You are connected to event: CFI-RPC4 (Please stand by for the Internet Governance Forum 2016 session number 96, Free Expression & Extremism: An Internet Governance Challenge.) >> Good morning, everyone. I want to give you a heads-up. I think a lot of people got stuck in the security line. We will begin soon. Don't get comfortable. We will break the IGF by breaking into three break out groups. It will be explained. There will be one group in this corner, one group in that corner and another group by the coffee station, where you just walked in. Give us a few minutes and then we'll get going. (Pause.) (Standing by for IGF 2016 session 96, Free Expression & Extremism: An Internet Governance Challenge.) >> About two more minutes and we'll start. We want to let a few more people come in the room. (Pause.) >> I would like to welcome you to the session on extremism and free expression. Thank you for joining us. We will do something a little different today. We want to have as much conversation as possible. We are going to break into three groups at some point. Not right now. Don't get terribly comfortable. We will talk amongst ourselves on the panel and ask people to go into corners of the room. If necessary, one group can go downstairs so we can have conversation among ourselves and people have a chance to talk. At 10:00 o'clock we'll come back into this room and convene as a group and report on what the individual sessions did and wrap it up. Hopefully this will be a good combination of talking heads and more importantly an opportunity for folks in the room to make their contribute wowings. My name is Larry, the CEO of connect safely.org an Silicon Valley organisation. I'm the technology analyst for NBC knows and the BB. Credit world service. Those of you familiar with my voice, that's why. One of the tech am Lisas for the BBC world service. I'm not the expert on extremism. My two colleagues are. Carl Miller, the research Director for research of analysis for social media. And John Russell is the Head of Quilliam, and my thoughts of this, somebody who follows social media clesly and writes about the phenomenon is to emphasize how important a topic this is. Extremism not only affects the person who is directly affected, ie. the man or woman, typically young man or woman who has been radicalised online or off, but his or her family very directly. Regardless whether anything happens physically in the world, anything dangerous actually happens as a result of that radical saying, but if in the horrible event it does happen, then the impact is much, much wider, of course. The victims and their loved ones are directly affected. The communities where it takes place, if anybody here has been ream to Paris or Brussels or Orlando, Florida; or San Bernardino or any other community where an act of terrible terrorism has taken place, knows the impact far and wide within that community. But also in the larger global community. I don't think it's beyond speculation that the reaction to extremism has affected elections not just in my country but around the world. It really has impacted, as we will talk about today, our willingness as a free society to allow full expression. One of the tragedies of 9/11, one of the many tragedies was not just the horrible situation of what happened in New York that day, but the impact it had and still has on free expression and human rights in the United States and around the world. And we are seeing that repeated and amplified over and over again. But I also want to make sure that we focus on the victims themselves. By that I include the people who themselves become radicalised, who cross the line from legitimate and appropriate free speech, political activism, the right of Assembly, the ability to grow and express themselves and protest what they consider to be unjust, but cross the line to a point where what should have been political activism and free expression becomes a crime and inhumane acts towards others. That's the line that I plan to explore in my breakout session. Where is the line between legitimate free expression that I believe we personally want to encourage even if we don't agree with that expression and that moment when it turns into something horrific. That will be my topic. I'll allow my colleagues to talk about their background in their talks as well. Start with Carl. >> CARL MILLER: Thank you. Thank you very much. Very good morning, everybody. Thank you so much for having me here. This is such an important topic for us all. As a researcher, the research world has been scrambling over the past years to understand what on earth is driving extremism online. Is it the technical infrastructure, things to do with the human being? Is it the services we use? Are there wider questions of international politics? What causes it and how do we undermine those drivers? I want to lay out four different themes which we know are driving different kinds of online extremism, whether it is far right radical Islamist, misogynist particular or otherwise. Theme number one is echo chambers. We jump into the Internet, we jump into digital tribes, people have been washed away in a sea of user generated content. As our networks, our friend networks become the mediate ors of information for us, increasingly defining the online experiences we have. We are realising, of course, that those networks are actually quite similar to our own, similar to who we are. In these digital tribes, these echo chaim pers that we have online we often see the same world view reflected back to us in a thousand different ways. So you get 20 Democrats in a m radio, you get 20 Republicans in the room. They all talk their own politics. Chances are that they all leave that room either more Democrat or Republican than any of them were having first goop in. Having that same view at home time and time again, saying you're right, you're right. Causes a shift. We become more and more convinced that our world view is right and secondly it convinces us that the people that disagree with us are ignorant or evil. As digital tribes become hardened online we see people increasingly believing that the others on the other side of the table are not legitimately disagreeing with them, don't mean well but must not have the facts at their fingertips or must have maligned or malicious purposes. Whether it's conspiracy theory, radical echo chambers, these worlds are shut off, any kind of dissenting information echoing that single world view, they flow further from the mainstream. Driver number one of extremism is the echo chambers, repetition of a single world view time and time again and the elimination of doubt or dissentencing information. Second, the disambitious effect. If you put a computer between two human beings, they tend to treat one another less civilly. Lots of Renos. Anonymity is part of it. Also the absence of human cues, the absence of the idea that the people you are speaking to are human beings. They hope, dream, believe things just like we do. Online disambitious effect, the role of computers in human discourse. Provides all kinds of cognitive biases which cause people to be less inhib ited. They get more abusive more quickly. And there are the number of times in any online discussion, the number of exchanges before someone calls someone else a Nazi. One of these effects is an important part of I think a piece of the puzzle when it comes to trying to understand extremism. Thirdly, it has never been easier ton find someone that you. >> MASAFUMI NISHIMURA: I havely disagree with online. As easy as it is to find people that share your beliefs and agree with you and want to change the world and change society in the ways you do, it is easy to find people completely different from you, completely opposite to you. We analyze social media to understand this. It is radical dynamic is getting more powerful. People from radical Islamist groups and from the far left are winding each other online. They are cherry picking conversations and throwing them into their own echo chambers, to show how evil, wrong, flawed the opposite points of view are. Lastly is not a driver. It is really the absence of something. That is the idea, if can, of digital citizenship or norms online. As the generation has come through who uses the Internet really as the primary way through which they learn about the world and do political activism and find people to try to change society in the sale way they are, people that see the same problems in society that exist as they do. Well, they haven't been taught, I think. And the idea of how you treat one another civilly online as you do offline. It is that normative layer that we all kind of are taught from our parents and in schools of what you need to do to be a responsible, reasonable member of a society. To avoid offense when you can, to try and be productive when you can. The idea of digital citizenship hasn't -- that hasn't translated into the online space yet. So in a sense it is a normative wilderness where there is a wider degree of understandings about how we can all act. What norms we should reflect. And how we should treat one another. That is an absence which I think is also driving all kinds of behaviors which are really socially problematic. Those are the four. Reciprocal radicalisation, lack of digital citizenship. Each of the break out groups, I would love for them to deal with those four themes and see how they can be undermined in ways we find acceptable and consistent with civil liberties and the other social standards and policies which we cherish. I'll end with two kind of provocations: The first is block chain. There have been other sessions on this. I don't have any time to really talk about it, but we are about to go through another potentially very profound rewriting of the way the Internet works. And what do we do with extremism when we actually in some important senses lose the companies that sit at the heart of the Internet services which we use every day? What do we all do? What do governments do when they can't pick up the phone to Google or Facebook when we have social media platforms, when there is nobody in charge. With the idea of those four themes and this evolution of the Internet which is staring us in the face I will be doing a breakout session on censorship. Not a popular topic at the IGF, I know. I want to talk about whether blocking of content, kind of the more coercive end of counter treatmentism, does that have any kind of place in the future of fighting extremism online? Is censorship something we should get rid of? If not, how do we make it something which is kind of broadly publicly supportable? Something which all different corners of Internet Governance community and Internet users can buy into and have confidence with. >> JONATHAN RUSSELL: Great. Good morning. I'm Jonathan Russell, Head of policy the Quilliam. We are a counter extremism thing Tang and spend a lot of time researching terrorism, extremism and how to counter the phenomena. Surprisingly, considering online approaches of extremists and how we can best counter them online has come across our desks frequently over the last decade. What I would like to talk about today is how similar lots of the trends that Carl has just put forward are inherent to human behavior and inherent to extremist operations both online and offline. I know there is very little difference between how we should counter extremism in those two very much connected domains. And therefore, for us not to be shocked or surprised or feared by this seeming new problem, and to consider how lots of the discussions we have been having about balancing human rights and national security priorities, civil liberties an national security are as applicable online and offline. And how the definitional difficulties when it comes to these phenomena are equally applicable to both online and offline discussions. We broadly stay out of the space that should be dominated by states. Of course, Quilliam has a role in advising governments as to what they should and shouldn't do in this space. Predominantly talking to a generation of policymakers who have never used snap chat or Twitter themselves and they have teams to do that for them. And trying to get over some of the generational struggles that we might have in this policy area. One of the things that we find in offline counter extremism which I think we need to port over to the online world is this full spectrum of approaches. So this full spectrum includes the soft end, primary prevention. Some of the digital civility stuff that Carl was talking about just earlier. Education, critical thinking skills, building resilience among vulnerable populations and trying to change the atmosphere in which extremists might operate in the first place. Talking about identity, talking about immigration, talking about integration. And considering whether there's a role for online activism and online work in this space to try to improve that domain. Slightly to the right of that we think a lot about targeted intervention, how we can stop signs when someone is going down one of these difficult pathways, when someone is -- how we stop the train and get it going in a different direction. We think most prominently about couples and counter speech. That is the area that I focus on at Quilliam. I believe that extremist organisations are affected because they are effective communicators. I don't think there is anything more complex than narrative and the stories that they tell themselves, the stories they tell vulnerable people and the stories vulnerable people tell themselves when it comes to radicalisation. Those are three important things. Whether we are looking at blocking and censorship or coveletter stuff, being in charge of a narrative and thinking about how we communicate with each other is surely central to this opinion. And that's why I think social media seems to have had such a profound impact on radicalisation and extremism. It is the optimum mode for communication. Therefore, social media facilitates, if not drives, radicalisation to that end. But I don't think we should rest at that. Counter speech and the work we do at Quilliam is all about thinking how we can use the tools that extremists exploit to communicate more effectively, to reduce vulnerability, to penetrate the echo chambers that Carl talks about and provide alternative or counter narratives to extremists and their ideologies. The issue we come across, though, is not that extremists use the Internet. It is not what they communicate online. We know these things. Much more concerning is why these narratives resonate with millennials and why extremists are able to change the attitudes and behaviors of millennials. To get them to act in a way that they otherwise wouldn't. And on the flip side, to consider how we can use the very same tools, communications tools and tech tools to achieve a similar source of resonance. Someone said to me recently that wholesome content never goes environmental. But it is impossible to get your counter narrative to really take hold. It is much easier to be inflammatory. Much easier, as Carl said, to -- you get more re-tweets by saying something at the pole of your spectrum of opinions. You will achieve more followers by preaching within your echo chamber or by cherry picking those controversial statements from opposing echo chambers and painting them as indicative of the other. So counter speech is clearly a big challenge for counter extremism offline and the biggest challenge for us online when it comes to this space. Of course we have what I call negative measures and blocking censorship and take-downs and the role of that within counter extremism. I agree with Carl that there's a role for that, but we get into difficult territory particularly when it comes to the human rights and free speech aspects of these things, to consider definitions of extremism. If we are going to take surveillance or imposing legislative approaches, whether that's in the public sector or in the private sector with these things. And much safer is to consider the much broader spectrum of approaches in primary targeted and counter speech interventions that we can do. So just to close, I also want to provoke a few things for our discussions. I want to know really who should do what in this battle. You know, is it entirely up to governments? Is there a role for the private sector? Or should civil society be leading on this? If so, how can we all work together? Second provocation is, is this assertion that extremists are good at using the Internet and are better than we will ever be because they have to fight to survive. Can we with our collective brains in this room and those watching prove them wrong, to show that we can use the Internet more effectively than extremists can? And third, the challenge that we need a magic solution to countering extremism online. I want to know how we can continue and evolve rather than spark a revolution in counter extremism, just by taking offline measures online and making that more effective. But I look forward to chairing a breakout session and hearing from you and reporting back. >> LARRY: Now is the exciting time when we all get to move W because this room is big enough for two sessions but not three, I am going to ask Carl to take his censorship discussion downstairs, but don't hesitate to go downstairs. All of us spend too much time sitting in front of computers. So the walk is good for you. Jonathan will be in that back corner in this room. I will be in this corner right up in this room here. Now is the time to get up, walk around, try to make it as quickly as possible. If for whatever reason if your group is too crowded, know that we will touch on all of the subjects in each of the groups, but focused very much on -- Carl suggested a show of hands. How many people want to do the censorship panel? >> CARL MILLER: Should we go for that? I'm on censorship. >> JOHN CARR: I'm going to tox on speech. >> LARRY: I'm going to lead a discussion about the line between legitimate political activism, thought and extremism. Show of hands, censorship? You are not favoring it by raising your hand (Laughter.) >> LARRY: Jonathan's discussion about counter speech, et cetera? And the other discussion about the line between extremism and legit maillot ... sounds like we are reasonably evenly balanced. Very good. Upstairs, downstairs. >> CARL MILLER: Censorship people, follow me! >> LARRY: Enjoy the walk. (The session was recessed during the individual group discussions.) >> LARRY: The discussion on counter speech will be in the back of the room and the discussion about the line between extremism and legitimate discussion is at the front of the room. (Standing by.) (The session will resume in 30 minutes.) >> LARRY: I do have a little experience. I went to UC Berkeley in the '60s and even though it was a very different set of issues and demographic people, we had our issues at the time. I remember very much being part of the radical student union. What, closer? It is going to be difficult. So I was saying -- can you hear now? I was saying when I was a student in the '60s, I was part of the radical student union and most of us ... On Civil Rights, we had the issue of people who had various, I'm going to say radical views, but operated perhaps in ... (Microphone is turned off.) >> CARL MILLER: Four, can we prove it, ensure that we are having an impact? Can we solve this? Lots of stuff in this space is pretty experiential and pretty -- it is iterative. What we want to do is feed this back in to make sure we learning from our experiences. How can we benchmark some of these things to evaluate our impact and then feed that back in so we can learn as an Internet community? So I would suggest that we do this standard way by hands, quick name and introduction and then in talking and we have lovely Vivian taking notes in the corner. Get all feedback in by 10:00 o'clock. Right? Let's go. (Speaker away from microphone.) (During break out groups, captions will be suspended. Captions will resume at 10:00 o'clock.) (The session will resume momentarily. Please continue to stand by.) (Standing by.) >> LARRY MAGID: All right, if we can get settled down, we can finish up. Hello? Am I ... can you hear me now? All right. Thank you, guys, very much for engaging in those conversations. I only got to go to one. But if the others were nearly as successful as the one I was in in terms of contributions from folks in the room, I'm sure we had a great session. At least we did and I'm sure the rest of you did as well. Where is Jonathan? Have we lost him permanently? Is there a group still going? Oh, there he is! Obviously that was so successful they couldn't even get their moderator to ... okay. Carl, you want to go first? Jonathan, are you ready to go? All right, so neither ka exarl or Jonathan is ready to go but I'm Chair, so I guess I have to. We talked about the line between acceptable speech and what this topic today's workshop today is extremist speak. Typical of IGF participants, we couldn't even agree on the definition of extremism. Nor could we even agree whether that was a legitimate term to begin with. Whether in fact that was the appropriate term to refer to what it is that should be concerning us. One member of the group suggested perhaps hate speech would be a better term. Just as I earlier said I'm not sure I would agree that radical is necessarily a negative term. Not everyone in the group streamed that extremism -- I remembered because I'm old enough remember, a quote from a Presidential candidate in 1964, Barry goldwater. I didn't agree with him and he didn't win but he said that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. But at that time extremism was an acceptable concept. Having said that, the group mostly agreed that the line is drawn when it comes to some kind of hateful or harmful activity. Excellent example was given of what is largely referred to as pizza gate. A person who happens to live near the restaurant in Washington, D.C. where it was alleged, I can accurately, that Hillary Clinton was sponsoring a pedophile ring that was operating out of this pizza restaurant. First of all, there is absolutely no evidence that this pedophile ring exists and that Hillary Clinton had anything to do with it. It was fake news. It was a lie perpetuated online. Yet some individual, because he was so emotionally and perhaps intellectually upset about the notion of a pedophile ring, took it upon himself to go to this restaurant with a gun and start shooting. I don't believe anybody was harmed. I didn't catch up on the news, but in fact it was a terrorist act perpetuated as a result of someone's speech. Was the person who spread that false information a terrorist? Or an extremist? Someone argued that the fact that it's false is irrelevant. That is not the relevant point. It was one of many examples. I think the question that our group struggled with, and I don't think frankly with all due respect, concluded an answer to, is the level to which one's speech should, the speaker who says something that is not directly inciting violence, whether or not that person should be held responsible if someone chooses to be violent. If someone were to say: I think that all people with red hair are evil. Therefore, if you encounter someone with red hair, you should kill them, hit them, harm them, that would fall under extremist speech. If someone just said all people with red hair are evil, that's the question mark. Is that extremism? We would all agree that would be hate speech. Does anybody in the group have a very, very quick additional comment based on something I may have left out? I don't have the most perfect memory. Apparently I have a better memory than I think I do. (Chuckles.) >> LARRY MAGID: Okay. Who here is ready? All right, okay. >> CARL MILLER: Carl all right. Well, I think -- thanks firstly to all Members of my group. That was a brilliant discussion and a rare thing to get people from so many different backgrounds together talking civilly on a topic where there is disagreement. We had diverse views on censorship. You don't often get to see that in one conversation. Everything from the idea that censorship is illegitimate and shouldn't be done in any circumstances than online. Not just terrorism but child pornography and forceful about -- technical, morally speaking must make sure that the guard especiallies that they maintain are right. Sorry, jumping in on that? >> (Speaker away from microphone.) >> CARL MILLER: May. Certainly have a right to even if they don't exercise it. Certainly different Shadis of gray of many credibilitytors around censorship in some sense being necessary, but also carrying with it lots of dangers. And so on this point of the dangers around censorship, I think there was a specific feeling of the acuteness of the danger around the censorship of terrorism. I think that was partly driven by the, as ever, the lack of a definition, global definition of terrorism and extremism. If one goes to terrorism conferences, that's important. Every conference begins with a debate about what terrorism means. It means different things to different governments and used to I will legitimize certain voices. Inex-who arablely and unavoidable a definition, whether you agree with it or not. But the censorship around terrorism was particularly difficult because of the politicized nature of it and the way in which counter terrorism laws around the world have mission creep, have been misused and in ways that they never were intended to be used for in the first place. There was also, I think, a lively debate around who should do the censoring, if you need to do censoring. There perhaps we moved closer towards consensus. I think there were a few people even a kind of governmental stakeholders that thought the government necessarily needed to take the lead in this. There was quite the clear idea that the actual service providers themselves where possible should be taking the primary responsibility for controlling the services. In the context of the conversation with governments and with civic society as well. The majority of the people in our group -- how many did we have there? Fifty, 60? The majority are not content with the status quo, especially I think civil society. There is a clear sense they do not like the current State of play around censorship. I think the governments and technology providers are more content with the current status quo. Where there was the most consensus is around what needs to change in order to bring everyone up to anishness State of contentment. That was process and transparency, greater oversight over how censorship happens and who gets to do it. Even with oppressive or dictatorial regimes around censorship. Capacity building, finding common ground and lastly conversation, which is what we just had. That was brilliant. I don't think many people changed their mind in that. But if all you know about the operation of echo chambers, even the introduction of descenting views can lead to doubt and you will be a tiny less sure about how right you may be. If we did that, that was half an hour or so really well spent. Thanks, everybody. >> LARRY MAGID: Thanks, Carl. I want ton point out in America, the First Amendment, the document that defines censorship, applies to the government, and Twitter, and other social media do sensor. It is not a question of whether they sensor, but how they should sensor, I think. Go ahead. >> JONATHAN RUSSELL: We also had a very, very interesting discussion. The starting point for it all was taking Carl's four trends online and with social media behavior and saying, well, is blocking and censorship going to change those four behavioral trends online or can we use couples to do that? Broadly we considered the role and value of social media in counter speech. And I am not going to do this justice, but I'll try to pull out four things where we thought the answer was yes. So first in accepting that the problem isn't online but is inherently human. And that social media and technology more generally can help us A, reach key target audiences. And B, link up different people with opposing views or even similar views that may be hundreds or thousands of miles apart. We looked at how ISIS is not simply a terrorist organisation but a social movement that brings together people from different countries who happen to agree on the same thing and we in this grume as a multi-stakeholder environment do something not dissimilar lar though perhaps not quite on the same scale an not to the same ends, and considering transfer the role of social media in finding collaborative solutions and working out who has a different role to play in this sort of stuff. We, therefore, talked about the value of that approach in getting out of our own echo chambers and breaking this. The key provocation in that is, do ISIS manage to get out of their echo chamber or do they will manage to penetrate other echo chambers and recruit other vulnerable audiences too? If so, how do we learn from them? The discussion went on to learning how we can learn from other domains when we any about counter terrorism, can we learn from political campaigns? Can we learn from militaries and influence operations in that space? Can we learn from the private sector and commercial advertising work when we are thinking about changing behaviors and changing attitudes? The answer broadly we thought was yes. But the key was not just reaching people. It was actually achieving resonance with those people as well. We had a very interesting discussion around the continuum between mainstream media and social media and differing roles and responsibilities in counter extremism in that space, considering how we are all journalists now and have an opportunity to shape narratives in a similar way that the mainstream media do. We considered also the role of the private sector in this. What they are and what they are not. And so we broadly thought it was unhelpful to see the private sector as the police or as gatekeepers of this stuff. Thinking that it was unhelpful to ask them to set their own definitions beyond the community guidelines that they set for their own platform. It is not up to Twitter and Facebook to decide, we discussed who is an extremist and who wasn't. It was a bit of negativity around the private sector too, considering whether the private sector can be expected to act for social good in this space or whether they will be forever driven by profitability and only considering putting forward counter treatmentism in their markets and whether we set ourselves up for a fall by expecting the private sector to do this and then less governments that may have a different definition of extremism and a more militant or repress I have approach to tackling extremism could demand private companies to follow their lead and act in their behalf. So we go back to something that Carl was talking about earlier about definitions and the politicized and securityised nature of counter extremism more generally. We discussed a whole host of other things, but broadly we returned to the need to see this as an offline problem and maybe to think about the role of technology and social media in changing those offline behaviors and tackling the root causes rather than simply tackling the current manifestation of extremism which is inherently online. And so we tried to cover a whole host of things like that. If I didn't cover 99's particular comment, please do raise your hand or shout out now. >> LARRY MAGID: I want to open this up for further comment, question and discussion. You can address here or question any of the Panelists or make a general comment about what you did in your group or whatever else is on your mind. Hopefully no censorship in this room. So open up for any comments or questions? None? Yes, sir. >> AUDIENCE: Thomas from the German foreign office. I want to make a short comment on the first two presentations and the first two Working Groups. I think a lot of the problems about not having a definition about terrorism and about whether censorship is the right term in the first place goes away if you really don't think of terrorism as such but look at what is criminallized in your legal order as supporting or committing a terrorist crime. That is how we do it in Germany. So if somebody commits a crime in calling for terrorist actions or supporting the terrorist organisation, then it is in the German Penal Code. Police steps in and it is REIT on treated as crime. It is not censorship but prosecution of crime. For that we don't need a general definition of extremism or terrorism but we have what is in the German law as interpreted by German courts. That narrows, of course, what we are aping at. But it makes it more precise and you get full judicial review of it possibly rather than having a general censorship or counter speech campaign. So that's legal precision would be very helpful in this debate. >> LARRY MAGID: Yes, sir. If you care to give your name and where you're from? >> AUDIENCE: (Speaker away from microphone.) we need to go to the root of the problem. Terrorism, extremism. I hear that downstairs. You know, the lack of social justice is a bigger problem. We have to address that, especially in some countries in our region and also we have this religious teaching in a Arabia. That is a bigger problem and we need to address that. It is not just about technical issues or about taking online, it is about going back to tackle these really two important factors and counter terrorism efforts. Thank you. >> LARRY MAGID: Okay. Thank you very much. Any other comments or questions? I can't see, but somebody in the back? >> AUDIENCE: Okay. My name is wiser Yoo from Nigeria. Now, I get a little bit worried when we programmatically always look at national security with extremism. There is a way in which we don't fall into the trap where our governments seize on the narrative and they are against human rights. I think it would be more useful to unpack what we mean by national security. Are we talking about survivor? Are we talking about government stability? Are we talking about citizens security? I see the impact of -- more on inciting violence against ordinary citizens. I think that for me that it would be more useful to be the Kabuzi human security or citizen security. When we talk about hate speech and treatmentism rather than focusing on national security. Thank you. >> LARRY MAGID: Excellent point. Thank you. Yes? >> AUDIENCE: My name is David Sullivan from the global network initiative which brings together tech companies, civil society organisations, investors and academics to work on freedom of expression and privacy. This issue of extremist content online is one that we have been working on for nearly a year and a half. I wanted to say we released a report last week with some recommends for governments, for companies, and for the specific thorny issue of when governments refer content to companies as alleged violations of their terms of service with some human rights-based recommendations for how both governments and companies can address this challenge together in a way that respects rights. I have a few hard copies here. It's also on our Web site, globalinitiativenetwork.org. Thanks. >> LARRY MAGID: We have time for a couple more questions. Back there? >> The mic? >> LARRY MAGID: My name is Jim Prendergast, I want to take a quick raise of the hand. The IGF is looked for new and innovative formats, hence walking downstairs in the breakouts. If you liked it, raise your hand. If you didn't like it, raise your hand. Won't hold it against you. That is what we are aiming for and what we tried. Hopefully you found it valuable. >> LARRY MAGID: (Speaker away from microphone.) >> I certainly enjoyed having a conversation that would have been more difficult in this room. Since there are not a lot of burning questions, I will turn it back to my Panelists to make closing remarks. Go ahead, Carl? >> CARL MILLER: Okay. During our discussion there was a quote which kept echoing around in my head from the Declaration of cyberspace independence by the electronic Frontiers foundation. In that document they said beware you weary giants of flesh and steel, you have no sovereignty where we go and you are not welcome here. From the beginning there was an idea that the Internet wasn't the property of nation states. It was an opportunity to evolve beyond the nation state as the fundamental unit of all human organisation. And the sense, I think the censorship debate is just another skirmish in what has been a decades long debate now or perhaps a war around who really controls the net. Is it nation states? Is it the people on the Internet? Is it technology companies that provide the most popular services for the Internet? Or is it something else? I will conclude with a worry of mine around how this future war will be fought. My worry is that discussions like this, as useful as they are, discussions in courts as important as they are will become less and less and less important because if you go to the people on both sides of the basic question of where does power sit on the Internet? Who should really run it? You see whether they are in anarchist tech notice communes outside of Barcelona or whether they are in innovation hubs within governments, really the real weapons that are driving this fight forward are not the weapons of debate. They are not even really the weapons of legal sanction, per se. It is tech. On the one side, great surveillance technologiesment the other side block chain encryption and all the other weapons fighting back. So my worry for the future is that the basic way in which human beings have decided on really controversial questions like counter extremism, like censorship, have always been politics, always been debate, making an argument and someone else makes another argument. Over this long messy complex process somehow we get to something that is consensus which barely anybody likes but most people can see some kind of stake in. But that is not what is going to happen next, I think. What is going to happen next and what will eventually dictate this is which of these two technological development trajectories wins out. Will encryption become a standard for everybody that will never be broken or surveillance technologies, various way of exerting control over the Internet become more proliferated and belligerent and which will break block crane and encryption and centralized organisations and everything else. That is not a sunny note to end this on which is unfair because I think the session has been brilliant. That is the final thought I will take away. How do we make sure that conversations like this matter in the future? How can we make sure it is not simply the powerful few that build the technologies that define the Internet that have a stake in what the Internet of the future will look like. >> LARRY MAGID: Jonathan? >> JONATHAN RUSSELL: I want to draw the parallel between media and social media. The two old adages in every newsroom around the country and the world. Number one, that sex sells. That is clearly as applicable online as it is in the mainstream media. The second is, if it bleeds, it leads. And that means that I think online when extremists communicate, it is going to reach a bigger audience than it ever does before. I am reminded of a different quote, actually. Brian Jenkins in 1988, a terrorism researcher, couples specialist too. He said the aim here of terrorists is not a lot of people dead. It's a lot of people watching. I think social media enables an awful lot more people to be watching than ever before. And I don't think we are going to be able to get in the way of those two inherent human trends. If it bleeds, it leads and that we will have a lot of people watching rather than a lot of people dead. Therefore, when we come to thinking about communications solutions to extremism, we've really got to start this offline and we've got to break apart the echo chambers and make sure we don't create our own chambers. Let's not fall into one of the traps that Carl identified of seeing all of the other as being stupid or evil. Extremists may well be both. But I don't think setting that up is conducive to effective tackling of them. And just to finish because it is often a sore spot on some of these discussions. It may well be that most of what captures our imagination is ISIS because it bleeds and therefore leads in our imaginations too, but it is certainly not the only extremism out there. There are many other worrying trends of right wing populism, of anarchist terrorism coming through as well. I would urge us to see all of these discussions and solutions that we've come up with today as absolutely transferable across the spectra of different extremisms. There we go. >> LARRY MAGID: Excellent point. I want to add to Jonathan's comment about social media. It also provides the people who are doing the terrorism or their organisations a direct media outlet that they get to define and control, so that they can have their own narrative. That has never been possible on a global scale in the past. I want to thank everyone for participating. You made this an excellent session. I want to point out special thanks to Jim Prendergast for organizing and coordinating the event. I really appreciate everyone's participation. Thank you again. (Applause.) (The session concluded at 10:30 a.m. C (Please stand by for Internet Governance Forum 2016 session number 114, Is Personal Data Mine or There to be Mined?.) (Please stand by for the Internet Governance Forum 2016 session number 114, Is Personal Data Mine or There to be Mined?.) (The Internet Governance Forum 2016 session number 114 will begin momentarily. Please continue to stand by.) (The session is about to begin. Please stand by.) >> MODERATOR: Okay, ladies and gentlemen. If we can take some seats, we'll make a start. Good morning and welcome to this session entitled Is Personal Data Mine or There to be Mined? My name is David Wright. I'm from the U.K. safe business centre and the European Insafe network. Insafe is a network of 32 national awareness centres who deal with a legal online tenth. We provide supportive online services and raise awareness of online child salvete issues. A great example of that, great example of this awareness racing is safe Internet day. And next year that will be on February 7. It is currently in its, I think, 14th year, celebrated in over 100 countries. It is a great opportunity to raise awareness about online safety issues nationwide. You can find more information about safer Internet day as well as the Insafe network at our booth in the village. So do go and check that out. We do need to press on. The session, we only have an hour. So we have got eight Panelists that we are going to hear from. I want to open the floor to questions as well. So we will press on. So technology is astonishing. We have an insatiable appetite for apps, especially if they are free. Amongst just us we probably have a huge range of free apps on your mobile or smart devices. Don't we love stuff that's free? Fixated on accessing services or apps all too often we tick the accept terms and conditions, often with little or no regard to what is contained within them. However, and as well, we also know there is no such thing as free. Given the knowledge in the room we all know that if we're using a free service, indeed we are the product. Whilst advertising in app few, the models go for personal data. We are going to focus on children and young people as they often make full use of social media and mobile apps, especially free ones. How is their personal data protected, managed and used? What is the legislation and regulations in this area? That is what we are going to be looking at. We will start off, jab m initiate the prigs by providing a multifaceted analysis of incoming European data protection regulations. Just by way of brief introduction to the Panelists, John car will be familiar to you in the room. Thinks NGO alliance for child salvete online and he can pock yiewrmt. Secretary of U.K. coalition for children's salvete and U.K. Council for child than and Internet safety. The Professor of the Department of media and couples at the school of economics and political science, author of 20 books and reports on children's online opportunities and risks, Ms. Livingston. She founded EU kids online network. Out pawls is apart time student and the youth representative of European digital youth, very much the European perspective. We will hear from Larry Magid, Marcy Hancock who will make comparison the children's online protection act, deliberations from the 1990s. Larry is a technology journalist and Internet safety advocate, Chief Executive Officer and cofounder of connect safely.org online technology analyst for CBS news. American university in Washington, D.C. where she directs the Ph.D. programme in communication. During the 1990s she spearheaded the efforts that led to the passage of COPPA. She is that you or of generation digital and conducts discussions. Marsali focused extensive on work with I keep safe on creating a new California study privacy assessment. Ann Neves and Louise Marie Hurel will balance the expect tremendous. Anna is from the society of foundation of size and technology in Portugal, former member ofmatic and worked in the field more than 25 years. Louise Marie Hurel is researcher at the yiewmplet of technology and -- at SGW located in Brazil and part of YouthIGF and youth observatory, initiative used to promote Internet Governance debates. She comes from a public relation also back grappled and passionate about privacy. Each of the Panelists will have no more than five minutes to share their experience with us. After which we'll open it up to questions. So John, to start off, is personal data minor there to be mined? >> JOHN CARR: Both. So the European NGO alliance for child safety online recently, about six or seven months ago published a thing called when free isn't. And it looks specifically at children as actors in the online eCommerce space. One of the tables that we produced in this excellent publication, which is available online, showed you the proportion of revenue from apps that was derived from apps that you actually paid for at the point where you downloaded them and the revenues that derived from so-called free apps. We had an interest in this, of course, because overwhelmingly, but children are a major users of apps. I think 90 percent are, or in excess of 90 percent of all of the revenues from apps came from apps that were described as free. So one of the points that we make in our publication is that we think that the use of the word "free" or even freemium is a deceptive term. The reality is if you want to do anything interesting or useful with the app, you're going to have to pay at some point. And often quite quickly. Anyway, the will general data protection regulation, here it is. I have it in my hand. It is the biggest single piece of legs latetive action taken -- legislative action taken by the European Union in its history. The consultations began informal around 2008, 2009. The formal consultation began in 2012.Ment final text was adopted in December 2015. It becomes law in every Member State in May of 2018. From a children's point of view, there are definitely some very, very good bits in here. We like, for example, Article 35 which specifically requires everybody who is involved in the provision of an Information Society service, which is what they call things like apps or indeed almost any commercial activity on the Internet -- anybody who is involved in the provision of an Information Society service will be required to carry out an impacts assessment to determine whether or not in providing this particular service, whatever it is they are selling or promoting, there is a risk of any harm being done. Obviously in this case harm to children. If they conclude that there is a risk of harm, how broadly you define harm, well, it could be very broad. We just don't know yet. If you conclude that there is a risk of harm, you will then be under an obligation to take steps as a company, as a business, as an information service provider, to take steps to mate gate that -- mitigate that harm. That we regard as a very positive aspect of the GDPR. Less positive, in some way, although it is too soon to say with certainty, is Article 8 which is introducing the default age 18 for all young people to be able to give consent themselves without having parental consent or verifiable parental consent before they can access an information colt service. Each Member State is given discretion to either stick with the default age of 16 or adopt a lower age of 15, 14, or 13. You can't go below 13, but you could go for 14 or 15. For the first time in practical terms in Europe, we have the possibility of seeing different jurisdictions having different age limits for young people. How this is actually going to impact upon young people's experiences or changes with each other across national boundaries and jurisdictions is still very unclear. The simple truth is, in the course of formulating this monumental piece of legislation, I'm afraid the legislators didn't think about that aspect. Certainly they didn't think about it in any depth and absolutely they did not consult any children's organisations or child welfare organisations. That is still a little bit hazy. As I said to the beginning, the answer to the question is: Both. In principle, the idea of consent, for how your data is used is there for most categories of data. Not all, itingly enough. It is possible if a company can establish that it has a legitimate interest that it done need your specific consent to be able to collect or use that data. Analytical data, things of that kind. I can see David's fingers are getting twitchy. There is a great deal to be said about this largest ever piece of legislation in the EU's history. That will perhaps give you a flavor of some of the things I think are important. >> DAVID WRIGHT: Thank you, John. It was always a worry, was keeping John to five minutes. It was my main worry coming into this session. (Chuckles.) >> DAVID WRIGHT: David hand it over to Professor Livingston. >> Thank you. Could I have the slide, please? Are you putting the slide up? Okay, great, thank you. I'm a researcher and I like to begin with data. So I just have one slide and I want to focus on the way -- I'm afraid this is from the U.K. because this is the only place I have the data. I want to focus on how U.K. children are using social media platforms by age, because age is the point at issue. So what we see here is that one in five nine to ten-year-olds and nearly half of 11 to 12-year-olds are using social media profiles in Britain dpiet being underage. It is obvious that self declaring your age is ineffective. And what the GDPR invites to think about as well as in other countries around the world is whether data authorities can exert greater power to ensure that underage children are not using services, or whether in making any such legislation we are inviting children more often to declare a false age. So to be treated as adults on social media platforms even though they have rights as children. By 15, you can see that nine in ten U.K. children have a social media profile. I don't know what is going to happen if EU keeps the GDPR age of 16, if those children are thrown off of social media platforms. I don't know and it's a good question if social media sites will seek verified parental consent for the age 13 to 15 by May 018, or whether it won't bother and it is going to just delete all of its profiles. What interests me about this graph in addition to pointing out the number of underage users and the difficulty of managing the will regulation is that this graph is not smooth. It has some jumps in it. Look at the jump from 50 percent at 12 to 74 percent at age 13, this this tells you a quarter of British teenagers are complying voluntarily to wait until they are 13. Whether they will wait until 16, I don't know. Look at the jump from 21 percent to 43 percent at 11. Any Brit knows that's when a child goes from a small local school to a big anonymous school. It's the moment when they need social connections. If social media platforms are not to provide those connections, my question is who is going to provide those as a society? Then if we look at the jump from 9 percent at eight years old to 21 percent at nine years old, I think that tells you this is something about the age when parents are giving their children a mobile phone or connected devices. They are doing it because they want them to be able to communicate and be safe. They are giving access to their kids by the commercial world. So is the GDPR right to protect the under 16s? How am I doing? Am I gaveling? Oh, good, that's where I am! So something about the media literacy of children. All this data comes from the media regulator OFCOM. They report the literacy indicators for 12 to 15-year-olds who are the age group at issue. So for 12 to 15-year-olds, what they tell us in Britain is half know YouTube and Google are funneled by advertising. Less than half can tell that the search results with the orange box on it with the word ADD. are add verts. M only, 27 percent think the information returned by a Google search can be trusted. 17 percent say I will give details about myself to a Web site to get what I want. 17 percent said getting more followers is more important than keeping my information prater. For younger children media literacy is even lower. Should we throw them off or consider also the benefits, because all of these children in my graph love to communicate online. All of them are using the Internet to get information services. 44 percent of 12 to 15-year-olds use the Internet to make a video. 18 percent to make music. 16 percent to make animation, 13 percent to make a Web site. This is a creative space. They are developing digital skills. 30 percent of them a at 12 to 15 go online for civic activities like signing a petition, sharing news stories, writing comments, talking online about the news. If we make the age 16 in Europe we will prevent all of that activity as well. So the right to participation and the right to protection are strongly in conflict. I hope someone in this room knows how to solve that problem. >> DAVID WRIGHT: What a great point to finish on. Moving along, I'll hand it over to automatic. >> AUKE PALS: Auke. >> AUKE PALS: In this session I would like to talk about personal data and not about children data because this session is called personal data. Two weeks ago, prior to this session, John Carr asked us all who was paying us. And I was telling him, yeah, I am getting paid by the NRGF. And we do represent, I represent myself. And we are all sitting here with its, because this panel is mostly with child protection people and that is not really fair, but it happens everywhere. It happens everywhere. Also with data collection. But yeah, everybody is sitting here because he has to represent someone and maybe because they just have to be here because some people might be sitting on Amazon or just playing Chess or something like that. But yeah, I still remember Eric Smith saying in 2010 every two days we create as many data as we did until the dawn of -- yeah, our creation, actually. And that made me realise that storing our data is definitely not free. Someone has to pay for storage and for the surfers and cooling and we can use services for free. We can use, for instance, Google, Facebook. I don't want to mention, there are a lot of other companies that are collecting our data. But yeah, that made me realise that everyone is sitting here with some interests. Also the large technology companies are. But my conclusion was, we are paying with our data and not with money. But what if we will pay with data and just the data collection would stop? Would we feel better about it? Some people would, because they are not giving away their data. And some of them don't really care about it. And just want free services. But yet you can't change these large technology companies. They are having so many interests of data collection and selling their data to other companies for way more than they can ask for having their service being paid for. And I guess that a government has to interfere in that. Just having a law, regulation saying we have to stop data collection at some point if we are paying for the services, because if I buy a car, the car company won't collect all my data. They will just sell the car and have a little percentage on that. Now we are sitting here with a panel of child protection people. Now I want to say something about that. Because we have made some standards in the past where your criminal record is closed and you can start over again at the age of 18. In Holland our healths in is free until the age of 18. So why not do that with data collection? Don't collect any data from children before the age of 18. And when they are an adult, then they can decide themselves whether they want a service to be free or want to pay for it with their data or with money. And I guess that's just a better solution than banning children from social media and other things, and in general data protection regulation there is not a clear line about that. You can be 13 or 16, and the country itself can decide about that. And I think every service, the whole Internet should be open and free for everyone, whether they want to pay with something or pay with money. But every service has to be available for everybody. If somebody at the age of 2 wants to use snap chat, for instance. They should if their parents allow them to because they are still under the age of 18. And the parents have responsibility for them. So the parents can decide whether they want or don't want to use, or let the children use so many. Thank you. >> DAVID WRIGHT: Thank you. We've heard three Panelists around the changes that are happening across Europe. At the moment with regard to data protection and also clearly the voice or perspective from a young person too. Now turning across the Atlantic to the experiences that we have had across America. Start with Larry. >> LARRY MAGID: Thank you very much, David. Well, in the spirit of data mining being used as a way to promote things I'm going to make two quick promotions. David mentioned safer Internet day. If anyone finds them self on the Eastern sea board on February 7 join us at the national constitution centre in Philadelphia where we will be celebrating. Connect safely will be organizing that event and we would love to have all of you come. We are not mining your data, just a commercial. The other commercial, on connect safely.org we have a section on guides. We have a parents' guide to student data privacy and educator's guide to student data privacy. These have more data than I have available to discuss with you today in my few minutes. Before I talk about the laws of the United States, I want to talk about the unintended consequences. In almost every aspect of child protection, there is a tension between protecting children and protecting children's rights. That is also true when it comes to student data privacy. Of course, I applaud all efforts to regulate and control the ability for young people to erase the data that is collected on them during their youth, as well as to protect the privacy of the data collected not only that they post perhaps in social media but the vast, the extreme amount of data, at least in the United States, that is collected on them by the school system starting at a very young age and continuing at least all the way through age 18 if not all the way through college and graduate school. Having said that, it is important to point out in this day of cloud based applications such as, for example, Google Docs and other cloud based appears used by students often sanctioned by schools, this data which is admittedly being stored by large corporations is the property of the children. May be of value to the children not only throughout their childhood but perhaps throughout their entire life and needs to be accessible by the children and only deleted with the permission of the children. Unfortunately in the United States with all aspects of childishes, children essentially have no direct rights. The rights are vested to their parents. It would be possible, for example, as I understand -- we have other experts here on the family educational records protection act, FRPA. It is possible for a parent to order the deletion of a child's papers and other information even if the child him or herself may not have wanted that deleted or at that point in their life may not have been aware of the fact that they might be able to access it later in life. It is always important in every discussion that we have about child rights to make sure we are talking about child rights, not simply child protection. Having said that we have a piece of legislation in the United States which is extremely important in protecting the privacy of children called FRPA. It applies to all schools that receive federal funds, which is not every school in America, but the vast majority of schools and covers the vast majority of students enrolled in schools. What this does for the parent, not the child, it protects the right of the parent to review and inspect the child's records, request corrections and provide consent or denial of disclosure of some but not all of your children's information. It does permit schools to share information for certain situations such as enrollment and transfer information, auditing and information. When I talk about students information, it ranges the gamut from cakal records, their grades for example, to participation in a school lunch programme which can have some indications or information about their financial status, to potentially even their health or psychiatric roshedz. There's a great deal of information that should be and must be protected, and is largely is protected about I this federal law. But that doesn't address the issue that others have raised so far, John and others, about the information that people disclose voluntarily such as in apps and in public social media and in other forms of public disclosures. Therein lies the realm for education. All of us in this field need to do everything we can to educate young people as well as adults, understanding how to use the privacy tools built into social networking and understanding what is appropriate and not appropriate to post. Finally, I know I'm out of time almost, it is up to both government and industry to make sure that industry doesn't abuse that information. We have to be very certain that all of these companies, most of whom have very good privacy policies, actually stick to them. Those who don't have adequate privacy policies, and there are some, are pressured to make sure that they are doing everything to protect the data, for the most vulnerable but all of us. Not everything but most things are good for children and for adults. I argue this is something that should go across the board. Thank you so much. Only 19 seconds over. >> DAVID WRIGHT: Fantastic. Thank you, Larry. I am going to hand it straight on to Catherine for Catherine's five-minute perspective. >> I am creating too much pressure for that. I'm glad to be here representing my University, American University but also representing the centre for digital democracy, a U.S. NGO involved in privacy and consumer issues. It is really important to have this conversation internationally about children's rights and how they are being fostered in the digital media culture because we are a global culture now. And too often I think these conversations have taken place within individual countries. I have made a commitment now, I'm going to be having more of these cross national international conversations with my colleagues. On that note I also wanted to just let you know, for those of you who came to the panel the other day on Internet connected toys, we have been working with NGOs in Europe around a dozen or more of NGOs in Europe and the U.S. that have filed in a collaborative strategic effort, have filed complaints with regulatory agencies in both the United States and in EU against some toy companies that are manufacturing some dolls and robots and other products that are not secure and that are not in compliance with current laws. I see this as the first of a number of efforts that we hope to make and involving academics as well as NGOs, civil society organisations. So just quickly, since sometimes I am called the mama of COPPA, because I led the campaign in the 1990s to establish some safeguards for children, in the Internet. At a time when the Internet was being commercialised very rapidly, and when children were, as they are today, a lucrative target market. We saw practices being put in place that with very potentially manipulative and harmful for children. Our goal at that time was to build in safeguards at the outset of that marketplace to get buy-in from industry and to have them, established by government so that there would be a level playing field. Everybody understood if you are going to do business with children on the Internet, you have to treat them fairly. We included in that law rules about minimizing data collection, rules about not being able to condition a child's participation in a game or something else on the basis of what they told in terms of personal information because there was a lot of that already going on. And we also included parents in the law so that parents would be providing permission and be involved in what their young children were doing. We set the age at under 13 based on developmental psychology literature, based on traditions in terms of those protections. So I think it has been important. It has helped guide the development of the children's media culture, the commercial culture online and we updated it a few years ago so it would apply to social media, to many of the practices taking place there. Let me say, having done that, and enacting any policy is always a humbling experience. You try to get it right and you are continually working to think these things through and to do things that will be able to protect children, on the one hand; but not to do it in a way that inhibits the participation. In terms of GDPR, I do not support requiring parental permission for children who are 13 years old and over. Over 13, as we struggled with in the '90s, it is not appropriate. These are young teenagers -- am I not doing this right? Okay, sorry about that. These are teenagers who need to be empowered. I always called for more granular kinds of privacy policies so they can make their own decisions. I think that's still the case. I don't think we can talk about any of this without taking into account the nature of the digital media commercial marketplace. And we've got to think about a couple of things -- where am I? We are almost out of time. I'm going to cut to the chase. Big data. We are talking about a system that is based on data monetization, personalisation, targeting individuals based on where they go on their friends. Not just what children disclose about themselves but how their behaviors are tracked everywhere they go. We are talking about enormous risks. We are also talking about some challenges to our traditional models of notice and consent. It is tough, it is going to be tough in the big data era. What I think is that the GDPR debate and controversy creates an opening for us to talk about building safeguards for teens and children into the digital marketplace. And get an industry to have that conversation with us as well as youth and civil society. I think it can be done. I think it is going to be challenging. Tough questions. No simple answers. I think we must do it. >> DAVID WRIGHT: Catherine, thank you very much. And again, because of time, we will move for the final perspective to Marsali. Thank you. >> MARSALI HANCOCK: Thank you very much, David. I'm pleased that I'm positioned here in the panel. Because Larry spoke about FRPA, the education privacy law and we heard about COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, all children, whether they are in or out of the classroom. Let's put in context that everything we do online, absolutely everything actually shapes our web experience moving forward. So if we were all to do a search word, pick the word Oreo. If we were all to search on our own devices, what you get and what you get and what you get will look different than what I have, depending on what I searched before. So it is really important that we think about the role of our own data and how the entire engine of the web, the economy of the web and the opportunity of the web and the risks is either they give us something we are looking for or somehow someone wants us to find something they think we will find interesting. In the discussion around data and can it be mined or is it mine? I don't think we can begin to fathom the number of data points that each of us in our own room have already released into the digital universe. I don't know how many of you took an you knower and now Uber knows everywhere you have been and where you are now. Every time you turn on your phone, every time you click. It is not to be paranoid, but to see it as an opportunity. The one place where the children do not have the ability to make choices about data they are sharing and with whom is in the school setting. One of the biggest gaps we have is around accountability and transparency. In the United States the FRPA, the only child privacy law that is federal, specific to all students in a public institution and our public funds is paying for that information, has never once been enforced. Never. So it is not a very high priority either inside the classroom in the schools or businesses. They have their priorities and they have their interests that they have to meet with stakeholders. So I think as we look as a global community, identifying ways to help find and foster and reward the companies that are willing to be transparent and have accountability measures that allow educators to select products that have been through a third-party review. So that we are not just guessing. When you look at the potential impact for good and for harm, I want the Internet and my Internet company to provide me the services I want. I want the advertisements that are interesting or healthy for me. When we are talking about our children, their lives will be absolutely shaped by what they have done as a child. So here is an example. The reading skills of the seven-year-old in the United States are pre-indicator of their success in all of their other academic studies. How many people on the planet do you want to have access to your child's reading scores? There are the records created on campus and there are all the little things about us that we are interested in, the colors we like, the music, style, fonts. There's such a great opportunity to create. In that creation we also generate data. So the goal is not to reduce creation or to reduce expression. It is transparency and accountability. If you know where a child sits in the school room, do you know where their data goes when it leaves? And do you know what happens to it? Well, it's gone. And will you get it back? And will you have an opportunity to review and look at it? What we don't understand today, people are making decisions about us and for us before we ever have an opportunity to know who they are and what they are. Here is another example. Some research found take people using Twitter in English that do not use proper grammar are more likely to default on a loan. Now, if you are likely to default on a loan, it means the loan agency will charge you more for the same loan. Which means a child who is learning to -- this happened to my daughter in ninth grade. She barely turned 13. Her teacher required that she answer on Twitter. So Twitter is a public forum. And so depending on how children are using Twitter and at what age, it may mean that they will pay more for a mortgage and they will pay more for their car. Or maybe they won't have an opportunity for a job. Another one of my daughters, new in college. The English Professor required that the students create confidential papers and then post it on social networks. So she talked to the Professor and said this really isn't a good idea. If you want a job in a law firm or to put this up on the web, it is going to create some problems for us. It was mandatory. So she had to drop the class. So as we think about data, we have to do both sides of the coin. We create data in schools about our children and we also release enormous amounts of data about our students. That in itself can be a wonderful or a horrible thing, depending on if we know who that company is and what they are doing with it and who has access to it and if we have a chance to look at it and review, because students don't have a voice and choice in which teachers ask them or require them to use for data. They don't have a choice on the information systems that are used. When you look at the fastest growing victims of ran some ware, meaning you go on campus and all of a sudden you don't have access to any of your information as ransomware is schools. One in ten are victim of ransom wear this year. I have been crooked off. But I tell you as we think about the importance of data and mining data, there are solutions within that narrow ven diagram of students and creating accountability. I'm happy to talk to anyone who is interested in having their country have a collaborative work an approach to this. Thanks, David. >> DAVID WRIGHT: Marsali, thanks very much. Without further ado, we have even either side of the perspective. Anna, you have five minutes. Thank you. >> ANA NEVES: Thank you very much. Thanks for the opportunity to share with all of you where we are on the discussions on this field in Portugal. First of all, we have to be all aware that there is not ... (feedback.) >> ANA NEVES: -- such a thing as online and offline worlds. They are totally interconnected. What one does in one has consequences in the other. What is happening here? Closer? Closer, okay. So privacy in the Internet is more and more important, bearing in mind that more than 50 percent of the world population is connected, meaning around 3.5 billion are connected to the Internet and more are about to come as well, as more interconnected devices. We quite often provide our personal data on a voluntary basis to use the social network, an application, a service, or just do a purchase. But these are not the only data that you are providing. There are so many other data collected by companies such as you have the position, date and time, when you use a service and they become metadata, meaning that data, information that provides information about other data. We should be all aware, well aware of that. Our children today are being socialized in a way that is vastly different from their parents. But the ease of use of digital, does that mean that they really understand their rights to protect their personal data? The children and users in general, want to have access to social networks, services, apps. But who really reads the terms of contract for such use? We are often giving away things that we have no notion. The issue here is that it seems that we have no choice. Either we accept the rules of the game and have access to the service, social network or app or we just don't be part of it. Then children and youth become excluded, which is highly problematic in a connected digital society. Lastly, I would like to raise briefly some issues that must be involved in the near future at the worldwide level. What is data privacy and security? Until what age is a user in the Internet considered a child? Is it only a question about age? During the Portuguese initiative of the IGF, we discussed these questions. I would like to share with you some of the messages that came out. The ubiquity of the Internet and the Information Society have changed habits, behaviors, aspirations, rules, jobs, fears, prejudice and the citizens' needs. Therefore, the implementation of new privacy standards for example the regulation of the European Parliament and the Council of this year on the protection of network persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, which will enter into force in 2018, is particularly relevant to the various representatives of the Internet community. Too often issues surrounding privacy need more transparency and more stakeholders should be involved in the discussion, implementation and regulation. We are in the Internet Governance Forum so we have to discuss governance issues about privacy. The argument that users must have full control over their own data implies alongside a preparation of users and consumers to this process through proper skills and training. On the other hand, it is required greater responsibility and accountability of actors who provide services and products over the Internet. By design and by default principles should be the private sector priors which could reduce eventually government regulation. Natted to legal frameworks, governments should also prioritize citizens, digital literacy training and education. Thank you very much. >> DAVID WRIGHT: Anna, thank you very much indeed. Final input, Louise, I'll hand it over to you. >> LOUISE MARIE HUREL: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. First of all, I would like to start off by saying that the Internet as well as the expansion and the development of information and communication technologies has profoundly changed our way of communicating and interacting, changing information and taking part in social life. In the same way, these changes have also provoked deep changes in the relationship between children and the world around them. ICTs have become a crucial part of many people's lives. Growing in the world where connectivity seems to be an undeniable trend also carries its own challenges. What does it mean to be born and raised in a so commonly hyper connected world? Where experiences are not limited to devices which we so commonly hold in our hands but is otherwise expanded to the most particular and intimate aspects of our lives? Perhaps this is the next question we should ask ourselves when thinking about the relationship between security, privacy, and children interaction with ICTs. One can trace many experiences from the relationship between children, adolescence and the growing Internet access. When we talk about personal data, we are mobilizing a category, classification of data that is somehow attached to a notion of self. I remember several years ago now when I first got my mobile cell phone. I was nine years old and it was mind blowing. I could talk to my mother finally. (Chuckles.) >> LOUISE MARIE HUREL: While a few years after that we saw Nokia's colorful cell phones and they seemed to flood the worlds of children and adolescence. We could have the pleasurer of playing games and sending SMS and using ring tones. The attractiveness of tablets and notebooks is because there is a shiny screen that interacts with those not in front of it but serves as a venue for children to communicate with others and access information. Once I was with my little cousin, I would like to share a really brief personal note on that. She forcibly made me sit down with her and play an online game. All the users were some kind of an animal or stuff. Each one of them, including my little cousin could buy clothes for the animal avatar, buy their own houses and clothes. She was clearly familiar with surfing the web and playing games such as this. However, while I was wondering about privacy, she was concerned with being able to access a particular service, a particular game. So it seems as if our online experiences are ever more attached to these big thematic parts where we sign in, accept the terms of service blindly and dig into an experience where privacy and security are not central and constant take downs are opaque processes. Algorithms who select who and what is important. We condition ourselves to limited forms of expression that are translated into posts, images, videos, and mostly we are okay with that because, well, all of our friends are in there. So that's okay. But being a digital native, being born into connectivity, they use the user appropriation of ICTs does not include knowing all about it. Parchts, schools, adults have an important role as mediators and caregivers in a certain way. Providing safety measures and helping them to expand perspectives related to the aspects of Internet usage. Right now according to the ICT kids from Brazil annual report 2015, 87 percent of children and adolescents in Brazil from nine to 17 years old have an account in social networks. What we've seen in this past month in Brazil, for example, is that the appropriation of a concern with children and child pornography can be articulated as a discourse, as a pathway to promoting bills that tend to over feed law enforcement agencies and not only necessarily tackling the most important fabric that helps us in thinking, for example, in how to connect the next billion, education. One thing I would like to highlight fast and I know the time is ticking. I would like to highlight that these processes are not devoid or exempt from underlying problematic disparities and asymmetries related to race, gender, stereotypes, familiar appearance and socioeconomic status. In 201525 percent of online scrims in Brazil was focused in race between Internet users that ranged from 9 to 17 years old. However, the highest rates of discrimination in general are normally associated to adolescents between 15 to 17 years old. Building one's identity is an ongoing process. That happens both online and offline. And most certainly that depends not only in the child as a user, but in the environment that she or he is exposed to. These services and entertainment platforms, islands, they need to reinforce and they reinforce the individual character of Internet access as something that pertains to the routine of being connected, as being part of what is socially normal, being autonomous and independent and playing games, navigating through different wents and accesses different services. How can we promote safe spaces and collaborative interaction between. There are shared responsibilities between parents, teachers, caregivers, as well. In order to foster an online that is more age sensitive. An Internet Governance that the international regional and national and local that provides institutional mechanisms for building and connecting the next billion, but bearing in mind that what kind of connectivity and environment that these future users are going to relate to. So thank you. >> DAVID WRIGHT: Thanks very much. Thank you. I'm going to in the last five minutes open the floor to any questions. Have we got a microphone? Okay. If you can just please say your name and any association would be great. Thank you. >> AUDIENCE: Hello. Can everybody hear? Hello? My name is Juan Pedro from Portugal. I'm an Insafe use Ambassador. I would like to address because we spoke about transparency. We also spoke about some tuns that we miss if we can't really engage on a social network or other type of site. I brought a question and since we are speaking about data property and collecting, I think we should really address the big elephant in the room which is terms and conditions. If on one side we are seeing that data should be protected, we also should empower youth, and we are speaking about youth. We should empower them with the knowledge of what we are giving because as we know, we wouldn't really have the time to go through each point and specifically about privacy and what we are giving away. And it is not as if we can really accept them because there is no alternative. So it is also an initiative, the youth manifesto which is the right to know what we are giving. Thank you very much. >> DAVID WRIGHT: Okay. So Panelists, if anyone else has another question? Okay, we'll take two questions and then answer them and we may well have run out of time. >> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I'm Allen La wine here with privacy fundamentals, having recently left the corporate world. I am aware and think often of Stewart brand's famous and perhaps apocryphal saying: Information wants to be expensive. And it does. There are real costs involved in operating all these systems and in providing good, adequate privacy protections. As we implement good privacy protections, I think we need to think about -- I'm going to invite comment on -- how do we provide the economic incentives for companies that provide their services and build the pipes to make them effective and make them implemented? >> DAVID WRIGHT: Okay, thank you. And you have a quick question as well? We'll take that and open it to the Panelists as well. >> AUDIENCE: I have the question off Twitter frommian head Rick, what do I want to reach with data not being collected under the age of 13. My response to by law the children are not responsible for their actions. So being in database forever wouldn't be fair. And getting to an adult is a process of being or getting slightly responsibility. So at a later age, getting punished for these actions wouldn't be fair. That was the question. And the response. >> DAVID WRIGHT: Okay. So the question about terms and conditions? Sorry? There are three questions. Terms and conditions and then we'll come to the commercial question too, John? >> JOHN CARR: I'll read one generals from the GDPR since that was what I was asked about. Quote. Given that children narrate specific -- merit specific pro ex-text and that's referenced elsewhere in the thing, any information and communication where processing is addressed to a child should be in such clear and plain language that the child can easily understand. So that goes to the point about the terms and conditions. That doesn't necessarily deal with the volume of words that can appear in terms and conditions. There is a famous story about this guy whose terms and conditions for this particular app extended to about 1,500 pages on the screen of his typical smartphone. On page 1,275, he inserted the following sentence: If you've read this, ring this telephone number and I will give you $5,000 U.S. Nobody rang. (Applause.) >> DAVID WRIGHT: Larry? >> LARRY MAGID: In response to Allen's question, it's a very interesting question. First of all, I think that companies have a right to make money, but we have a regulatory process that says they have a right to make money under certain circumstances. While I'm not in any way believing in over regulation, I think holding people to their privacy promises is essential. The government has a role in that. Finally I would like to look in traditional media, the U.K., the BBC, the United States, of nationality public radio and public television, there has been a precedent for publicly supported media. Whether that works in social media or not, I don't know. We have to make sure that government had no control over those media, but it is an interesting role that we have not explored sufficiently when it comes to social media. >> DAVID WRIGHT: Okay. And final response, I think, in lick ten seconds, Catherine. >> CATHERINE: Well, we are not talking about whether they can make money or can't make money, as Larry says. But there are conditions, I think, that we need to place on companies in terms of corporate responsibilities to young people. We need to review those. I think it's time to really review them and identify some safeguards in terms of data limitation, in terms of certain marketing practices, in terms of transparency and clarity in communication with young people. And there's much that needs to be done in this area. >> DAVID WRIGHT: Okay, everyone. The time is now up. And so we have lots of questions in this debate, and that will carry on and on and on. Just a quick plug again, if I haven't mentioned already, safe Internet day on February 7. More information at the Insafe booth. I ask that you thank the Panelists for their fantastic input. Thanks very much, everyone. (Applause.) (The session concluded at 11:47 a (Please stand by. The IGF 2016 session number 84 Youth in IG: Capacity Building versus Policy Discussion will begin momentarily.) >> DAVID NG: Hi, everyone. We are about to start because the previous session just ended and this location is a bit far. So we would wait for two more minutes to start this session. This is workshop 84, Youth in IG: Capacity Building versus Policy Discussion. So we will start in two minutes of time. Thank you. (Pause.) >> DAVID NG: Testing, testing,. Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining with us for this workshop. This workshop is workshop 84 talking about Youth in IG: Capacity Building versus Policy Discussion. On that, although the topic talks about, this is multiinclusive for the whole purpose of capacity building for youth and also the policy discussion. For this session we can see we have more youth initiative to engage youth in Internet Governance such as the youth programme launched last year during the IGF meetings. We can see in the regions we have different group works, we are engaging youth regionally. In this workshop, as I mentioned previously in discussing the approach, which approach of youth engagement is the better way. Of course, for the two ways of capacity building and also policy discussion, it is a mutually exclusive discussion. We would like to discuss which is the best way for engaging youth in discussion. First I will go through the agenda of today to make everyone familiar with what we are doing for this one and a half hours. Can you move forward the power point? Thank you. First we have the analysts from different youth initiatives to share about their work in the region. We have 20 minutes for sharing. About a few minutes for even Panelist to share their work. We have free discussion after that. We welcome everyone from the floor to speak and go to the mic, grab the mic to speak on how you think about the two different topics. Topic one is on what is the best practice of youth engagement in Internet Governance and how can we enhance collaboration among different initiatives, as I mentioned. We have more initiatives about youth engagement nowadays. I see there is room for cooperation and collaboration. In a sense, once you hear your voice and your ideas on how we can do it better. And on the second topic, talk about how we can do better to engage youth in IGF. Right now in IGF we experience this discussion. We need to think about how we can better engage with youth. Especially I saw that many youth around the table joining this session. I welcome everyone for further discussion. I think we are ready for the sharing. And firstly I would like to tank the speakers for sharing with us. We have the Youth Authority and we have Martin from network of European digital youth. We havia shy from the German, we have gain from the Ambassador from a va. Horn is from the Internet Governance academy and remote participation from Uganda, who is Jonathan from the youth foundation. We have Yoka -- Olga from the GAC of ICANN an also south school Internet governs. We have ICANN members Rodrigo joining us with for the Panelists. First we want to start with Adela to share with her work on Youth Authority. Adela. >> ADELA GOBERNA: Thank you guys for inviting me here. I'm within the youth observatory. I would like to stress I'm speaking in my personal capacity. The first question, what is engagement? What is youth engagement? The problem I see with engagement is not the young people being engaged with the topic I itself but finding space, when the space we already have to have them engaged in speaking there. Nowadays the questions, we are going through what structures or if the young people should be a stakeholder itself, which I don't actually fine it is the right discussion. It leads to the right point. I think the problem we are having nowadays, it is actually having the old school stakeholder engaging these young people in order to speak their minds and continue their work within a frame where they can speak. In that sense that's why the youth observatory initiative began since lots of young people were involved in the youth at IGF forum last year. They didn't feel they had the opportunity to engage with the stakeholders that represent they will. So what should we do? Inside the stakeholder bring in the organisation, but the discussion is being turned to the other side. We are speaking about should young people be a stakeholder? I think that's the way of leaving them apart from actually discussing policy, from actually making them part of the policy and start targeting them. That's the thing we need to avoid. So the whole point about this is to start discussing about how can the stakeholder that we know, academia, private sector, civil society, call it whatever you want, kind of make them part of the stakeholder that they are and make them part of the position that this stakeholder has. I think the main problem and issue we need to tackle right now is how we turn the discussion to the other side of the table. We need to make young people realise they need to be part of the stakeholders to be engaged in the discussions, but not be engaged with the topic. I find it interesting that the question is youth engagement in Internet Governance which is huge. I mean, we are talking about youth engagement with the events of Internet Governance or within the topics of Internet Governance which I think most of the people are already engaged with Internet Governance as a topic, but not engaged in the structures we've got that make Internet Governance. So the youth observatory, the organisation I volunteer from time to time contrasts, kind of tries to tackle these ideas and puts the focus on that and kind of makes people understand we don't need new stakeholders, but we need the old stakeholders to kind of understand they need new people, or other people who have different positions to be part of them and kind of make a new perspective pop up within them. So thank you. >> DAVID NG: Thank you, add L.A. we need to make youth stakeholders as part of the discussion and we agree on this. Right now we have Martin from the rural perspective. >> MARTIN FISCHER: Hello? My name is Martin from the European digital youth. For the last two years we have been running a project called the European youth IGF where we bring together young people and youth Delegates to the IGF from Netherlands, Germany, Austria and from Turkey. Two of these countries we institutionalized the first YouthIGF ever. I just wanted to share the principles that we set out for this project in order to engage young people in a qualitative way. I think these also show case a couple of problems that we saw in youth participation and Internet Governance. Six principles. First one, co-decision making and comanagement. We want young people involved in all decision making and administrative processes. Young people can take part in any position and take budgetary control and they are part of the project and not merely observers. We want multi-stakeholder events, not just events for young people that engage with other target groups that we want to meet. They are educational for everybody there. Young people set the agenda. So when we host a YouthIGF we rely on a format called bar camp. Young people set up the agenda and set out the topics for workshops, get the time slots, hosts sessions. We have experts they can engage with in these settings. We want no cost for participation. So young people engaged in the process should not have to cover any of the costs themselves. We found some generous support from the European Union in order to do so. So participation should not have extra burden for the young people that take the time to do so. We also want continuous engagement. That is why we ran it over two years in order to make sure that the young people will also continue to stay in these processes. That doesn't necessarily mean young people need to go to every IGF that is coming, of course. Usually the first IGF is overburdening, very full. It is a hewn impression and that's why it is important that afterwards we give possibilities to also engage in other initiatives or return. The last point of these principles would be what I call informed representation. So far, it is important that the youth Delegates own feedback with the local communities. They are engaged through these bar camps but also with local organisations, we have host organisations for each of them. So they have contact to the local youth and feed back the information they get in the forums but also carry the local voices from youth into IGF itself. Thank you. >> DAVID NG: Thank you, Martin, for sharing the six main points of youth engagement. It is very useful and how we can inform the participation for the youth to engage in the process. Followed by we have back keep from the youth centre. Thank you. >> JOACHIM KINDT: Thank you, David, for inviting me. I'm bringing more, a little bit more of the institutionalized perspectives. I'm working for the German safe Internet centre. I'm the spokesman. I'm also part of the Insafe network which is the umbrella body of the European Union where all 31, 28 Member States plus three more states are taking part of. When I was thinking of how we were starting our project and opening to youth panels, actually it goes back to 2008 when in the safe Internet programme for the first time ever the European Union clearly fixed that we have to implement the voice of the young people into our work. I make it very quick quotation because it is very interesting to read it and it is still today where we are many years later. It is still the right thing where we should start. The programmes, I quote the programme strongly encourages the awareness notes and the safe Internet centres to involve children and young people in their work by establishing youth panels, youth forums in their countries where young people can express their views and exchange knowledge and experience concerning the use of the online technologies. Children will also be asked to contribute to the policy development and design of awareness raising actions, materials. So if you are thinking about this, that was a very early start. But these were the guidelines for us. Okay, now, the world is different. We are no longer a world of adults and experts. Now we've got the voice of the youth. A lot of things, of course, has changed. Within the framework of Insafe and the individual safe Internet centres, today almost all the Member States and all the countries in Europe got some sort of youth involvement or they even have their own youth panels. So there we got the guidelines which were very instructive for us, but I would like to make a brief remark on a personal level that for me personally I am very grateful to the IGF because the first time ever I saw how people, young people stood up and showing their voice, that was not within the framework of the European Union. They got these great guidelines. But that was here at the IGF. Everybody who is a pedestrian going or a teacher, he knows that you get the best results if you can reach, of course, the brain, but at the same time the heart and the emotion. That was exactly what was happening to me here at the IGF. So I went back to Germany and we started immediately to build up youth panels. So since 2009, 2010 we got youth panels and we also got children panels for children at the age from 6 to 12. Of course, in the context of children panels, that is a special issue. We cannot talk of political discussion, but nevertheless it is very good to have both sides of the coin. What are we doing now? What is the youth panel, the German youth panel doing? What did we do so far? Of course, we are very much, the youth panels are -- we go with them and we are opening booths at one of the biggest fairs across Europe, games com. It is the question of visibility. We go outside, we do marketing, we make communication. The big step also was initiated by Insafe, the web we want process. Web we want is a situation where for the first time no experts were writing online he had kative issues, but it was a peer to peer approach. The first book ever produced in Europe with a peer to peer approach. We are having the youth conference web days. We are, of course, having the safer Internet days. Our young people are going to IGF. Like Martin said before, of course they don't have to go to every IGF or every Euro dig, but we think it is not a question of visibility but in the other direction. They have to get the spirit that their issues are not a question of national perspective; that it's a global perspective, of course. As I'm not a pedestrian going and not a teacher, for me personally it was very important, the communication asking pect. So therefore, we, it is just recently that we are working on this. But we try to implement a pool of young people and if we got the safer Internet centre, got an approach by the media, by the press or by journalists, we think before, of course, the adult was going there. And went to the TV station and the press Articles, but now we think of that we are cohosting the adult with the young person. We are even doing the press conferences with the young people who are the experts. So, to come to my final remark, so far I think coming from this long way of the safer Internet programme to the better Internet for kids programme, we did a lot of good work on capacity building, but if you ask me -- David, when you sent me the title of the workshop I was a little bit irritated at first sight because I thought why capacity building versus policy discussion? That was irritating to me. I didn't really understand at first sight the contradictory part of it. I must be honest that now thinking of coming to this project, I think you are right because I honestly have to respond if I think if we, capacity building, yes, we did a good job. We can do it better, but did we or do we have a design how to implement young people's voice into the political discussion? I would say so far not. And I think the six points Martin mentioned, they are the absolute good guideline where we have to go. So thank you for inviting. Yeah. >> DAVID NG: Thank you and really a good recap of what we are discussing today, of course we are doing capacity building for the youth engagement discussion and you mentioned it is important to send our children to some of the IGF to experience a real you discussion process. As well as also how we can really make the real policy in a sense, as Martin also mentioned in his six principle. We have gain followed by -- to talk about the Asia region work. >> JIANNE SORIANO: Hi, everyone, I'm from net mission Hong Kong. So net mission programme is a programme that brings together University students in Hong Kong to promote digital inclusion, Internet Governance and have policy discussions. Every year we recruit University students from Hong Kong. Mostly not from IT background, including myself. And we train them when it comes to Internet Governance issues. After the training process we have trainings. And then in those trainings we select a few of them to go to conferences like IGF and ICANN and AIPPI IGF. We also have projects that target younger people like net-Y programme which is for high school, and Hong Kong IGF and some of the participants are also here. As Ambassador, we also organise the YouthIGF weds that focuses on youth engagement in Asia-Pacific region. It is also annually. We have organised eight IGFs so far. The latest one was in Taipei. The IGF also is held in parallel with the Asia-Pacific regional Internet Governance forum. Even if we have separate workshops and programmes, we still integrate the workshops with the Asia-Pacific regional IGF workshops, which is I think is really important for the youth to engage in the main conference. In the Y-IGF we focus on role play discussions and also have interactive sessions like the simulations. And for ICANN conference we organise the model or mock ICANN meeting which we moderate these workshops with local participants from the host country and we have also nutritious yeahed a local IGF which is the Hong Kong Y-IGF this year. It is a three-day camp that recruits high school students. In that camp they do things like they made promotional video about child online safety, which they had to do under like three hours. And then they also have to come up with solutions to link ICT with Sustainable Development Goals. We held a one day discussion on topics like human rights and privacy and security. So what net mission has done in the Asia-Pacific region is to engage youth in not only Internet Governance but also give them a platform to do the organisation, the decision making of how they should run a youth programme and not just having older people to do that but having younger people to do these organisations and while we are not directly involved in policy discussions but we have the power to do decision making processes and I guess I would say for myself, I have been in the AIPPI IGF multi-stakeholder steering group as the first young person. Things like that enables youth to be part of a decision making process of a bigger things that happen in the Asia-Pacific region. Thank you. >> DAVID NG: Thank you, gain. You have a very good case on how youth can initiate the programmes by themselves and also taking part in the API IGF is an important input from youth, how we shape the programme. Followed by also I have got Haoran Huang on IGF. >> HAORAN HUANG: Thank you, David and hello, everyone, I'm huer ran Huang from Beijing University, I'm a post-graduate student specializing in Internet Governance in day-by-day studies and research. As well as the participants and maybe the only one from mainland of China to join the Asia-Pacific Internet Governance academy, APIGA for short. It is my pleasure to share my experience here. Even though I'm majoring in IT before here I do not have the reality feelings of Internet Governance. This is a first time event hosted by ICANN, Korean Internet and security agency and others. It is a five-day event heard at the University this summer. After that I come back with three things. The first is the thematic feelings towards Internet Governance. The speakers spend all day with us and we gained basic knowledge on how the international Internet organisations work, such as ICANN and IGF. And what is the topics they are talking about now? Second is the reality figures l feelings. Net mission has the mock conference there, too. With this we know how to make our worries and how to join the discussion in ICANN. This could also apply to IGF. Third is making, already make a lot of friends there. Some of them have already been very active in ICANN and IGF. In these Internet Governance events. After PICA, I feel confident I can apply for ICANN 57. Well, I joined the USC GS as a member as well as the IGF community Working Group, we call CCWG, working stream 2. At this time I also come as ISOC IGF Fellow to be here. I m continue to join these events in the future and share, after that I will share my experience with more friends around me and also encourage them also to join this capacity building programme. So since David as well as our good friend from net mission, I thank you for making this happen and because it is definitely very important. And besides this, today I would like to discuss more about how to engage young people not only in to the capacity building programme but also as making a voice to be heard at these policymaking platforms. >> DAVID NG: Thank you, Haoran, you gave us your experience in participating in the ICANN discussions, including joining the CCWG group and also GNSO. It is really engaging the discussion of Internet Governance and policymaking right now. Thanks for sharing your experience. We look forward to hearing more from you in the discussion. After that we have Olga from ICANN and also Internet Governance. Olga? >> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much. I am not young anymore but I am young in spirit which is what matters always. I commend you for the fantastic work you are doing. Honestly I'm impress, gain and all of you from different parts of the world, you made a difference in the last two IGFs. I'm sure that this will make the difference for the whole Internet and the whole community from now on. So my congratulations for your fantastic work. I was thinking about what we were talking about today, and I realised that we have been running a programme that it was not meant for young people, but it has been used by young people, which is the south school of Internet Governance in Latin America. We don't have an age limit for the programme, but it is mainly applied to the fellowships, really given to young people. Mostly, I would say 90-something percent are very, very young professionals. The programme has been enhancing the participation of Latin Americans in the Internet Governance processes, whether it is IGF, and regional IGFs as well. So if you are interested in applying, you can pass by our booth. I have some brochures here. Our next school will be in Rio de Jan three to 7 April. We grant scholarships to all our students. We don't charge to anybody. We offer two types of fellowship, one with accommodation and the whole training and lunch and coffee breaks and the other one without accommodation, depending on the -- we granted 180 fellowships in the last school in April in Washington. So we have no limits from where you come from. The only limit we have, we cannot pay tickets, we don't have that much money as other organisations, but if you have funding for the ticket, you may participate. We also offer remote participation. And in the last school that was organised in the organisation of American states venue, we got in the five days programme 25,000 remote participants from 89 countries. And there was a spontaneous hub organised by the ISOC Barbados that Garys 60 people all together in a room in a University that follows all the will programme and made questions and made comments. So it was not meant only for youth, but it has been really focused on youth and I think we have been successful in bringing this group to this meeting. And about your involvement in policy, this reminds me one of the things that I do, which is the increasing women in all the leadership positions in organises, ICANN, ISOC, ITF and all that, and women in general in going towards engineering careers, which I am an engineer. We are not many. So this reminds me somehow how we are going to try to get involved more women in these spaces. I think that some parallel thoughts we can have in how to involve more youth. When I was young like you, I thought that I would get everything by my merits. Everything. Because I was tough and I was focused and I was trying to do hard work. And that doesn't always happen. Sometimes other things happen, which is part of the life we have to live in and we have to understand. So when I was young, I was toaltdly against quota -- totally against quotas. That is horrible. For me, I will get everything because I am a hard worker and I'm focused and I want to do that and I'm determined. That is not always the case. So I think that sometimes quotas are useful. And especially for women. Maybe for youth. You may have that in mind. And it is proof that diverse group of people produce the best outcome. It is not all young people, not all men, not all women, not old people. Having youth in the group is fantastic. Also having women and men and people with experience. So this is something that you shuted look at and I will give you two examples. In the province of Buenos Aires, the biggest State of Argentina, which is the size of Spain, for example, just to compare the size and the amount of people that live there. They have a new law that they require 50 percent of women in the legislative bodies. And also I would like to remark the confirmation of the Cabinet of Mr. Just continue true dough, the Prime Minister of he Canada is 50 percent men, 50 percent women. They asked him why? He said it is 2015! You can have that in made. Adela made a very good point. Not only stakeholders of youth because you will be isolated. You have to mix. You have to bring your views. You are the natives of this technology. I am not. I was born and I read from books. Any students look a as me as I come from another world. Yes, I had books and photocopies. I had no Internet when I started. I am here with you and you have a fantastic opportunity to get engaged in policy work. Again, I commend you for the fantastic difference that you are making in this IGF. Thank you very much. I have to leave because I have to be present in another session. Thank you again for inviting me. I'm very honoured with that. That you can. >> DAVID NG: Thank you, Olga, you made a point of different stakeholders, not just stand alone as youth. Also referring to the statement that youth are part of the stakeholders, but we stand alone to take all the merits and credits. And also about we want to engage both men and women in our discussions and agenda issues, which is a concern not only for youth but all stakeholders. Thanks for making these remarks. Right now we also have Rodrigo to speak a bit. Thank you. >> RODRIGO DE LA PARRA: Hello, David. This is Rodrigo de La Parra from ICANN. Thank you very much for the invitation. Very much appreciated. Yes, so first of all congratulations. This is a great initiative I think you are making headway. I remember in the last IGF someone stood up and said well, we only don't want to be heard, but we want to have a seat at the table and discuss substantive issues. And you are doing that now. But you are also doing a lot of things. And let me share with you what it is we are doing in ICANN with the youth. We have a lot of initiatives that we are doing for you. Why are we doing it? And one of the live examples that we have and has been just described: How quickly one of you got immersed in ICANN policy development process. Because it is not only having young people working at ICANN or engaged in ICANN. We want them to be involved in the policy development process. Because that really is at the core of ICANN. This is what we do and this is where we need your voice. So in order to do that, ICANN is not a very easy place to work and to collaborate. Actually it is quite complicated. That is why we have built different programmes to help you, in this case the youth but also all stakeholders so that they can contribute to this policy development process. We call this capacity building. We need to build capacity in all stakeholders, in all regions so that they can really come and work with ICANN. We have, I think I am going to divide this explanation into two. We have global initiatives, which are applicable to everybody. But we also have some regional activities that we are doing in a different regional offices. I'm going to offer you examples of my colleagues in the Asia-Pacific hub, the APIC home and also in the LAC region, since we are already here. In the global initiatives we have two programmes, one is the fellowship programme. This programme started in 2007. And this programme is not only about supporting financially people to go to the ICANN meetings. But also it creates a sense of community and it helps you and guides you throughout the way both by my colleagues on staff, but also with other people like you. Young people, maybe you will become a mentor to another Fellow and they will grow. It is an amazing programme. Each of the ICANN meetings we have, by the way, three meetings per year. We will take these meetings from region to region. So, for example, next year we are starting in March and we will be in Europe in Copenhagen. Then we will go to during the summer, in June, we will be in South Africa in Johannesburg. Then we will conclude in Abu Dhabi to conclude that one. Then we will come to San Juan and in Panama and Barcelona. We are rotating every year. And for every meeting, we offer for the fellowship programme around 60 slots for fellowships. These are not addressed particularly to young people. These are for everybody. But most of them are young people. But we do have one programme which is and has been designed exclusively for young people, which is called the next generation or the next Gen programme for ICANN. We are getting old in the ICANN community. So it was about time that we more or less started to renovate the people, because the Internet will, you know, need the young and spirited, full stamina young people. But also there is this task of conveying the message that we do not need to, or we have to be very careful not to give the Internet for granted. I believe young people may have, potentially can fall into this temptation because probably if you haven't read a lot or hearing the right conversations, you wouldn't know that there has been a tremendous effort to have what we have now. So it is not only about accessing high-speed Internet movie in a device of this size. It wasn't that easy. One of the principles, or the principles that made this possible are those principles that we will need you to embrace and to continue with these, let's say quote-unquote tradition of having ICANN and having IGFs is particularly important. So let me share with you quickly two projects or initiatives that we have been doing together with some friends from the Asia-Pacific region. I think one of them has been mentioned, but it is the APIGA, it is very succeed fell. You have it in Seoul in 2016, about 30 people from Korea and 20 regional fellowship, and interesting out of 120 applicants. But it was not just granting them this financial support but there was a prerequisite of 25 hours of online learning about ISOC and ICANN trainings. It is a very great participation, five day structure, with focus of course in ICANN topics. Another great project that happened just in our previous mention about, there was an outreach with local academia in collaboration with net mission. I believe that was also mentioned. That was also a great programme with students from local stiewforts. That is actually a very good way of engaging because if we do that together with the ICANN meetings, you have the chance of bringing these folks to participate and to see what an ICANN meeting looks like in real life. Those are two examples of what we are doing in the Asia-Pacific. And just to conclude, I'm going to share something that we are doing in the LAC region. We started helping the youth observatory in LAC. We helped them and they helped us. In many respects. So we now created in our Web site a full list of all of the initiatives and regional initiatives that deal with Internet Governance of some sort, creating mechanisms, dialogues, IGFs, et cetera. They helped us to build this database which is available in our regional Web site of ICANNLAC.org. We started that and one of the people working at the observatory approached us with this very nice project. It is called primary Internet Governance, or governs primer. Short course of one day only for young people. It is packed and ready to sell and go to other countries. They started in Brazil. It was very successful. In just six months they replicated this experience in two more countries. They had one in Buenos Aires and the next one in Uruguay. And we are already planning to have the next one in Mexico next year, because they already have, like I said, a template of Internet Governance. That is working really well. Also we were invited to contribute during the LAC IGF in Latin America and the Caribbean. We had one day prior before this event staforted, one day exclusively directed to young people. Actually, even more younger people were involved. This, I believe, was high school students involved or engaged. They were really ask asking the right questions. So this is it for me. Thank you very much. >> DAVID NG: Thank you, Rodrigo. You mentioned a bit on the work of how IGF is doing on capacity building. I think it is very appreciated, the work you are doing especially on the fellowship programme and some of the activities that has cooperation and collaboration from that community. For example, the APIGA and it is great to see how we run the whole Internet in a sense is multistakeholder collaborations, for the whole thing. So thanks for sharing your experience and we are looking forward to more collaboration on how you do that engagement work. Followed by we will close the panel for sharing of experience. We allow to open the floor to discuss. For this I will pace the mic to Bianca to moderate the debate. >> BIANCA CAROLINE HO: Right now is the open mic debate. You heard all the Panelists of where they stand, and everything that they do, which is super interesting. We would like to open the floor for Panelists as well as anyone sitting on the side on giving us some thoughts on two specific topics. So the first 20 minutes will be devoted for what is the best practice of youth engagement in Internet Governance snn and particularly on this I have heard a few speakers say that how to include youth as, not as a separate stakeholder group but as a whole. And how do we engage them in policy discussion better? So I think this is one of the important things that we can discuss in the first 20 minutes. There are so many initiatives all across the world. How can we enhance cooperation among different initiatives? That would be also interesting. There is some overlap and there is some that is quite different and some very specific to regions. That would be quite interesting RFA so I will open up the floor, if you are interested to talk. Put up your hand and yes, we will pass on the mic. I'll start with Sonia. Please identify yourself at the mic. >> Thank you, Sonia living stone from the London school of economics. Is this working? I feel I have had I have heard good practice about involving young people. I don't think I have heard any young practice about hearing and acting on the results of what young people have to say. Maybe I can be really specific and ask the man from ICANN, which particular issues on the ICANN agenda do you think you could be most interested in? Can you think of any ways in which ICANN has acted differently as a result of youth participation? Canal I ask Jack em the Jack even, you read out -- if I think about the European Union and the data protection, I can't see that young people have been consulted about their feelings. Good practice, good practice in stakeholders acting on the input of young people, I have yet to hear that in this session. >> BIANCA CAROLINE HO: I'll pass the mic to Joaquin and then pass the Mike. >> JOACHIM KINDT: Thank you for asking this question. It is very important. It is results oriented not just for the sake of doing it. There is value in renewing generation Allie. It is soon to say how really the impact has been with the next generation programme. Because we only started this about two years ago. But I think it is changing things in the communities. Helping having new blood coming in with new ideas and new ways of solving problems. I'm sure our colleague that just told us that joined NCUC next to people who have been working for ICANN during the last ten years can tell us a little bit about his experience. I think just the mere fact that he is there, it is changing the chemistry within that group and the ideas that the young can have. It is still early to say, I believe at this stage, but I do think they are making a difference already. >> Sonnia, thank you for your question. You know we are more an education programme. So while getting down to the point how do we work on the concrete level, we are writing -- well, we are giving materials, writing books. Very practical handbooks for implementing into the curricula. So if I think how we published a work on data protection. You said you can't see how the voice of young people is involved in the complicated process of legislation. Of data protection, we can not really intrude in this, but on the real pedagogical level, I would say yes. The way is like this. We got the experts which are basically most of the time still adults. This I have to confess, but then we got the youth Panelists as a very good consultancy. We got these meetings and we are working together. The final thing is never, like before, it has been only a product which is going to the teachers and the curricula, which was only a product by adults. That is now changed. We have this consultancy process by youth and young people. I would say yes, there is a first step of involvement, but it is not the end of the line. >> BIANCA CAROLINE HO: Thank you. We will have a remote participant and then him and then yourself and we'll pass on to that. >> I'm the remote moderator, our founder President of the society and IGF Pakistan and the Coordinator for the YouthIGF Pakistan 2015. I will read out his message. Youth community needs secure, reliable and civil gloacialt, frequently conducted we are concerned with recognition at the international forums but unfortunately we are always neglected. The youth community from Ting or under Developed Countries interested in physical participation at global and regional forums and events were not working but they do not have sufficient resources. Although our youth community has financial constraints they take small steps in initiatives but the contributions are mostly neglected. We need unbiased recognition at global forums. Our voice is not loud but we hope the YouthIGF platform will support us and allow us to be heard. We request issues and policies, policies for next generation and support to resolve the day-to-day problems threats faced in the will region of our countries or online. Thank you. >> I wanted to remind everyone. It is such a short open Mike section, restrict your. >> My name is Gustavo, the group, a Brazilian research group focusing on Internet law and governance. Over the last three years I worked in engaging young people in Universities with IG. In this IGF I represented my group in the first session and since then talked with many young people who would like to do something similar, engaging their community through a research group of their own. We are now creating a group through 2017 to incentivize the creation of such groups and hopefully we can, after one year of debate, experiences with who knows, present a panel in the next IGF about this topic. So if you want to be part of in group, if you think that this proposal is interesting to you, even if you are a student, then please talk to me. I will be hereafter this session and it will be a pleasure to discuss this topic with you. That's all. >> Thank you. It's great to see other initiatives coming out of IGF and how we can collaborate among people. So I will now move to. >> AUDIENCE: My name is (indiscernible) I'm from the German centre for child protection on the Internet. I have a question for the stakeholders from ICANN and other organisations in the room. From the discussion we had so far, one could get the impression that youth are just a homogeneous group, but with reference to Sonia's studies and research, we all know that they are as heterogeneous as any other group. There are differences due to their nationalitity, due to gender, to age, to your knowledge, skills, competences, to anything. So how could we ensure that youth that take part in Internet Governance, represent all these different voices? I don't think it is the voice of the youth. It is many voices and it is also related to the question of what is most interesting for young people? I don't think we would get unique answer if we ask all the young people here in the room that this is the most interesting aspect that we would like to be engaged. How could we all take that effort to ensure that all the voices of young people are heard in the process? >> MODERATOR: Does anyone want to address that? I can address that later. Is there anyone who wants to address that specific question? No? >> AUDIENCE: It might be too difficult. >> I can say how we address it in our project. Our project, for once we also try to work with quotas and try to reach as diverse young people as possible. So a lot of impetus, a lot of focus was put on involving very diverse groups. We worked with hacker spaces, with disadvantaged youth groups in order to reach as many people as possible. However, people interested in Internet policy usually tend to be more homogeneous than, of course maybe I would like. However, we also let the youth Delegates pick their own topics that they want to focus on and specialize in and become experts in their own field. I'm on the panel rather than the youth representatives because I deal with the project. One of our is talking on section torsion in another Panelist. They are passionate about these points, but maybe not passionate about youth participation themselves. This is more about a gateway. Once young people are in the forum, then they are there, it is on a very different level. I also wanted to reply to Ms. Livingstone briefly, but I forgot! (Chuckles.) >> What was the question again? >> AUDIENCE: (Speaker away from microphone.) >> MARTIN FISCHER: Because we have a very good example from our German group, because there in Germany, I think, is one of the first YouthIGFs that recognizes youth as an independent stakeholder. That means they are on the steering panel and have access to their own panel, they can have a Delegate on each session panel. Young people can have a direct will impact on those discussions. They are policymakers, not necessarily the discussions, if you see IG as afield where the discussion is held, that leads hopefully to impactful policy and evidence based policies and young people can certainly contribute in that process. Thanks. >> AUDIENCE: I'll comment briefly. I feel like young people are same but different. That is an interesting way of seeing it. We are all, I need a lot of training. There are things I don't understand, so many stakeholder groups are already there. But there are different parts of the different people have different caps. I even heard a discussion today where the youth have haven't chose their own cap. They could be civil society, they want to get into private sector but want to participate here as civil society. Part of it is also the awareness. Other stakeholder groups, as you say, be it government or other things, whether they are willing to engage youth as a group and not to look at them separately as some of the Panelists said, integrate them. I think that's my two cents, very quickly. So I want to pass on the mic, so the lady in the back? She raised her hand and back to Raymond. Yeah, yourself, okay. >> AUDIENCE: Hi, okay. My name is Veronica from the YouthIGF programme. And from the youth observatory. We started, I wanted to share a little bit of a story of a group of people that started this YouthIGF programme from Latin America that we speak Spanish, okay, and have this experience finished with the initiative that I wanted to share with you. Our discussions started how we start to be involved in Internet Governance issues and how we start learning about this. And we, the most of us said that we didn't know anything about Internet. And this was the first time we see how Internet works, who were the actors, the principal actors on the Internet. It was all very interesting to share our stories to learn together about that. And what that was our problem, mainly our problem because our Universities, there are no courses regarding to Internet, regarding on how this works. So we see that there is a lot of courses, there's a lack of courses and education. I don't know if this happens in other areas on the continent. Maybe I see that there are a lot of initiatives in Asia which is very great for us also in Europe. However, in Latin America this is getting, I don't know where. So that is why we thought that one of the main things we can do is to be the connection between partners at ICANN that have a lot of content already worked, and our Universities, our partners are friends that doesn't know anything. That is why we started a programme called Ambassadors of the Internet? Our Universities. My friends are going to be like all these days in this, in Pallco talking to you. They have our cards, like this one. I don't know how to ... (Laughter.) >> AUDIENCE: Yes, we have a web page. This is an initiative. We are starting to launch it. If I see that there are a lot of youth programmes already working on these topics, we are so open to hear about your experience and try to help us, each other and do the better, because yes, there is a lady saying that maybe here in the youth we are not representing all the people from our country, but this is just a way to engage youth people in this process of policymaking, of thinking. So we just want to have the help from UN and support. Thank you very much. (Ana Neves.) >> Thank you. Another thing I want to mention, you don't really need to restrict it to have a collaboration right now. It can happen beyond in room. It can happen beyond in IGF. Go around and network with more people at the end and then we can get more outcome out of this. Now passing to Raymond. >> Raymond: Thank you. I I really appreciate all the people here because we sit for a long time to discuss youth participation. In my view I want to express one point, why youth participation is important. I remember reading one phrase: ICT is possibly the most powerful tool in this era to solve problems, but itself is not a solution. Maybe we should use ICT to solve the problem that Markus can't. Youth can do it because woe don't work. We are sphil in the schools, we may think of a lot of problems that don't involve money. That is why I think a lot of people here have been doing great work in involving people to educate, learn more about IG. But I want to address one point. What is the purpose that we have to involve youth? What do we mean by participation? Do we only consult the opinions? We also want them to be involved in policymaking. That's why I really appreciate the question that that lady involved. Any real concrete result, because Hong Kong contacts, I come from Hong Kong and net mission like gain. Before joining this programme, I have never heard of anything about Internet Governance in Hong Kong, never. There is no consultation, no policymaking. In my view if we really want youth participation in the youth governance, not only do we have to educate them, but also we may have to lobby the government fof real Committee or some institution that the youth can join in and speak the voice. So I like the German model. I think that the Asia-Pacific model is still very starting point. And that is why I think in part of youth participation, that should fit with the local context. One more point is, if you are interested in some youth engagement training materials you may also approach to me that we have to make some YouthIGF toolkit because I would like in Hong Kong, before joining this programme I never heard of you have youth IG or something like that. That's why we want to educate. Thank you very much. >> JIANNE SORIANO: Thank you. Moving to the lady in the back. >> AUDIENCE: Hello, everyone. My name is Ivy. I'm from Ghana. I came as an ISOC Ambassador. Can I see by hands how many of us are not working as ICT professionals or taking up ICT courses? Can I see by hand any of us? (Pause.) >> AUDIENCE: Okay. You bear with me that those who showed their hands, they are not actively into ICT career or doing ICT courses. That means most of us who are here are maybe aware of in based on, or maybe because we are involved in ICT courses or taking up ICT career, and all that. We had an Internet Governance forum in August in Ghana. One of the outcomes that some of us proposed were that people are not aware of this Internet Governance. And during the zero of this meeting we had a youth discussion group and in our group we had young people as at the age of 12 and 11. And they had a lot of good contributions to make. And some of them pointed out that they are not aware. All that they do with the Internet is social media, Facebook, or what's app. They suggested that they think the Internet can be used to do a lot of things, but they are not aware. So as we are here, I would advocate that if we leave here, we do not just go and sit in the comfort zones. We have a lot of work to do. We need to reach out to our colleagues. There are a lot of youth activityist groups who are not ICT related. We need to reach out to them. Internet Governance is about multi-stakeholder involvement, multi-stakeholder discussions. They have a lot of contributions to make. We don't have to go and be in our own small cubicle doing IT jobs. We need to reach out and make them understand that we need their contributions to develop Internet Governance. Secondly, most of our institutions, especially in Ghana, since they have a lot of social clubs and all that. Do we reach out to them? They are not even aware. So when we have to organise national forums, we should send insure taigs to the adults. We shouldn't just send insure taigs. We should follow up and make sure that they will come. We might not really get the involvement we need now, but if we start, I believe that we will get them involved to make the Internet Governance a better forum that we want it to be. Thank you. >> JIANNE SORIANO: Thank you. Now moving to EMEA. >> AUDIENCE: Hello, everyone. I'm Yolanda from South Africa. I forgot my question but I'll go with the flow. Basically what I wanted to ask is involvement of youth in policy discussions. What do we want to be involved in? Let's say access, for example. When we a propose access as the youth, is it any different than just access in general? I want to know, like this policy discussions, are they youth-specific policy issues that we need to focus on? If so, I think we need to be much more clear on that. What I've noticed anyway, in South Africa we don't have a youth coalition, which we might want to start, myself and other people. How do we narrow down youth specific issues, even with the recent Africa IGF, there was a youth panel. What we saw from like the government and obviously private sector, oh, it's just the youth. You find our issues are always on the side line. Basically coming here I wanted to figure out, are there youth specific issues or not? Are we just trying to bring about awareness and get people to the table? So thank you. >> JIANNE SORIANO: We are running out of time on this topic. Anyone who wants to make one final intervention on what she mentioned? I'll choose someone off the table. >> AUDIENCE: Are you going to -- go ahead. So I wanted to only -- I'm from the YouthIGF. I want to reflect on all the participations that there have been here today. I think we need to reflect on what is the worth of a voice of a youth voice right now in current days because the worth of a voice is not only to have the voice and have the opportunity to participate in one of the meetings or one of the summits or forums, but actually that voice leads to a change. I can have a brilliant, magnificent idea how to change the world. If that voice does not lead to tangible and concrete result, that voice is women and girlsless. We need to change -- that voice is worthless. We have to change participation. We are always asking for more spaces. We can have hundreds of spaces. This is not a requirement like a quota. This requirement actually needs to be implemented by all the governments and by private institutions and by civil society. Otherwise, our velocity never be heard and will never lead to an actual change. Thank you. >> JIANNE SORIANO: Thank you for that. I'm sorry, we are moving on to the next question because we have two. So you know, that is a natural extension is what can we do better to engage youth in IGF. I wanted to check how many under 30 youth are here. Can you put up your hand? Okay. Me too. Okay. Great. Because we have a room full. I wanted to ask one question. How has IGF been for you so far? Do you feel excluded? Do you feel included? What is it that you feel? I want people to comment first. >> AUDIENCE: Hello, everybody. I'm gan Pedro from Portugal. It was exactly what I really wanted to say. I really have to pick on something that has already been said. We are bringing very interesting points, interesting initiatives, but then I ask the same question: There is no more than 25 adult people in the room. So this is a session towards capacity building, but how can we really build something if there is nobody hearing? Thank you. >> AUDIENCE: Hello. What I would like to say is that I feel that what you youth people show is not the essential of youth. I feel that you are sitting here and thinking in the way we adults are driving you and I would like to hear, I am a little disappointed because I don't hear youth voices, real youth voices. More than you, I know you are University people that work in policymaker issues, but I would like to think or encourage you to think programmes that will include all the youth. Artists, political movement, more text -- the youth is very wide. Here I hear just a little bit of your voice. I'm sorry. >> JIANNE SORIANO: Thank you. Moving to yourself? >> AUDIENCE: Okay. Hello. My name is Enginia, part of YouthIGF in Brazil. I'm a University student. The question about hearing hearing about youth, what we can do, what we have been driving by other people, I want to say it is other people who are here are already working to make some kind of difference, not just because we are part of the IGF conference, but because in our community, in the local place we are interested in making a difference by teaching, by talking and mentoring people in Internet Governance. For example, myself, I'm part of, I created a Web site with my friends because we felt the necessity of sharing opportunities like YouthIGF and all the incredible opportunities for fellowships and scholarships. If you think about it, this scholarship, you usually get to be heard or to be known by people who really need that. We created this Web site and we had the opportunity to share all the scholarships and thing that we know that can help you to develop the skills and the interest, because what I think is that in the universal way we know there is education and it is really kind of technical. What we need is to prepare you to work in society and actually be part, not just by talking or being part of the programme, but actually by working. In this scholarship and fellowship programme we feel that people will develop the interest and back in their local homes they will work to spread this knowledge. What we need from IGF and all the people who are developing programmes like that is sport. Not just come here and talk and have awesome opportunity, but when we come back home we go to schools or Universities and talk about that. And we know that this is really hard because of bureaucracy and all the kind of things that we have back home by having opportunity to talk. So I think this is a kind of solution that we can think by making this project and all the knowledge that we have here, to actually active people. If we can get all the people who are part of YouthIGF, all these projects to support them and give them materials, and give them mentoring, they will become leaders in their community. This is what I'm trying to do in the programme I created, I have 75 people from the State of Brazil. We have awesome results with people who have no financial need, no financial support. What they do, they go to the school and talk with the Director and they ask: Can I speak here? Can I talk about opportunities? If you have been able to do these things, not being mentioned, imagine what we can do having the support of people who are here. So thank you so much. (Applause.) >> JIANNE SORIANO: Thank you. We want to engage more people who haven't spoken. So I am going to give it to anyone who can comment on what can we do better to engage youth in IGF. No one at all? I want to give it to speakers who haven't spoken. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. >> AUDIENCE: I will be briefly actually. So as for your question, today I don't feel excluded. I feel that I have been integrated into the IGF. That said, this is my second IGF. And in my first IGF I did not feel integrated. And I can say what helped me integrate. First, I became part of groups that discussed IG during the year. There is the youth observatory. It helps people make people feel integrated. I know that some people are part of the youth from the CGI in Brazil that helped them. So there are groups that prepare you throughout the year and we contact people you know during the IGF. Programmes from institutions and the third thing that helped me was that I was assisted by someone very much more experienced than me and Ianata from Mag and having this mentorship helps to understand how the IGF works. These are the three things that I have seen personally that have a high success rate. >> JIANNE SORIANO: Thank you, that's great. Who else is a youth who has a mentor? Not many. Maybe that's something that we should work on. I mean, yourself being part of a group, mentors are easier to access, but I mean, if you look at other people who come without -- go ahead. >> AUDIENCE: Actually, we don't even need to have very experienced mentors. People who have been to one or two IGFs can reasonably well mentor younger people. So it is not like mentors are an extremely rare resource. They are quite available actually. >> JIANNE SORIANO: Is there anyone who wants to share how they feel included or excluded at this IGF? >> AUDIENCE: Thank you so much. I'm from Nairobi, Kenya. This is just a comment on the youth should not only be involved in terms of participation, in terms of participation in the process of policy discussions, but they should also be involved in terms of the actualisation of those policies which are not only sit around in a table give discussions, but when it comes to really the actualisation of what we really need to be involved in the same. Also what has already been said in terms of role molts. We need the role models to be able to mentor us because we are the leaders of today as well as the leaders of tomorrow. And the will people who supposed to guide us in terms of policy discussions and in terms of also the actualisation of the same in all sectors, whether economic, financial, or social. Thank you so much. >> JIANNE SORIANO: Great. And I think that echos the point where earlier we mentioned how to make our participation into tangible actions. I think that is a great point. Anyone else who wants to comment on the -- okay, go ahead. >> AUDIENCE: Okay, thank you. This is Haoran speaking. Brief comment. I want to invite the young people here. Because I have written most of them as an IGF Fellow. I want to ask you a question. Please think about the first time you apply for this event fellowship programme. We can see we are, there will always be a question that asks you: Why do we want to apply for this? Also benefits would you want to take away from this event? So after this as we can see, we have a very excellent programme. But after this only limited programme are continuously active pating in the -- participating in the IG event. Please keep this in mind because your motivation is most important for you to continuously join these sessions. Thank you. >> JIANNE SORIANO: That's a really good point. I see a lot of young people jupe off because of University studies or they get work and get too busy. That is very important. Raymond, you want to make a I point? >> AUDIENCE: I wanted to respond to this lady, I don't know the name. Hello! I think, okay, I'm also a University student. I want to respond to your question. If you ask for my real feeling, I feel not only should youth be educated but also the other groups including the adults because I attend a workshop and I realise some of the workshops they don't really listen to youth. I one thing yesterday, he tried so hard to speak, he had to stand in front of the model powerless to get the chance to speak. I think not only youth, but others. I appreciate all of you sitting here to hear the youth. But some of the workshops, it is not the same. That is my real feeling. Thanks. >> JIANNE SORIANO: Great. Thank you. Anyone else who wants to comment before I wrap up? >> What I wanted to add, because I think just for me this is only the second IGF. The first IGF I was at was four years ago. I see some drastic changes in the amount of youth participation. I think back then we had been like 20. Now it is more like 200, which is pretty cool. I think and Raymond said it also earlier, we are still start sort of in the starting point. Right now we are at the level that we have representation. Young people are there but they are not necessarily in the processes. One of the big issues is that young people are there one time only in IGF. We have the culture of it is all about who you know. I am here because I jumped in for an old colleague. So you need to get young people into the structures. I think there is something that we can learn from anti-discrimination work, that is how to be a good ally. There are a few rules on how to be a good ally, and something we should recognize in the IGF culture. Number one, we need to acknowledge that a group is disadvantaged or under represented. Second is that we need to actively listen to them and educate ourselves about them. The last point, we need to give the floor to young people. It is great that we had this open mic session for such a long time. Most of the workshops I attended today had five to ten minutes for questions. >> JIANNE SORIANO: One final comments? >> Very quickly. I wanted to thank everybody for the invaluable feedback. I think there is a lot of good concepts that we need to go back and reflect on how to improve our programmes. All of them are useful. Thanks for that. >> JIANNE SORIANO: Okay. So I'm going to wrap up the session because we only have three minute left. First of all I want to thank everyone on the panel, everyone who spoke up. I wish more young people on the side could have like stepped up. So that is something I wish to see next time. But I understand it is kind of intimidating to speak in front of 80 people on what you think. So there's a few points that I can summarize from this discussion. Let us not look at youth separately but as part of the stakeholder group and it is important for stakeholder groups to recognize that youth is part of you. They can be civil society or government or any other caps that they wish to take, but they are important and you should value their opinions. The next thing is turning, changing what we have here into tangible actions. I think that's super important and there are a few things I can already pick out. Number one, there are different initiatives, research networks or websites, just go and talk to them. The second thing is obviously network with different people. Everyone comes from a very different continent. They have different challenges. I think that's worth bringing back to your own country and digest that. And the other thing is mentorship. I have kind of seen mentorship as quite important and probably next year we need to put more emphasis on that with the organisation of IGF. You can jump on and organise a mentorship session as women. You don't need anyone to give you approvals. The beauty of IGF, it is loosely structured. Anything you want to do, you can just kind of raise your hand and people will need your help and you need to constantly engage with that, which is kind of difficult given there's a lot of other things that might distract you. As long as you put your head towards it, I think everyone can get that chance. So yeah, again I want to say thank you to anyone. Remember the good ally three rules: That was talked about by Martin. I just want us to have more cooperation and success towards next year's IGF. Thank you. >> DAVID NG: Last but not least I want to promote this Friday the he youth Coalition on Internet Governance. We will talk about how to work collectively on making YouthIGF more appealing. Thank you for joining us in this session. Your inputs and all the efforts you have made and in doing the report. Thanks, everyone, for joining. (Applause.) (The session concluded at 1:30 p.m.) >> MARTIN FISCHER: If you are interested in my proposal of research groups, talk to me. Just reminding you. (Please stand by for the newcomers group.) (Standing by for the Newcomers group.) (Please stand by for the Newcomers group.) (Standing by for the Newcomers Track.) >> Hello. (Pause.) >> MODERATOR: Hello. This is not working. (Standing by.) (Microphone turned off.) (Please stand by. The Newcomers Track will begin momentarily.) >> Hi, all. The Newcomers session will start very soon. So for those who will not be participating, please -- anyone sitting in the chairs, please move to the table. We have plenty of space. >> MODERATOR: Anyone else who wants to join us at the table? Thank you. It is such a small group here today. You don't need to worry about speaking up and all that. >> MODERATOR: Hi, thank you so much for coming here today. It's a Newcomer track. We see people all the way in the back. We are not monsters. So in the future you can move kind of upwards. So we've got some comments from yesterday on the Newcomer track. Today we will start with introduction of everyone who is around the table. So we will have that first and move to the government and IGOs to understand. Lee and Christina is here to understand their roles in the organisation, what are the things that they care about in IGF and how can we engage with them and then we will open up to Q & A. Okay. So we have to start from this side. Can you just kind of tell everyone who you are, what organisation you represent? Thank you. >> Hello. My name is Kanan. I come all of the way from the south and this is my first time in IGF teenlding as a youth Fellow. Thank you. >> Hello. I'm Jimmy. I'm from Hong Kong. I'm a year A student. It is my first time to come to this IGF. And. >> I'm he will VIN and I'm from Hong Kong, China. I'm a year eight student. It is also my first time to come to IGF. >> Hi. I am. (Gives name.) from less owe though, my first time from IGF. >> My name is Chris. I'm very actually and old, old comer of IGF. These three, youth engagement causes students and I help them have fun here. >> Hi. I'm nationally Charles from Hong Kong. I'm a year ten student. This is also my first time here to attend IGF. >> Hello. Karla Reyes, I'm a law Professor at stet son University college of law in Gulfport, Florida. I am here as a representative of the dynamic Coalition on blocking technologies. >> This is Eric, my first time coming here, I'm here from the youth alliance of Hong Kong. We sponsored some students in Hong Kong and we want to promote youth participation on IGF. And nice to see you guys. >> Hello. My name is Alexandra. This is my first time at IGF. I'm from ISOC. So yeah. >> Hello, Raymond from net mission Hong Kong. First time here. I come to learn. >> Hi, everyone. I'm A nrkya I work for the IGF Secretariat. Me and Bianca we started the Newcomer track stemming from our own experience. When you come for the first final to the IGF you're so confused. I think it is important to understand the IGF processes. I'm thankful to Christina and Lee. You have ten persons sitting in front of you because they are from the IGF in the beginning, but please use our mailing list if you have questions. It's a good source for communication. You can always talk to Christina and others now that you see them in the venue. >> My name is Erin. I'm from Canada and I work for free expression organisations. It's my first time with my colleague. >> I'm also working for IFECs, Head of campaign and advocacy, Heather orange, my first time here. A lot of our members which number over 100 globally are working on digital issues. It is a did opportunity for me to come and have a better understanding of what it is they are working on and the issues they are facing. >> Good afternoon. My name is Sebastian, I'm the reels support manager at. (Audio garbled.) I am here because we presented a session on internationalised domain names and enhancing linguistic and cultural diversity online. My organisation has been here a lot but this is my first time attending IGF. >> Hi, good afternoon. I'm Jo Jo from Hong Kong. This time is my first time to come because we are sponsoring the youth projects from our lion's club. This is our championship. >> Hi. Jose Mendoza from Venezuela, member Fundo Libre. My first time here. (Audio difficulties.) >> Hello, everyone. My name is -- it is my first time. I work for a telecom company, orange. >> Hello, everyone. My name is Marcia, I am from Mexico, my first IGF. I'm involved in the local initiative of Mexico. >> Great. Thank you for everyone who made the introduction. I know it might be intimidating at first but hopefully by day four you will be used to it. In the Internet Governance Forum there are civil society, academia, students and civil society. Today we are focused on meeting NGOs and so Li, he is from Council of Europe. He's the Internet Governance cord 98er on the right. And Christina is the Head of sector for are Internet Governance, stakeholders engagement at the European Commission. We will have them speak briefly about what they do, why they why they are here at IGF, what they care about. Then we open up the floor. So Li, please go ahead, thank you. >> Do you want to do that? My name is Lee. I'm, as bang ka said, I'm from ... I'm from, I live in France in Strasbourg. I work for the Council of Europe which is a intergovernmental organisation of with 47 countries in its membership. You may know, some of you may know that there is in Europe, there is a European court of human rights which is based upon the European convention on human rights. Which is a legally binding instrument which basically compels those countries to ensure they protect the rights of every individual in their countries. So it is a legal mechanism, a form of redress which you don't always find elsewhere. Which allows people, individuals to take cases to court against countries if they don't do, or they don't protect the human rights of those people, those for whom the human rights can be the freedom of expression, right to privacy or right not to be discriminate the against and many other rights besides. So that means that I'm here to try to ensure that the Internet, at least from a European perspective, has a human rights dimension to it. Which means that as we move forward with the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, there is a human element. Because the Internet is belt upon people and people need to respect it. There's dignity and integrity and nondiscrimination. And there is democracy. And these issues might seem very abstract, but as the Internet runs faster and technological change, the pace becomes faster are and as it moves forward, governments, companies need to understand how to protect people's rights and make sure they evolve in the right way. In what we do, how we communicate we don't lose sight of the Internet being people and we have the right for individual integrity, the right to choose, really choose what we do, self-determination, et cetera. So it is an ongoing thing. And that is my role. I look at the human rights, the rule of law issues and democracy issues. I want you to take home the idea that the Internet is a form of democracy. It is bringing the whole picture together. Our lives are online, that's more and more the case. It is difficult to make it distinct from our offline lives. It is important that we don't lose sight of the people. I'll pass to Christina. She works for the European Commission which is not the Council of Europe. She will tell you why. Thank you. >> CHRISTINE RUNNEGAR: Yes, thank you, Leah. Hi, my name is Christina. This is for me my fifth IGF and the third in my current role. So in a way I feel still a newcomer because you never stop learning from the IGF. So it is such an enriching experience. I think it is also a matter, simple reflection of the fact that the Internet is an innovation and a technology, keeps evolving. There are always new issues, new topics. In a way we are always Newcomers at the IGF. As Lee was saying, yes, I work for the European Commission which is different from the Council of Europe. The European Commission is one of the institutions that forms the European Union. The European Union comprises 28 Member States and yes, so we are different organisation. We are a sovereign national organisation. So we have a European Parliament that together with the Council that brings together the ministries of all the different Member States, make legislation. So in that sense we are really different animals, if I can use that expression. That is what is what makes us united is the respect for human rights and than fundamental freedoms that are part of our treaties. It is part of our DNA. In terms of Internet Governance, what we strive to do is to make sure that all the European Union Member States come to international fora and speak with a common voice. And also promote a vision of the Internet and of its governance, which is based on certain values, like fundamental principles and human rights. We also believe that the Internet is a resource for the global community which should we kept as a global Internet and fragmented Internet. We see there are other visions in other parts of the world which have a different perspective. And there are maybe some authoritarian regimes that would like to close the Internet. And we don't want that. We want to promote and open Internet. We think that this brings the most benefits to the citizens but also to the business world. The Internet is an amazing technology also to create innovation, jobs and opportunities. There is also that aspect. And in terms of the way the Internet should be corched, also for the future we believe that all players, what we say, we use a lot here in this context stakeholders should have a voice. And this is what we call the multir multi-stakeholder approach. I don't know if you came across this word. It is very much used here at the IGF. In fact, the IGF is the em boldment of this concept. It is a space where stakeholders from technical community, from government, from individual users -- who am I forgetting? Civil society, they come together and exchange ideas and opinions and this is very important, to have the space for debate ond for discussion. Maybe just for you also, as you are Newcomers, many say that the IGF is the place where you come, you discuss and nothing happens. From our point of view, the IGF is really very valuable because it is the place where you start the discussions. Maybe then there will be a follow-up somewhere else, but the discussions originate here. This is not the place to end discussions but to start new discussions. And this is why also, for instance, the European Commission is also a donor to the IGF. The IGF Secretariat is managed by donations. And we are a supporter, yes, and I think that this also shows our commitment for the IGF. >> BIANCA CAROLINE HO: Great, thank you. For all the people over here, what are the things that they can engage with you, what are the resources that they can provide? What are the things that you need from them? I just want to -- for example, if you have a lot of training on human rights or I just wanted to know, what are the areas that they can engage with you? >> Lee: Good question. So I think what is really happening now with regard the Internet is that many people don't know really what happens. They don't get it. They don't -- the understanding of clicking yes, I accept terms and conditions of service which are 50 pages long is not understood. They, the question of network neutrality, which are technical, and all the issues you read in the newspapers or online, these issues are not easy to grasp if you are not in the fields. So there is a need to build capacity. I am talking about the judges in the countries that we live in. The prosecutors that deal with the cases. So even the civil society activists and the governments. The people that you deal with the policy in the countries, it is not -- I mean, don't assume that they all understand what is being discussed here. So building capacity is key and the Internet Governance Forum is a place where you can build capacity. Lots and lots of national Internet Governance fowrps have grown over the years. I think there's over 60 or more across the world, something in the will region of 30 national Internet Governance Forum spaces in Europe in the wider Europe, 47 countries. And they are organised because people want to organise them. So they are multi-stakeholder. They try to bring people together. They try to understand the issues, what is happening and what can I do, how can I get involved? You are here because you want to get involved. It's all about participation, participation, participation. The key is to, Council of Europe, for example, in the ... (Audio cut out.) >> Lee: Taking the integrity forward. In terms of influencing policy, we work with governments. That's something else which is an important issue. If there are draft bills in your country, draft legislation, you know, that legislation can come to this organisation I work for. We can give opinions and make sure that these human rights are reflect hopefully in those draft legislations. It is a way to positively influence how government thinks. It is a way to encourage people to understand in their roles. Because we all work in silos. Everybody works in a silo. Here, here, here. The Internet by its nature goes across the borders and we are only going to be able to deal with the Internet if we go across our own borders. That is the big challenge is to be able to talk to each other. Every challenge, every problem on the Internet you can't solve in one silo here in the government ministry that you have in your country. It won't work, I don't think. Cybersecurity is a shared approach that involves user, user rights, protection, it involves governments, it involves technical people who deal with the issues too. Only by talking to each other can you really help, I say, reinforce cybersecurity. There is a need to come together. That's what we can provide. We can try to bring those actors together. I guess that's the same for the commission. If you need to address an issue, we can probably help navigate to who should be -- which actors are important and perhaps who should be at the table. And which issues are needed to really be addressed. We can help focus the debates and point you to the right people. That's where we can help. >> I absolutely agree with you, of course. National IGFs are important especially for people who cannot travel every year to the global IGF happening very far away. We don't know where it will be in the future. So national IGFs are a very good place to start with. In terms of capacity building, I would like to mention that the European Commission is creating a Web site, a tool which is called the global Internet policy observatory. And it is a place where you can find a lot of information concerning Internet Governance. It is a tool that is still under development, but it is already quite advanced. I don't have here the link, but if you go on JIPO net.org, from there you can access the actual tool. I think that is also a possibility for you to know more and navigate into the many issues affected by Internet Governance. And maybe I could suggest you to either subscribe to the newsletter and follow on Twitter the information provided by the global Internet policy observatory. There are other tools like the Geneva Internet platform which, for instance, I think is an extremely useful tool in terms of capacity building and education. So yes, I think it is a concrete suggestion that might be useful for you. But also if I may, I will would be interested to know from you what -- I mean, you have been here for a couple of days. I imagine, what are the challenges, what is difficult for you? What are your questions? That would be interesting for me to know. >> BIANCA CAROLINE HO: Anyone? Any questions? >> Maybe some people are too shy, but let me get started and I will appoint them to answer the questions. This has been a great tool for us to come all the way from Hong Kong to here. In Hong Kong probably more than 99 percent of people use the Internet. Probably only less than 1 percent of people know that there is an IGF. So there is a good idea that we can start first, the national IGF. How that will work, in Hong Kong or China. >> I can comment on that. Hong Kong, there is a YouthIGF that is already here. For Hong Kong as a city, Hong Kong is part of the Asia-Pacific region. We previously hosted a Asia-Pacific IGF. If you wanted to have your own, you can speak to NRI, which is national and regional Internet Governance forums. I think they have better resources to tell you. I can give you the contact later on how to organise one IGF. Right now it is quite grassroots. Everyone can say I want to organise them and start looking for venues, start looking for speakers and developing their agenda (Bianca.) >> AUDIENCE: I have a question about interdisciplinary discussion. I'm a lawyer by training. I'm now a legal academic, fairly new legal academic, but academic nonetheless. Many of the discussions I've gone to in the last day and a half about jurisdiction or law enforcement and cyberspace, from my perspective as legal academic focuses on those issues, some of the topics have been discussed for many years on my side of the fence, right? But it sound like it's new on this side of the fence. How would you encourage interests disciplinary die -- interdisciplinary dialogue so the discussion doesn't go around and around when some of those things have been thought through from a different discipline? Are there organisations here that are more interested in interdisciplinary dialogue that I should seek out or is it a matter of participating in those discussions and having my side of the fence heard? >> Christina: I understand your interest is on jurisdictional issues and legal aspects, correct? >> AUDIENCE: I'm actually here for blocking technology, but that is really happening tomorrow. So in the interim I have been going to sessions on jurisdiction and other legal aspects because that's what my interest is. So far the discussion I have heard resembles very closely discussions that have already happened but only a legal perspective in mind shall right? Only on my side of the fence. Now it's happening on a technical side. My question is, are there organisations I should focus on or people I should reach out to who are bridging the gap in particular? Or do I just talk in those technical discussions to try to bring my perspective to bear? >> Christina: If I can start, maybe you have more ideas. But of course here at the IGF there is a great opportunity for networking and meeting new people and new organisations. In a way what I was saying before, this is the place where conversations start. It is a matter of finding here the right people you want to talk to. In the meantime, if you are also able to share your knowledge with others who have different perspectives, I think this helps a lot because, for instance, technical community developing, I don't know, a new IP standard maybe has not in mind some legal implications of what it is doing, so this dialogue is very important to share knowledge and perspective. Of course, if you are interested in a specific aspect, there are some organisations that are more relevant for you to talk with. Including us as a representative of the intergovernmental organisations, but also I am thinking about the Internet and jurisdiction project. You should also find in the programme the right sessions for you. And then get in touch with the people an talk to them bilaterally. This is a great opportunity to meet the people here. Once you have the contact, you can continue the conversation later. >> Lee: This is a good question. This is why we're here. It is actually really difficult to get everybody that you need to get together in one room and do this. It sounds very efficient, but it is very difficult. It is a lot of work, a lot of work and a lot of repetition and discussion, discussion. And it is exhausting sometimes, I would say. You don't sometimes see the end of the will tunnel. I'm thinking of the organisation called ICANN, for example. Which meets regularly and talks about issues and issues and issues. And there's process and procedure, procedure. It is quite boring, I would say. ICANN colleague, please excuse. It is technical. It is hard sometimes to grasp. It is not easy. It is just repetition. You have to have a lot of courage. There is no silver bullet. That is why, this is nascent. The Internet is nascent and working across silos is nascent. You have to do something -- if you want to go further, you need to start with a core group of different actors. You need a trusted actor, someone who is recognised who has credibility, I think. You need individuals in and around like a cloud of supporters who can help. You need perhaps, it depends. Maybe you need the ear of the government, or individuals in a government which can maybe help orient your thoughts. But it is not one size fits all. And it will take time. But that is why I'm saying we can help maybe point you in the right direction. And identify the actors. Maybe we can even help to organise with IGF Secretariat a meeting with those actors in times to come, and get them there and get it going. But you need a lot of good will. You need the ear of certain actors. If they are not there -- if you are talking about copyrights and you want to can he copyright, you can't do that without WIPO in the room really. I don't know if it's useful to have a discussion between a single stakeholder group who are complaining about the problem if the problem is linked to an organisation or sector or stakeholder group that is not there. I would say organise it to prepare, but if you want to change things, then I think that is where the Internet Governance Forum is helpful. We are sitting here. We have no name plates. We are not really affiliated -- we are not saying I'm representing an organisation, I have a particular mandate, I'm talking about this. We are all talking quite in a flat way. And if you like, the Internet Governance Forum is unique because it gives everybody the same legitimacy to speak. We can all speak on equal footing. That is what is unique about this place. If you go back to your country, you may not get a foot in the door in a meeting because you don't have a name plate and title to go in and talk. This is a big lever for you. You understand the value of this place here and the people. I come here, if I was to send emails to people, some of the important people I know here, they may not reply to me. But I might bump into them over the coffee and they may then come to the session and you can achieve more in a five-minute thing than you would ever achieve back home according to normal channels. Really, it is very unique, underestimated. You can simply register. You don't have to pay. Just come. Okay, the question is of traveling and staying here, that's an issue. But it does travel around the world and you can connect remotely. But it really is a place where you can do a lot more -- I wouldn't say lobbying, but connecting, it's a place of action. It's knowing how to use it. That is what we are doing here. I can't, in five minutes, I cannot say to you how to use it. We can talk and have other meetings like this. We can have conference calls. And we can come together with Bianca and others and try to orient what to do. I think that's what is possible. >> BIANCA CAROLINE HO: Great. We have time for one last question. >> AUDIENCE: In response to, you discussed what they are doing some things. So we have the commitment of the government or some companies like Facebook and Google. So how can you ensure that the discussions are effective and it is used in the world? But without commissions, just discussions? >> Lee: That's a really good question. We all commit to coming here and talking but no one is obliging us to come here and talk. The companies, if you are talking about companies, they don't have to come here. They can stay at home, really. We can all stay at home. It's a question of wanting to come and to share. So that is what is key. You know, I work in Europe an we've just only now started a conversation with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and many other companies at a small level about how we can connect the governments and the companies to talk more regularly about the problems. Because in terms of -- companies don't sign treaties. Conventions. We agree, we commit to respecting human rights in our business models and in our terms of service. No, no, they don't sign those. There's no signing anything like that. It's a question of wanting to come to the table, a question of reputation. And once again, we can get them here to talk about those issues. But it is not obvious. It is not easy, especially back home. So once again, this is the place where you can grab them and put people together. I hope that ness as your question. >> Christina: To complement what Lee is saying, companies do what they are supposed to do. They do business and governments have to make sure that the rule of law is respected, democracy is respected and citizens are protected. So at the same time companies create innovation, new services, new products that go to the benefits of the final user. So there are sometimes issues and problems that needs to be rebalanced. And so that everybody is in a good situation. Of course, we live in a complex world. I don't want to say that everything is perfect. And there are very strong economic interests in the Internet ecosystem and in general, but there are also very strong political interests. It is complex. But that is why it is important for us to be here and to also defend and promote our vision of respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms. So it is not easy, but we are there precisely for that. And of course, for instance, if I can talk about the European Union, we, for instance, had -- we are creating new rules for protecting the privacy of the citizens. It is a very complex process, but we discuss also using the IGF. Then we take home and we continue that conversation. Net neutrality rules. We just had in Europe a law which is now valid for all Member States, which is a law on the open Internet. This law prevents that Internet services providers block or slow down the access to the Internet due to commercial considerations, for instance. So these are practical examples of things that do happen, but all the dialogue that is required also has to take place. >> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much for your answer. >> BIANCA CAROLINE HO: Thank you so much, Lee and Christina. I would like to give a great hand to everyone who is here today. (Applause.) >> BIANCA CAROLINE HO: Tomorrow there will be another session. Let me check. But it will be another convening same time, same room. Tomorrow it is civil society. You can come. Thank you so much, Christina and Lee, addressing difficult questions, but inevitably knowing what will happen the first time. Thank you. (The session concluded at 2:18 p.m.) (Please stand by for the next session.) (Please stand by for the Internet Governance Forum session Impact of e-commerce in the development of vertical markets.) (Standing by.) (The Internet Governance Forum 2016 session 26, Impact of e-commerce in the development of vertical markets, will begin shortly. Please stand (Please stand by. The session will begin momentarily.) (The session will begin shortly. Please continue to stand by.) (The Internet Governance Forum 2016 session 26, Impact of e-commerce in the development of vertical markets will begin momentarily. Please continue to stand by.) (Announcements in Spanish.) >> For those who don't speak Spanish, this Open Forum will be held in Spanish. So there will be no transcribing in English. Sorry for that, but it is a Spanish speaking session. Okay. (Session 26, Governments and IGOs at the IGF, will be conducted in Spanish. English captioning will resume following this sessi (Please stand by. Internet Governance Forum session number 26 is being conducted entirely in Spanish. English captioning will resume during the next session, number 36, WSIS Action Lines supporting the implementation of the SDGs.) (Standing by.) (Please stand by. The Internet Governance Forum session number 36, WSIS Action Lines supporting the implementation of the SDGs, will begin shortly.) (The session WSIS Action Lines supporting the implementation of the SDGs will begin momentarily. Please stand by.) >> Good afternoon, rn everyone. I think the technical come regs are trying to get the streaming going. We are going to start any way because there is another session starting at 5:00 o'clock. Thank you for your patience. My name Isadora even Bogdan and I am in charge of strategic planning at the ITU. We are going to be looking this afternoon in this Open Forum of how we are using the WSIS Action Lines to implement the SDG. We are really excited to be here this week at the IGF. It is great to see that we are keeping ourselves true to the WSIS plus 10 outcomes which called for aligning the WSIS process and the SDGs. It is really great to see SDGs everywhere in all of the sessions this week. >> DOREEN BOGDAN-MARTIN: What we are going to talk about in this session is specifically the WSIS action lines and putting the WSIS Action Lines lens on looking at how we can use the WSIS Action Lines to help achieve the 2030 agenda. At the ITU our membership decided at our last meeting of our Council that the WSIS would be a sort of foundation for us to achieve the SDGs. We've done quite an extensive mapping exercise based on the SDG-WSIS matrix where we look at our own strategic plan, the 17 goals and of course the WSIS Action Lines. As many of you know, we have the open consultation process ongoing to prepare for the WSIS Forum next year. We invite all of you to contribute to that. Vladimir has prepared some slides that show the preparatory process for the WSIS Forum. But for the sake of time we won't get into great detail about how we will be preparing. But just keep in mind of date of the 15th of February. If any of you are interested in being nominating yourselves to be Facilitators of the high level track, we would very much welcome take. We are also running our WSIS prizes. We would welcome you to nominate yourselves if you have great stories to tell. We have some 8,000, I think, entries now in our stock-taking database. In that stock-taking database we are linking to the SDGs where we can show concrete examples of how you can use connectivity to achieve each and every SDG. With that I am going to hand over to my colleague, Vladimir. Vladimir standingvich is gob to. >> VLADIMIR STANKOVIC: Thank you everybody, for joining us. Let me lay down the format. I will invite the Panelists to give a two minute intervention on the topics I will read. After that I invite the WSIS 2016 prizes and chapter perns to show case how on the ground projects are helping. These are critical drivers of universal solutions in the 2030 agenda for sustainable agenda. I would invite the Panelists to provide suggestions and ideas on how the WSIS imitation. >> WILL: Process including the forum on could align with SDG taking into consideration the overall review. And also close alignment between the WSIS stiement and the SDG owe sustainable development. This is a unique process for collection of information on actions carried out in the context of WSIS. Underlining the alignment with SDGs. How can local, national, concrete projects on the grassroots level as well as the innovative cross sector of will -- partnerships be more visible. I would like to invied Cedric, coordinating UN sco's projects since 2009 to take the floor. >> CEDRIC WACHHOLZ: Thank you, Doreen and Vladimir for bringing us and for the WSIS Forum. We are fully supporting, fully part of it. They are a big part of this important work. We appreciate that very much and we support it fully. For the alignment to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, I would like to start with a quote from the agenda. It is acknowledged that the spread of communication and interglobal connectedness has great promise to develop knowledge societies. And there is, of course, also the WSIS+10 part where it says we need to align. Today I would just like to give you a very short introduction from the U in NGA's perspective. We bring together 30 different agencies and there are 30 agencies we are currently the Chair together with the Vice Chairs, ITU and UNCTAD UNDP and ECLAC. And we looked at 30 agencies and asked them how did you align? I would just like to share with you five different strategies of alignment which came out of this process. When we analyzed how these different agencies did go forward in this alignment process. The first is straightforward. You can think about, I would probably think about it most spontaneously. It is about incorporating ICT deployment as an integral part of national, regional, or local health, education, and so on, strategies. It is integrating them in these national and includes also international trade and e-commerce and so on. So different agencies working on these integration into national sectors. Secondly, second approach is to really use these digital ICT services to reach out to vulnerable remote rural population realising that ICTs really have an important role to play to ensure rights-based development. That can include freedom of expressions, social media, et cetera, where ICTs are key also to reach out and ensure rights which normally could not be ensured. The third dimension would be to provide technical and policy advice on the potential of ICT innovations for sustainable development through capacity building exercises and training for policymakers. A lot of agencies are doing that. And the fourth dimension would be to support the measurement and monitoring of ICT for Development initiatives, within different sectors. The reporting on the SDGs and indicators. And union sco through the UNESCO includes indicators in their ongoing annual education statistical work on ICTs. That is a new part for us, a new measurement. Then fifth, generate and analyze new data and new innovative platforms for data collection. These are the five dimensions. If we looked at different agencies on how we approached it. In two minutes I couldn't do more. Another time I will speak more about UNESCO then. Thank you. >> VLADIMIR STANKOVIC: Thank you very much, Cedric. We will go to the Panelists and open the floor for additional questions. I would like to move to our colleague, cease seal, economic at ung tanld the Coordinator of E trade for all. Please,. >> CECILIA: Thank you Vladimir and thank you for organizing this session. UNCTAD is part of the co-organiser of the WSIS and in particular the UPU and ICT and at the last session in May we organised a session which focused on leveraging ICT to support the SDGs on trade growth for Least Developed Countries. We heard from entrepreneurs from LDCs about how they take advantage of e-commerce. E-commerce represents, we know, a good illustration of the connection between ICT and SDGs by providing new markets on commerce and it can be a powerful driver for growth, economic growth. Access to the Internet is estimated to have the potential to generate over 2.2 trillion in additional GDP and more than 140 million new jobs in the developing world. So, for example, the SDG targets 1711 is to significantly increase the export of Developing Countries, in particular with a view to doubling the Least Developed Countries share of export by 2020. And this will by necessity require greater involvement of Developing Countries in the digital trade and e-commerce. Market again which is estimate the to $22 trillion. So the SDG we all know that they only can be realised with a strong commitment of the global community in partnerships. And WSIS and UNCTAD has launched last July together with partners a new initiative. So you were talking about concrete prongs as women and this is also a concrete project that is called E trade fall. I have brochures if you are interested. It is a multi-stakeholder initiative aiming to improve the ability of Developing Countries to use and benefit from e-commerce. It will be a driven mechanism. The idea is basically to have partners cooperating with the private sector to pull capabilities -- pool capabilities and resources. Today we have 18 organisations, international organisations that have joined. I understand that ECLAC is also eager to join. We have 22 private sector companies on board. This is very little for the moment because the initiative is so new, but this initiative is basically very timely as Cedric said. E-commerce can involve multi-stakeholder and we all have to work together. The idea is to build a portal platform where Developing Countries government will see whatever assistance is available, capacity building assistance by all Members. It is like a bit, you m select some factors and the fact sheet will appear and you will be in contact with the leader of the programme. There is coherence of the programme and this will facilitate the donor contribution. They can see whatever is available and according to the development priorities they can select whatever programmes. So the E trade initiative focuses on seven areas. Again we don't have much time but those areas the main bottleneck to e-commerce. You have to connect or you can't do anything. ICT skills are very important. You can cannot be connected without the knowledge of using the tools. Then there is the payment solutions, which is often a bottleneck. Trade facilitation as well. The legal framework which is crucial to undertake any activities online including e-commerce and access to financing. So I would like to invite you to join the e-commerce week, which will be from 24 to 28 April in Geneva. And there will be the first gathering of the partners of E trade four. Thank you very much. >> VLADIMIR STANKOVIC: Thank you, Cecile. We are witnessing understand will continue to witness many initiatives and processes to be aligning with the SDGs in the future. In this respect, I would like to inform you that this meeting comes as a part of the series, the regional review on the WSIS implementation process which started recently. This is something new for the WSIS implementation on behalf of ITU at least. We have so far organised meetings in the CS region, Asia-Pacific region and Africa region. We are using these opportunity WSIS IGF being organised in Mexico to see the will regional perspective on the Americas region. In this respect it is with great pleasure to have with us today lag did dro who is the ICT special at he can and with the digital agenda for the Latin America and the Caribbean. Please, Alrjandro, share your views with us. >> ALEJANDRO PATINO: Thank you Vladimir and thank you colleagues for inviting us to join the panel. On the topic, I think WSIS SDG matrix serves as a great tool to map, organise ICTs as enablers of the SDGs. Nevertheless, I think that this exercise should be also taking into consideration regional, national planning processes. ICT plans and digital agendas should be aligned with the development plans. This could boost effective implementation of projects that willful fill the promise of SDGs. The regional level I want to highlight that the Latin America and Caribbean, we already have a regional digital called ELAC. It has genesis with the WSIS processes. The first plan was approved back in 2005. This ICT plans states 23 objectives as priorities regarding ICTs towards 2018. It was approved by representatives of 18 countries last year. Here in Mexico. I think that also within this framework we can also encourage stronger link between ICTs and SDGs. Finally, I would like to address another topic that my colleague from union sco mentioned. It has to do with innovation for decision making. It will require a strong collaboration, global, regional and national levels. Several documents within the framework of the UN has highlighted this topic. Eventually next year in January the year end the UN will hold the first data forum that will take place in South Africa. Obviously the monitoring and reporting of 169 goals, 231 indicators of the 2030 agenda is without a doubt a challenging task. So networks encourage collaboration on data will contribute to the Optional best practices for monitoring SDGs. But also to foster better development plans for the region, obviously at a global level. Thank you. >> VLADIMIR STANKOVIC: Thank you, Alrjandro. Regional perspective is something that we all have to take particular attention to, not only to the national and local level and global as we are, but regional perspectives we know how much you defer. Your presence is appreciated. I would move to the other partners of the WSIS Forum, the Internet Society. ISOC which has been a contributing partner of WSIS forms in the last several years and also plays a key role in the nominating of high level Facilitators for the technical kernings. We have Constance the senior Director of the Internet Society, share your views on today's project. >> CONSTANCE BOMMELAER: Thank you, valid. The ISOC has been a long standing partner of the WSIS ITU and implementation of the WSIS forms and participating in WSIS discussions. This discussion is extremely timely. It allows us to re-ample that WSIS is all about sustainable development. We saw that some of the discussions deviated at certain points of time on Internet Governance discussions, but really the origin and the purpose of WSIS is about sustainable development. Ten years after WSIS phase one in 2005, with the ten-year review of the WSIS process, the community reaffirmed two very important points from our point of view. First of all, that to build the Information Society we want, it is important to use ICTs to reach broader goals. Specifically sustainable development goals. And the way to do that really is the multi-stakeholder approach. Hence the importance of having these inclusive dialogues. Again it is a privilege for the Internet Society to be part of this session today. So I think really the alignment of WSIS and sustainable development is natural. And we are seeing today that the partners, the different stakeholders are also reorganizing their work. I'll take the example of the Internet Society. Our plan of activity for 2017 now comprises very cleerm and explicitly sustainable development initiative. I would also add that I think that WSIS+10 is not the end of something. It really is the beginning. We have to think about implementation. The ten-year review was also an opportunity to realise that all the targets had not been reached. Now is the time to talk about methodology. And acceleration. From this perspective, I think there are two ways, two tools that perhaps can be developed further. First of all, the need to articulate explicitly the link between ICTs and sustainable development goals. The ITU matrix in that regard did a fantastic job. Many of our organisations use it to inform, enlighten how we organise our own activities. And then I think with a little bit of time we can take a step back and start gathering data, relevant data on what works and what doesn't work. We know that simply equipping schools is not sufficient. You need a full enabling environment, you need the right teacher and with time we are now able to analyze what works and what doesn't work. And in this regard, I think the WSIS forum and implementation track that feeds into it is probably a very good opportunity to bring together high level policy officials and show case all these stories. And the WSIS awards are also good opportunity to do that. So thank you. >> VLADIMIR STANKOVIC: Thank you, Constance. Before we move to show casing this ICT projects that are moving forward to sustainable development I would like to invite another partner of ITU, IEEE, with whom we have been working in recent years and exploring to add a component to the upcoming swot in the form of hackathon. Justin has been following these on behalf of ie. >> Thank you for asking us to speak here and all the work organizing the forum. I want to focus on one area, the local grassroots efforts and bring it into the WSIS Forum. I think that is vital to the WSIS implementation and the SDGs. And because when it comes to IEEEE, ITU is our wheel house. We have thousands of technical communities around the world. I would like to give an example. One of our groups is the special interest group in humanitarian technology in Tunisia. They worked on a volunteer basis to connect two schools with plans to connect one school per state during 2017. In addition to just connecting, they are providing high quality stem education to the boys and girls both. What makes it special, this is University students doing this. They are in the middle of doing their studies and working extremely hard. I spend a lot of time talking about that, but really projects like this should be in our opinion be brought into the WSIS Forum. Because of that, because knowledge and funding are so important not only in initiating but completing these types of projects and this is what benefits the community. This is what is for the SDGs. One of our suggestions for consideration would be allowing a networking opportunities for these individuals to meet policymakers, funders and technologists. Because I think everybody in this room can say one of the great benefits of the events like this and the WSIS Forum is the ability to connect with different people, diverse people politically, geographically. It provides opportunities to interact and learn and gain and make connections. As an example of that, Maharen, sitting over there today, he sat in the ethical dimensions of ICTs in 2030 and he's Secretary General of the site in Tunisia. This panel wasn't about connecting the unconnected or specifically about schools or the work he was doing. However, he contributed so significantly in some of the ethical considerations of connecting the unconnected, specifically education, STEM education and things like that. By doing that, it raised the profile of the work they're doing. The will people are talking to him. The connections he's making, these are the kind of things. If we can put individuals like that object panels that maybe aren't just about connecting the unconnected but other topics and allowing exposure for them. So I don't want to go over time too much. We have a booth. Come talk to us and the rest of them, there's three of them here who have been really working hard, doing great work and this is how the SDGs get achieved. They are hitting gender equality, connecting the unconnected, providing connection and we -- education and we think allowing networking opportunities for them would be a great addition to the WSIS Forum. Thank you very much. >> VLADIMIR STANKOVIC: Thank you, Justin. This session again will be an opportunity for you and your colleagues to share their views. WSIS Forum is all about that, bringing people together. Having the opportunity for the grassroots small NGOs or small companies to meet the decision makers in the spot. So before we go one by one, let me introduce you to the WSIS prize winners and champions who will share with us their experiences about WSIS. I would like them to use this opportunity again to launch the WSIS stock taking report for the Americas region. Another product of the WSIS stock taking that is kind of new and innovative where we really are putting light on the regional perspective. And in this regard, I would like to invite WSIS prize winners and champions first of all to thank you for joining us and to share with us your views on how ICTs are implementing SDGs giving on the ground examples of your awarded projects. In this respect I would like to invite SMS Karla -- the telecommunications markets of the Minister of science, technology, and telecommunications of Costa Rica. The action line action to project connected homes. Please, the floor is yours. >> First of all, thank you for the invitation. It is an honour to be here. As you said, we have a programme called (phrase.) it means connected homes. What we do is we give a laptop and a subsidy to the family that is in a condition of poverty. So this is very important because we require a full coordination in between the sector of telecommunications and the sector in charge of poverty. One of our concerns was how do we connect the unconnected if we in the telecommunications sector, we don't have the data of who these people are. So we spoke with the Director of poverty and they told us we have a database. We can tell you which families are identified to be in poverty. And this is not something, some kind of project in which a family goes to a service provider and asks for a laptop and then the service provider has to look for the information of the family. It is already done by an expert, which is the Director in poverty. So this programme helped us address the Sustainable Development Goals from different perspectives. The first one is reducing poverty because we are focused on families that live in poverty conditions. But there is also a component of quality education because we are starting with families that have a student at a high school level. So we are trying to give these kids an access to a computer to have better education, to have a new tools to study. Then the gender weeblght component is very important. Because in Costa Rica 9.2 percent of hose how olds have ahead of household that is a woman. If we reduce this analysis to the households in poverty condition, the number increases to 44.5 percent of the households have a woman that is in charge. So we are trying to address this gender equality issue by empowering women through the ICTs. And this is also related to other components like good health and wellbeing and decent work and economic growth because building on what has been said before, we can have the programme as a stand alone programme. So we also have this other initiatives not part of this particular project but which work together. For example, we have to train teachers. We have a project, because there is no use giving the kids a computer if the teacher doesn't know how to use it. We have other programmes, for instance, for entrepreneur women and we try to teach them how can you use this computer that was given to your son that is in high school, but you can use it also for your economic project. So I won't extend my presentation anymore, but IEEEE this -- but I think it is important for us to work not only on the perspective of communications in ICTs, but to work from a global perspective with the poverty perspective and the education perspective and President gender equality. Thank you. >> VLADIMIR STANKOVIC: Thank you, Karla. WSIS prize is a flagship of the WSIS process, an integral part of the WSIS stock taking, is a certain place and time where certain projects and initiatives worth mentioning are to be globally recognised. We welcome you and everyone else who joined this contest and continue to invite everyone else to submit. I would like to move to Madam Kristen that cardenas, who is the general Coordinator and winner in the action line eLearning for the massive open online course. Please share your views with us. >> Thank you for the invitation. Similar to Costa Rica, we are improving our implementation of education. We were moving from one programme that was focusing, one to one delivery. We were delivering devices to students, that we bring them home and we are changing the model now to an ecosystem model that consists in adapting classrooms in the school with connectivity and teacher training and content in order take the technology is available not only for the kids but also the teachers know how to use it and implement it. So for doing that, last year, two years ago in fact we started developing a platform of content that we won the Swiss prize in 2016. And the platform was a collaboration among different Universities, private Universities. We invite them that they collaborate with us and they gave us many courses, the Mooks. The hard work was to cure the content and classify it and put it in a platform and try to he invite people to go and take the courses to the beginning until the end. We saw a lot of people that dropped the courses very fast. After learning that many people is not educated only in the schools but also they are using these kind of platforms to learn, we decided in the basic level education to also create a platform of content and we are working on that. We are having more than 2000 courses already. They are small courses for teachers and in order that they know how to implement technology in the schools. Because for my point of view and from my job position, it is very easy to talk about how the ICT impacts education, but it is very hard work trying to include it in the curriculum of the schools, in the elementary schools. So we are working very hard in these online platforms. We strongly believe that teachers who want to use technology in their small time after school time, and during the classroom time. That is why we are focusing on trying to give a small pieces of what we want the teachers do from different sources. We are working with firms such as Microsoft, Google, and we are collaborating with all of them and we are also trying to make nets of teachers in order that they can share the best experience and practices. So in these small scale, we expect that teachers, the more active teacher uses act tiflt at least three hours a week. But we also think that after school many parents and teachers and students can use the platform. And we believe that the ICT in education will have as much impact as in the school and with outside the school with this selection of contents that we are putting available to all the students. >> VLADIMIR STANKOVIC: Thank you very much for this intervention. As a matter of fact, Mexico has been very strong in supporting WSIS process, but also in partnering with us. We have received numerous contributions and proposals from many Mexican entities. It is also a pleasure for me to introduce another WSIS prize champion that won in the federal telecommunications. Institute of Mexico, mobile telephony plans incorporator. We have Victor Martinez he, the Director of international affairs. Victor, the floor is yours. >> Thank you very much, Vladimir. It is an honour to me to be here on behalf of the fermd telecommunications institute. Good afternoon, everyone. In the institute we are fully committed that the access to telecommunications services plays a transformative role in the economic and social sectors. The ICTs are an important part of social and economic development. We celebrated the renewal of the money to the WSIS Forum and therefore we are working in order to collaborate with many Mexican stakeholders to achieve the SDGs, to the development of telecom broadcasting services including the Internet. One clear example of this is that the federal institute has many projects. One of them is mobile telephony plan incorporator that is the project that wins the award to the champion in the last WSIS Forum. This allows us to compare all services pay TV, Internet and fixed plans in single, double and single play modalities. Users have an online tool that allows them to compare the coding package of the various telecommunications services and also to find specific details regarding features, tariffs and other Options. At this point, it is important to emphasize that the comparator in our point of view contributes directly to achieve SDG number 9, particularly 9C and also credibilities the 16 objectives. The contribution to SDGs is due to the fact that the comparator as well as the reports manual empowers users with the necessary information that allows them to freely choose the service provided and permit them to know the conversion conditions under which they are contracted with the telecommunications services. So the comparator contributes to foster economic competition in telecommunications services and to decrease the prices of services and improve the quality of those services. This serves the statistical analysis that the IFD are doing considering three years after necessity began this reform. In conclusion, the comparator has contributed to transparency of the prices of those services empowering users and providing the necessary information to make better decisions regarding tariffs and plans that most satisfy their needs which has a direct impact on the prices and quality of data services. In this way through economic competition prices, telecom practices have been reduced with increasing in these. This provides aferldable access to the Internet. This in conclusion is our view that this is a comparator is helping to enrich the SDGs. Thank you, Vladimir. >> VLADIMIR STANKOVIC: Thank you, Victor, for your intervention. To wrap up this part of the session I would like to invite Dr. Margaret Bernard, senior lecture ter at the University of west independent December of Trinidad, for the will project increasing food production through ICT research and development. Margaret, please. >> Thank you, Vladimir. Good afternoon, everyone. I will tell you a little bit about our project, Agrinet. It is an ICT in agriculture project, a research and development project that aims to promote sustainable agriculture in the Caribbean. It aligns with SDG number 2, to end hunger, achieve food security, and improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. In terms of the WSIS line action it aligns with the line action C7, E-agriculture, supporting SDG 2. We saw that very good alignment between the action line and the SDG. The approach we have taken in this project is to develop several mobile and web-based applications for farmers and ago actualtural snugs. We have developed a number of apps as well as we developed open data platform for storing national agriculture data. I want to just quickly give you a little feel of what some of the apps have done. One of them, Agri diagnosis is a system for pest and disease diagnosis. And it is all including an educational component as well. We focused on four crops: Casava cuckoo are toe mat toes and peppers. Another map app, agri maps provides farmers with information on their soil, and other topographical features of their land and recommends to them what is the best crop to plant for that farm. It is a tool that can be used by agricultural policymakers to manage land use within the country. Another app is a financial management tool. Most of the are farmers in our country and in fact in the whole Caribbean are family farms, small family farms. Many of these farmers do not keep good records. This tool allows them to manage their farm as a business. And what it promotes then is the farmers can now become more active participants in value chain discussions within the country, can have access to financial centres. It can allow private sector investment, risks in services to come in. So all of these things are important for us to develop in the Caribbean. All apps have a back end data analytic module so we can analyze the data to see what is happening at the country level or even at a county or municipality level. One unexpected outcome that we are very pleased with is the way we were able to engage youth in agriculture. Many young WSISns now see the possibility of agriculture as a career. Agriculture is more ICT-driven. Being recognised as as WSIS champion this year gave greater visibility to our project in Trinidad and Tobago and the rest of the Caribbean and very importantly it validated the work we were doing amongst the policymakers, because we were recognised by such an esteemed international organisation. Thank you. >> VLADIMIR STANKOVIC: Thank you, Margaret very much. This is exactly what WSIS and stock taking is all about are, to promote such projects globally. Hopefully make space for your projects to partner with other entities. We have been joined by His Excellency Mr. Janis, who is no stranger to WSIS stakeholder community. Ambassador, we have heard from our colleagues from UNCTAD and UN sco and their vision about how WSIS Action Lines are implementing the support of SDGs. Would you please share your views on this topic? >> H.E. JANIS KARKLINS: Thank you very much. I will try not to contradict anything that has been said before that I did not hear. And I am an engineer by formation and my mind works in if we have a problem, what we can do. In the same way as I see the world and SDGs. So we have two phases now in SDGs. First phase is to work out nationality implementation plans. And the second phase is to implement those national plans to meet objectives that have been set out by sustainable Development Agenda. As a result, WSIS platforms, all these platforms including WSIS Forum, including Internet Governance forum and anything else should be used first of all to share information, how certain things have been planned at this stage in different regions, by different governments. The governments do not invent the wheel every time. And then starting most probably from next year, gradually we need to move to sharing information, implementation, what is working, what is not working. Again that governments are not stepping on the rake time and again and getting bull pes on their forehead. And WSIS or ITU has done in my view a very good work by mapping WSIS agenda to SDGs and this matrix, I think, can be used for sort of planning activities related to first phase and the second phase in general. I hope it was not something that contradicts what has been said before. >> VLADIMIR STANKOVIC: Thank you very much for all of your interventions. The time is closing on us. We still have some seven to ten minutes left. We have some comments from the floor. Please, Denise, from UNDISA? >> Thank you, Vladimir, I think this session is very timely that we have entire linkages between IGF and WSIS. As you know we are the online WSIS action line one, seven and 11. We organised two sessions last year in the WSIS meeting and after the WSIS meeting we have launched a UN eGovernment survey 2016. If you haven't checked yet, I encourage all the participants here to check the latest data on EU eGovernment survey. And of course, we have just started preparations for the next survey. We will have consultation meetings in Africa and in South America, Latin America in early 17. We plan to organise two sessions and plan to focus on the role of private sector, specifically in our facilitation meeting and also we will have a session on eGovernment. And we are hoping that our work on WSIS will feed into a high level political forum in June in New York and also the SDI forum. And before that we are also in communication with UNCTAD colleagues to have a meeting during U.S. TD and bring that discussion to the WSIS Forum. Thank you for the opportunity for giving that update. >> VLADIMIR STANKOVIC: Thank you, denyis. We have another intervention from the floor. Please, introduce yourself. >> Thank you very much. My name is (indiscernible) Mousivi. I am a former member of Parliament in Iran and its ICT. It is Vice Chair of ICT Committee in the Parliament. In the WSIS action lines we have the role of governments and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development. I think there is no doubt that the U.S. government had and has a lot of influences and a big role to develop ICTs around the globe. And during past eight years, the Obama Administration, ICTs and Internet freedom and also connectivity was on top of the agenda of the U.S. policy, U.S. administration. After the new election, I think we got some concerns about whether this policy remains in action or not on top of the agenda or not. We got some general licenses for some sanction countries, especially for Iran. And Cuba, which exempts ICTs from sanctions for these countries. This is really a big concern for these countries that, whether this type of policies remains in action or not. So in my mind, ITU and WSIS stakeholders have a lot of influence and I think we should follow up and raise this concern with the new administration to make sure that this policy continues. Thank you. >> VLADIMIR STANKOVIC: Thank you for your comments. Doreen, would you like to maybe wrap up and maybe get an answer to this question? >> DOREEN BOGDAN-MARTIN: Okay. Well, regrettably the next session is supposed to start now. So thank you all for coming. I think in response to the last question, maybe just to say that the WSIS process, as you all know, is about multi-stakeholderism. It is about coming together and collaborating so that we can together build and information and knowledge society for all. And we do count on all of you to continue working with us through the IGF and also through the WSIS Forum. So thanks again for coming. Enjoy the rest of the IGF. (The session concluded at 1700.) (Please stand by for the Internet Governance Forum session on the African union.) (Please stand by. The Internet Governance Forum session on the African Union will begin momentarily.) (Please stand by. The session is about to begin.) >> FAYE MAKANE: Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for making the time to be with us here today. This session is about the feedback from the African IGF that took place from the 16th to the 18th of October in South Africa. I think the IGF was a three-day occasion. What happened, this was the first ever that happened during the IGF that we had a high level meeting before the main event, where we had experts coming to talk about topical issues, issues that are of interest to us as Africans and can we take the Internet innovation forward as Africans. It was the first that we had more than four ministers present at the IGF. For me, I think we need to build on that momentum. For as long as we have had the African IGF we never had senior officials or ministers in the meeting. This was the first time. I think going back home we need to communicate to our government official, communicate to our governments to say this is an important issue and we need to participate actively. What happens here is going to influence what happens in Africa. It is a very important forum for us to be part of. For us in Africa, this will actually, it completes the multi-stakeholder process or the multi-stakeholder approach. Most of the time governments are not part of the discussions that we are having. It is like we are speaking alone and the policymakers are the no listening to what is being said. I'm sorry, I work for the Department of telecommunications and postal services. Without further ado, the first Panelist is Idell Sulliman. He is the senior policy officer at the AUC. Over to you. >> Thank you, Polita. I would like to highlight some of the ... (Microphone not working properly.) >> Some of the achievement also of this vision of the IGF that too place in did your ban, South Africa. As well as also talk about the challenges. One of the highlights, I think the rest of the speakers also will speak about some of these issues, but one of the highlights that we introduce the African Union declaration, net governance. Actually in the previous IGF. And this is kind of an example that shows that multi-stakeholder model is working. And also the process we are very proud about the process through which the African Union, the Internet Governance was drafted and worked on. It is a bottom-up approach where the draft convention, the draft declaration was put online for everybody to make comments and then commencing with the call for the African Union ministers of ICT looking at the convention and also making contributions. And in Durban, making some sort of proposal to put forward the convention to the Head of state to adopt, consider and adopt the convention. So we think this is kind of a multi-stakeholder working. I have five minutes. I think I need to go to the challenges. I think, number one challenge is that everybody in the room and all the ICT experts believe that the ICT is the enabler for the Africa to leap frog into the 21st century. Indeed, also in achieving the SDGs. But not everyone is sold on that. Particularly the political leaders. They are still, there is a lot of convincing that we need to do. So what we are facing was the lack of the political will, the so-called political will. And somehow for us, the action taken by South Africa to invite ICT ministers is welcome. And this is kind of one way to mitigate that lack of political will to include the policymakers in the discussion. So that they are informed about the issues and then they can also -- we can get their buy-in into this notion that ICT should be the enabler for the Africa to join with the 21st century. Of course, we don't have all the answers. That's why we have this discussion. And I think my colleagues is going to speak to some of the answers in his presentation. The second challenge is to do with trust and confidence in the use of ICT. So throughout our discussion during the African IGF, almost all the speakers, they spoke about this efforts to rebuild trust and confidence in the use of ICT and what needs to be done. It gets to a point where you think that maybe some of the important actors are telling us: Fix it. We won't use it until you fix it. We want to see improvement. We want to get confidence back again into the ICT so that we can use it. So I think this is one of the main major challenges that we face. The last one we are, when it comes to what we do, the work we do, I think we always aim at having an impact. And to do that, I think in the last IGF we thought about kind of streamlining the recommendation so that the recommendations can be tracked and followed upon in the following upcoming IGFs. And in that context I think we are facing with kind of a question. We at the Secretariat. You know, it is something to do with the multi-stakeholder group attending the meeting. Whether they have the mandate to speak for this particular group and of course in turn, whatever the outcome or recommendation that is coming, in this context is it viable recommendation outcome? And one answer to that question is that maybe when we have enough participation in that, in all the groups, then we don't have to worry about that aspect. But again it is the age of resource. And if you think about these three challenges, maybe if you solve one, then it is a domino effect and the rest is going to be addressed. Like if you somehow, if the stakeholders have the confidence in the use of ICT, then they will invest in ICT and then you will have more participation and so forth. But so this is to lay the ground for the discussion and the kind of challenges that we are facing in order for us to kind of have very concrete recommendations and output. I was told my time is up. And I think with that I will stop. Thank you. >> MODERATOR: Thank you so much. The next speaker is Dr. Mawaki Wachoko, going to give us feedback on the African school of Internet Governance. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. So I am Malwaki Chungo, a Professor in Togo. I also am the founder of digital access consulting. In this field of Internet policy and governance. So APRISIG is one instance among those few region-focused capacity building programmes around Internet Internet Governance. There are a few of them. It started with Europe, I believe. And Latin America also has one. There is one in Asia, if I am not mistaken. And Ffri SIG is the African one. This year was the fourth edition of this school. It stand, as you know, as you have guessed, for African school of Internet Governance. It is convened by the association for progressive communications along with the agency on behalf of the African Union. So I think it has been that way since the inception four years ago and this is, this year is the fourth edition, as I said. It is generally start with a call for applications and we receive a lot of applications. And this year actually I am very pleased to say that we have, we had a good bunch of diverse, a mix of government people, civil society, first and foremost, of course, government sometimes, lawyers, students including Ph.D. candidates, soon to be maybe Professor faculty. We have also staff, sometimes staff from international cooperation agencies and so forth. So it is usually covered a lot of different profiles, cut across a lot of different profiles from different stakeholder groups, different institutional affiliation and this year was really a good harvest, if I may say so, because after a thorough assessment of the applications we chose depending on their resources and I believe we had about 30-something people this year. Frederico, if you know the figure? We have more than 30 candidates selected? Forty-five, very good. Much more than that. And the process this year as kind of surprised me. I'm not going to talk about on behalf of other people, but I am one of the faculty of, Facilitator for the learning process. I was very much surprised and positively so by the merits of the people we have this year they each gave a good, built out of this a good vibrant community that managed to carry forward the message and the take-aways and outcome of this programme. And today they have formed various groups. One that I'm aware of at least is a what's up group where they keep sharing information about Internet Governance and Internet Governance issues, and keep talking about what they have learned and the ramifications, the implications in the respective regions and countries in their respective jobs. Now, the link with the African Internet Governance comes through the practicum that we organised during the training process. We have that particularity. We give a lot of presentation, but also panels, discussion panels, a lot of interactivities and including what we call practicum. The practicum is that they are given some theme, topic, issues to work on and the form, from the different stakeholder groups to negotiate around those issues to come away for common statements. This year was really interesting because a lot of the negotiations went on and people really played very well their roles. You won't tear people some away where activists, they were playing a government role and they play very well. Some others were playing business, et cetera. And they came up with a statement on, a common statement on the issue. The issue this year was Internet shutdown. So the exercise was so interesting, so much so that the common statements was carried over to the African Internet Governance Forum and they delivered that statement during the proceedings at the African IGF. The interesting, one of the interesting aspects of organizing the Afri SIG and the African IGF together is the practical aspects of what the learners, the students have learned during the school can be implemented or can be carried over to the actual Internet Governance forum, interacting with government notably, but also various stakeholders. So the Afri SIG class of 2016, they participated a lot in the IGF, the African IGF proceedings. Not only did they deliver their statement but also many of them volunteered to be rapporteurs. And they were involved in the various debates and they even organised their own sessions on different topics and came at the closing session to deliver their outcome. So that is one of the very interesting aspects of this. We can come back to details in the questions and answers. >> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Dr. Malwaki. I will hand it over to talk about the key outcomessant the possible future, he is a member of the Security Council of Nigeria. The cofounder the Nigeria IGF and a member of the MAG. Mr. Olivier? >> Thank you very much, Ms. Moderator. I would like to respond to my colleagues request on some information that he posted across. And then I want to respond to what you are requesting us to look into. But I want to emphasize one thing. Please, will you permit me to speak as African, a concerned African? Because I have observed that we have always been engaging in Internet Governance Forum over the long period of time. We have had enough of the talk show. We have had enough of engaging the community, the same community all over again. And we have also have had enough of engaging in international programmes or events like this. But I am concerned about the, a question that we should ask ourselves: Where are we really going? What is really the impact, the value that we are trying to derive from all this participation and all this documentation and all that? Now, before I could provide a response to that, I want us to look at certain things. Now, I would like to emphasize that the current approach to Internet Governance in Africa is extremely one-sided. It is not yet multi-stakeholder. Because when you talk about multi-stakeholder mechanism, then you have the equal representative for the stakeholders group. When you look at the multi-stakeholder structure that we have now, you have government and probably some civil society and few -- want to say active participation the business, student, youth. I have to give it to them. The last year, the African IGF we can see the input of the youth and I can tell you that that is quite impressive. But taking it from there, I want us to look at how can we expand the frontier of Internet Governance in Africa? How can we build a wall? We have three products. The first product which have, the African constitution on cybersecurity. We have the IGF, Internet Governance charter. We have the outcome of the Internet Governance which has been on a daily basis. We can measure the impact of these documents. What have we been able to do? Let me streamline this on cybersecurity? I know I have little time. See, it worries me that the African country seems to embrace more an international document, but when it comes to our own document then you find ourselves asking question, question, and question. My intention is not really to blame ourselves. But what is the real theme that is making Africa not to embrace its own policy document? If it is incentive, if it is funding, how can we address the issue of funding? How can we bring people who can organise the product that we have so it can be, the other stakeholders can a accept it and look at it in a manner that this is a document that has to do with our future. How can we drive it? How can we support it? Then on the Internet Governance, the way we are running Internet Governance in Africa, fine, I really want to give kudos to the veterans that have been doing that. I think there is a need to learn from what yiewr dig is dosmght it is essential for us to have African Union, you know, maybe provide secretarial support, but I think there is a need to have the cooperation of all will stakeholders, most especially the business community. When I was discussing with one of the organisers, we were talking about issues of funding. I said Africa has funds. You know, I don't want us to be coming to the international programmes like this and always be looking for funding. Let me use the, there is only one company in Africa that has been funding it. I'm talking about GLOW. Why? Because the impact and the cost of California is well communicated to the business society and they are supporting it and funding it. How can we communicate to the outcome of Internet Governance process to the stakeholders, especially the business community so that they can fund what we are doing. They can be engaged. Then we can actually build trust issues. There can be no trust if we refuse to provide an enables environment that will bring the other parties into. >> MODERATOR: Excuse me, time is up. >> Let me stop here. When we ask questions, thank you. >> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, even though you didn't give us the recommendations that we requested you to give us. So the next person, not the recommendations but the key highlights of the high level meeting. That is what we are expecting. But now I will hanltd over to my friend in NDI who will talk about the recommendations of the IGF and also the issues of inclusiveness and trust in Africa. He is a senior librarian. Over to you. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. I am a librarian and I am in I have La, the international association of library association. I'm thement of Senegal's library association. I guess we are going to share about the recommendations that we heard from the African IGF 2016 in Durban. For each session we had a reelings, assisting the role of Internet Governance in the Sustainable Development Goals. The stakeholders recommend that the government needs to partner with libraries to deliver on national development plans. And also government must embrace interinternet Governance as a social governance tool for community transformation. For bridging the digital divide in Africa, we issued two recommendations: Government support by civil society should launch campaigns and design programmes to sensitize women on how to use the Internet, including on issue related to woman's rights. Government must also support by private sector needs to developing more digital content. About Africa's digital economy and Africa and human rights on Internet. It is, the African declaration rights and principles should be adopted and implemented by all stakeholders. The other thing is the government also, the media, private sector and civil society should initiate educational programmes at the community level. And in local languages that would raise awareness on the Internet and promoting IGF forums. Connecting the next billion, which role for Africa? Here also government and Parliaments should establish a framework for promoting local content development and consensus. And regulartive bodies must promote affordability of the Internet to people in Africa. Third, local government needs to create community networks where communities provide the Internet access for an among themselves by connecting via network or wifi access point. Privacy issues in the Internet, it was recommended that African Member States should sign and ratify the EU convention on cybersecurity and personal data protection. And also all stakeholders should promote measures on rebuilding trust and confidence in the cyberspace. And also reinforce capacity building on Internet Governance issues. Inclusive development in Africa. We found that African governments should establish clear goals specifying what was needed to achieve the digital agenda. Governments, private sector and regulatories it get government agencies to migrate from ipt six and reduce the cost of access to the Internet. About the youth and entrepreneurship and innovation, also the digital transformation of Africa, government should involve young people when creating policy for the youth and children. Government need to integrate innovation and entrepreneurship in the education system and support helping to teach young people education. The African Union, pan African radio and television projects should take into account the needs of the youth. And so approval the African IGF charter and reports on the general IGF concerns. The draft charter must be made available online to receive input from all stakeholders. For the steak of the recommendation of the IGF 2015, government should respect multi-stakeholder approach in implementing national IGFs. IGF should be organised according to the bottom-up approach so as the nationality and regional, continental levels are up to date. Recommendation of the various IGF should be taken into consideration in government, subregional and regional organises for action and plans. Those were the issues that we wanted to share about the recommendations, Madam Chair. Thank you. >> MODERATOR: You can provide that? Thank you so much. The next speaker is Ms. Meru Duma going to speak on building on the outcomes of Durban and paving the way for digital transformation in Africa. She is the coordinator of the Nigerian IGF and the we African IGF. Over to merry. >> Thank you, Paulisa. Madam Chairperson. Before I go on, I want to correct the name of Chagu, my colleague. He is not Olivier! His name is Chagu Lugali. (Thank you for your correction.) >> Now, we are going to look at the way forward. Some of us were there. Others were not there when we came up with the resolutions and the recommendations. Okay? There are some that are low languaging fruits that we can actually get hold of and implement. And how can we implement some of the recommendations? We need buy-in of all the stakeholders. First, we need that our governments, our countries, our states, whenever EU has a meeting with them, you should be able to represent the recommendations somehow to them, for them to also realise. Some of them didn't even know what was going on in the Internet Governance space. I was so glad that the south African government came in full force to the African IGF in Durban. So it is a good development and there were others wondering whether the AU was going to use that as blackmail or not for the heads of states, look, that thing is there. We have to do it. South Africa is on board. All of us, to know the multi-stakeholder, the implication of the multi-stakeholder approach of Internet Governance. So the buy-in is very, very key to us. Amongst all of those things. We also want to look at low hanging projects we can kick off with. The business sector, for instance. How can they key into these recommendations. What should business sector take over? We are talking about digital literacy. We are talking about bridging the digital divide. We are talking about economic and social investment. They are also need to know that there is a business casetor them in the Internet Governance, just like Chagu said, we have not heard much from them in this space. It is only when they understand. So when there is business activity, business sector programme in the continent, can we take these recommendations to them? Can we take Internet Governance aspect, some aspect of Internet Governance recommendation to such programmes? Many things happen, many programmes happen in Johannesburg in South Africa, in Kenya, in Nigeria. So when we have such programme that is focused on business sector in our economy, can we bring the fact that there is business in Internet Governance so that they can see the business in it, the business value in it and then key into it. We need that. We need to do that. We have educational programme. We said governments should collaborate with libraries. I think libraries is a strong one association in Africa. I think these recommendations, the library association should take it up as well. And make it known in their own programmes as well. We need to track these recommendations. We actually, when we come to Internet Governance, African Internet Governance next year, we need to have a measurement and see whether we have made progress at all or we are still where we are. We also, I think the collaboration and partnership issues, partnering with our traditional funders and our new funders that we can find in the government, the collaboration is very, very key and important. So we should not just be talking but we get it done. And our teachers don't even know, are not digitally skilled. How can we take advantage of our recommendation and get to our school, teach our teachers to teach our students? And they too will also be able to benefit from what Internet presents. And we have the academia in our Africa. I am not sure they are playing their rules or they are playing the type of rule we expect from them. How can we take this message to the academia institution, academic institution? Our Universities should go into research. There should be research. They come up with one thing or another. I was listening to connectivity just a few hours ago. And some of the new programmes or some of the new stags or some of the new mechanisms, even the Europe is doing has now to be able to connect their communities, connect our Universities. The Universities. We want to challenge you people to go into research and get money for your efforts. Maybe I'll stop there. My time is up, right? So that we could also discuss more on it. Thank you. >> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Mary. Just one thing that I wanted to add. You know when I started speaking I said that you know, I think the process with the IGF, the African IGF in Durban was the beginning of the process of engaging government and making sure that government is there because it doesn't help coming up with recommendations when they cannot be adopted at the national level. So even though we can say that we will want to monitor the implementation, but if we don't bring our governments on board, then we will not move. So I think the important thing is to try to serve as high as possible when we go back home. The other thing I want to say, you know when we do the national IGF welds and then there is the global one. For Africa we need to focus more on our problems and challenges so we can find sewings, African solutions to our approaches. We cannot say we are like everybody else. We are a unique couldn't nenlt. We should always take that into account when we discuss and when we have dialogues that we need to come up with all solutions and not try toe adopt from others when it doesn't assist us in any way. I will open up for questions now. >> Sorry, Madam Chair, I think there is a point I missed. One point I missed is that we have the national IGF. We have the regional and then we have the African IGF. And I think we should try as much as possible to link the three so that at the African level, then we are talking about some of the issues that are at the bottom of the things, which have come from the national to the regional and then to the African level. That is the only thing I left out. Thank you. >> MODERATOR: Mactar, you have the floor. >> Thank you. My name is Mactar. I am Head of the African commission and with my colleague we are actually supporting the Secretariat of the African Internet Governance Forum. I have three to four key messages I wanted to convey. Number one is to complete what Adela -- what -- is saying with regard to our challenges. He did not mention the financial challenges we have as the Secretariat in terms of securing the required amount of money that will allow us to keep on organizing the forum. Specifically, this coming year will be actually a big challenge. We hope we will make something, but it is also very important that from the participant point of view to make sure that you are also somehow contributing at least by sponsoring yourself to participate. I know it wasn't traditional for the last four years. We have actually all the time made it happen in terms of bringing most of you to participate on that, but the challenges with budgets sometimes can happen. And we have to be ready for this such kind of situation. I hope we will be finding a solution. But in case of, just be prepared. Number two, is about issues raised by my brother from Nigeria. He actually said it right in terms of the issues specifically related to cybersecurity. The UN Convention on sibesh security. People have a tendency to try to confront the conventions. It is a useless game. It has no sense at all. One is addressing cyber crime at the international level. And the other is specifics not just with regard to personal data transactions in Africa, with the aim partly on cyber crime. I don't know why people have to put them in competition. Senegal, for example, has signed both and ratified both. So why are we having a problem? And in any case if there is any issue of ratification of that convention, you can always ask why and questions and then we will be able to assist. But from the government point of view we haven't seen any problem that is happening. It is very, I have a concern. In one hand you have the technical people asking questions while they are not pushing any agenda within the national platform to make this happen or not happen. And at the same time you have the government to actually not asking any questions, but in the same time not moving forward. So what happens is we are not moving at all. And this is why I am coming to the recommendation which is my message number three. Most of the time we do recommendations, very good recommendations, brilliant recommendations, but there is no follow-up. We from the African Union point of view, we convey the outcomes to the organs, to the governments through appropriate channels. But it is expected that those who were participating will go at the national, regional level and start pushing them. Unless we define another mechanism through which we are pushing this, and that we need to discuss at the forum over there. And my message number four is the question he came up with with regard to why, what kind of setup we do have, why the business is not participating, why the private sector is not participating. Now, we as a Secretariat, as I was saying in the beginning, are pushing those who quote-unquote cannot sponsor themselves to come. And most of the time we are thinking. >> MODERATOR: Mactar, I have to ask you to stop. >> MACTAR SECK: One last one. One, we are trying to push for civil society, academia to come, but we expect that the government representative and the business will come. The business never show up. Why? That is another question we have to address and that will be at the forum also to discuss that. I had a lot of things to say, but you know we are -- >> MODERATOR: We are almost out of time. Any more questions? >> My name is Moez, I'm a Kenyan citizen on this occasion. I just wanted to raise the issue of the African Internet shut-downs that we have seen and the unfortunate eventuality of not having even an official statement from the African Union, especially to the government from which you operate from which is Ethiopia. As much as we really would want to say yeah, these are governments and as such -- I mean, African Union is just another group of African governments. Africa has been moving fast to incorporating nongovernment members into the community. So when we don't see African Union actively pushing against some of these extreme forms, then we feel like maybe African Union is just, you know, actively participating in the principles that you are advocating even in the African Union cybersecurity convention. At no point whatsoever can a government justify complete shut down of Internet, whether State of emergency or whatever. My point, as a than African citizen, I feel like the African Union is not doing enough to push back against this detrimental push from governments around Internet shut downs and censorship. Thank you. >> MODERATOR: Thank you. I'll take another question. >> Yes, this is not a question. I just want to make a statement on some of the comments that have been made here. I do believe that -- it's Federico, representing the action coalition and inside Namibia, two organisations in Namibia. And I just would like to state up front, I'm fairly new to the IG space. One of the things I noticed and I feel that we really need to talk about is the logistical elements, which are some of the things raised here. And how -- if we want this to work, it has to be a two-way process. From the national level, as participants in this space and from the AU level. For instance, AU level can help us open doors within our governments. And speaking from a Namibian context, our government is -- well, to become clueless in this space. And so there, you get to us, you can ask us to help them understand and actually facilitate -- we are serving now on the working Committee for our long NIGF which we hope to have next settlement. And one of the issues is that our government and regulators and the people tasked with getting this off the ground from the government side are fairly clueless. And so we need some sort of mechanism to help us open doors. And I think that will also help us with, for instance, going to business at the local level. If the AU office, for instance, can give us some official endorsement to help us in that sense. Just to -- because, you know, we operate in an environment where people are like official accreditation. So we need that sort of assistance. And once we have that assistance perhaps -- we need to be creative about funding our African IGF of the perhaps using that sort of accreditation we can inspire our local IT sectors and ICT players to help us compass Tate upwards towards the African IGF level, helping us fund certain activities and things like this. It should actually, because of the constraints that we operate in, we should actually be looking at very creative measures to help us fund. But that would require of the AU office -- I'm saying this in very friendly terms because I don't get the sense there is a lot of outreach going on. So that would require a lot more pro activity from the AU office towards the national level and the subregional level. So that also, I think, an aspect that feeds into that is the issue of research. You spoke on a panel yesterday on data and the credibility of data within our context. Capacity -- >> >> MODERATOR: I'm sorry. >> I'll finish this point. Helping African organisations, research organisations and researchers to actually be doing IG related research, country specific, region expect so we don't get to these platforms and have to rely on data and research from somewhere else. And aggregated to reflect us as part of a bigger -- >> MODERATOR: Thank you, Fred wreak owe. You have the floor. >> Thank you very much. D -- this is a question to Mactar. You mentioned the problem of the African I IGF funding. Can you please explain why this is a problem that is now happening? Because I remember the 31st IGFs that there was no problem with funding at all. So out there some sponsor refuse now to pay? Is there any reason for that? Thank you. >> MODERATOR: Imla. >> Hi, I'm Imla Gandhi. I want to make two points on Internet Governance. I think in Africa what we need to do is not to copy and paste the global Internet Governance agenda but I think some of the problems that we are facing in Africa is because we are trying to be the U.K., trying to be the U.S. -- God forbid -- but we have to localize the Internet Governance agenda to suit the needs of Africa. And I think the other challenge that we also face as Africans, we actually had problems coming to Mexico, visas are an issue. Just saying I am going to Mexico for a visa, coming from South Africa, is just a problem. It is like you want to traffic something. So I think it is the practical things, the visas. They are so expensive. Just getting a U.S. visa I think is more than $500 importance most people, most Africans. There are practical issues I think we can look at. >> MODERATOR: Thank you, Imla. Go now? Okay. >> Good an. I'm Natasha. I'm from Namibia. This is Namibia's and civil society's first attendance of the global IGF. And I don't really want to comment much on what was said by the speakers, but I want to share my experience as an African here, what I have seen since I arrived on Saturday. We have had pre-meetings before the conference started. So I was aware -- Namibia is very new in the IG space. It was both government and civil society that made a conscious decision this year that we want to get involved actively in the IG space. So we have as government, Namibian government and civil society we have begun to engage, and we go to the African IGF meetings in Durban and started talking to the government. So we are really interested in IG now. But Namibia is a leading country in freedom of expression. We don't have a problem with Internet access, but we don't have freedom of speech challenges. If you have Internet shut downs, we are quite free environment. One of the freest in the world actually. But I wanted to say that even though I was aware of the fact that Africa, Africa GI there were understandable challenges everywhere, and I understood before talking to people that have been working, other Africans who have been working in this space wf, I was aware of the fact that the African voice at this space is basically unheard. Very little, we don't really make impact. We just are here window dressing, walking around. And that we are not really heard. And being here the past four days has kind of confirmed that for me. I have been embarrassed to go to panel discussions and to various spaces and seeing, number one, how the narrative around Africa, every time speakers want to make an example of things that should not happen, Africa is used. We as Africans are not on panels. And if we are there on panels, then we are there as the victim that was saved by the waste. But I wanted to say that even this is embarrassing. I have seen a number of africans walking around the past couple of days. Where are they? I want to challenge AU and the civil society activists, we need to change the narrative in our presence around IG issues in this space. We need to do better. Thank you. >> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Point taken. You know, we have run out of time. >> I believe they -- >> MODERATOR: Can you give us ten more minutes? Okay, Mactar, I'll give you two minutes to be respond. >> MACTAR SECK: Five important questions. I will try to be very quick without going over. Number one, the sponsorship is coming from the AU budget. And some sponsorship that is coming. Most of the sponsors, some are used to give 20,000, I'll give you 1,000. That's one thing. The AU budget actually has been cut by, and that is why it is happening. On the outreach, we have endorsed the regional Internet Governance forums through the regional economic communities to make sure that they are the ones driving the national IGFs. So the one actually has been empowered to do this kind of thing. However, we provide the endorsement for any regional IGF that will happen. We sponsor it and we push for it and we come to support it. Technically, with funds and everything. But I will explain that later. The Imla, I definitely agree with you, we need to have our own definition of what is multi-stakeholder. We can not copy the multi-stakeholder as defined today because those are the defined giving to the governments less power because they have advanced that kind of matter. We in Africa, for instance, the government is a job creator. The main, he represents, he funds academia. He funds the civil society. He does everything. And yet if you go to the definition of the multi-stakeholder, he should not play an important role. Then South Africa and African Union do have a position on that, and developed that. I am speaking quickly, but you know, I should have shut down. By the way, you don't have to feel bad about it. Africa is not the only country where you have the shut downs. That is 2.4 million lost last year because of the shut down in Middle East, in Asia, in Eastern Europe, everywhere. Africa is not the only one. We are very sorry. >> (Speaker away from microphone.) >> MACTAR SECK: No, we don't have to be worried about that. African Union commission is very sorry about that. And we try maximum to talk to those countries, but again the commission itself is composed of the Member States. And they are the one saying yes or no. >> MODERATOR: Mactar, I am going to have to cut you off. I need to. (Overlapping speakers.) >> MACTAR SECK: I would just tell you, the entire story about shutting down is not because they wanted to shut down. Because they have a security concern, most of the time coming from outside. >> MODERATOR: Mactar -- (Overlapping speakers.) >> MODERATOR: Sorry, can we not have a dialogue? >> MODERATOR: I will give an opportunity to the Panelists to wrap up. >> I just wanted to conclude by circling back to my initial concern with regard to the lack of political will. I think if we have political wills, then most of the issues are going to be taken up by the stakeholders that are concerned, whether it be government or private sectors. And to answer the question with regard to the organizing of IGF at the local, regional level, I think Mactar addressed part of it. But people need to think about the sustainability. And I think South Africa is a very good example where PPP was in action and most of the cost was beared by the private sector. People need to take note of that, thanks. >> MODERATOR: Thank you. I hand it to you. >> Thank you. Two points of the government participation. This is crucial. I am one of the people who have been complaining about we are having a multi-stakeholder process, but without governments. As long as you don't have government around the table, you are not going to have political will. So far, I think the AU participation, although AU is the pan African intergovernmental organisation, it is just a programmatic agenda. It is not a political agenda. So you need government to be involved to have a political agenda, political will behind it. So I was happy to see the involvement of South Africa last time around. Our process is like we talk about bottom up process, but our process is kind of also top-down in the sense of it goes from international to local. So we need to, although it is not a bad thing. It is good ideas may come from international, but now we need to localize them on research. Research takes time and money and resources. And I just want to draw your attention to the fact that the western world has never made any significant progress without research. But in Africa we don't give a damn about research take. That is a problem. I'm a researcher, I know the struggle. (People calling out.) >> MODERATOR: Can we have order, please. >> I have been called by a citizen of Nigeria saying African research is lacking. Many countries, research is an issue. Research is the abandoned child of all this. We need to do research in order to make progress. Thank you. >> MODERATOR: Thank you. I hand it over to you to Mr. Olugbile. >> >> OLUSEGUN OLUGBILE: I want to correct an impression from my colleagues. >> Excuse me, you have one minute. >> OLUSEGUN OLUGBILE: Number one, I would agree with you that Africa has not been having any part at the -- impact at the global level. Let me communicate this clearly. The current IGF hacking team, they have have so much debate, we have it within the MAG. We came together and formulated that. And we, but what we have not done is take advantage of what we have done, to take advantage of that. We have not seen the African coming before, the inclusiveness we are talking about is the Africa we had in mind. That's number one. Number two, you can not recreate a multi-stakeholder Mohamed. It is there. What we have not done is implement that principle. Number three, I want us to learn from Nigeria and Internet Governance Forum. What we have done, we have multi-stakeholder model. We bring the security law enforcement, law maker, everybody and we communicate the values of NIGF that has been the secret of our success the last five years. The last one which I want to emphasize, the business community. You see, if you don't have the Africa IGF you are not going to get the attention of the business community. We need to repackage it, bring a business guy, not to commerges lies the process, but you have to recreate the value. Business wants to listen to value. I can't sit here, you want me to sit here for the whole day and there is not going to be any value I will go back with? We need to address that. The last one, I think we should also look at how to review the regional outputs to African IGF process. We have enough of recommendations. >> MODERATOR: Your time is up. Thank you. >> We need to have action. Thank you. >> MODERATOR: >> I have just one word for enabling inclusive and sustainable development, to invite all the stakeholders to pass libraries and librarians. They are a safe space with access for all. Librarians trained people ready to help and to be online. Place. Partner with library and librarians for sustainable development. Thanks. >> MODERATOR: Thank you. Mary, you have the last word. >> Last word is that we should walk our talk. (Applause.) >> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. I would like to acknowledge our rapporteur over there from sim ban way. Thank you for the hard -- Zimbabwe and thank you for the hard work you are doing. You know, the discussions here were really robust. I think we need to have more discussions like this. We don't have to go to a platform and not say anything. This is the future and we have to really address the critical issues addressing Africa. I wish to see more of this type of engagement in the future. Thank you very much everybody who came and joined us for this session. Thank you. (The session concluded at 6:14 p.m.) (CART provider signing off.) Copyright © 2016 Show/Hide Header