23 May 2013
MAG Meeting
PM Session
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Ladies and Gentlemen, can we please take your seats? We would like to get started, if we want to finish at 5:00 to allow those who have a plane to take to take their plane.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Excuse me, Ladies and Gentlemen, has anybody seen the attendance list that we were passing around for people to put their names on.
>> It's here.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: We've got it. Thank you very much.
>>ASHWIN SASONKO: Ladies and gentlemen, I think we will start again our discussion. Please, and as we start the workshop, whoa, we are almost eight minutes late. Markus will kill me if it's ten minutes late.
[ Laughter ]
Okay. As we start, perhaps we can start with easy things first. During the lunch and free discussion many people asked me about the life in Bali and how you work in Indonesia, so perhaps I would like to give a bit more information before we start the technical discussion with Markus because it also includes how you work, you know. Well, I tell everybody yesterday, I told everybody yesterday that in Indonesia it's six hours -- in Bali, not Indonesia. Indonesia is three times difference, three times zone. Jakarta is five hours different with Swiss. Bali is six hours different with Swiss. So today in Jakarta it's about 8:00 p.m. No, sorry, 7:00 p.m. Yes, 7:00 p.m. in Jakarta. In Bali it's 8:00 p.m. So if you are from Europe, you will be sleepy this the morning. If you're from the U.S., you'll will sleepy in the afternoon. If you are from Honolulu, you'll be sleepy at night. Now, in Indonesia you will see the sun at about 5:00. You'll see the sun at 5:00 until 6:00. From 5:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. And you can go to the beach at 5:00 actually, although it's still a bit dark. And school normally start at 7:00 a.m. in the morning. School children will start their class at 7:00 a.m. in the morning. Offices -- yeah.
[ Laughter ]
You don't believe me? Just believe me, you know, because I have children still in elementary school. Offices start at 7:30 a.m. Yeah, 7:30 a.m. Now why it's like that, about 80 to 90% of Indonesia are Muslim and we pray morning prayer at 4:30. So 4:30 morning prayer and you take your bus and you go to your office or you bring your children to school.
Now at 12:00 you must stop, not only for lunch but to give people the afternoon prayer. You must do that because otherwise you will get complaints. A lot of complaints. At about 4:00 p.m. we will -- not only we'll stop not only for coffee break, but stop for half an hour not only for coffee break but also for another Islamic prayer. I do not know how much you know about that but Muslim will pray about 4:00 p.m., something like that. At about 6:00 we must give -- we must stop for half an hour to give the Maghrib prayer and that's it. And at night, have a night prayer but it's up to 12:00 p.m. So that is standard.
So this kind of things, even if you have workshop you must stop at 6:00. Otherwise people will complain and all the workers will go off because they need to do their Maghrib praying. Now on Friday everything stop at 11:30 after 1:30 because people should go to the Friday prayer. Yeah.
Now, Bali is mostly a Hindu area but there are many Muslims there, too. And Indonesia we have to honor, you know, every religion, so we have to give them time for them to pray. So please consider this time schedule when we make the workshops because that's the local -- what should I say Markus, local cultures, local religions, and (indiscernible) religions, if you like to say that. Okay, thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you very much. And yes, we certainly do respect diversity. Yes, Hartmut.
>>HARTMUT GLASER: I would like to ask our host if they see any possibility to have a flexible working day. If you have so many breaks, I have a proposal. We in Brazil last week have an international conference in the front of the beach. A nice hotel that Markus knows. We have IGF in the same hotel. And we, during the IGF, lose some participants going to the beach. And last week we avoid this. Our experiment was following: Every morning free. We start with 12 with the lunch for everyone, then the first session from 1:00 to 4:00 and the second from 4:30 to 7:30 in the evening. And all 1,200 people attend all the sessions in the afternoon and in the evening. So I'd like to propose that the host country and the organizing committee consider this flexibility in our agenda. Only a proposal, only for discussion. I don't know the reaction. But I like to propose we don't need to slip out during the meetings. We can use the free time in the morning.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Well, we have -- we have taken note. And we will look into this proposal. We would have to check whether it's in line with U.N. rules regulation, with the contracts with the interpreters.
>> You MAG members would like, we'll try.
>>HARTMUT GLASER: I will invite the translators to go to the beach also.
( Applause )
>>MARKUS KUMMER: I see there seems to be a lot of favor within the MAG for this proposal. So we will put it that way, we'll look at it with sympathy.
[ Speaker is off microphone. ]
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Unless we hear there are voices against it. But I can't see any hands shooting up against this proposal.
>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Some people we have problems for justifying the traveling to Bali, at least at home.
(Laughter )
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Well, this is what we said right at the beginning. It might be -- it will be difficult for some people to convince their superiors that they're going to a serious meeting because it's in Bali and this may indeed be a concern if they see the schedule, they might think it's just a nice holiday. But I see Chris, you asked for the floor.
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sorry, Markus, but I understood that the interpreters required a two-hour break between two three-hour sessions, so I'm not sure how we would manage that for the main session.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: No, that's what I meant.
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Otherwise, I think it's a fantastic idea.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: No, we would have to look at how it works with the contract with the interpreters and would have to tweak it.
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We could just try to cram it all into a full 24-hour period and then take the other three days off.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: All right. Anyway, we have taken note. Ayesha.
>>AYESHA HASSAN: Just to say when we're thinking about this, I know many people do coordination meetings in the morning, so just factor that into the way in which you're planning the schedule. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: I mean, obviously participants are free to coordinate or to go to the beach. So that's fair enough. Yes, Tero.
>>TERO MUSTALA: I think if the coordinations could be arranged on the beach there would be much more people in those.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Veronica.
>>VERONICA CRETU: Thanks, Markus. I had the experience of organizing some international meetings in Turkey on the Mediterranean. So that was also a challenge, how do we make sure the participants are in the room and they are not going to the beach. So we had this experiment of having a longer lunchtime. So we had two hours for lunch. One hour would be fine for lunch and one hour for going to the beach, and this worked perfectly well. Otherwise, everyone was waking up at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning to make it and then they were in their room at 8:30 or 9:00 so -- and it worked perfectly well with people from diverse cultures and backgrounds and a longer lunchtime might make sense.
>>ASHWIN SASONKO: Just give you a bit comment about the situation in Indonesia. Indonesia is very hot, very sunny, and very humid. Bali is like that. Now, in Mediterranean, perhaps little different. So if you go to the beach at 11:00 a.m., for example, or 1:00 -- 1:00 or 2:00 p.m. or something like that, it's just rather hot, rather humid, and rather sunny. That's all. You can use your what you call it, sun -- sun block or something like that, but it will not stop the sun anyway. So just my experience, I mean, many people will go to the beach early morning because it is cold, 5:00 in the morning I told you, 4:30 everybody will wake up because of the morning prayer and then we go to the beach. And 7:00 p.m. they go to school and so on and so on. But in the afternoon, it's really hot. And if you use what you call it, suit like this, make sure you are -- you have -- you are in an air conditioned room. Otherwise you'll get sweat and you cannot work. If I'm in Indonesia I will always use -- wherever I go, it's a short, short-sleeved shirts and it is acceptable for a meeting and long-sleeved shirt is acceptable as a very formal meeting. Go to the -- go to the marriage, for example, a wedding ceremony or big ceremony, you use the long sleeve, if you like. And it is common. This one, full sleeve with this one, well, you are (indiscernible).
[ Laughter ]
Well, I just mention about the temperature and so on. You can check on your Google, of course. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: This is important first-hand information. We will take that into account in planning. Well, this, maybe, is a nice transition. I thought basically we have -- on the agenda we have to come up with a theme and a sub-theme. And our Chinese colleague was very keen on that is not yet in the room so I don't want to rush it through without him being present. So I wonder whether we could not maybe instead look at the possible schedule. Brian and I have worked on that during the lunch break. That was before you gave us all your background briefing on what we have to respect so we have to revise that in light of that. And in any case, it's just purely -- please, Raul.
>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA: In advantage of the time, I would like to make a statement regarding the work that we did this morning. I was not very happy at all with the way that we analyzed the workshops. I think that the -- the contiguous use of the different groups was different and I don't -- I don't see any progress in the -- it's supposed that we had agreed to reduce the number of workshops and I think that was -- was trying to rescue all the workshops, even those that were very low scored. And so I -- I don't think that's -- that we did that in the best way that we could. And in fact, throughout this, you know, that the MAG is sometimes criticized for defending the interest of the people that is in the room, in the meetings, and I think many of us are on board with workshops and trying to do all the workshops that could be seen as also a way to defend the workshops that were proposed by ourselves. So I think that it is not clear for me how good the result of the work that we did. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Well, we have received, I think, the results from the various groups, but I do get the point that maybe the methodology applied by the various groups was not exactly identical. The brief -- the remit was to evaluate the workshops that had made the grade but then also to check and cross-check whether there were any other workshops and in line with the discussions that came from new people and also from different regions, in particular developing countries, could not may be of interest and might be rescued. Now, I think each group did that, but the question is, did we apply the same criteria. And that, I think, is maybe a need for recalibration and the concern that you expressed is also, of course, a serious one. The MAG clearly should not be seen as serving its own interests or MAG members should not be seen as mainly pushing their own interests and their own workshop proposals. And if that's the perception, then I think it is a problem. And it may be a wrong perception, but I think it may be a perceived problem but the perceived problem is also a problem. And I really think we do need to address this. We did have the discussion in Paris that we should maybe be a little bit restrictive with workshops coming from single proponents, and I think there were some workshops that came from organizations that have more than one. And my organization is guilty of that, I'm fully aware of that. But we never actually concluded on that. We did say in Paris well, it may be a little bit different if an organization has the capacity of doing workshops, they can do more than one, there's different people involved and between individuals. I do remember in the past we had once an instance where one individual came up with five or six workshops and that's -- was seen by many as excessive. And maybe we have not looked at this broader pictures with sufficient attention. And yes, I see other people would like to comment. Chris, please.
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Markus, if I could suggest a way forward it would be for -- because we can bat this ball backwards and forwards forever. So my suggestion would be that we've done some work, whether we think it could have been better or not. The Secretariat goes away and -- at the end of this meeting and works through the input that they've been given from the groups, produces a sheet that actually gives us a picture of what that now looks like, including suggestions for flashes and suggestions -- and all that stuff, and a section on these workshops have been encouraged to merge and all that. And then perhaps or so make some -- provide some suggestions around so the Internet Society currently has X number of workshops in the yes pile, ICANN currently has Y number of workshops in the yes pile to kind of give us a sort of helicopter view of where we're actually at. And then on the list over the next couple of weeks with a bit of effort and concentration and discipline we can actually reach agreement on what goes forward.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, Chris. I think this is a very constructive suggestion. There is, I think, also a little bit of an added complication.
Longer orientation is possible, I think, as there are sometimes the names put there are not necessarily the names of the main organizer. And at the same time the same names may appear in different workshops. So -- I would also maybe call on the MAG members to consider withdrawing either their names or workshops if they are all over the place. And sometimes it may actually be without doing because as we have heard,
that some workshop proponents put their names forward. But, I mean, you can do a word search and find out and check and cross-check. I think it's in everybody's interest, also personal interest, that their name is not listed too often. And I think overall -- and as I said in the Open Consultation it should be the old party principle family holds back and MAG members, I think, preferably should not be all over the place in the program. So we should not be in the panels of main session. But I think the same also applies to workshops and the final workshop program should not be seen as a workshop program that promotes the interests of MAG members but MAG members should be seen as those who produce the program and who maybe have an occasional workshop but they should not be the focus. Nick, you wanted to comment?
>>NICK ASHTON HART: Yes, thanks. Nick Ashton Hart. I was just going to mention, in addition to that, I hope that --
>>NICK ASHTON-HART: Yes, thanks, I was just going to mention -- Nick Ashton Hart, in addition to to that, I hope at the end of this, you end up with few and few -- I think this will not be looked on well. There seems to be a general interest in ensuring that there's a lot of new voices and a lot less of incumbent voices. And I hope that you'll factor that in. And I would also say that diversity is something that can be fixed. That's something that can be fixed. If the proposal for the event is good, if the idea is good, if it looks like it will be interesting, that should be more important of how many of what grouping are proposed eight months in advance or six months in advance. Because, when you're trying to propose these, you know, you --
Don't know who's going to be able to go except incumbents. Those people will go. Getting new people to go when you don't know the date for sure is harder. So I would hope that these things would get factored in too. Thanks.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: It's always difficult to rewrite history. And there's a lot of it that's legacy. But I think we have discussed that before, also, the question, you know, we had a strong emphasis on diversity for each proposal. That goes back to the very beginning when was concern that there might be capture for individual workshops. But I think we have shifted our attention. We have evolved and matured. And I think the -- I would think there's a general understanding that there should be an overall diversity, but not each single individual workshop can have all the balances that are necessary -- gender balance, geographical balance, stakeholder balance. But we cannot fix that now. But I mean, we can -- as you suggest -- I think we have made an effort, we have tried to take that into account. Okay. We will look at what is coming in. And the Secretariat will collate this information and get back to you with the aim to give the go ahead to a significant number of workshops as soon as possible. And, obviously, there are lessons learned. And one of the lessons is we have to start the process much earlier. It's after the meeting. It's before the meeting. I think the day we move away from Bali, we have to prepare for the next meeting. And the same goes also for MAG renewal. It's -- one of the problems we're facing is that a lot of new members come on board when we have already started the process. Obviously, it would be helpful if we have next year a February meeting with a new MAG in place that would then see the workshop going through. And we have to take that into account when revising, I think, the workshop template that we have more emphasis on new faces, on the participants from developing countries and that we actually give negative points if we see the well-known faces. I mean -- and I think a lot of the -- of course, we have this tradition -- there were maybe also some people who proposed the same names because they said it would be safer. If there's name recognition, then they think that the MAG automatically would approve and would be easier to get approved. But, if we reverse that and you make it clear, no, you get the brownie points if it's the other way around, if you come up with new speakers -- and we know there are new speakers out there. Or if they say we don't know a speaker, please help us to find speakers, that's fine as well. And -- but we have to clearly rethink the process. But we have are captives of the process we have started. It -- we have to recognize it hasn't been perfect. And we'll not be able to fix it so that we can say now it's perfect. But let's at least work with it and let's try to make it as good as possible. And also, again, an appeal on all of you. Maybe withdraw, maybe ask somebody else to take your spot in a workshop. Subi and Zahid.
>>SUBI CHATURVEDI: Subi Chaturvedi, India.
Thank you, Markus. I do want to point out day 1 and day 2 at the open consultation and the first day I did raise some concerns. I made an appeal. This morning has been very productive. We've had a very, very constructive discussion. And I do want to thank all the colleagues on the MAG and everyone in the room for taking these suggestions on board for reconsidering. I know a lot of effort went into the current process. But thank you for being accepting. And, really, that's all. Thanks.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Zahid.
>>ZAHID JAMIL: Hi, yes. I'm not a MAG member any more. And also I proposed a workshop, so I decided to stay away from the process. I thought it would be helpful or -- but that's not necessarily possible for all of us because it's just the nature of the way we do business. But I take your point, Markus. One other thing I just wanted to say is you have to be here because everything we did in this morning is not transcribed. People on the outside have no idea how much effort went into it. So I would just sort of attach myself to Subi's remarks to say that there was a lot of effort, a real attempt to compromise and come to solutions by every different groups. I want to make sure that's on the record that a lot of work went in there.
On the issues of next steps and possible solutions, I just want to repeat something I said on the MAG list about say, for instance, the human rights element. It's something which has a new focus for the IGF now in the way it's being done. We have a long list of proposals, it would be sad to see that only get six or seven to come through. And I know the group has been working trying to fix that. I know I said on the e-mail also there's a diversity issue. We may have an imbalance. It's a new issue. Let's remember that this is the first time that people have been proposing this issue, so we might not have the same level of quality or diversity or et cetera that you would have had otherwise. A solution might be to have people merge -- and I understood that even one of my workshops, which is the oppression over the Internet, became quite hotly debated because it has similar WCIT-type issues, et cetera. It would be helpful if I could get the contact details of other workshops, and I don't know how to get them. Then maybe I can contact them and see where we can merge. But at the moment those contact deals are not available to, basically, those proposers. So where would they go? How would they find it? Can they pick and choose? One last important point, we don't, as proposers of workshops, want to be shooting in the dark. If we've been told that, look, you need to do something to your workshop, it would be very helpful to have a clear guidance saying there wasn't either enough diversity or that you were -- you know, you didn't have a core organizer. So whatever the metric is by which we need to meet, it should be clear to us so that we can meet that. Otherwise, we're gambling as to what we need to fix. And we may fix the wrong thing. I just wanted to make that point. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. To the last point, it's also the question of whether the Secretariat has the capacity to write to each individual workshop proponent explaining -- do this coaching.
But I think we can give a global feedback and say what we actually are looking for. But in this particular -- Subi, may I ask you not to ask for the floor again. I don't want to extend -- I mean, it's an important discussion, but we have limited time.
And the last question -- no, the question before last, if you see potential workshops you would like to collaborate, the Secretariat never publishes the e-mail address on the Web site, but you can always ask the Secretariat. And we discussed that before maybe the Secretariat will ask people whether they agree to have their e-mail address published on the Web site. But the Secretariat is always the go between in possible mergers.
>>ZAHID JAMIL: Very quick, Markus, on just that one point. Would it be possible, instead of putting the burden on the Secretariat could people reach out to the Secretariat or maybe the Chair of the group that, basically, was looking at those issues, group 1 or 2 or 3 and say, "Look, here's my workshop. I'd just like you to give me some kind of response"? It takes away the pressure from, say, Chengetai or the Secretariat.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: There again, it relies on voluntary work. I mean, obviously, each individual MAG member is totally free to reach out to workshop -- you may know somebody and can say, look, your proposal is quite good. And had you tweaked it that way, you would get through without any problem. That was quite often the case. Workshop proposals were written with assumptions that were based on past years. Now, if we are shifting a little bit our priorities, how do they know unless we tell them? This is -- and that's the conundrum we're in right now. But I would not like to prolong this discussion too much, because we have other important agenda items to cover. But I see Bill and Mr. Chen.
>>BILL DRAKE: Thank you, Markus. I was surprised Raul sounded as unhappy as he did. I certainly felt -- and I said a number of times of list in the runup to this that we need to push further of trying to make sure we have really crystal clear rules and harmonized across everybody's expectations and that everybody is evaluating in the same way and that we communicated in advance with the applicants sufficiently clearly. And I think much more can be done about that next time by starting earlier and putting stuff up in February.
But, under those circumstances I felt like, at least the process I participate in was not that bad. I mean, I think we treated fairly. We went through all the ones that had been turned down, and we tried to see what solution could be found. And I didn't really notice it being about favoritism or things like that.
So I think we're muddling through as best we can, and I wouldn't feel too down about the whole thing. Personally, I mean, I would say -- I would be very happy to withdraw my name from every workshop that's got me listed that I did not submit myself.
One thing I would like, can we -- when we communicate with the proponents, when you go back to them and say your workshop has been approved, can we say it's provisional upon them selecting no more than six speakers and designating them and turning in real names with the final thing. Because one thing I'm worried about is we're approving a lot of things -- a lot of things got approved that had long lists of people. And I don't know if those people were really all contacted. It should be six confirmed human beings that meet the criteria. Otherwise, they shouldn't be going forward. I would love it if -- I don't know if that's too difficult for the Secretariat. But having workshops that have 15 things listed with half of them being the names of organizations doesn't work for me.
And I just was wondering, Chris, are you suggesting that we should hold off on notifying anybody until after we do this helicopter thing?
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That's a matter for Markus to decide. I don't know how we do it. But I think we could do both. Earlier on Markus said he wanted to try to get 50 or something workshops confirmed. And I think by going through the ones that have already been approved, removing the ones that we said could possibly merge with something, then, you know, those ones are effectively confirmed confirmed. And so. Therefore, you'd be able to do that.
But what's -- there are some that would need to be delayed slightly because we've suggested merging and so on, but I don't think it would slow it down. Slow down letting a bulk of them know.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Yes, thank you. The information clearly does not need to be sent out today. It can easily wait a week or two, but I think we have -- we have a solid bunch of workshops together, and some of them may be provisional. And I like also the idea of, you know, repeating again we don't want too many speakers. Having said that, once again, I was really impressed with all the effort that was put in into assessment. It was a lot of hard work, and we had feedback of 26 people who are considered to be expert in this matter. And the file was a very thick file, and I gave a thorough assessment. It may not be perfect. But perfection is impossible to get. And it is defendable, I think. This assessment. Yes, Mr. Chen.
>>HONGBING CHEN: Thank you, Chairman. I have to reiterate my strong reservation about procedures. What are we doing? We here are coming to the 80%. We have already spent 80% of our time, but we're still mired in talking about the workshops. We haven't touched upon themes or subthemes, which is our mandate.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: I was going to close this discussion to discuss the themes --
>>HONGBING CHEN: I just feel the time allocation is not balanced. It's not reasonable, to be frank. Because I think the theme is -- overarching theme and subtheme should be discussed, because we don't have much time. And what do we see here at the table is it seems hinting to people that our dear colleagues that the naming -- the terminology you have used for splitting the committee yesterday, it's been used -- I mean, in wrong place or in wrong way. I mean, it's -- audio it hasn't been fully discussed and agreed upon by -- for the members. I suggest that we get down to business right now. Because we don't have too much time. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: I was going to start at 2:00. And I waited because you, Mr. Chen, were not in the room. I said I don't want to start this discussion without you being present.
The table up, we look at that later. The names there are not supposed to be agreed text. The -- can we make sure it's not up any more? Okay. That was an indication of how we could organize the slots.
And the -- the titles we had were working titles that came out of our February meeting. They did not come out of the blue. Can we discuss then the main theme? I sensed we had a preliminary discussion on that. And I heard there was a lot of support for the heading "Building Bridges" as a main theme for the 2013 Internet Governance Forum meeting. Is anybody opposed to using this title as a overall heading? Indonesia?
>>INDONESIA: Thank you. I'm not MAG member so -- so I do not exactly understand the whole discussion. But I'd like to make sure that security and -- is already considered for both what the government and for the multistakeholder, as I tried to recall what Honorary Chair mentioned during his opening remarks, that -- that cyber sovereignty, for instance. And also the issue that IDRs will discuss about new global Internet regulation of the next ITU consultant meeting next June. So, again, I would like to make sure that the security issue is important and will be considered by the government as well as for the stakeholders. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. But here we are talking about the overall theme. We had in the past the Internet for all or Internet governance for development, some very broad, high-level, overarching themes. And out of the February meeting there came a very strong sense that, especially in light of the divisive Dubai meeting, that the IGF in Bali would be a tremendous opportunity to build bridges and mend fences between different governments and different stakeholder groups. So building bridges, I think, had a lot of support. And I take it that -- I see many heads nodding and that we have agreement on this. So we don't need to discuss it, if we agree. If there's no strong opposition, I would think then the -- and the MAG doesn't decide. The MAG agrees to propose that to the United Nations, and then the United Nations will either accept the proposals or will reject it. But I take it that there is agreement in the room that we will propose that to New York to the Undersecretary General who will send out invitation and invite all stakeholders to go to Bali to the IGF under the overall heading of "Building Bridges." Only MAG members. Yes, please.
>>HONGBING CHEN: I think the viewpoint from Indonesia deserves our special attention. The sovereignty principle should be highlighted in the Internet governance, which is also being mentioned and dictated by the WSIS outcome. Because we are in the age of division, I mean, in terms of Internet governance. There division of labor between governments and technical and commercial communities but now that division or the distance among these stakeholders are so big that we need to bridge -- build a bridge. So thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: So I take it you agree that we need to build bridges. Yes, we have -- Subi, are you against it?
>>SUBI CHATURVEDI: No.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Okay. So we leave it as that. So we agree on building bridges as a main theme. Thank you.
[Applause]
It's always good to have an agreement on something. Now one of the subthemes supported by many and that was reflected in the February report was enhancing multistakeholder cooperation for growth, development, and human rights. There was one delegation that objected strongly to the delegation of human rights. Obviously, there's a lot of issue that can be debated. But I wonder whether we could agree just on enhancing multistakeholder cooperation for growth and development. Yes, Mr. Chen.
>>HONGBING CHEN: Chairman, as to the subthemes, as we all know, the Internet governance is such a broad concept. It's inclusive and covering a broad -- a broad range of issues. So, when we talk about subthemes, I think we need to get a balanced approach. So it's better we talk about a list of subthemes rather than one by one. So, I mean, if we do one by one, we don't know how long the list will be or how short. So it maybe -- I suggest maybe we can have a package or a list of subthemes and discuss it.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: This is, basically, the main subtheme, which would explain building bridges. And how are we building bridges? By enhancing multistakeholder cooperation. And why are we enhancing multistakeholder cooperation? It's not only for building bridges. It's also good for growth and for development. Chris.
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Markus, perhaps it would be helpful for people who haven't been here before if we could characterize this discussion by briefly saying what happened. I think there's confusion around why a subtheme is and why it's there. So perhaps what happened last year -- what did we have last year, maybe it would help clarify the discussion.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: In any case, these themes and subthemes are very high level. My suggestion would be let's put it aside for the time being and follow up on Mr. Chen's suggestion that we look at it all as a package. A subtheme is more illustrative of the overarching theme. And you cannot pack everything into the subtheme. But we had also -- to pick up on what Chris said. We have a long tradition. I think we started with four themes. And we gradually added themes of -- issues to them. The very first meeting we have access, diversity, security, and openness. It was a mixture between more technological themes and more societal themes. Then we added critical resources. We added Internet governance for development. And these were all useful themes to have. But we also, at the same time, felt over the years they lost a little bit their meaning and much -- the same discussions took place every year.
And at the Paris meeting there was a strong sense that the main sessions in the previous -- in the traditional format had lost much of their meaning. There was less energy in the session, so there was -- was a need to look at every session.
But, again, in the IGF tradition, it was understood that no issue is taboo. Every issue can be brought up. It has proved to be very healthy that people can discuss issues they're concerned about. Last year it was Internet governance for sustainable human, economic, and social development. But back again to the subtheme -- and maybe we can show again the proposed schedule.
I have picked up the subthemes what we identified at the Paris meeting. There was enhanced cooperation, human rights, freedom of expression on the Internet, Internet governance principles, legal frameworks, and cybercrime, spam, cyber security, et cetera, principles of multistakeholder corporation, and the Internet as an engine for growth and advancement. And I tried to combine them with the old themes we had. As we discussed at some length in Paris, it's not necessarily a dichotomy. It's just to give more focus to the traditional themes.
So what we called access and diversity would now be with the heading "The Internet as an Engine for Growth and Advancement." There was a proposal made maybe we should replace "advancement" by "development." I think that could be a -- you know, we can tweak these wordings. They were not agreed on 100% as working titles. But I think, on the whole, they were rather useful. And enhanced cooperation is very closely linked to critical Internet resources. Freedom of expression, we discussed that issue under the term openness. Internet governance principles, again. And legal frameworks on cybersecurity, spam. That's clearly closely linked to the theme of security, which was a traditional theme. So it's nothing really that much new.
Now, I wonder whether we -- we could take them one by one. I think I saw nobody objecting against enhanced cooperation. We discussed this at some length at the very beginning, especially coming after last week's meeting at the ITU, the world telecom policy forum. Then we have human rights/freedom of expression on the Internet. We had a very strong input from the community to have workshops on these issues, and you may also recall that the report of the Secretary General on the renewal actually was, if anything, rather critical of the Internet Governance Forum of not having touched enough on human rights issues, reflecting on the taking stock process we had leading to the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting and the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting itself.
And Internet Governance principles, again, that is something that has been with us now for the past three years, I would have thought, with much discussion. We started it, I think, in Vilnius, had a very long discussion on the importance of principles. Legal frameworks and cybercrime is a slightly new wording of an old issue that has also been with us and I think that would tie in very nicely with what Mark suggested on having this session where we actually look at the issues that were issues of concern to government and that was strongly echoed by your colleague from Indonesia. It is an issue we have to take seriously. And in principles of multistakeholder cooperation, again, that's related to the discussion on principles. And the last issue again, Internet engine for growth and development looks at the -- what we had maybe before looked at more under the access level. It looks at it also as what the Internet can contribute. But these are, I think, very much related to the broad issues we had always discussed and tried -- and in February tried to reframe them a little bit more in a forward-looking manner.
Now, I'm not discussing the proposed structure for the meeting which is looking at the wording, and yes, we know the structure tries to reflect a little bit what we have discussed. It picks up the idea that was made I think by Matthew of what he called focus sessions, which actually sounds very nice, but we have those sessions where we have workshops and prepare them through a round table of the various workshops, then have a session where we actually try and produce some kind of outcome people can take home with that we have something. But could I open the floor just now on the language and have your comments? Tero, please. and Ayesha.
>>TERO MUSTALA: Thank you. So if we start with enhanced cooperation which was proposed there, this is more like thinking aloud than having a strong opinion. But I'm just raising the question whether it is good to, you know, incorporate the term as such because it's a term which has been used in many places during many years and I'm afraid there may be some -- it may be somewhat loaded. So my alternative, which I'm not strongly proposing but just throwing out, if we just modify it a bit like -- for example, like enhanced multistakeholder cooperation.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Ayesha.
>>AYESHA HASSAN: I'd like to support Tero's input. That's a useful evolution. Also, thank you for this. It's helpful to be able to look at something and give you concrete feedback. On the legal framework section, I thought our discussion in February was really helpful in looking at what would we be talking about in that session. And I think it's useful to put into the title some of the key issues that people are really concerned about and have wanted to talk about in other fora. And so right off the bat if they see it would be something like legal frameworks colon, spam, comma, hacking, comma, cyber security, and cyber crime, I think that makes for a very attractive session and it really is descriptive of what we're hoping to cover. And just one idea on your question about timing to be determined, we might consider having 50 minutes on spam, 50 minutes on hacking, 50 minutes on cyber security and cyber crime, thus addressing some of the format issues that we've been concerned about in these three-hour blocks. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Yes, the language we had in February was legal frameworks and cyber crime then brackets spam, comma, cyber security, et cetera, so it would be just basically adding hacking.
>>AYESHA HASSAN: Actually, I think if you just do legal frameworks colon and then do spam, hacking, cyber security, and cyber crime, because we'll talk about legal frameworks on all of those issues, I think it would be coherent. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: I've lost the order. It was -- you were not next but okay, I think you're next.
[ Laughter ]
>>HONGBING CHEN: It's my turn? Thank you, Chairman. Thanks for the introduction of the main themes. Actually I think, personally, I'm an open man and I stand for innovation and evolution. I'm not a conservatist. But when coming to the main themes of IGF I think it's a big topic which has cost so much time and energy of previous MAG members. And after such arduous efforts we have got to the balance -- got a solution which is shown on list there is three -- three substantive main themes, access and diversity, security, openness and privacy, the third, critical Internet resources. I think now -- it seems to me that the proposal you have briefed is a total reshuffle of the cards. It seems to me -- I'm not optimistic about its destiny, its future. I would rather say that the sensitive and subtle balance we have strucken in the past should be -- it's the best option for us to preserve the old pattern, the old three themes. But I'm also open to new suggestions, just as we know that the host of the eighth IGF Indonesia has made a great effort in preparation -- in preparing the -- this forum. I would like to acknowledge as they're -- the respect for them and also I think their suggestion about the principle of sovereignty deserves -- I mean, it's very attractive to us and it deserves our attention. If we want to add new main theme, I would like -- I would prefer take out this one, sovereign -- principle of sovereignty put forward by Indonesia. Then I hope that we can have four main themes. May I repeat the three old ones, first access and diversity, second is security, openness, and privacy, third, a critical Internet resources. Fourth, the principle of sovereignty. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Well, you left out Internet Governance for development when you referred to the old ones. But as you see, they're all up on -- or, they were on the table. I did not eliminate any of the old themes I had proposed. It was just a adding them with a clearer focus. But let's continue the discussion. I think Bill was next.
>>BILL DRAKE: Others have said what I wanted to say.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Okay. Is that, Zahid, on ICC Basis or -- no? You are. Okay.
>>ICC BASIS: Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to, on behalf of ICC, say that we would support the theme of human rights. We would support it in this following manner, human rights, freedom of expression, and free flow of information on the Internet. In the context of human rights, it is a right to connect, right to interact, and also the right to have free flow of information. And this does not simply help individuals and Civil Society and human rights issues. It also helps trade and liberalization and creates an enabling environment that will allow assistance both for human rights, for business and trade, opportunities, and employment. To take a simple example, if you look at the liberalization and the ability of the Internet to be able to break down barriers of information, we see the great advances made by developing countries through outsourcing and through other means that have actually added to both the developing country growth and bridging the digital divide.
Ensuring that the free flow of information remains unhindered will also ensure that the digital divide which is starting to, in fact, widen can be brought a little closer. So I would, as this being part of the theme, as you said, bridging the -- bridging -- building bridges, et cetera, this would fall well within it.
Also, I just wanted to mention it was good to hear the chair from Indonesia actually mention at the begin, you know, that the WTO that will be taking place in Indonesia and also, you know, GACs being an important issue that deals with this sort of issue of free flow of information. If you look at the documents that BASIS supports, they support very strongly the free flow of information, APEC in its declaration in Russia in 2012 again as part of the APEC framework supported the free flow of information and so does ICC Basis and some of the documentation outside by the Secretary General and the Chair support the concept of free flow of information. So I just wanted to sort of add my sort of statement that this would be helpful to have as an additional aspect of human rights.
Also just one last thing. On the high level ministerial that took place last year in Baku, free flow of information and freedom of human rights was actually one of the most important issues, if you'll read that right at the bottom of the declaration. Thank you very much.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Chris.
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I'll just get close to the microphone. Sorry. Can you hear me? Yeah. So I just thought it might be worth reminding us all of how we got here. And this is a double-edged sword. But these headings, human rights, freedom of expression, enhanced cooperation, et cetera, were the result of a public open discussion in Paris on one day with governments not -- open for everybody, not just the MAG. There was an acceptance of the -- general consensus and acceptance of these in the room with one exception, and we then moved on to the MAG meeting when these were also discussed at length and there was a general consensus that they were acceptable. They were then used to inform the community, to provide a -- to provide them with guidance as to what their workshops should be about. There was an understanding that the old -- if I can call them that -- the old themes would be retained in the background, if you will, so that these new -- these new expressions would hang underneath them. And that these were -- it was critical for the future of the IGF that we actually didn't move on. This was a very clear consensus position. And I would also counsel that in the same way that I would be adamantly opposed to going back, I also think it's risky to start tinkering with them now by adding to them or changing them to any great extent. I appreciate that everybody has opinions and I appreciate the people who are trying to get their own things in, but we spent a lot of time in Paris working on these particular wordings and we had an agreement -- we had consensus in the room, at least with -- I think with the exception of one party. So whilst I think it's great that we could be discussing adding free flow of information, et cetera, I think it's not appropriate to be doing that at this stage in the same way that I don't think it's appropriate to be going backwards to the old themes. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Yes, indeed, they're part of the summary record of the MAG meeting. We circulated the summary record before publishing it and we did not receive any comment that this would not reflect the general feeling of the meeting.
Well, I thought if we have agreement to tinker here a word or there a word, fine. But if we start negotiating, then it gets complicated. Fiona?
>>FIONA ALEXANDER: Yes, thank you, Markus. I just wanted to add my support to the framework that you've put up on the screen. As a general matter, I think it's a good balance of what the IGF has been about in the past and retains everything and actually offers a nice evolution of moving forward at a time when everyone is looking at how the IGF is going to move forward. So I think it's a good balance of that.
I would just offer one slight amendment on the legal frameworks. If it could be legal and other frameworks because in some cases spam and things like that is not always legal frameworks. So maybe it could be legal and other frameworks.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that. Susan.
>>SUSAN CHALMERS: Thanks, Markus. So just kind of following on from Chris' comment and Fiona's comment on the legal and other frameworks session, I think that -- I may recommend that you reduce the particular categories because in the event that we are introducing categories of frameworks then I feel that intellectual property should also be included. There are workshops that focus on that theme that have been selected. Thanks.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Mr. Chen.
>>HONG BING CHEN: Thank you, Chairman. There's -- maybe there's something wrong in my understanding, but I have heard some members, some colleagues expression that it seems that something has already decided by -- on the last meeting in Paris, so it is so. We accept it. I don't think it's the right approach. If that's the case, there's no need for us to have this session. Okay. This is -- let's put it aside. Let me come back to the -- what -- explanation of my thinking about the main themes.
We know IGF very successful in the last seven years. I think we should consider why it is so successful. I think one of the reasons is we have good organization of the main themes which, as I have said, cost us so much of our energy and time. If we want IGF to continue to thrive, I think it's -- it's a good option or we'd better preserve the overall structure of the past agreement. If we have total reshuffle or total change of the older structure, I cannot foresee -- I can see the danger in the future. I mean, we are not a revolutionist, right? So we're just building upon our success. Let's just -- I mean, let's first -- I would like to invite all of the colleagues to think about our approach. We should -- now we have a big house. Although it's not so good, it's not so perfect, there's just some cracks, there's some still painting unfinished, but at least we have the house. The next thing we need to do is to finish the job. But make the house perfect, a good house. But it seems to me that some colleagues thinking another way, they think the old house, there's some problems about the old house, let's demolish it. It seems to me, okay? Maybe my guessing. So I would like rather to sincerely invite all the colleagues to think about the history of MAG, of our discussion about the main themes. If we want to ensure success, I think we'd better be careful with the approach, have a better -- I mean, good strategy, good approach, and maintain the structure of the structure of the main themes. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you very much for this. And actually, I agree with every word that you said but except I drew a different conclusion.
[ Laughter ]
I'm not revolutionary either, believe me. And I followed the evolving nature of the MAG -- of the IGF from the beginning. And it's also evolving. There are certain issues we can discuss now, we would not have been able to discuss at the beginning. And that, I think, is the success that we have been able to build a platform for dialogue where we actually go and listen to each other, and I think this year it shows itself more necessary than ever before. And the -- the proposed framework is precisely that. It's building on what we had in the past. But it also reflects some new evolving priorities as they emerged in the international debate. But I see Finland, please.
>>FINLAND: Thank you, Markus. My appreciation goes to the work done by the Secretariat on moving the IGF agenda forward on the basis of what we discussed in Paris. I think these terms express the evolution which has happened in the IGF discussed just as you referred to and I am fine with the changes proposed just now, including changing enhanced cooperation to enhanced multistakeholder cooperation. But I just wonder if we could merge the -- merge it with multistakeholder principles. I mean, what is the difference between these two? Perhaps we could spend some time to reflect on that. Also, I heard very well the Chinese concerns, and I just wonder if we can somehow alleviate them and adopt some kind of a dual approach so that we could explain the colors on the agenda with the new term and the old term whenever it applies. I don't know if this creates more confusion, but this could be the way out of this.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that. I also had -- Theresa has been waiting for quite a while.
>>THERESA SWINEHART: Yes. Likewise, thanks for the work and the Secretariat really trying to get this put together the way it is. I would support the trying to be evolutionary and moving things forward. We had Open Consultations in February and conclusions out of that and those materials have been up for quite some time. To one of our dialogues earlier, I think we need to make sure that we are listening to the participants and to the community and moving that forward. So I would support the structure that we have laid out here and the approach on the topic areas.
Markus, I think you had raised one thing, and I'm just trying to identify it. I did -- I think that your suggestion of Internet as an engine for growth and development, it might be worth having a conversation if we need to, but seeing advancement with development, I think that's a nice angle to it and would reinforce the importance of development in that theme. And with that, I'll leave it for right now. Thanks.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Veronica.
>>VERONICA CRETU: Thank you, Markus. My proposal is the following: I think that we should aim for simplicity and clear language. So the way the -- the way the sub-themes are put here is fine. On the contrary, instead of complicating things we should give them as simple as possible. So because we are designing an event that is aiming at the broader community, not only at the community that exists already. So if we want to do outreach and reach out to the others, the sub-themes have to be as simple and as clear as terminology as possible. So this is fine.
One suggestion is if it's possible to have a short description, two, three sentences, coming behind each of the sub-themes so that people who have never been to IGF, they do a click on that and they have an understanding of what is that something about, what stands behind those sophisticated words at some point.
So from my perspective this is fine. We should not complicate it more. Keep it simple. And provide a clear language and accessible explanation of what do these things mean. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. That point is well-taken. We are sometimes too much insiders in the discussion at a meeting, as I used to say, when you say Internet Governance, the eyes of your interlocutor glaze over and some of these are insider phraseologies and terminology.
But the Secretariat will produce and update the program paper and there it will be explained, this is basically just the idea of the structure of what it could look like. And yes, of course, enhanced cooperation is linked to multistakeholder principles. That's why on the schedule we think it could make a three-hour session where you actually discuss it also in line with what we call the Brazilian proposal at the end of the WTPF. But it maybe makes the discussion more complicated that we see it unnecessary that we see it in the schedule, but at the same time I also thought it gives more of an idea of what actually the meeting could look like if we followed this approach. Bill. And Mark.
>>BILL DRAKE: A couple of quick points. One, the -- the session on the role of governments in multistakeholder cooperation, it would seem to me logical.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Can we not discuss the schedule? We're not discussing the scheduled. We're discussing the wording.
>>BILL DRAKE: Right. I meant the wording. The wording of that and the wordings of other sessions are such that I would see them coupled in a way that would be more integrated. Okay?
>>MARKUS KUMMER: We'll try to put up the Word document with a list of the bullet points of what you had in session instead. Maybe we could focus on that. Do you have anything else?
>>BILL DRAKE: Not if I can't say anything about the amount of time.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: We're not discussing the schedule. We're not discussing the schedule at this stage. Hang on. We have Chris and Fiona.
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Markus, a couple things. If -- I just want to support the way that it has been phrased. This isn't an revolution. Revolution would have been to abandon our previous reference points, such as access and diversity, and move on to new ones. This is -- this is an evolution in that we have retained our original anchor points and produced wording that focuses the discussions on this particular IGF on aspects of that. And that's why it's good that they're called focus sessions.
I think that -- I agree with you. I think that we are, in fact, still keeping those phrases and adding to them.
I just wanted to make one other point, which is that I'm slightly concerned about adding multistakeholder to enhanced corporation, which is, basically, an -- already an accepted term that people will kind of -- so I think juxtaposing the two sessions, I think, it makes sense. I'm not sure we should be adding the additional word to the actual title. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Fiona, did you want to come back?
>>FIONA ALEXANDER: I think just to add one other data point to this, which is you received 160 workshop proposals or close to that all based around this terminology and this wording? So, for all the people who spent all the time getting all the workshop proposals and getting all the work together, for them to make sense and see that reflected in the schedule, it's good for them to keep it the way it's structured.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Mr. Chen?
>>HONGBING CHEN: Thank you, Chairman. I think I have heard a lot of good suggestions and proposals from other colleagues. Really appreciate that like, especially from Finland.
I mean, it seems to me that we are not revolutionary. We are either -- neither revolutionaries nor conservative. We are trying to build upon our success. We want to take an evolutionary approach. I think it's the right way. It's the right way.
As to the substantive issues, I think the new proposal chairman has briefed us in the beginning, some of the proposed concepts have already been included in the older main themes, as we have discussed on a number of occasions like human rights or freedom of expression. That is already included in the second theme like security, openness, and privacy. And if these three concepts are well-balanced, I mean, it's -- it is a very good reflection of the concept of human rights, the values of human rights. Human rights is a broad -- is a concept which encompasses a lot of these things and encompasses balances like we have seen on the declaration of -- universal declaration of human rights article 19. We can see on the other covenants, human rights covenants. So I think now it's better for us to preserve the older ones, the access and security, security, openness, and privacy. As to the Internet resources I have a little bit more to talk about. There is CIR is the core issue of the WSIS. It's also a core -- always the main theme of IGF in the last years. It's critical for and further development of the Internet and governance of the Internet. So I strongly recommend that we maintain the critical resources as the main theme. Do not change it.
As to the Internet governance for development, maybe we can use other words, something like that, but encompassing the same value with new focuses and a new emphasis on specific issues. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. What I think Internet governance for development, to say much in part of Internet as an engine for growth and then advancement. That's same concept. And critical Internet resources, I would disagree with you. It's not core concept of WSIS. It appears, I think, once in WSIS in a sort of small paragraph there. I think Internet governance is throughout. And multistakeholder corporations, for instance, appears much more -- critical Internet resources in WSIS, if you actually look at the agreed language.
And the time critical Internet resources appeared first in the WCIT report. And it refers to the underlying telecom infrastructure as well as the physical structure of the Internet; that is, Internet naming and numbering. It's also much broader than what we actually, traditionally, looked at in the IGF.
We did that with the WCIT to agree. We can send recommendation to New York. We can also say we had different opinions. There was one proposal that was like this, and there was another proposal that was like that. And we asked the Undersecretary General to
pick. We did that with the WCIT report. There were three or four different models, and that was considered to be helpful. It would be my preference that we actually agree on a single recommendation we send to New York. But you're not obliged to do so. Mark?
>>MARK CARVELL: Yes. Thank you, Markus. I thought I'd try and help the thinking on the dual approach that Mervi proposed. And I wonder if we perhaps incorporate these key reference points or words under the main theme heading. So we'd have building bridges. And then under that you'd have access, diversity, security, openness, privacy, resources, and governance, I was thinking, rather than sovereignty as Mr. Chen was proposing.
So, I mean, when somebody goes to the main theme -- building bridges, very strong message -- what are we talking about in the Internet ecosystem? These thee elements, if you like. And, when you go to the program, you have a lot more precision about the scope of the sessions. Yeah? Is that one way of sort of taking forward this dual approach? I'm very happy with the themes as allocated to the sessions, with a couple changes that have been proposed I support as well, enhanced multistakeholder cooperation. But is there, perhaps, one way of accommodating this dual approach? Under the main theme, you have then this sort of list of key reference points, which I think provides that linkage thematically to the previous IGFs. But then we go to the program. And then you see the precision of the scope of the discussions taking forward those elements, if you like. That's my sort of idea. Thank you. Hope that's helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. So your suggestion, if I get you right -- and I will ask Brian to put it up -- will be under the heading "building bridges," you add the traditional themes access, diversity, then we had security openness, privacy.
>>MARK CARVELL: And then I suggested resources and governance. So resources is about not only the critical Internet resources capacity.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Resources and governance. >>MARK CARVELL: Just to continue these list of key words if you like.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: You would like a comment.
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I'm just concerned we're now effective redrafting our original pillars. What we currently have is reference -- referencing now in our agenda to all of the original pillars, we have reference points for each of the sessions. I know we're not talking about when the sessions are. We -- so every single one of them is covered. Every single one of them is mentioned. If you go back to the original time -- well, it doesn't matter. It's there. So, if you look at access -- so access and diversity is like the sort of heading. Internet as an engine for growth and development. That's what we're saying. And I think if you actually tie the Internet as an engine for growth and development specifically to access and diversity, rather than have access and diversity, openness at the top and have all these things underneath, it's actually much clearer. So the clarity comes from saying access and diversity. That's the original theme. This IGF is Internet as a engine for growth and development. Openness, human rights, blah, blah. So, rather than lifting them away from the new phrasing, putting them in the new phrasing, actually creates much greater clarity.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: That's what we have tried to do in the schedule. Susan.
>>SUSAN CHALMERS: Thank you, Markus. So I'd just like to support Chris's recent comments. I'd also like to reiterate my comment with respect to the legal and other frameworks title, which I see has been changed. That reflects three subject matter headings. So I understand the importance of spam and the issues related in terms of the greater context that we're all in right now. But I think that the -- it should be reflective of all of the workshops that were submitted underneath the original title. And it currently is not. So I would suggest that title is -- goes back to what it was previously. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Finland?
>>FINLAND: Thank you, Markus. I can now understand the logic of keeping enhanced cooperation and multistakeholder principles apart, since this allows us to discuss the Brazilian proposal and the role of governments in Internet governance under enhanced cooperation and then the principles in the other main sessions.
But, turning to the Chinese delegation, I would like to ask whether the interpretation of enhanced cooperation that China and many other countries have actually equal the notion of management of critical Internet resources. I mean, in recent years we have discussed IPv4, IPv6, and other technical issues under the management of critical resources. And, when we move to enhanced cooperation, I think that allows us to move back to the discussion of the more political which were brought in the very beginning of the life of the IGF. So I don't think that there is any problem with this theme also from the Chinese perspective. But -- but I would be glad to hear the opinion on it.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that. Mr. Chen, please.
>>HONGBING CHEN: Thank you, chairman. I think there may be different understandings about the hierarchical order of the concepts among our colleagues. But I would rather build our consensus or reach our consensus based on the history, the historic facts.
First, as to critical Internet resources, it's not a small issue. Actually, it's the starting point of the IGF process in 2005 within WSIS. Many people are not satisfied by the monopoly of the CIS. This is the starting point of the IGF we consider.
So I -- just to repeat my position, we're clear that there critical Internet resources should remain as one of the main themes.
As to the idea or the question raised by Finland -- thanks for the clarification -- I think, in my understanding, enhanced cooperation is the way or is a method to improve or to facilitate the solution on critical Internet resources. This is our understanding. I mean, in monitoring enhanced cooperation. The purpose of the enhanced cooperation is to solve -- to change the current unreasonable situation of the governance of critical Internet resources. It's quite clear.
Come back to another point that chairman has proposed that maybe we can use Internet as an engine for development, I think that would be a good choice. It would be a good choice for replacing one of the themes. But for the enhanced cooperation and the multilateralism, I think it's -- I mean -- how to say. The importance or its position on the hierarchical structure is different. So, to sum up, I think maybe we can still maintain the overall structure of the old themes and change the wording of the Internet governance for development to Internet as engine for development and principle of sovereignty. We have this as a new addition into that. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. We have several veterans of WSIS in the room, and I saw their flags go up. I think Fiona first. And I saw Raul and Theresa. Matthew. Yes.
>>FIONA ALEXANDER: Thank you very much, Markus. I think if we're going to debate the history of WSIS and IGF, we can do that for hours. And I'm happy to do that for hours, if you like. And we can go back to the 1998 plenipotentiary and the resolution that called to the creation of WSIS that led to the IGF. But I don't think that gets us anywhere in terms of where we're trying to go.
So, again, I think what you guys are trying to put forward is a very good balance of retaining a discussion of all the themes that have been discussed for seven years and showing some evolution of the IGF, which is what a lot of people external to this room are looking for, just to keep that perspective in mind.
But I would lastly draw your attention to paragraph 72, the Tunis agenda, where it says the purpose of the IGF is to discuss public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance. That's it. There's no other specification. So this idea that we're stuck in something from seven years ago, I'm just having problems struggling with understanding that.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: It clearly doesn't mention critical Internet resources. That is a fact. Raul.
>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you, Markus. Just, despite the fact that I agree with Fiona that we should not spend hours discussing the history of WSIS. But, as one person that was there, as a member of the WCIT and also involved with the negotiations in Tunis, my interpretation is that the critical Internet resources is not a starting point of IGF. And that it is exactly the opposite, in my view. IGF was created for dealing with the broadest definition of Internet governance. And enhanced cooperation was expression that was invented or created at that moment for dealing with the controversy of what should be the mechanism for managing the critical Internet resources. So I think that's, in my view, enhanced cooperation is an expression that permits under that umbrella to hold any discussion about critical Internet resources.
But, as a person involved indirectly in the operation of critical resources of Internet, I don't oppose to mention that directly. That's not my motivation for supporting the change in the wording. I think that, in fact, I -- all the Internet community has been very supportive of, including those issues in the last additions of IGF. And we will engage in discussions about many aspects of critical Internet resources. But I think that what people are expecting from us is that we show evolution in IGF in all the aspects of IGF. And one of the most visible things is the agenda of the meeting. So I think that this is one of the critical areas where we have to show evolution. So I think that's the pillars, using the same word that Chris used that, that's where those themes that were agreed and in Paris is that the best approach for the agenda. So I very much support using those subscriptions. I agree I also supported the proposal from Veronica that we should include some descriptions of the -- of each session in order to provide more information to the participants. And, in those descriptions, we can probably find a place for satisfying the expectations of trying to be comprehensive and included that enhanced cooperation, in the description we can say that it includes discussion about the critical Internet resources. So I think that we can satisfy the points of everybody. And I would like to say my last point is that I like very much the explicit inclusion of human rights as one of the titles. It has been a long way since the beginning to give more visibility to everything related with human rights. And there is a thing that's a big claim in that sense from the community. And it is clearly shown in the number of workshops, proposals that were submitted about this topic, I think. So that human rights, freedom of expression, should be very clear topics listed in the agenda. Thank you very much.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. And, again, I would like to repeat what was mentioned in the Secretary General's report when it came to the renewal that IGF was criticized for not devoting enough attention to the issue of human rights. And I would also like to recall that we have the report from the working group on improvement which was approved by the general assembly that basically asked us to improve and to evolve. And just repeating the same agenda year after year, I think, would not play into our favor.
Izumi, Theresa, Quasi, Matthew. And I have more. Yes, I can see Andrew Baher, and, of course, Mr. Chen. But Izumi first.
>>IZUMI AIZU: Thank you, Chair. Yes, I was also part of the history or watching the negotiation stuff. But I wouldn't go into the details. But I clearly remember for the first IGF in Athens, in the preparatory process, nobody really proposed to discuss about the CIR as it was on a taboo from both sides. So there's no explicit theme there. In the second year, it's changed and changed. So, to my knowledge, IGF has been evolving and changing and there's no taboo in discussing as in the beginning. Of course, if you have some problem, we can understand that. But there's no perfect solution.
As to the human rights, in addition to what Markus said -- I was in the CSTD working group -- last year in the human rights council of the United Nations adopted a resolution that online rights should be equally well-preserved or protected as the offline rights. Whether it really makes sense or not is another story.
But It gave us interesting revisit of what we mean by human rights over the Internet. So we may have different views about this or different interpretations. But, certainly, it's opening up new areas that we're to discuss from all angles. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you very much. Theresa.
>>THERESA SWINEHEART: So I'm a little bit concerned about where we are with the time and the dialogue. It's close to 3:45 on the last day. And people are going to start catching their flights out. And it seems quite inappropriate and unfair to all the participants both in the February session and in the dialogue up to here to start rearranging the deck chairs on how this terminology we're using and what's been agreed to. So I'm wondering if we can go back up to the program and just focus on what needs to be tweaked or adjusted and try to move this forward so that we can come out of this meeting with a document that enables those who are preparing for the IGF to start the planning process. I just feel like we're going back over history, and it's time to move forward.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Yes, thank you. I was actually hoping to wrap up the discussion. We don't seem to be able to reach consensus on the small print, but I sense, while not everybody agrees there is very, very strong support to what we had on the screen on the proposed schedule. That would include the traditional titles, but evolve and build on them. I just wonder -- yes, we have not tried it around the -- basically here we have all the old titles are up -- well, critical Internet resources is part of the IGF folklore, but it is not agreed WYSIS language, that we have a definition of what it means. And WYSIS I think we have one reference to critical Internet resources but it doesn't feature high in WYSIS. Critical Internet resources is not part of the mandate of the IGF. It is not in the paragraphs that determine the mandate, as it is. Okay, Chengetai, can you read now?
[ Speaker is off microphone. ]
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Well, no, I mean, we have the -- in the WCIT report we have a reference to what critical Internet -- paragraph, it should be made clear, however, that Internet governance includes more than Internet names and addresses, issues dealt with by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN. It also includes other significant public policy issues such as critical Internet resources, the security and safety of the internet, and developmental aspects and issues pertaining to the use of the Internet. That basically means it is more than just names and addresses. Yes, and there is another reference. Issues relating to infrastructure and to management of critical Internet resources, including administration of the DNS, IP addresses, administration of the Root Servers to technical standards, (indiscernible) and interconnection, telecommunications infrastructure. We never discussed telecommunications infrastructure, for instance, including innovative and convergent technologies, as well as multi-liberalization. So it is a fairly broad definition and we have always focused on the very narrow part of that definition. This is just also to delve in the history.
Well, my appeal would be to go for what we have proposed. Take the Paris language. Maybe as somebody said leave it as it is because it may create confusion if you alter it as people have been used to it. But yes, Mr. Chen, please.
>>HONG BING CHEN: First, I would like to respond to some remarks made by the colleagues about the CIR and other issues. I think there's no need for us to go back to history, I fully agree with that. We're under time pressure and there's some documents, the Tunis agenda, there's some reference very clearly. I just say it's -- we'd better move forward. We do not talk about it in detail, spend too much time on that. We just leave the -- I mean, keep the old four themes and move forward. Yeah.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Do I take it, then, that you agree with my proposal, we leave the four themes and include them in what we have had up on the screen?
>>HONG BING CHEN: No, it's -- I mean, actually it's overlapping sometimes, it's illogical. What do we have seen coming from the Paris conference -- Paris meeting. It's about a same topic but it's -- I mean, the relationship between this new proposal and the old structure, they are overlapping. And for me, I think I'm more comfortable with the older structure. Maybe add one thing, that is the principal of sovereignty. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Oh, Indonesia, sorry, you asked for the floor. Indonesia.
>>INDONESIA: Okay, thank you. We are going to list two things. We understand that cyber sovereignty is already covered by the main theme but we -- list that cyber sovereignty in one of the sub-themes maybe in (indiscernible) and sovereignty in the legal and other frameworks. Maybe we can add what about sovereignty of the government in the cyber things like that. That's one thing.
>> I can -- I use this opportunity for the second themes? Thank you. For the second sub-theme on access and diversity, I'd like to stick with my -- my proposals. If we put number one, Internet as an engine for growth and sustainable development. How about that? Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: May well be the thing we can agree on, sustainable development. That makes a very good suggestion. Baher, you want to --
>>BAHER ESMAT: Thank you, Markus. I remember when the CSTD working group on IGF improvements, you know, we had long discussion on how to improve the IGF, how to improve the MAG, how to improve the whole preparatory process, and, I mean, there was -- at the time it was not on the MAG but I witnessed the amount of criticism that the MAG used to, you know, get from different people that, you know, they're not doing their job and selecting high quality workshops or up-to-date themes and so on and so forth. So I find it a little bit difficult now to hear, you know, motions that we should try to stick to old themes that, you know, have been on the table for seven -- seven years. And the MAG actually -- one of the recommendations reported in the CSTD report was for the MAG to continue to reach out to stakeholders and involve them in the preparatory process and get feedback and all this. And we did that in Paris and we spent a lot of time discussing themes and, you know, sub-themes and all this. And what we have today on the screen is the result of this long discussion. And I don't think it would be fair for the MAG just to overlook this feedback that was -- I mean, in part was written in the stake -- in the stock-taking process after Baku and then it was also heard in Paris. So it's not fair to just ignore all this and, you know, decide on different themes or sub-themes, even if those who are, you know, inherited from previous meetings. So I -- I totally support the views that we stick to what we discussed and agreed upon in Paris and move forward because otherwise I -- I mean, if we're going to have a third MAG meeting at some point and we open this discussion again, I don't think we're going to finish. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: To the last point, we are not going to have a third MAG meeting.
[ Laughter ]
I wonder, as the issue of sustainable development came up, our colleague from UNDESA here would like to take the floor? Can you -- and I also would like to ask him how comfortable is if he would come forward with not a consensus opinion but our report makes two options to the Secretary General. There is, I think, large agreement in the room, but there's not a full agreement in the room to go with one agenda. But however, there's a different opinion expressed that it would be preferable to keep to the traditional agenda. That is my reading of the room. Please.
>>VYATCHESLAVA CHERKASOV: Okay, Chair. Thank you very much. Given that MAG is a multistakeholder advisory group to the Secretary General so that I believe it would be very useful if we be able to update you on the recent developments within the United Nations system and with recent focus of the major priorities of the Secretary General. He has many priorities but one of those is extremely take his attention as well as the attention of the member states. I believe that the diplomatic community is aware about this directions or the mainstreams. But on the other hand, so I believe it would be very fair and important for the multistakeholder community or the IGF to be aware about and to be briefed and updated. So that -- can we go to --
>> (Off mic).
>>VYATCHESLAVA CHERKASOV: The what? I sent the e-mail.
[ Speaker is off microphone. ]
>>VYATCHESLAVA CHERKASOV: Okay. One just -- so I believe so this very short briefing in the form of the, you know, the presentation, and actually thought that what I would like to brief you about this important meeting that took place in -- in 2015 in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro. So that thanks to the, again, government of Brazil, it's about Rio plus 20. Which is actually one of the focus of the implementation of the many development goals, as you know, so it was a main priority of the entire U.N. system and as well the world to achieve these MDGs, which is actually going to be finished by the 2015. And I believe so that it is very symbolic that government of Brazil -- professor, I believe I can disclose this information -- send an official offer to the United Nations to host the 2015 IGF in Brazil. So I would like to share this information with you so that the formal letter of take Brazil as one of the hosts for the 2015 has been already received. And so that one of these outcomes of the 2012 event that is -- that the whole world has analyzed this economic and financial situation around the world and start considering what is the post-2015 agenda.
And right now the one of the priorities that working on the issue that the sustainable development goals is going to be developed and is going to be start implementing on 2015. So that now it's the very strong and solid process of the follow-up on this recommendation.
Again, I'm not going to spend too much information about the MDGs, probably I believe you know there are eight MDGs which has to be achieved and so this analysis shows that some of the MDGs have been achieved. Some of them not. And one of the reasons that the -- this, I would say, controversial implementation of the MDGs that they have been developed on their very, I would say, close group of the people. So therefore now, it's a big decision was done so that the new sustainable development goals are going to be implemented based on their multistakeholder platform. I believe that IGF has to be one of these good initiative for the world society to implement this multistakeholder platform.
Now on your -- on the screen you can see so that it was the very long and extensive process which is right now being implemented. And in terms of the formulating of the sustainable development goals. And -- next one. And right now is a number of the working groups has been set up within the U.N. system. As you can see one of these working group is based on the 30 members from the government, from the U.N. agencies, and from the NGOs, to discuss what is the content will be of the sustainable development goals. And based on the -- these -- next one. Based on the recommendation so that as you can see that the Rio plus 20 is recognized that significance mobilization of the resources from the variety of the resources and effective use of the financing to promote sustainable development. So that everybody knows that right now Internet is one of the very important element of the economic development. So therefore, the issue of the role of the Internet and the issue of the role of the Internet Governance is getting more and more important. As you can see right now, this is very -- very, very important conclusions which was derived from the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals and the future world are in focus.
As you can see so that the role of the -- it was identified that the role of the governance was really not taken into consideration in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals and as well as should be taken into consideration for the new sustainable development goals in the process of their formulation. So that as you can see, this is the priorities area which was made before and now they can see this has to be taken into consideration. You see the participation, the decision-making process, (indiscernible) information, freedom of media, so that this is the -- the other areas as well which is actually covered by their area of the Internet Governance. Second one.
So that on the other hand the high-level panel, as you can see, was also set up to getting the area of the -- what is the sustainable development goals will be. And this is a co-chaired by the president of Indonesia and also so that the former prime minister of U.K. is also one of the co-chairs. So that we see that all governments, NGOs, Civil Society, private sector, right now is concentrating on the developing this sustainable development goals and they make recommendation for the security -- for the security council and as well for the Secretary General what is the content and how it's going to be implemented.
So as you can see from this perspective, I'm telling you so that I'm going to analyze the old information right now. For example, the group of the United Nations information group come up with a special joint statement to the Secretary General to bring his attention of the importance of the ICT to be a part of the sustainable development goals and as well as implementation. So I get all of this information and then recommendation which is we do not have right now. Unfortunately, I did not see the Internet Governance as a part of this process, so that -- does Internet Governance has its niche in this process? I'm fully confident, yes, it does. Without Internet Governance -- without -- you can see that governance is an important process for the future development and a part of the sustainable development goals.
So that -- who can recommend it? I mean, I believe for the MAG is only proper, you know, that settlement of the experts, of the practitioners, of the group of the people who just know what is importance role of the Internet Governance for the future sustainable development for the development itself. So that, yeah. So I believe so that in this case I just tried to, you know, brief you on this recent developments. Also bring to your attention that for the fourth time in General Assembly session is going to discuss, first of all, what is going to be component of the future sustainable development goals and as well as the mechanism -- modality of the implementation of these goals, monitoring process, and the evaluation in the future. So therefore, I hope that, you know, that you just take into consideration and also pay attention to this recent update on the main -- one of the main focus of the -- not only United Nations but the member states, governments, and NGOs all around the world. Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for this. The point has been made in the past that we seem to work in parallel but not towards the sustainable development community. And also a point is made by an expert who has followed the Rio process for a long time was that in terms of process the Internet Governance community was further advanced in terms of multistakeholder participation. And I think a session on sustainable development, the community, they maybe are better, further advanced in the conceptual point of view, but in terms of process, giving everybody a voice, our community is more advanced. And we may indeed have a contribution to make, and I think a main session on multistakeholder principles, a focus session as we discussed that which could have some outcome takeaways could indeed feed very nicely into the sustainable development process.
We don't have much time left. There's -- there's remote participation comments. Yes, please. General comments.
>>FARZANEH BADII: Thank you. I have one remote participation intervention from (saying name) Williams. Could the MAG please remember that remote panelists can also be used. That would help with the question of whether or not speakers will make it to Bali.
And I have a rather long comment from Stuart Hamilton. I'm going to read it out. Hello from the International Federation of Library Association Institutions or IFLA in The Hague. We would support the inclusion of a main theme that looks at public access to the Internet. IFLA is a coordinator of the Dynamic Coalition on public access through libraries and has organized workshops on this topic at the last two IGFs.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Sorry, Stuart. I think it's interesting, we will post it, but it's not the time. We are really running out of time.
>>FARZANEH BADII: One more comment from Carolina Aguerre. I would like to support Veronica's proposal and to suggest improvements to the main session and workshops by providing a report on both content and process to promote a legacy of outcomes of the IGF. Thanks.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Yes, again, my apologies to remote participants. We usually prioritize them, but we're really running out of time and general comments at this point are -- we just don't have the time to deal with them.
Now, can I ask you to be very, very conservative with asking for the floor and only if you really think you really have to. So who would like to talk, even considering that we're running out of time? I can see Mr. Chen, Qusai, Subi, you want to? Yeah. Okay. Please.
>>HONG BING CHEN: Thank you, Chairman, and considering the remarks by colleagues in the last 20 minutes, I think we can come up with some solution. My suggestion is like this, access and diversity, we keep it. Security, openness, and privacy, under that we will have the Indonesian's proposal, we add the one principle of sovereignty under that as a supplement theme maybe. The third, critical Internet resources. The fourth, we can use Internet as engine for sustainable development to replace the Internet Governance for development. Plus, we can also use -- I mean, maybe we add one more, like Internet Governance principles because this title encompasses many different principles. Under this umbrella we can talk about any issue. I mean, just -- this is the spirit of IGF. We do not foreclose or exclude any topic under this theme. This is my latest suggestion for your consideration. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Yes, thank you. And very much appreciated that you're trying to bring it forward, however, I still think I see much of the previous proposals. And don't forget that we have proposed in the schedule an open forum session where we actually listed all the traditional themes so that's clearly on the agenda. Chris.
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Markus. It falls to me to perhaps to lower the level of diplomacy. It's clear to me that there is a general concensus in this room to proceed in the way that is up on the -- up on the board. I acknowledge that one member of the MAG, specifically China, does not agree. But we can bat this ball backwards and forwards as much as we like. There is a clear agreement amongst everyone else, or pretty much everyone else in this room to proceed, and I for one have had enough of bouncing the ball backwards and forwards. I think you -- I would prefer there to be a joint -- an agreed consensus-based proposal, but I think we have now reached a point where we need to agree that this goes forward as the proposal of the MAG with a note that one member of the MAG is opposed, and if they wish to make alternative suggestions it is, of course, open for them to do so. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Subi.
>>SUBI CHATURVEDI: As a new member, we have begged indulgence of the MAG and the Chair several times to reach out already in there. I do want to reinstate that we have moved forward. What we have on the screen is come out of deliberations from Paris. We do need to respect that there's a lot of time that has gone into it and all themes have been taken into consideration. So this is confluence. I want to support this new solution that is up on the screen and also the main theme which takes into spirit the equity and the Internet and the openness and sustainability. That's all.
>>QUSAI AL SHATTI: Thank you, I have been waiting for a while. We are talking about six themes, not seven, right? There is two suggestion for one theme, right? Principle of multistakeholder cooperation or enhanced multistakeholder cooperation, right? They are two different -- so we have seven, not six.
[ Speaker is off microphone. ]
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Basically -- forget what's up there. Go back to what we had in Paris. Main theme, building bridges. And then --
>>QUSAI AL SHATTI: And during the past discussion actually we did not focus on CIR as much as we focus on the Internet ecosystem. That's the terminology that we were talking about. Not CIR specifically. We talked more about the Internet ecosystem because this is more an inclusive term. That's one.
Two, the discussion also in Paris when we talked about CIR or the Internet ecosystem the preference was to focus more on enhanced cooperation at that time and the Internet Governance principles rather than talking about CIR because for the last six meetings, with the exception of Athens, we were talking on that scope and we wanted to shift to enhanced cooperation which is the issue right now, which is the hot issue that we want to address, as well as the Internet Governance of the principles which is also the issue at this stake right now. And this is more of a priority than the CIR itself. Or the Internet ecosystem.
Referencing representation, I think we should support strongly the human rights/freedom of expression, and the free flow of information on the Internet. This is an important issue because there are different understandings. We look at this differently. We have different limits. So this topic needs to be debated and it needs to stay there for a while, until we can develop a common understanding.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Okay. Let's close this discussion, and I agree that we unfortunately -- yes, sir.
>>HONG BING CHEN: Actually, Mr. Chairman, it's my persistent plead that we should spend more time on overarching themes and main themes starting from the beginning of yesterday. Unfortunately we haven't -- we have seen over 80% of time was spent on working shops. I mean, now, it's just we're doing something under time pressure. It seems some colleagues say we will just succumb to the time pressure. But up to now I haven't talked -- made any comment about the proposal on the screen. If you allow me, I can explain to you why it is -- I mean, what is my opinion observation.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Please.
>>HONG BING CHEN: Yeah. The first point, I think it's understandable, acceptable because it's kind of continuity. It has inherited the essence or the essential value of access of diversity. Well, for the second point, the original title is security, openness, and privacy. But now we are using human rights, freedom of expression, free flow of information on the Internet. I don't know where the colleagues you know that freedom of expression is just one topic on the human rights. We think that structure of human rights, there's protection of women, protection of children, protection of the disableds. Why we don't mention that? It's illogical. See? Yeah? The third, Internet Governance principles, I said it's acceptable. Sure, it's acceptable because it gives us an umbrella structure under which we can talk about specific issues, specific principles. On the Tunis agenda, also on the -- in the Geneva principles, I think all over principles are valid if we discuss under this title, it's acceptable, yeah, including the principal of sovereignty, the principle of multistakeholder, the approach of multistakeholder. But why we are doing -- I mean, it seems to me these things, these topics now, the titles or the so-called main themes, it's just a -- not tidy. I mean, it doesn't fit to each other. When we say Internet Governance principles, okay, if we have the item as main theme, why we use principles of multistakeholder cooperation again. It's duplication, total duplication. I mean, it's just illogical. I do not oppose innovation or evolution. I just want to make it good because, I mean, we want to make IGF -- the eighth IGF successful, right? Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Yes, thank you.
Thank you for that. Only MAG members. I'm afraid, Veronica. Sorry, Vlada.
>>VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Markus, with due with respect to the Chair and the colleagues, I request that you close this discussion and limit every next point in intervention up to two minutes, maybe one time per each MAG member with possible reflection once. Because we have the whole point 8 to do within 45 minutes. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. And I would also like to recall that these language may not be perfect but it doesn't appear out of the blue. It was with us since Paris. Indonesia.
>>INDONESIA: Thank you very much. I do not understand why the first subtheme now has disappeared. I think this is very important the role of government in multistakeholder cooperation. Now this disappears.
>> The building bridges one?.
>>INDONESIA: The role of government in multistakeholder cooperation. Why this disappear.?
>>MARKUS KUMMER: It's in the schedule. The idea was to pick up the discussion we had in WTPF last week where Brazil had a proposal on that. And, if we -- the idea would be in the schedule, maybe start with that as -- really to lead us into the discussion and ask the Brazilian government maybe to introduce this agenda item to report on whatever happened since WTPF in May. That would be the idea. Sorry. Only MAG members.
Honestly, I do appreciate the spirit of you, Mr. Chen, of trying to move forward. But the sense -- my sense is that all your colleagues would be happy to go along with what was proposed from the Chair, with your exception. And I also think there's nothing else that we can do than report back to New York. And you will be a witness -- you will be participating in this meeting that we have -- what I would say large understanding in this room that this would be doable framework for the Bali meeting which would reflect very broad input from stakeholders which would be responsive to the work of the working group on IGF improvement and to comments made that we have to evolve and address issues of concern. And we would actually, with this agenda, with this framework, position the IGF as a platform where certain issues can be taken further and above all be addressed in a multistakeholder framework. That was also echoed by the Secretary General of the ITU last week when he specifically mentioned that the discussion we had last week, which was a good discussion in Geneva here, in the WTPF, could be continued also in the IGF, not exclusively. There is also the CSTD. There is, of course, the ITU counsel. So that multi per fora. But the IGF clearly was mentioned not only by the Secretary General but also by many member states as one of the fora where this discussion should be taken further. And I sense there's a strong feeling in this room that this can only be done if there is an evolving agenda which actually reflects the discussions, which reflects the concerns. As I said earlier, I appreciate we seem to agree on the principles of evolution. But we also seem to agree on the necessity to keep the building intact and solid. But by not changing we actually are in danger to rock the building. Because then the IGF would be criticized for not being responsive, for not being able to reinvent, for just repeating what it has done all over and over again, and which has been criticized. And we have to take that into account. We had a broad consultation after Baku. And there was a lot of criticism. And in Paris we discussed this. We took it into account. It is reflected in the outcome of Paris meeting. Nobody but nobody in the MAG said the summary record was not accurate. So it has been with us. And there's nothing new in there. And it builds on what we have been doing in the past seven years. I, honestly, don't think there is any dichotomy between the old issues. They were not part of the original mandate. The IGF developed them when we first got together. Honestly, there were a bunch of people back in 2006. We didn't really know how to approach this. But we sat together. And they came up with four issues -- access, diversity, openness and security.
Then a year or two later it was felt maybe it makes sense to deal with them together, security, openness. Add privacy to that because it's an important issue. But these were not there from the beginning. They were not part of the mandate. They evolved.
And this is exactly what we are doing here. We are reassessing the situation. And we think it might make sense to build on what we have done in the past. Maybe regroup some of the issues and look at them with a different -- slightly different lens.
Now, yes, these may not be perfect. Yes, we could discuss for hours on end to improve them. But one of my favorite sayings is the perfect is the enemy of the good. And we all know, I think, in diplomacy you never reach perfection. It's an approximation. And we are trying to find a new way of, basically, doing what we always have been doing. That is providing a platform for an open multistakeholder dialogue where you can address all the issues that relate, as long as they relate to Internet governance. And this is -- Brian could maybe put up the schedule again. This is the schedule we are proposing. Again, there's no claim for this to be a perfect schedule. But I think it could at least be a good starting point and it could work. And we can develop it a bit further. And we would have to, obviously, fill it also with substance. The point is made we need to explain a little bit with the sentence or two what each of these issues mean. But, if we just walk through it -- and I'd ask you to bear with me just that we are on a common page. Or maybe it's not necessarily clear when you see it or maybe we have not been clever enough to express it.
But what we now call day zero -- that's the day reserved to pre-event. That's Monday morning. So there are pre-events on the Monday. They will be ministerial roundtable. There will be other pre-events. We don't know yet. There will be for sure academic gathering with our friends from GIGAnet. We will also have a regional roundtable. And we will also have, I hope, some event on capacity building that will pick up some of the workshops that have not been approved. These are two tracks we agreed on are important. And that has also been mentioned in the working group on IGF. Improvement. Capacity building, and the regional initiatives. Then we picked up the -- on the first day we will do what we always have done, start with an orientation session for newcomers. And there we thought that -- will you please bear with me and allow me to finish this presentation?
[Speaker off microphone.]
I'm explaining the rationale behind the agenda. And I --
[Speaker off microphone.]
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Yes, no. We don't have time for discussion any more. It's -- I'm just trying to explain what is behind this. Because, I mean, we will have further discussion to that. We will do that online. And I will also suggest that we will have regular calls leading up to Bali, maybe a monthly call.
But then allow me to go back. And then the idea was maybe take up the main theme, building bridges, and build on last week's discussions in WTPF and ask the Brazilian delegation to explain their position, what they tried to achieve and that we discussed at some length on the first day of Tuesday.
Afternoon of the first day, the opening ceremony, opening session.
Then on the second day we picked up the suggestion made to start each day with a short orientation session for newcomers or for everyone. That would be in the main room, so that it would benefit from interpretation. So it will be beneficial for people who don't have English as a mother tongue. But that would be just explaining what happens where, where to go, and so on.
And then, as a first session, we proposed picking up the old access and diversity themes and have the Internet as an engine for growth. And I think we agreed to add sustainable development to that wording. And focus session would mean that these are sessions that are basically prepared by workshops. There are various workshops on this issue. And we will give them the opportunity to have a roundtable to then provide their input into the session. Okay. One of the problems may be there may not be enough time to do that. So we may have to retweak it or maybe put some of the roundtable day zero or whatever. And then the afternoon would again be sessions that would be -- where we would make sure we would have the workshop inputs. So we call it focus sessions. But there will be, again, going a step further what we had been doing in the past with the so-called feeder workshop. It would not be just a reporting in. But it would really -- the idea would be that these workshops come up with some proposals, some tangible outcomes.
And these would, basically, be two issues on freedom of expression on the principles.
And then moving onto the third day -- and that, again, will be the broad security session. And that was -- especially, our colleague Mark was very keen to have that pick up some of these issues that were seen as controversial at the conference in Dubai and give some insight solutions on how best to deal with spam, with cyber security. And the idea would also be that we then would do our best to attract policy makers to this session.
And then in the afternoon of that day we picked up on the suggestion that was made during the course of the week to have an open forum where we could discuss any issue. And there we listed all these traditional issues so everybody wants to say something on the critical Internet resources can go there and say so.
And we would also add the traditional taking stock as part of this session for immediate feedback.
And then on the last day, again, reversing 2 multistakeholder enhanced corporation and multistakeholder principles, presumably, then there would have been some discussions that would have taken place since the very first session on building bridges and the role of governments, as that could then feed into that last morning session. And in the afternoon, here again we go back -- I think we did that the very first time in Athens that we tried to finish on the high note with emerging issues. Some proposal that was made by some civil society folks was precisely to have maybe a keynote speaker or emerging issues that we would not define too much in advance but maybe see in the light of what this just topical shortly before the meeting but somebody who actually would draw the people back in to the room. Again, that will be open for discussion. And then we would have the closing session. And oh, we also introduced two daily taking stock sessions of 30 minutes, one in the evening and one in the early afternoon as was suggested during our discussions, as an experiment. If nobody turns up to these sessions, then we will not repeat it. If they prove successful, then we can have the end of each day, as Veronica originally suggested.
So this would be our suggestion for a possible schedule. And this would be part of the report that we would send to the Undersecretary General in New York.
Now what is -- where is the agenda? I have it here somewhere.
Is there -- we -- yes, we have -- I think we have discussed most of the sessions. The open fora we discussed that. These are usually reserved to traditional organizations. So just the ITU, UNESCO, but also ICANN or the Number Resource Organization. The IETF has already asked for one. There we have a deadline 30th of June. And we have also agreed that smaller organizations could also ask for a slot maybe a shorter slot of half an hour. And that will be submitted to the MAG for approval if it's not entirely clear whether or not such an organization would fit in. But I think there was a lot of support for the idea of having also small organizations. Dynamic Coalitions, as always, they will be given a slot. But we will make sure or the Secretariat will make sure that they have produced the report of past year's activity. It should not just be an excuse to have a guaranteed slot. We want to see that they have done some work.
On the capacity building track, I understand that there are some discussions on the way. And I don't know whether you maybe would like to report in just very briefly on where we are on that one.
>>VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Yes. Thank you, Markus. Based on the discussions on the e-mail list -- and then we had a short meeting today, there were a couple points we basically agreed to inform MAG and ask for opinions, of course. The first one is there will be a number of pre-events that fit into capacity building. We already have some suggest the by ISOC and others. MAG members will try to help them synchronize, and they're free to suggest and organize they the way they want. But this can be marked as part of the track.
Second point is orientation sessions. And it's discussed and outlined over there that we will have, basically, every day a short piece of orientation session. However, we're thought to request 90 minutes, if possible. If not, then 60 minutes. Because 30 minutes would be too short for the sessions. The sessions would be -- this is one idea -- organized following the experience from the last previous year. The first day would be about the process of IG and how to participate in the IGF. The second and third day orientation sessions would be about the topics. And the fourth day would be about a follow-up, the greater or bigger context and the capacity building.
The first topic is marking the CB, capacity building tracks throughout the program. Because we've identified many workshops that have been approved. And there will be some IGF village activities open forums, suggestions which relate to capacity building, marking them in the program. Since we cannot mark them in a separate color because they have already been in some of the categories, we'll find a way with a star or somehow a technical way to mark them so people know what our recommended capacity building activities going forward.
The fourth point is the failed sessions that were not approved to go as sessions, as workshops but might have some link to capacity building issues -- and there were a couple of them identified thus far, I think, will be invited to join the organization of the orientation sessions or other, which are related to capacity building.
And the fifth is we'll try to encourage the participants to come up with evaluations and suggestions what they would like to learn or hear more in future and how to develop this process. I leave it at that and welcome comments, of course.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that. One thing we'd have to look at is the availability of interpretation if we extend the orientation sessions. But it can also be English only if we have no interpretation. And I wonder whether -- Paul, would you like to report briefly on the regional track? You had a meeting early this morning.
>>PAUL WILSON: Thanks, Markus. Paul Wilson here. We have circulated some notes courtesy of Sylvia to the list for the regional track. It's a little bit of confusion about which list exactly this is supposed to be -- is supposed to be being used. But I think we'll ask for Secretariat help in clarifying that and hopefully converging on a single list whether it's the regional track or other.
So you've caught me by surprise, and I'm just digging out the notes from the --
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Just give a very high level.
>>PAUL WILSON: Okay. The -- very high level, there's unanimity that the regional -- a regional track involving simply regional reporting from each of the reasons or national IGFs is not interesting. One of the things that the -- that these IGF initiatives do have in common is a need to share experiences, success stories, approaches to methodology for various things about how the events are organized, program committees and preparatory activities and so forth. The -- our consensus, therefore, I think was that we have a half a day pre-meeting on day zero, two 90-minute sessions which is for exchanging experiences fairly informal session but one really geared around how to get the best and the most out of these initiatives. So that was one aspect. The others were to encourage the theme-specific content of regional activities or IGF initiatives to come into the main IGF sessions, to the extent possible.
To have a couple of slots in the program, however, for regional initiatives or IGF initiatives to come together to talk about the specific thematic issues and issues in common that will need some prework, I think, some polling of the coordinators in the communities of the regional initiatives to identify the themes of the topics that are most interesting and are of most interest to one or more of the initiatives represented so that there could be some useful exchange there.
The session we had was pretty informal. Marilyn and I both were involved with facilitating. And there were quite a number of other people there. So I'll finish with that and just let Marilyn or anyone else add any other comments. Thanks.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Marilyn is actually sitting up there. She's participating remotely in a meeting in Accra, Ghana.
Chris, you had a question.
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I did. Thank you. A couple things, just on the -- great stuff on the capacity building and getting all this orientation stuff worked out. That's amazing. And congratulations to everybody concerned.
Just on the suggestion of longer orientation sessions, I think, from our experience, that might be challenging, given that you've got three-hour slots with translation. But, if you wanted to have longer ones, it would be possible, I think, to start them earlier using not the main room, but a large -- one of the huge meeting rooms. I think there were big and huge. And, obviously, you wouldn't have the translation. But I'd encourage that flexibility.
And I wanted to ask a question. I may have misunderstood. But did -- was -- was our honorary Chair from Indonesia saying that, when he was talking about prayer times, that that would be run through the meeting?
>>MARKUS KUMMER: That was my understanding, and we have to factor that in.
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That's going to be seriously challenging with our 3-hour sessions.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: That will be a challenge we have to factor in. Maybe the Brazilian proposal is the best way out, spend the morning on the beach. But we have to figure it out, yes. Yes.
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: I think this is about all related to agenda item 8.
The question then would be that would be agenda 9, next steps. There my humble request would be to the facilitators of this morning who took on the various groups to deal with the workshops whether they could carry on their work as we move forward so that we would have facilitators for each of the workshop groups and also discussing on how they relate to the focus sessions. That will be an important, I think, innovation that we will have to organize roundtables of all the workshops and then link them in to the main session. Can I sort of see an agreement among the facilitators? At least I see no protests, so I take it -- yes, Olga.
>>OLGA CAVALLI: Yeah, thank you, Markus. One brief comment. Our group shared in the MAG list the results of our discussion in the morning. Some of us will follow-up on the mergers. And one thing that we couldn't do is to meet in person with the other leaders because we found some overlappings or -- so we could do that online. So I'm open to that. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: I think also we said that when we started the meeting today. There's also maybe some need to recalibrate the basic philosophy and modalities so that we all agree the same criteria. I mean, we did not have the time to discuss up front. But we noticed that maybe not every group applied the same criteria. So maybe the Secretariat could organize a call maybe sometime next week between the facilitators of the three groups.
[Speaker off microphone.]
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Just to go through the list what we have done. Now -- I don't think it should take too long. I think there is a need to have this kind of communication to ensure some kind of coherence.
Chengetai, is there -- what else are next steps? There are the deadlines. And I think the next deadline is 30th of June for open forums, Dynamic Coalitions, also for the village? Please. Microphone.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes. So 30th of June is the next deadline for open forums, Dynamic Coalitions, and also the booths. And, well, we've also put 30th of June as a deadline to request to hold a pre-event as well. So, if you take those into consideration.
I was also wanted to say that, yes, we do have those three groups. But we also need MAG members to take care of the subgroups as well onwards. I think it would be a bit too much to ask the coordinators of three groups to do that. But we can discuss it on the phone call and then have --
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Yes. Let's take it from there. I mean, you drive it further. You may also reach out to colleagues or please also indicate if you're interested in being part of that. You know your colleagues. Reach out to them and say hey, I'd like to be part of your working group. And this, obviously, links to the related main sessions on how best to organize them. Raul?
>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you, Markus. I have a question from my government that they're asking me if a government can ask for an one open forum slot? Yes? It's not limited to organizations then?
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Well, traditionally, it is to organizations, but why not if -- we always said governments should be part of this. And if a government wants to be part of this --
>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you very much.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you very much.
We have done the next steps.
Any other business? Yes, Vlada.
>>VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Thank you, Markus, I wanted to raise two issues. One is participation and the second one is we discussed it on the list whether we should have the MAG meeting before or after the IGF. And I think it might be a convenient moment to just sound the temperature of the room. But, before that, I'll leave it to you and the others if they want to discuss. I just wanted to check maybe also with the organizers what is the status of participation with the Secretariat to make sure this is going to be even better than before. There have been a lot of efforts and discussions with Patrick and the others how to build possibly a web site into this and possibly a social media and so on. Just wanted a short update on what's happening with participation. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: That is an important aspect. And I'll leave that to Chengetai to answer. Briefly, on the issue of a MAG meeting, maybe you were not in the room. But we discussed it briefly. And we said we will try and have a lunchtime meeting on day zero. And then maybe one on the last day again or the day before last or so. But we clearly need to get together. And also I think what I would like to see that we have maybe monthly calls. How many can you have on WebEx? 200. Okay. That's -- that's fine. No problem there. So we can have a regular WebEx call with all MAG members to discuss the state of preparation as we move forward. Chengetai?
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: For the eParticipation, we are not quite there yet. We're still discussing. And we also have to discuss with the Indonesian hosts, which is what we planned for June. That's on June's schedule.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Izumi.
>>IZUMI AIZU: Thank you, Markus. While I'm a little bit exhausted like many others, I was recalling just yesterday's working -- I mean, the IGF improvement theme. One thing I'd like to perhaps propose and I might volunteer is to prepare some kind of an online evaluation of feedback system, which, if implemented properly, will make assessment of let's say each workshop, how participants have satisfied or not. I don't think we have done that effectively or efficiently before. Correct me, if I'm wrong. And having this electronic form is very easy for later use of making an assessment.
I would like to hear any other's comment, if you guys have. But different -- taking on from what Veronica provided for the meeting, other kind of meeting modalities, and combined with what I suggested in Paris and about BAF, or birds of a feather, which means, when you are there and you come up with something new and you'd like to call for some meetings ad hoc, we'd like to have some kind of a space. It's -- I think it's close to what you -- Veronica suggested as an open space. And I also suggest a physical bulletin board, which is similar to the open wall. This kind of more spontaneous arrangement will create much more sort of energy going forward from this -- I mean, Bali's IGF into the next round. So I'd like to really see these two happen. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: That's clearly on the agenda that we have that space for spontaneous suggestion. Veronica.
>>VERONICA CRETU: Thanks, Markus. I have two suggestions. The first one is related to providing feedback to the workshop proposals that didn't get through. I think it's important to continue encouraging people to get back to us to submit proposals. And this has to be done in a very diplomatic and nice manner.
Number 2, I've been in MAG for a while, a year. But this has been really my first time in a face-to-face consultation meeting. And this has been really great. And I suggest that, whenever we have new MAG members on board, they are provided with an opportunity to come to their first meeting in person. Because this makes a difference. Then the inputs and the contributions are -- you know what is expected of you. You know how you can contribute. And being in person at the first meeting as a MAG member is really important. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: I think most -- those who didn't make it, it was just too late to make arrangements. But I agree nothing replaces the physical presence, however hard we try, with having remote participation. Izumi.
>>IZUMI AIZU: Thank you. Yes. In Baku, I asked to have an extra MAG meeting, if you remember, at the very last minute, because there was none. And, to my surprise, it had good attendance. It had one hour short notice. And, Chengetai, you remember you were solo almost running the show. So we couldn't -- and with the high-level ministerial meeting at Baku. We couldn't have any meeting at the beginning of the IGF amongst MAG. I'm not too sure how logistically we can organize that. It's highly effective, if we have one meeting in the beginning and one wrapup sort of MAG meeting without getting into the next consultation, if we can.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: This is agreed on. We'll have a MAG meeting organized at lunchtime first day, preday, day zero, and maybe last time the last day.
Well, I think then we have -- Raul, would you -- Ana, okay.
I think we have exhausted our agenda. Personally, I would like to thank you all very much for your dedicated participation. And I know you all put in a lot of work, and I think it was actually a very good and constructive discussion. We have not resolved everything, but I think we are on a good track. And I think we will be able to resolve the remaining questions online. We will now, as indicated, prepare a summary record of the MAG meeting. We will submit that, as always, for you to check whether we report accurately what happened here. We can rely also, of course, on the transcription, the realtime transcription. And my thanks to our scribes who are, with time lag of nine hours sitting in California doing it remotely, really have done an excellent -- an amazing job. I would suggest that we give them a hand and thank them for their job.
[Applause]
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Yes. And, while we're waiting for our chairman to close formally our meeting, I would once again express -- Theresa.
>>THERESA SWINEHEART: I'd like to truly thank the Secretariat and the team for all the work. I know it's being done with limited resources and just a huge appreciation from the MAG or everybody else or myself, in particular. For the amount of work and the time and hours that are being put in to prepare the work for this and to run the session. I just wanted to acknowledge that.
[Applause]
>>FARZENEH BADII: Thank you. I have a comment from Fatima Cambronero.
(Reading remote intervention.)
As a new MAG member, I would like to thank to the support for the remote participation during these days, especially Farzaneh, and also the collaboration of Raul in this morning's meeting.
I thought that's very important to be read. Thank you very much.
[Applause]
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. And her energy and enthusiasm is very much appreciated getting up so early.
Yes. Mr. Chen, please.
>>HONGBING CHEN: Thank you, Chairman. Would you please just turn on the computer again, because I want to make my position quite clear.
About the main themes, how would you report to the Secretary General? I want to seek your clarification from you. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Are they up? No, they're not. And I haven't got them now in front of me. But, basically, the main themes pick up on what we previously had. And that is access and diversity. And that would be taken further with promoting growth and sustainable development. And I may quote wrongly, but we will tidy that up.
And openness would be taken up with human rights and freedom of expression. Oh, we'll find my notes here. And we will go back to the language we had in the summary record of the last meeting with some minor tweaks as agreed.
And then we have security, and that will be the legal frameworks. Call on -- what was it? Spam, hacking, cyber security, I seem to remember. And, basically, I'm an orderly person. But I think at the end of the meeting, I was exhausted and I can't find my notes any more. Yes, I found my notes.
And then we have Internet governance principles and principles of multistakeholder cooperation, enhanced cooperation. And, again, all the -- in the schedule you will have seen all the traditional themes are reflected in the schedule. And they will be dealt with in the forum session where we have an open microphone where everybody can address all of the traditional issues -- access, diversity, security, openness, privacy, critical Internet resources, Internet governance for development, and also the taking stock. And so, basically, it would be -- the schedule would be attached to the agenda. And the overall arching theme would be building bridges with the subtheme enhancing multistakeholder cooperation for growth and sustainable development.
>>HONGBING CHEN: As you may understand it, I have a proposal, which is quite close to what you have said. I don't know whether you would have reported both this one you have said and mine to the Secretary General or we should -- we make some efforts to build to the bridge. I mean --
[Laughter]
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Well, as building bridge is the title, the overall theme of the agenda, this is decision to building it now or whether we can build a bridge after we close the meeting and bring it to the attention of the entire MAG. Or we can build it online. But we definitely can take your wording. I would suggest come with your wording, and I would include it in the report. If we can agree on building the bridge right now, all the better. So please read it out.
>>HONGBING CHEN: I would rather you say your slide maybe.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Unfortunately, it takes some time to warm it up again. And -- it will -- it will come up, but it will take some time. That's the problem. Okay. Then --
>>HONGBING CHEN: 5 minutes or --
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Shall we conclude then on this note that we will try and build this bridge as we go along and maybe we can do that having a coffee right now just a few of us. Or we can do it on line. But, in any case, the report -- if we cannot just sort of build the bridge straight away, the report definitely, I can guarantee you that will reflect your proposal. And your flexibility certainly is very much appreciated. And with -- you have some -- no? Okay. Okay.
With that comment, once again, I thank all for your constructive spirit, for your hard work and dedication. And, with that, I hand over to the Chair to close our meeting. Thank you.
>>ASHWIN SASONKO: Thank you, Mr. Kummer, my friend, Mr. Markus, who has been together with me since Paris meeting. And, ladies and gentlemen, we have finalized our three days meeting. First of all, I would like to appreciate the IGF Secretariat, the UNDESA, and, of course, the EBU, the president of EBU who himself has offered us lunch not only the place for discussion. Appreciate for all contributors. Finally, we have a theme, the subthemes set up, proposals to be discussed with all the workshops. And, of course, we have all inputs which is necessary for higher level meetings, high-level meetings which will be carried out on the 21st, the first, say -- the day before the IGF opening ceremony.
And hope this high-level meeting can also give more contributions and hope we can keep the top officials also during the next four days.
I also hope that the organizer, represented here by Mr. Hendarwin, from the Indonesian Internet Associations, can accommodate all the inputs of the workshops and so on. And the organizer can work together with the IGF Secretariat to review all the necessities from rooms needed and rooms to be divided and things like that.
I also hope that all of you can get enough information about Bali. Most of the formal -- from the formal presentations by our head organizer, Mr. Hendarwin, and also the non-formal ones, like the one I mentioned. (saying name) But I'm saying that because you mentioned about humidity and so on. But I'm saying hot because it's 60 degrees while here it's about 80 degrees or something like that. But, believe me, you will not want to leave Bali after the meetings, not only because of the beach but also the villages, the cultures, which is completely different as the one you have in Switzerland, of course, also very different from many other countries. And it is a very distinctive area. And we'll have the meetings about two weeks after the APEC. Two or three weeks after the APEC.
And for the APEC Bali has been prepared for the APEC meetings, because it will be attended by many heads of countries, head of governments.
So I hope the facilities, if they can -- they are good enough for the head of the governments, it is also good enough for the MAG members and all of us.
Finally, I would like to say that I understood that during the formal meeting we have here for today, we also have many other meetings with friends, and with partners. And I hope all this can contribute to a stronger global Internet society that we want.
Ladies and gentlemen, with this, I would like to close my comment and close the meetings, and hope to see you again soon in a few months' time. And thank you for all your contributions and your meetings here. I would like to pass this to Mr. Chengetai, IGF Secretariat, who should tell something to us for the next program
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: No. I just wanted to thank everybody here, MAG members and the non-MAG members. Also the scribes. I don't know if you gave the scribes thanks. Yes, you did. Thank you very much. And Giacomo as well. We have been giving him late nights. And he helped us organize our meetings. Thank you very much.
[Applause]
And I'd like to thank the Secretariat team. I'd also like to thank Farzaneh. She's leaving us. For some reason she thinks she can't finish her Ph.D. and work at the Secretariat. I have no idea why. And I'd like to thank her as well. And thank you.
[Applause]
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: That's it. Thank you.