa. And also, we try to promote research and educational network, because we think that we have to work on education to have to achieve our objective in ICT4D. We also tried to put ICT as a priority on our development document and strategy and also as the tools to support the other social economic domain like education, health, local connectivity and so forth.
If we talk at the regional level, it's not easy because only 70% of the population are literate, so we face another issue of illiterate people and how to put ICT on these people. We try to create also industry, on this issue and we also work a lot with the regional infrastructure.
I think that one of the issues in Africa is that we have to work not only with the Government, with society and private sector, we also have to work with our regional organisations because they do a lot on coordination among countries. And we also try on our local registry, which is AFRiNIC to set up a high level group of Government on public policy development issue.
I think it's an important thing. We try to achieve to involve more Government, develop more Government, more Ministry, more people who make decisions on these projects. I think that's what you try to do and about the participation, we participate since the beginning of the preparatory meeting of WSIS, and we'll continue to participate on the development of this process. Thank you.
>> NITIN DESAI: Anriette?
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks, Nitin. I think what Governments can do to enhance the National arrangements, well, firstly the inclusion of other stakeholder groups, that's very important. We've heard that in Brazil that happens. It doesn't happen elsewhere.
And then secondly, including not just business, Civil Society, directly involved with the Internet, but involved with development: The health sector, the educational sector, libraries, groups whose work directly relates to the development of the Internet and the impact of the Internet on development.
They should also be included. I think another real advantage that progress that needs to be made or change, is that there's more of an integrated approach. So you'd have a Government that has one set of people that would go to the World Intellectual Property Organization and dealing with access to knowledge issues and other intellectual property issues. But they would never participate in the IGF or in any Internet Governance arrangements.
Is similarly, those dealing with trade who go to the WTO, we experience in how Governance decisions impact on users, a convergence between regulations made in these different places so I think we need to integrate them more.
Similarly with something like the commission on status of women who's dealing with gender equality. They don't get involved in Internet Governance very often so Governments I think need to look at the scope of development challenges and then bring those actors in.
Then I think look out for contradictions and be transparent. I'd like to hear from people about ACTA, for example, the Anti Counterfeiting Treaty, which Governments signed. It's not always they're who has done that and who has not and it has impact on access to knowledge so I think transparency is as important as participation.
>> NITIN DESAI: Zahid?
>> ZAHID JAMIL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am so glad that these points were just made because it allows me more freeway to go into other areas and to say Internet is not just ICANN and ITF and others but in other arenas, like the WTO and others and places where say for instance the ICC has a business organisation feeds into the European Union processes. So I'll give you two examples very quickly that may be used from international and local engagement perspective.
So in, as a Pakistani being involved in the ICC and their privacy Task Force which was providing input into the European Union process of the directive related to data protection and related to the cross border transfer of personal data. So all electronic data if using the Internet when it travels from the European Union to other places is subject to the EU directive. And sitting in those Task Forces and participating as a developing country business individual or representative was very useful because when this issue came up in my own country in Pakistan, so engagement at the international level and now talking about how that impacted Nationally, when the Government decided to sort of produce a legislation or draft legislation which would have actually impacted the IT sector the outsourcing sector in Pakistan shut down basically Pakistan's IT sector's ability to obtain outsourcing of business from the United States, because completely pro EU. We had to sit there and explain and the whole of the ICC a lot of the people from the Task Force has to actually engage directly and these are U.S. companies, European companies, other developing countries, in that Task Force had to engage directly with the Government, with the Civil Society, especially with the business, with the help of the business, in Pakistan to say well, this legislation will impact your ability to be able to do IT outsourcing and what are the different solutions, so something was suggested which was the standards contractual clauses so the Government of Pakistan adopted those,
So that gives you a cycle saying you allow National representation or developing country representation at these international fora that can impact international regimes, that can have a following effect at the National level and actually bring international best practice and openness so that's one example.
The second very important one is let's look at UNCITRAL. The ability to be at the table when the electronic contracting was being put together. It's simple, easy to translate and understand. It was technologically nonspecific and it was easy to implement so many developing countries implemented it. In my own country having implemented just this legislation in its international best practice context meant there was no licensing regime for necessarily having PKI or digital signatures.
That meant that the Government of Pakistan which was trying desperately to say if I want to enable security on the Internet for the users in Pakistan, I will have to invest millions and millions of, or millions of dollars at least in a PKI or root infrastructure and put that whole thing up and provide it to my citizens didn't have to do that. The market was open. Investment came in from abroad. VeriSign signed up with the local affiliate that had been doing various things in Pakistan and suddenly within one year of the legislation coming out, so that was the legislation leading to business, that the business of electronic signatures started in Pakistan. PKI was available in Pakistan. Guess who the first users of PKI in Pakistan were? It was the Government, because the Government decided they wanted to do online tax returns using PKI. So it gives you an example of how international engagement being able to be at those places, drafting those international frame works can have the impact of creating openness, innovation, creativity, and then probably and most likely produce investment in developing countries and produce results that then make it easy for a local Pakistani who would have to stand in line maybe have to go through corruption, bribery to maybe pay his income tax and file his receipts or go to some income tax office doesn't have to do that any more because it's online, it's transparent, it's not costly, and he gets to do it technologically.
>> NITIN DESAI: Bill Drake?
>> WILLIAM DRAKE: Thinking about the last two comments connects to the discussion that led to the formation of the question. If we talk about a few of the sort of more cutting edge engaged countries, it's easy to name Brazil, Kenya, Egypt, there are a number of countries that have very are well foreign policies, are very much engaged in these practices. You know, the model looks pretty encouraging.
I live in Geneva though and I spend a lot of time around the United Nations and what I see is related to what Anriette was saying, many countries first of all, the least of all countries often they don't have any mission at all because they can't afford it or they share a mission or something.
But countries often if they do have representatives you've got somebody who has a portfolio. They follow one or two intergovernmental organisations that have a fixed vertical kind of structured agenda. They have a set of procedures for interacting with their home office, and when the Minister comes for a major meeting, they facilitate and so on. But then you go into ICANN or go into some of the private multistakeholder kinds of entities that are engaged in Internet Governance, and there isn't that a parallel kind of process in many cases. In many cases you don't have because it's not the sort of simple sort of one Minister for one issue kind of thing. It's a much more diffuse set of processes, diffuse set of actors. It's more complex, and there isn't often on the ground a real clear process for organising and engaging.
So I've talked to people in the context, for example, of ICANN meetings where they told me: Yeah, well, hide to come on my own money. The Government doesn't support this. We've got nothing going on back home. In fact, I'm not sure the Minister knows I'm here. These kinds of situations.
And you say, well, what about other people? Do you have a delegation? Are there people from your private sector, your technical community, Civil Society? No, there's just the one person. We don't have any kind of discussion about that. I think if you look across a lot of these areas, technical standards, security, so on, where the work is being done in these kinds of bodies it's not clear to me that many countries really have all the machinery in place to be able to engage effectively.
And so it strikes me that one of the areas that from a development standpoint we could be doing something useful is trying to help with that, trying to identify ways of getting organised, and how do you get the right people to the right kinds of meetings with the right kind of mandate, who then bring back the information and the knowledge and the issues to the home country to have it incorporated into the National policy framework and so on? There's a whole set of complicated issues there I think that merit further consideration going forward, because it's clear that much of the real work that's going on around IG particularly at the global level I mean, is not going to be in those strict intergovernmental bodies, with the traditional hierarchical agendas. So we have to figure out how do we really do this? ISOC, ICANN, others have programmes in place to bring people but I think much more needs to be done there.
>> NITIN DESAI: Can I have some from the remotes?
Mic for the remote participant.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN-LEBLOND: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. We've
had a few comments which came from Grace Mutung'u, from Kenya who is an
ISOC ambassador in the audience. She made two comment, one was to do
with the new gTLD programme which we spoke about a while ago and she
mentioned that the competition would be good for Kenya. It's a diverse
country and Internet is a good platform for expression. It's kind of
decreasing competition. Which regards to what we're speaking about
right now, which is effectively the government-led initiatives for
leading digital villages, et cetera, she mentioned that there is a
universal access fund charging licensees in Kenya. And there are also
many private sector led initiatives which are led by corporations that
are developing the network. It's a mix of the two. Not only
government but also private led. That's all the comments we've got so
far. Thank you.
>> NITIN DESAI: The discussion is also probably repeating itself.
And I really want to move on to the fourth question.
And that is that okay, we had this preliminary discussion, if you
like, a general discussion on Internet governance for development. But
in a sense, you know, that purpose is also to -- for us to try and get
greater precision on it. And in some ways we've had three sorts of
things coming up here.
One is of course the broad question of representation in
decision-making procedures and processes. Who sits at the table. One
dimension of this is the country dimension. Are developing countries
adequately represented?
For another dimension which has been raised is also who is
represented?
It's not just a question of developing country, but who is
represented. The question that was raised about a voice for
marginalized people, for groups with primary language is not English,
et cetera.
So that's the one set of issues, who really gets to -- whose voice
gets heard when decisions are taken.
The second set of issues was about all of the many things that we
talk about under the rubric governance, what are the elements that
would be most salient, who -- net neutrality, there seems to be a lot
of support as something which is very important. But almost everybody
was mentioned in different ways.
One issue, for instance, which was mentioned is nobody has -- struck
me as being a stability issue, Maimouna mentioned.
Cost the country about 60 million dollars?
That's a lot of money, you know, for -- and the -- you know. So I
think -- but apart from that, most of the other issues are mentioned
more than once about access, the whole question of diversity,
linguistic diversity, for instance.
And the openness question was also mentioned.
The question -- the fourth question we have on our agenda is that how
do we take this agenda forward?
How do we -- we talked about many things. But we need to now make
some more specific suggestions on how we take this agenda forward. In
the IGF and elsewhere.
And that's the theme that I want to really close with. And I want to
quickly -- remarks from the panel gist so there's enough time for the
chair and me to say a few comments. Some of you are flaking out.
We'll have a quick exercise. Who is going to lead off on this
question?
Yes. Raúl.
>> RAÚL ECHEBERRIA: I'll be very short. We will continue discussing
the same things in the same forums. Of course there has been some
suggestions of having more -- global, regional and national level. I
think that the agenda is on the table as we are discussing it. I think
that's what would be very interesting, from my side, is to have some
kind of evaluation of the different initiatives from the point of view
of the impact in development. I have seen in -- in a funny way we need
a development meter.
I have to say that initiative like this would need support, of
course. Yes. I don't know where the support could come from. I
commit my support. But I think that it could be very interesting to
have a certain view of how different proposals, different initiatives
impact in development. And not only -- because many, many things, many
times proposals are based on specific interest of the people that make
the proposals or political interests or just the -- narrow view
depending on who is promoting in each thing.
So I think it could be very interesting to -- support to have one
more element. Objectivity. This initiative is negative, is positive,
and how positive or how negative is it in terms of development.
And I also think that it is also in the line of what ever was said
before; that it could also be interesting to have an evaluation of -- a
self evaluation maybe of different organizations. What are they doing
in terms of development and how they work in part in development. So
I'm not only -- I'm speaking about organizations, organizations that
have specific role in the Internet, everything. Thank you very much.
>> NITIN DESAI: Anriette.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks, Nitin. I think participation is
essential. And not just more participation from developing country
governments; also civil society. But we need governments here as well
and business. And then also find ways of bringing in the voices of
people who are not yet connected to the Internet but who are impacted
on as a result of that.
And then we also need more participation from development
practitioners, people working in development, other sectors, health,
education, et cetera.
Secondly, I think we need human rights oriented approach. I think
there's nothing that's going to be more effective in pulling out the
human social, economic and sustainable development impacts than having
a rights-oriented approach to how we discuss Internet governance.
Thirdly, I do think we need to tackle the issue of defining what we
mean by development.
And narrow definition which only talks about developing the Internet
industry is not going to give us what we are looking for in terms of IG
and development. And fourthly I think capacity building remains very
important. At different levels in cross cut and the way it's being
done at regional IGFs and also at LACNIC, and informational capacity
building. And I think we do need to look at IGF improvements for want
of a better word. What we see in the regional IGFs do is they do
create a space where developing country stakeholders can come together
and discuss their particular concerns and begin to formulate common
positions and priorities to bring to the IGF, but that that is to work
those regional forums do have to be inclusive and adopt a more holistic
approach to developments. The challenges of development and the
development agenda exists at the regional IGFs as well. Even if there
they are not catered in a developing country. It doesn't mean they
necessarily mean they are addressing broader development issues. And
then the final point I'd like to make in terms of improvement, I do
think it would be valuable for developing country participants if they
felt that the outcomes of the IGF that are of relevance to development
are communicated or followed up on in a more tangible way. And I know
this doesn't bring us back to the issue of messages, processing of
outcomes from the IGF, but I think we need to -- we need to address
that as well. Because what is the point of more dialogue on
development at the IGF if we are also not more effective in following
up on the outcomes of that dialogue in one way or another?
>> NITIN DESAI: Bill Drake. And then -- I'm going to ask that we
basically use this as a wind up thing also. So Bill, then Zahid.
>> WILLIAM DRAKE: There is a paper, background paper in the book
that was given to everybody with registration in which I try to put
forward my own perhaps idiosyncratic view about how one could go about
trying to promote a development agenda in the context of the IGF. And
I just want to mention a couple of the concluding points, suggestions
that we might consider. And I recognize fully in making these that
they're probably not going to happen, but it's good to be ambitious
sometimes anyway.
So you may set the bar where you want to be and you find out whether
it's at all possible to even begin to approach it.
The first point I would make is that clearly the tradition of making
development a cross-cutting issue that's kind of submerged into other
sessions and the main session and so on, doesn't really ally for enough
focused attention to it. I would suggest consideration of perhaps
institutionalizing a development day as a regular part of the IGF
programme. The secretary general in his paper about renewal of the IGF
talks about a lot of the need for more attention to development and
engagement of developing countries and so on.
I think having a day like that might signal appropriately that we do
take this seriously and will be a focal point of activity. And one
could do something more with the time slots than simply having two
3-hour sessions. One could imagine other ways of using that second
time slot to do something innovative, whether it's debates or
breakouts, a number -- there's a number of different things one can do
there.
One might consider designating a special track of workshops focused
on IG for D and directing some direct linkage into the main sessions,
encouraging organisers of developing forums and other kinds of meetings
to build in development components and say what they're doing as
appropriate.
But probably the main point I suggested, which I'm sure would be
controversial was that it would be important to establish some sort of
multistakeholder group. I know we can't say working group in the IGF,
because that's verboten, because people associate it with a very
bureaucrat particular UN and intergovernmental model. But some sort of
open multistakeholder group that has a mandate that is recognized, not
a loose dynamic coalition that doesn't get any support. But an actual
group that tries to sit down and gather the information and assess on a
cross-cutting basis, on the way that Raúl just suggested. You know,
looking at the range of instruments and trying to sort through the
issues and trying to identify which ones are important, which ones
merit further consideration. And if it -- the group were to come out
with some messages, the messages would be from the group. There would
be messages from the IGF, not of the IGF, but maybe that would inform
the main session activity and so on.
I think if you want to have a focal point for some targeted activity
where people who are really committed to the development concepts are
trying to drill down on an ongoing basis, and using tools that we
didn't have at the time of the WiGig, social networks and information.
You're not really go going to advance this agenda very much. My
concern will be the major developing countries will continue to think
that IGF is not concerned with our issues and will look to other
institutions that they believe are more focused on it.
>> ZAHID JAMIL: I guess I'm going to be a little more frank than I
have been. I think that the Internet to me as slightly younger person
probably, but most of the youths who are here, they had a workshop, the
Internet means a very different changed society compared to what it was
earlier. The paradigm shift -- in fact you have turned the paradigm
upside down. Democratizing tool. You have gone into a minister's
office, now you probably have more information than the minister has
probably because you researched because of the Internet. The openness,
the entire values that the Internet brought, the change internationally
that has been brought. Now, that is what needs to continue to develop.
So how do we go forward?
What we do is we make sure that those values, what the Internet
actually means, what its values, basic values have been, why it's been
such a game-changer should continue. And in that of course we must
include people from developing countries and make sure that their voice
is heard.
Now, as a key point there, who do we include?
If we're going to include governments, of course they should be
there. But let's not forget that governments in many countries of the
world don't necessarily represent the will of the people in those
countries. If you were to speak to people in my country and you spoke
to my government first, they would say yeah, of course, we want to
block all content that has anything to do with politic, shut it down.
Because it's very unsafe. Who is it unsafe for? For the politicians
who come to power. You speak to the people, they want to see those
article, see the blogs and read those blogs. We need to make sure that
we keep the ethos and values of what the Internet means and make sure
that that development does not become regressive by anything that we
do.
So the identification of the right people would be important.
The next is outreach. Actual positive outreach. So ICANN has a
fellowship programme. The Council of Europe convention on cyber crime
has an octopus programme. Very good. But I think those outreach
programmes need to go into national areas. They need to go to country,
sort of publicize. And yes, definitely I agree with the point made
about messaging, that the outcomes of the IGF have to go through that
outreach, go down to the national level from those international
structures. Using the people who participate as ambassadors. Not sort
of saying you have been here, thank you very much, now you can go back
and you're on your own. Maybe the message will come through us or not.
I think that messaging is very, very key as well.
And there needs to be more sensitivity to developing country needs at
all IG platforms. I have seen in many areas there is some attempt in
trying to understand it but it hasn't really matured to that level. I
think that needs to be done. At the same time, while we talked about
all of this, it's very important that development as I tried to define
it in a broader capacity earlier also allows in the ethos and values of
innovation, creativity so that they can lead to investment. Because if
you don't have investment, you don't create an enabling environment.
And continue to develop to treat that enabling environment. You won't
have the undersea cables coming to certain country, you won't have the
infrastructure investment coming to certain countries because you don't
have that enabling environment. And therefore you will not see those
societies and developing countries benefiting from the development --
from development, period. And the access to the Internet and
development of the Internet per se.
I think these are the various areas. It's not just about having
professionals from development -- they should be there -- but also keep
the focus on also the issue of making sure that the ethos and values of
what the Internet represents really should continue to develop and
evolve. Web 3.0 at some stage.
>> NITIN DESAI: Thank you. Everton and then --
>> EVERTON FRASK LUCERO: Thank you, Mr. Desai. A brief question on
the question of enabling environment. I believe it is an important
aspect to be considered indeed. But I don't think it is enough,
because it doesn't explain many of the aspects. For instance, why is
it that some countries cost to access is 100 time, 200, 300 times more
expensive than in more central countries?
Only an enabling environment is not enough to explain that. You have
to go a little deeper too.
Now, on your question, Mr. Desai on whose voice gets heard, I believe
that there's no other way to get more people involved in -- than
through education. In this since I have to admit that there are many
initiatives that are doing already a wonderful job in trying to reach
out in capacity building and in developing countries like the south
school of Internet governance, the DiploFoundation, the people who were
at the initiatives participate now at the IGF and they're making
differences in their own communities and at the national level. So
this is something that we need to recognize as a value added to our
work. On out reach by those decision-making bodies, yes, it is also
very important, provided that it is not limited to provide them with an
open mic. Or to some -- or restricted to capacity building. Because
if it is a decision-making body, what developing wants is
decision-making power as well.
It has to come.
Now, on the question about where do we go from now, I think that
there is still a question that needs answer. And perhaps it may
provide guidance for us. It is about are the current structures and
institutions open, transparent, inclusive enough?
Are they taking into account in their plans, policy, plans -- the
development perspective, and how?
Because it strikes me, and I am glad that Anriette reminded us of
actor. For instance, it strikes us that many participants of this
forum, including -- and many other fora, they are able to make
speeches, wonderful speeches praising the policy of transparency and
openness, but they are also able to go behind doors, negotiate a treaty
that will affect the way Internet is governed worldwide. And knowing
that in order that to happen, that treaty will have to be accepted by
all the others that are not being invited to the same table. So that
is a problem. That goes against all that we have been discussing here.
And that will affect indeed the spaces for development if we are really
serious about that.
We need perhaps reports. We need perhaps indicators from those IG
mechanisms. And including starting organisation by this. That's the
first question of all. Everybody, every action is related in the end
to development and may have an effect on how people in the very end of
our globe, how they relate to the Internet, how they can -- benefit
them. So all Internet governance mechanisms in fora, and institutions
should be invited to come here and then report on specifically what
they are doing.
Today we heard, for instance, from Raúl, what LACNIC is doing. And
that's a positive example. Of course we do not force them to do that.
Perhaps they will reply, oh, development, we don't have anything to do
with that. This is something for politicians. We take -- we are only
concerned with the technical improvements of the network.
But if there is one conclusion that I think we could take from this
environment here and this debate is that that is a wrong assumption.
That actually what they do is relevant to development, yes. And they
should therefore be engaged in this process positively. Not with a way
of trying to find why it is not -- well, we need to go through this
finding why it is not working. And then -- but together trying to find
solutions that will improve the decision-making mechanism, to include
time for those whose voices are not heard.
>> NDEYE DIOP-DIAGNE: Very quickly, I think what he said is very
important. We have to think about more participation from developing
country, specifically the government from developing countries. And
for that they need -- not only those -- support but also content.
And I think in the case of Africa we need also to invite additional
economic community and also the AU commission to be part of the
consultation process initiated by CSTD.
At the national level we set up a national IGF forum. And we will
continue the discussion till the July 2011. And we will see in our
report what will -- what are the biggest issues at the national level.
And we also -- this forum, the national IGF in five countries in West
Africa. And we will come with report for the five countries. And
really to have -- to identify the real issue of our concern about the
IGF and the contribution of the forum -- continuation of the forum.
>> NITIN DESAI: Thank you very much. I will turn to the panel
members for stimulating and very useful and valuable debate.
I'm afraid I've gone out of time so I'm not sure that we will be able
to summarize really. But what we have heard here is a result of the
fact that the Internet is a highly complex infrastructure. It's
extremely simple to use. That is really an extremely simple thing to
use. You don't need to have any sort of technical abilities or
computer knowledge. And like we can handle it quite easily, you see.
And that's an issue. So the people who are using the Internet for
development, they have no interest in the governance issue because it's
so easy to use. Nor do you need to do anything much about how the
thing functions in order to be able to use it well. And therefore the
more you tell me bring people who are using it for development and ask
them what is a problem that they face because of this or that, other
than costs of access, you will not get any other reply. Because it's
so easy, it's simple to use. So I think we have to ask ourselves the
question, are there things which we could have done differently in the
management of the Internet.
Take the whole net neutrality issue which has been raised. This is
something which will never come up if you were to talk just to the
user. But it come up, you talk to the people who are involved in the
management of the Internet. There are -- because then you have this
tension between the technicians who's driven by the desire to make this
system work better and better, by the commercial interests who want to
use it for a certain purpose, by the civil society groups which are
very focused on issues of openness, access and transparency.
And this is the great advantage of a forum like this. Because it
brings the people together. And that's precisely why the issue of
Internet governance and governance has surfaced here rather than
somewhere else in the process. I think the future of IGF is to
continuously use development in the Internet as it takes place. From
this perspective. Because you have people here who do bring all of
these different cultures together in the space of forum, the technical
culture, the commercial culture, the culture which is focused on
openness, transparency, access and that class of issue.
Now, you can add to that people who have no interest what ever
Internet governance but are basically concerned with development. And
then if you take the remains to focus on these issue, by always let us
do so. And let us make an attempt at doing so.
There have also been suggestions which have been made about asking
the various people involved in Internet governance to come up and
explain how they have been -- you know, the factored into development
in their work. And this is a theme we can certainly pick up in terms
of our future work in this area.
It's been a very valuable discussion and I want to thank all of the
members of the panel and all of the participants from the floor who
have helped us in trying to get a little closer to better understanding
of this. And with this I hand over to the chairman.
>> VYATAUTAS GRUBLIAUSKAS: Thank you very much. Thank you very much
for making things run so smoothly. Thank you very much. Thank you all
the panelists. You shared with us very professional your points of
view. And particular I would like to thank Mr. Nitin Desai, your great
experience helped me very much. You made such professional summary
that I think it's nothing to do for me.
So thank you once more. And it's a good example -- the good example
how deep you feel that problem.
And this discussion that has just finished has shown us that from the
point of view of perspectives, Internet governance of development is a
serious and especially important process that requires constant
attention. And when we are talking about any governance, we sometimes
allow ourself to joke that there's a short distance between strict
dictatorship and uncontrollable anarchy. Hour, agreed governance model
could help us avoid these extremes. And when we talk about Internet
and when we're looking for the most optimal solutions we can, and we
should talk about a global governance process of global Internet.
Can be proud of being one of the leaders in the world in developing
optical fiber technologies. Broadband penetration and the mobile
technical development. Lithuania is taking that position as well. We
understand measures and importance of this process. I dare to say that
IGF as a global platform with equal rights for speaking up and hearing
out all the different positions must have perspective in the future.
I hope that our next meeting will continue fruitful, relevant
discussions in which we took part this year in Lithuania. And in the
beginning I would like to -- supposed to joke a little bit. If you
remember in the opening ceremony I played and sang a famous song by
Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World. Don't worry, I will not sing
this night. But I can promise you one thing. Louis Armstrong wrote a
lot and sang a lot of wonderful songs. I know one more, then. The
name of the song is We Have All the Time in the World.
So if it will meet us next year. I promise you I will sing this
again. So thank you very much. Have a good night, and see us next
time.
(Applause.)
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