The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Geneva, Switzerland, from 17 to 21 December 2017. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> ANJA GENGO: Hello to everyone, and thank you so much for joining the NRIs coordination session, which is an assessment session I would say of the IGF2017 work that has been produced so far. And, kind of our look toward the future, what we want to achieve over the course of the 2018 year.
I do see that colleagues are still joining us, but I would start, since we have only one hour, so we will need to be all concise and precise in delivering our remarks.
So, the purpose of this coordination session is for the all NRIs to meet in one room in one place. I think bee have some online participants, as well, colleagues present from different communities from different NRIs, and to lead us directly with the IGF secretariat, with the MAG, thanks to the MAG chair and also with our colleagues from UNDESA, and of course among yourself. So, with that, if you agree, I'm going to quickly go through the agenda that was built by the NRIs in the past couple of months in a bottom up manner and completely endorsed by all recognized NRIs.
So, we would open this meeting with quick remarks by the MAG chair, by the colleagues from UNDESA, and by the IGF secretariat leadership.
After that the NRIs will be into the following items. The first one would be in terms of the memorized joint work, what worked well in 2017, and what should be the NRIs objectives for 2018.
Should all NRIs come up with a topic of mutual interest from the NRIs joint substantive work for the next year?
What should be the nature of future collaboration among the
NRIs and the NRIs and the IGF? What is or could be the role of
regional and sub-regional IGF in a broader framework of
interaction between the NRIs? Feedback and suggestions on
current and future support from the NRIs, I'm sorry, from the
IGF to the NRIs, and obviously we will summarize our outcomes in
a form of key messages that will be sent to the divider
committee.
So, I will just, here being a very formal role of giving the
floor, and I will be reporting from this session.
With this, I would like then to invite the MAG chair, Ms. Lynn
St. Amour to open this meeting.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Welcome. I will keep my remarks very, very, very short, because as Anya said, we have a short timeframe. It is important that we hear from everybody here in the room.
I think the only thing I would like to impart is that certainly I, as MAG chair, and the MAG are very, very appreciative of all the work the NRIs do over the course of the year to help advance issues of Internet and Internet Governance.
It's extremely valuable, extremely useful. Understand that it is also a fair amount of work, and a volunteer capacity, which makes everything that the NRIs have actually accomplished this year that much more impressive.
So, the work is very important. It not only, of course, helps advance those issues locally, it really feeds in and au sports the global agenda and the global discussion here which is critically important. It is at a minimum a win-win, and frankly I think win is probably bigger on the Global IGF side with respect to all the contributions that we get from all of your efforts.
So, we're really looking to understand how we can continue to kind of deepen the relationship, where we can make some additional progress in terms of supporting you in your activities, and I think the growth has just been tremendous. And, of course we should fully recognize the efforts of Anya in the focal point role, and then so many of the other kind of really key instigators, if that is an appropriate word, Norma Cade that has been a big force here in the development of the NRIs.
I will stop to keep to short comments and pass to Arman, who is with UNDESA with dep of Social Affairs with the UN in New York. Arman.
>> Thank you, Lynn. Good afternoon, everybody. I would also be short. I will follow the trend.
My director, Mr. Jeul, was here addressing you, and he can't be here today, so he apologizes for that, but he briefed me of course about the importance of the NRI's and the whole movement that you have put in place.
I just want to convey that we are in New York very encouraged to see how this NRI is growing, not just if numbers but also in quality and in outputs, and we're very pleased to see that. So, I would put myself in listening mode for most of the time. I will write down what messages you have, what requirements you have, what requests you may have for us, for UNDESA, for the IGF Secretary eight to help you bid on this in the future.
With, that I hand it over to Chengetai.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thanks very much. Yes, I'll echo the words of Lynn and Arman, as well. Just to say thank you very much for all your hard work and we do strive for this to be a relationship that is not just NRIs to the IGF, but both ways, and we reinforce each other, and we help each other along the way.
Most of you, I think, I've spoken to and you've spoken to me, so I won't say much and just thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you very much for your remarks. With these remarks, I would then open the floor for the most critical part of this meeting, which is the purpose of this meeting at the end of the day, which is to hear from you, first of all, on the first agenda item, which is in terms of NRIs joint collaborative work, what worked well in 2017, in your opinion, and what should be our objectives for 2018? So, you can just indicate by raising your hand in case you would like to intervene. Maybe the interventions could be up to two minutes, maximum, depending on the number of interventions so that we are end this meeting on time.
Marilyn.
>> Marilyn Cade representing as co-coordinator of the IGF USA and joined by Dustin who will probably answer some of the other questions.
What I think worked really well was the very intense support that we got from Anya as the focal point, and from all of you on the team, all of you, because we got special treatment, and we need it. And, because you will notice when you look at the publication that our focal point put together, that the majority of our new NRIs took place in the last three months. So, the fact we had a well-run network, a well-run efficient communications process, an extremely responsive focal point, meant that we could be a sash brand new initiatives into the network and by the time they did their NRI they no long are felt new. The practical support that that provides and the coordination, the platform, but also the calls that take place, the second thing that I think worked very well, and I will turn to others, is the fact that we are so committed to bottom up and rough consensus. So, it does take us more time, sometimes, but that means that we have broad agreement. We will never get to unanimity and I don't think we should strive for that, but we get really broad commitment, and I think that is one of the things that worked absolutely wonderfully.
One of the things that didn't work so well is that we weren't clear enough about the purpose of our mailing list and others by past the focal point on a number of times creating confusion, so I would really strong, and other people actually used our mailing list to market themselves. And, I find that very annoying, myself, but I think it is very unfair to the focal point and to us. I would like us to have a mailing list that is just about our work. If we need to have a separate Skype chat on something where people say, hi, I just arrived, blah-blah-blah, okay, but let's make this a working mailing list. And, I think it's our fault, because we didn't set up any rules. So, that's my second point.
Then, the other thing that I would like to ask is that we, I think it worked well to have Chengetai and Lynn and Anja also attending the ICANN meetings from time to time, I convene the IGSA and the IGF coordinators that were able to attend there. I think that worked so well this year. I would like to see us do more of that next year because it brings you closer, even if you can't attend all the NRIs, you will at least be able to see some of them there.
>> Thank you very much, Marilyn.
>> Thank you. Leanna, coordinator for IGF. I would like to join the comments Marilyn just made. Absolutely agree about focal point support that was really great during the year, and the calls we have had. I would also like to say that the collaborative sessions between the NRIs was really well novelty. We collaborated, we worked together, we have the topics which was in common between the different countries, yet we got a very good session together, so that was really very good thing for this year. And, I would like it to be continued for the next, as well.
Thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you, Leanna.
Pacific IGF.
>> Thank you, Anja. I would just like to encourage the NRIs, particularly with you as the focal point, to look at a mechanism to consolidate the work that it does and feed it into the high level political forum that is happening in New York next year, and to work closely with Mr. Ar man plum who is there on the panel to see that that actually goes through, because noting that we've had 12 IGFs, and in fact the first regional IGF is actually older than the Global IGF process itself, the Caribbean IGF. So, you can actually look at how you can consolidate some of the best practices and how, in tangible examples, of how it meets the SBGs and showcase to the world the strength of the multistakeholder process, and learn with the IGF multistakeholder process being in the UN mechanisms and being one of the oldest. So, I thought I would just add that. And, also to congratulate you on excellent work that you're doing, and also to thank Marilyn Cade, and all of the NRI coordinators in the room for the work you're doing this year. Thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you very much, Sala. Let me see. Yes, can we go here.
>> Okay. I'm (?) and from University of (?) university near Beijing high. I'm the MAG member of the Asia regional IGF, but I'm not really want to talk about that API IGF, but I want to talk about GFCN, because we just heard this September, this July and there was I think IGF was set up, and actually we're a bit curious about the function and the organization of IGF CM, because the whole process is not transparent, and actually when I tried to join the IGF CN, they only accept two categories of the membership. The first was in the (?) the second one is a corporation. So, there is no category of membership, of the lack of Civil Society, and technical community. And, also, when we look at the website, it didn't show anything about the organization structure who is the board of the director member and also MAG members. So, I just curious as acdemias, how this process was set out. And, any clarification from the Secretary, yes, thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you very much. I think you are bringing important questions, but since they are on an individual basis I would allow this meeting focus on the issues that belong to the network and corporation with the NRIs and maybe we can meet immediately after this session if your schedule would allow or any time during the day to discuss those matters.
Thank you very much.
Mary Africa, and then we will go to China, Columbia, go to ICANN and to the network IGF.
>> Thank you very much. My name is Mary Uduma, and I'm from Nigeria IGF, as well as I have a role in the West African IGF, even at the Africa level.
First, I want to thank the panelists, and more over the moderator for allowing us to do the cooperative sessions. It's been very, very productive. Laid a good foundation, and I know that by 2018 (?) on what you have started, and we will get more. We shared experiences and we have key takeaways and it's been very, very educative, informative and productive, and I believe that if we continue that way, it will also help.
I want to thank you Anja. Any time I send an Email we have (?) structure or give us WebEx and she responses very quickly. So, it's been very great. And, (?) please, you've been so well.
We need to continue in this way. The network is growing, and there is no golden bag, and that is the legitimacy of the IGF, of the local or the national level. So, we are coming from the government where government plays a lot of role, so our government are now accepting that this is the way to go. So, we're going to encourage the network to grow and those that have not joined will soon be part of -- I had a lot of inquiries when I was at the booth, some coming to ask where -- how do they start their own IGF.
Thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you very much, Mary for these kind words
and concrete suggestions.
Maybe to go to China IGF.
>> Okay. Thank you, Anja. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Anja, and (?) and Chengetai, because I think the IGF really collaborative different regions, and during this year, we collaborated with other NRIs to make very successful decisions, like (?) and IPV6. I think this is a big community. We can emphasize more collaboration, not only in the technology but also the governance issues.
So, what I want to -- also I want to fit that to the lady just talking about the IGF China. Actually, we are open to all the society, but the things that we don't promote very much because we are just a start this year, and not many people know IGF China yet, but I think it's what we are working on, and we want to drive this to make more people to join us and also the door is open to all Chinese society and collaborate with international society.
Yeah, thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you very much. Maybe we can have a quick meeting after this.
Thank you. Maybe now to go to Columbia IGF.
>> Thank you. My name is Julian Casabunas from Columbia IGF. I would like to highlight what worked well in 2017, all the support from the secretariat and other MAG members for bringing global perspective of our IGF. It was very important during our annual forum. We did three training courses in Internet Governance, two on our governmental organizations, and one during our annual meeting with more than 72 participants.
Action steps for 2018 includes to become a reference point in discussions regarding issues related to Internet Governance throughout Columbia, and to develop training spaces for young people, beginners to Internet Governance. Take the IGF to different regions, where it's currently has no presence, and at the same time, facilitate the participation of regional representatives during the national forum.
And, to look for new participants, especially young people in a small and medium size enterprises. Expand and maintain remote participation. We have this year more than 200 remote participants, and we want to extend these wider. And, to attract new members, the IGF should identify ways to address the benefits of participating in the Internet Governance environment. Maintaining independence on priority of interest, promoting the importance and validity of the multistakeholder model. It's benefits and limitations. The role of Civil Society is important in achieving this, including promoting it at a regional and international forum.
And, insure that the results of the discussions held at the national level are shared at regional and international IGFs as we are doing this year.
Thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you very much, Julian. I think I said to ICANN now, Andrea, ICANN is supporting a lot of the NRIs and then we go to the Netherlands IGF and then polish.
>> Thank you, Anja. Yes, so as you mentioned ICANN has supporting not only the Global IGF but also several national regional IGFs across the five continents. In my experience in Europe we have been supporting other kind or with money or with our participation, almost all the national IGFs in Europe, for instance. We do the same in all the other regions.
To answer your -- the question of No. 1, and probably No. 4, what worked well and what could be improved for 2018. I think one thing that really worked well is the tool kit. The tool kit really did a tremendous work in promoting the multi staying holder model and teaching the multistakeholder model and letting this IGF be bottom up model and processes. This is good and tremendous advancement.
What I would say useful for 2018 and going forward, is to continue the same exercise, and to use the Global IGF as a platform to share what worked well at the national level. I see that many small national IGs. They do have struggles in terms of securing funding, in terms of establishing a legal representation in the Country to get this funding. And, or how to involve other stakeholders from their own Country. They are good for participating with ICANN, ISOC (?), but then they have a little impact in getting the same participation from the (?) from the local telecom operator or the Internet secretariat business. So, I will use the same approach of the tool kit. I will recommend to share what worked well in national IGF to talk about those issues. How did you (?) your funding go? How did you involve the local government? How were you able to get to telecom provider of your Country to give 5,000 Euros or provide support for (?) something like that? That would be extremely helpful.
Same vein, you made me think of being here, these are the same places where the first WSAA (?) were organized. WIGI was unintended consequence of WSIS. The IGF was unintended consequence of the other GIGSIS. And, the regional IGFs are unintended consequences of the global IG. Those are all positives. I think the next unintended consequence questions is positive having a national IGF real impact on a legislation, on for using a clear outcome in one Country. We need to get these things out. I'm sure that we come from one of those, rather than the global ones. That's my assessment. But, we need to give them visibility. And, we need to use the platform of the Global IGF to do that. So, to look and probably we have all the contacts, ask them, send a question. Are you aware of any outcome kit that you may track and put down? (?) participate right after the discussion on freedom of expression legislation our Country improved, and we had as a result. So, this one would be extreme important.
I stop here. If we have time to all to address No. 4. Thank
you.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you so much, Andrea.
I think Arnold from the Netherlands IGF.
>> Thank you, Anja. And, on behalf of the Netherlands IGF, I would really thank you very much for your hard work as leadership, as a focal point for the NRIs, supported by your other colleagues, Chengetai, UNDESA, and of course our MAG chair, Lynn.
We see an enormous growth of NRIs and as a national IGF, it's tremendous to see. It's already mentioned when we met the Secretary General, this is one of the tangible outputs of the IGF, and we should continue that. And, that is also was the reason and still is the reason for the Netherlands government, not only to support you with our words, but also with money. And, you know that, but perhaps the others in the room are not aware of that, but last week the Netherlands signed a multi-annual agreement with the UN covering the period 2017 to 2021 through which the Netherlands government, which is a co-organizer, (?) of the national IGF, is paying every year from 2017 100,000 Euros. That is equivalent of 118,000US dollars.
(Applause)
>> Thank you, Marilyn. It is no blank check, it has to be some work it pins our commitments to continue this multistakeholder approach and to have a strong, solid, and stable, and independent IGF secretariat with permanent staff. So, we're not going to pay too much money for consultants. We would like to see permanent staff working very hard like are you doing to expand this network. And, we see an enormous progress, and this network is working very well. There is somebody in the (?) IGF secretariat who is for us the focal point and she told me that she is very happy with the exchange of views and the Email traffic and the goals. It is working very well. But now it creates a problem for us, because she said there is so much Email coming in with the full up work, we have to hire some people to get this all done. But, that's a problem we have to tackle, and that's our problem, but we will find a way to get that sorted out.
For 2018, what are the prospects? I think that will be dependent upon other work, which is going on in two working groups of the MAG. And, one is dealing with the more strategic planning of the IGF, because at the end as I see it, is that we will have an IGF, whether it is the same or different, I don't know, but if it is a different one, then of course the national and regional IGF should perhaps link to this new work scheme,
which is coming out. We don't have clear the picture of how it shall be at the end, but that will be effective to be cleared up as well in the future.
Thank you.
>> I want to come in for one second to say obviously the five-year commitment is important and it provides some sustainability and the future. The amount that Arnold quoted is nearly four times what their average contribution as been, as well, so it was a significant step up and a much longer commitment. And, the important thing is that he's actually said he will allow us to use that, if you will, for a call for action from some of the other donor's, as well. So, you know, again, just appreciate very much, very much strong support, Arnold.
>> ANJA GENGO: I think we will now go to Eger from the polish IGF and then Italian IGF.
>> Good morning. Well, first of all, I wanted to extend a big thank you for all your support. We are a new kid on the block, and we wouldn't be born without great support from Anja, from Lynn, from Chengetai, from the secretariat. It has been a long process, but we're there, and we look forward to the future. And, so thank you again so much for all your great support.
I am speaking about the future, I wanted to raise two points. First of all, I wanted to support fully my colleague from Columbia. I do believe that training is a very important part, especially for the young IGFs, like us. We need to build capacity. We also need to help people understand how to talk about the IGF. We had a session about that today. And, how to build further capacity. How to understand what different agencies do to the UN agencies to au port Internet Governance and multistakeholders.
But, at the same time, having said that, and having supported Columbia, I also am pretty worried about the level of set of work and obligation that is are being put on IGFs, although I agree that the tool kit is a fantastic tool. And, we use it. We do have to remember that we're all, vast majority of cases working as volunteers, and there is only so much we can do. So, I just wanted to point out that when we built capacity and we build new tools, we also have to think about the internal capacity we have.
Thank you very much.
>> ANJA GENGO: Igore, thank you very much. I think we can
go to the Italian.
>> Hi to everybody. And, also, I want to thank Anja for the big job she has done for coordinating NRI. And, I think it's important for NRIs to share best practice. I think this should be one of the best value that we need. So, I think it's important to have a (?) or something that for each topic like cybersecurity and artificial intelligence and so on. The best practice, and the (?) that have been discussing during the national initiative. I think this could be a very big other value for all NRIs.
Okay.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you very much Argentina.
Now maybe we can have final remarks from (?).
>> Thank you, Anja. Felix Mongu, I'm the coordinator of
the IGFGI Congo. First, thanks for the support that give us the opportunity to make the IGF con go real. Organized this year the
first edition after some year of pushing.
The second thing, I'm impressed what I had heard about around the government support, because of (?) in Congo to make it real, we, how can I say that, we contribute ourselves the only contribution of the government was the infrastructure support, but for every year, other section that is a contribution and contribution of executive secretariat, that to give you the, how can I say that, to explain that we are really, really involved and motivated to make it -- make the IGF, how can I say that, will partner for the government and all in the DSC. I have got some recommendation of the MAG. I will be quick.
First of all, that we propose that every -- every IGF regional IGF evolution meeting between all national IGF integrating executive Secretary and MAG (?) national MAG coordinator.
The second one is that after every IGF, regional IGF we also recommend that collaboration between all national (?) that (?) situational coordinator, sorry for my French, and all executive Secretary. The third one is for the participation of all those member and coordinator we are asking to African union to support that initiative.
The third, we need to produce some, how can I say that, data and we are asking also to our Country to contribute. We've -- every data of our Country to make a database as (?) database. And, the last one, for all those content we need to translate that in every language of the union nation.
That's all. Thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you so much, (?) for these remarks.
I don't see any raised hands on this agenda item, and I think it is going to overlap maybe with the second and third agenda item. So, maybe just to park your remarks for those following items.
So, if you would agree, then I would move to another item asking you should, or can all NRIs come up with a topic of mutual interest for the NRIs joint substantive work for next year? This was actually a question that raised on several of our virtual meetings and I just thought it would be good to use this moment toe where we are, a lot of us are face to face present in one room to see whether it would be possible to at least come up as early as possible in 2018 with a topic, at least framework, that could be reflected by the NRIs agendas, that could be predicted to be reflected by the NRIs agenda given that the (?) is completely bottom up. So, this is a bit sensitive area, but since the proposal came from you, I wanted to have a it discussed here.
So, maybe to go to the IGF USA.
>> Marilyn.
>> Thank you. Marilyn Cade speaking for the IGF USA. Anja, I wanted to make a clarification. Always remember to turn your mic off. Sorry.
I need to make a point of clarification. We are bottom up, and we are consensus based, and we are not in a position to agree to any kind of hierarchical imposition or structure. Each Country needs to be able to decide for itself and sub region and region. So, I'm not saying that others might not be interested in trying to come up with a common approach, but for us, we will always have to do broad consultation. So, having said that, what I can say is that we participated along with others in identifying the eight topics that became the consultative sessions. So, it's very possible that we could -- that the secretariat focal point could propose a short time for us to consult to come up with some commonality. But, we wouldn't be able to do that from IGF USA's perspective, we wouldn't be able to do that until we did that consultation. So, that would be my immediate point.
But I just want to say that in the two NRI sessions that I moderated, the one on fake news, dis-information, and misinformation, and the one on access, there was a very strong (?) Mary is one of the organizers, I don't know if Omar is here, there was very strong interest in continuing work together on that topic, perhaps even in their -- in our national IGFs. And, then coming back in 2018. That doesn't mean to impose it on all, but I mean just coming out of those sessions, there was interest in those topics. So, perhaps, you know, hearing from others about whether they would be able to comment on a single topic, I think it would be hard for us to do that. From the IGF USA, but it was not hard for us to come up with two priorities for the consultative sessions.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you very much, Marilyn. Yes, this is exactly why I'm asking, because we have two different views among the group.
Any other comments to this? So, I don't see any raised hands, and I'm following also the WebEx. I don't see any, except Alexander telling me to speak louder, I don't see any comments on this matter.
So, with this, then, I would leave maybe this question for our next virtual meeting, beginning of January 2018 to discuss it. I do agree that it is a very sensitive area, given that the bottom up process is actually the biggest value of the NRIs collaborative process.
So, let us maybe leave it for our virtual consultations.
And, with that, maybe move to the third agenda item. That is very much connected to this first item that we discussed, and that is what should be the nature of future collaboration among the NRIs, and also between the NRIs and the IGF? And I think Marilyn tackled already the point of continuation of the collaborative sessions.
>> It's Marilyn. I'm going to make a follow up. Not everyone was here in our consultative session in 2015. We debated this issue, Marilyn Cade speaking. We debated this issue very thoroughly, and I think it would be really helpful if we went back and pulled out the transcript when ambassador Carklin's was the MAG chair, because he explained the nature of the relationship, and perhaps that would be good, Anja to share with all of our newcomers. At that time, we came up with a phraseology that we then agreed to. We've changed a lot, but we said that the IGF reflects into the NRIs and that the NRIs reflect into the IGF. And, that's kind of an elegant way of giving the flexibility of sometimes maybe being very tightly aligned, and other times really respecting the bottom up global nature. But, again, I'll just reiterate this. IGF USA would not be a position to agree to a hierarchical reporting. I know that because I have a US passport.
>> ANJA GENGO: Marilyn, thank you very much. Going to
Italian IGF.
>> I think it would be useful to have just a few topics of common interest, and maybe international initiative can add more topics to discuss. I think it could be useful. This is my point. Okay.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you very much.
Any other comments? Yes, Mary.
>> My name is Mary Udama, West African IGF. Question three, what should be the nature of future collaboration? We'll start at, as a network, and if it is not broken, do we need to fix it? So, if it is working well, we continue the work we are doing.
And, NRIs and the IGF. We are part of the IGF. There is no (?) about it and the IGF have been feeding and we have been feeding into the national level. And, we bring up our perspectives to the IGF that if the Global IGF continues it's (?) and with all the talking and the bidding, we are done talking it to the national level. I don't think the impact and the acceptance will grow. So, it is the local IGF or national IGF that is actually shooting up the other -- all the things that happen, but a lot of it, a lot of acceptance is because we do it at the national level. To my own understanding or the west Africa, we need to understand what the collaboration you are talking about, or relationship.
We had previously asked with the national or the regional IGF see to the Global IGF or to have always been said that we are different initiatives. But, after our Continental level and at our regional level, we feed in from the local because we report whatever happen had at the local level at the regional and at the continental level, not at the global level.
Thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: We have Armenia IGF.
>> I will speak on behalf of (?) European IGFCD. We do have calls during the year with flash null IGF, so as sub regional, we continue and we see that the there is a need among national IGFs to have a floor, to have a platform where we can continue discussions within a year, and we do have regular calls. And, we share our experiences, practices and there are many countries which are information, yet so sharing experiences with the experienced national IGFs with those that want to have an established a dialogue in that countries, this helps a lot with them. And, we have in a region an understanding that we want to talk to continue to talk to each other and share our practices. So, this is from (?). Framework of interaction.
>> ANJA GENGO: Yes, Andre Euro.
>> Thank you, Anja. And, also let me congratulate you for the extremely valuable work you have done over the last two years. I think without you this network would have not emerged so valuable and so quickly.
So, I'm coordinator of a regional IGF and we are constantly thinking what our role could be in respect to the Global IGF and in respect to also the regional IGFs, and we will have a retreat in January soon where we will also discuss in issue and rethink what can our role be and how we could improve. Our constant efforts are to support the Internet Governance debate, the global Internet Governance debate as such, and we believe that the national dimension in this debate is actually the most valuable part, because it really is the bottom up process when you bring up the topics from the bottom to the Global IGF.
We see ourselves as the regional IGF as a kind of linkage between the national and the Global IGF. We would like to help really to bring those topics up to the Global IGF. What we did in the past in URI DIG and I think we will continue is that we will offer a kind of assembly or gathering of national European IGFs, and I know that for the secretariat for the IGF secretariat it is very difficult to attend all the nationals you are going to be invited to. I could think that maybe also the other regional IGFs offer the same kind of gathering and then it might be less burden for the global IGF secretariat to travel to five, six, or ten regional for us and meet there the nationals which may be otherwise -- which you might not otherwise not going to meet because it would be too much trouble to go to all of them. So, I think this could be also a role the regionals could play so that there really are the platforms to gather the nationals and bring up the topics and also be the meeting point for the Global MD National Flora.
Many times, my ideas have been misinterpreted as kind of introducing a kind of hierarchy. This is definitely not our intent. That we want to introduce a hierarchy this and that we intend there is a reporting mechanism between national regional global. That's not our intent. But I think there is a lot of coordination work and enter length age work in bringing up the topics as a regional we have maybe a little bit more resources than some of the nationals which are just information, or which are very young initiatives and here we would really like to help.
We also, with the kind support of the IGF and other sponsors, we offer regular travel support, and here we have a great emphasis on inviting those who are coordinating the national IGFs because in Europe not all the people have the resource toes travel to the various places we are visiting with
our regional forum. So, this is also among our efforts to really bring them together and use the funds we have available wisely and really enhance and strengthen the Global IGF debate.
And, the last word. I think these enter -- these collaborative sessions, as they have been introduced this year, I really, and we really appreciated this new kind of format. I hope we can see this developing in the next IGF. I really believe this is an additional element of setting the agenda for the Global IGF besides the call for workshops and I also think that this is actually maybe a better way, even, to really bring the messages from the nationals to the Global IGF up and also Eurodig was the facilitator of one of these sessions, we were not imposing content, just helping to define a topic and then inviting the nationals, and I think this really this kind of session format has the potential to be developed in the future and I would very much like to thank for the (?) and the secretariat for making that possible this year.
Thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: Sandra, thank you very much for being very clear on certain points, which I think were necessary.
Any other comments from the NRI colleagues before we give the floor to the MAG chair?
Yes, Diego.
>> Thank you, Anja. First let me join everybody in the room in congratulations for the amazing job that you have been doing ahead of us, and actually, also to thank you for your resilience in, like, supporting all annoying people that we are in the room, because we are always annoying you with our emails and stuff. And, thank you so much for that.
As I told you yesterday, Anja, and I just want -- I would like to share it with the group. I think that for 2018, and I would just like to go back slightly to a topic No. 2, we think to start thinking of more structured ways of assessing consensus and of assessing the things that we want for the network as Maria would say. I think that, for instance, instead of having a main session of three hours in which every single different project wants to present what happened to the IGF audience, we should work more with documenting those things during the year and try to use these opportunities in which we are together face to face to build concrete documents and concrete things, and maybe if we could start operating by subgroups, (?) subgroups, regional subgroups and things as such, we could be able to yield more concrete results of the activities of this network. And, I think that the way that we use the space in the Global IGF, I am not seeing you, Anja, sorry, the way that we use the space in the Global IGF, should be arranged bearing in mind that idea of more structured with moderation, professional moderation, maybe, and using specific methodologies that we can come up together in our first meeting in January in order to sort of deepen the way that our process ease and our work flows for 2018.
Additionally, I just want to congratulate everybody who took the burden of creating in the last minute specific workshops for the NRIs. But I would like to highlight that was our personal experience, we add very, very (?) interaction with the Portuguese IGF, but a lot of different projects said that they would help us inputting people in the workshops and creating the documents, and in the last minute, actually, two or three projects actually worked for one session, and I think that is a matter of the way that we did not have a structured work flow, and that would be my two cents for this discussion, and I would like to thank you once again for all the amazing job that you have been doing ahead of us, and for your guidance, but also for your resiliency.
Additionally, one other thing. Marilyn said that we should use our mailing list and maybe we should even split mailing lists for having different purposes, and I think that for 2018 we should create a code of conduct that is shared and signed by all of us to guide the way that we use those mailing lists. Because it's not only some sort of a showcasing and other things that actually create an overload of messages that we receive, but sometimes we see very weird interactions in the list which should not be taken place in the list, and I think we should empower you as a sort of moderator for the list to enforce some rules that we agree among ourselves. Thank you very much.
>> ANJA GENGO: Diego, thank you very much it is concrete and to the specific points.
Let's go to IGF USA.
>> Thank you very much, Anja for giving me the floor. I apologize first for my voice. I've lost it throughout the IGF week.
(Laughter)
>> My name is Jennifer Chung. I am sec tear yacht for the Asia-Pacific regional IGF. First, I would like to echo all my colleagues around here in congratulating Anja yourself for being such a great focal point for us doing so much good work and allowing us to be able to have this network to collaborate and share best practices.
I guess two points I wanted to really highlight, and I also want to echo other colleagues, is the development and publication of the toolkits were very, very valuable. That encapsulates the work from ground up, it is a consensus based work that has never really been formally capsulated and having it at the global level gives it a prominence which is extremely important in highlighting this good work that we do at the NRIs.
The second thing I wanted to say, and Diego did talk about, the collaboration sessions I think that is a good movement forward because we're discussing substantive and pertinent issues that a lot of the NRIs were discussing within their national and also sub regional and regional levels, and having this space in the Global IGF is very important, because I think each NRI has its own view to bring, which is extremely interesting to even just participants around the Global IGF. They might find something that really speaks to them or they have opinions on these very hot topic issues that they realize, oh, maybe Japan IGF is talking about this and Sri Lanka IGF is talking about something else. That is very, very important.
And seeing if we can leverage that into some kind of substantive Intersessional work between the NRIs is very important. I think having the collaboration lines open and the communication lines open facilitated by, of course, the IGF secretariat focal point is and really valuable to all of us. So, I will keep my comments short and thank all the colleagues for this great collaboration.
Thanks.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you very much, Jennifer. So, sorry for your voice.
USI and ICANN.
>> May name is Dustin Phillips, and I wanted to provide some observations on the main session. I think it is great they increased collaboration between the NRIs and their ability to come together at this Global IGF. As the rapporteur on the main session, it was great to see the common themes come out of that, but I think that limiting it to only two-and-a-half hours, especially with that hour gap in the middle, made it hard for a truly cohesive session and I think that we could have got a lot more out of it if it was a continuous slot with maybe a little bit more time added to it, as well.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you very much.
Now let's go -- you will tell me the name. I'm not quite
sure.
>> Hello. My name is Gounla Asbring. I am APC Amazon fellow and also on the multistakeholder steering group for the APRIGF, and I just wanted to make some observations in regard to inclusion. And, obviously we want to include as many parts of the community as possible at the IGF, and that includes people with disability. I know that the secretariat has worked hard to ensure that venues and so far, is accessible as possible, and I'm just wondering if there can be in the future in some way have a person in the secretariat trained in the issues that are often barriers to people with disability and that could be physical disability, people with hearing impairments, people with visual impairments, and so that the pathway to being able to participate is fully there.
From the APRIGF experience, we specify that the host needs to have accessible venue, and this time we negotiated with the host venue tone sure that the venue was accessible in a number of different ways, and that proved successful in getting assistance from the Universities disability services office who could then assist the facilities on site, and that was very helpful.
So, I'm happy to continue that discussion with the secretariat and Jennifer might want to make any other comments in regard to the APRIGF planning.
Thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you very much for these comments.
I am sorry that Chengetai is not here he would be probably the most appropriate person for this question. We were very limited and I no e we communicated also with Andrea, we had limited physical capacity of staff to accommodate people with disabilities, and given also the venues capacity didn't help, but maybe Lynn wants to --
>> No. I just want to add that I have spoken to Chengetai about it, because it has been a quite a long thread here over the last few weeks, and we've agreed along with Andrea that we will kick off early in the next year a plan to actually build a much more robust response, if you will, to thick and taking into account all your marks, as well, so Chengetai has already committed that he would work through like a task force or something.
>> Thank you Lynn, very much, thank you for your understanding. Maybe now to go to Armenia IGF and then Trinidad and Intibago.
>> Thank you, Anja. Ali Anna.
I would like to reinforce that there is a need for more visible support from UNDESA and IGF secretariat in terms that we would like to see you in our events. I would follow up what Sandra said from (?) perspective, that I understand for IGF secretariat it would be maybe difficult to travel to all national IGFs, but yet in those countries, in Developing Countries, it is very important to see the support from the UN UNDESA and IGF, for the government. It is very important to see the support. So, if you could be engaged in the event, national event, it would really give a great visibility and credibility for the national IGFs and regional, as well.
So, that was a need for us. Thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you very much, Leanna. And, we talked about it internally and you know (?) is my regret this year. Only a couple we planned to attend and unfortunately nobody could attend due to schedule conflicts.
I think Tracy, Trinidad, Intebago, and yes, Sri Lanka.
>> Thank you very much. I would like to of course echo obviously the great support that the secretariat and the focal point through yourself, Anja, and others like Marilyn, and of course even Lynn have provided to new IGFs like ourselves (?) however, we do want to express the desire that small countries, like ourselves, have peculiar challenges inputting on events like this. We do have very limited support within Country to actually get these kinds of events going, in reaching out to our partners, (?) but the exception of the IGF, we have challenges getting funding from people you think might fund these type of IGFs, so it's a struggle. I don't know if there is anyway this can be assisted because we have struggles with remote participation, tools, struggles of getting venues to participate these sort of events, correct venues, these kinds of things, and I think for smaller countries like ourselves, we really do need some level of special attention. Affirmative action. That is the way to phrase it. We see other IGFs doing very well, happy for that. Larger IGFs, regional IGFs and national IGFs, whereas we are somehow struggling to put on these events. So, there is some way this could be assisted, I really want to make that case here today.
Thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you, Tracy. I think it is well noted and it requires several of our consultations to come up maybe with a strategic approach, but definitely there is a will on this side, and obviously on all the NRIs. So, thank you.
I think Sri Lanka and then Japan and then crow Asia.
>> Thank you (?) from Sri Lanka IGF. First of all, I would like to thank the secretariat for the support that they do for us, especially recognizing us and especially giving all the needed facilities and needed guidelines to us. Meantime, I would like to address an issue or a challenge that we are facing at the moment that there are organizations who are trying to reach us or the national regional I don't know how about regional ones, regarding the national ones. They're trying to come to us and hijack our process, multistakeholder process, and trying to evaluate us and trying to give the opinions to how we should work. So, this, is a challenge that we are facing at the moment. Kind of organizations and organization on NGOs. So, I think this may be a problem for other national initiatives, so if there is something please we need help at the moment.
Thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you.
>> Quick follow up on that. I really want to reinforce the comment that was just made, and I know we need to go on with other things, but perhaps we will take that up as a working item. There are well meaning organizations that perceive that the NRIs and work at the NRIs on their agenda is a way for them advance their agenda, but they are, perhaps, not understanding the situation, politically or otherwise in a Country, and they may actually harm the reputation of the NRI inadvertently. They may convey what is misinformation because they're not very knowledgeable. So, they are what I call the parachute team. They parachute in and study something and then they parachute out and write a report and apply for aid funding or other kinds of funding.
I am not saying that that is ill intentioned by any means, and I am not trying to pick on any particular development entity, but I think we need to have standards ourselves so that when a -- and when a small NRI who is very busily working is approached by somebody from outside that says oh, I have sponsorship money, I have this, I have that, that there is some way of kind of understanding what the underlying purpose is. We listen to everyone so that doesn't mean you would say no, but you also would need to have respect able treatment.
>> ANJA GENGO: I think I said (?) IGF, and I didn't see
any raised hands, so maybe there could be the last comment.
>> My name is Nata (?) I'm coordinator of creation IGF, and I would like to say I appreciate help from MAG and ICANN and secretariat. And, also very thankful to supporting organizations that helped us organize our events. I would also like to thank Anja for her great work and tremendous support she gives to the NRI community.
From my perspective, it's not always easy to explain our management and our institutions (?) and whoever we need some if there are someone who would let us go to some meeting, like this one, it's not always easy to understand why it's important to be part of those meetings. And, so, explaining why IGF is important is not always easy. So, I prepared some document that hopefully easy way to say why it is important, and maybe this kind of institutional help would be more than well come in our case. So, I don't know if there is possibility that we get some, I don't know, formal support or something like that that would explain why IGF as initiative is important and why and why crow Asia as a Country or as another Country should be part of that initiative.
If I can quickly move back to the question No. 2. I think from my perspective it's useful to have a topic neutral interest for various IGFs, NRIs, and I really don't know how to implement that and how to jeopardize the process of a bottom up approach.
Why I think it's useful? Because in the main session for NRI that we had yesterday, we shared our position on same topic, and my opinion is that to have a broader consensus on one topic, it would be -- it would be important to have that topic part of agenda of our IGF meeting, or maybe it doesn't have to be IGF meeting, but just to have that, to know that topic well in advance so we can ensure some kind of broader consensus. The topic will be able to speak clearly on behalf of our IGF community.
Thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you very much. Japan IGF and then we go to the (?) IGF, and I hope that can be the last comment, because we are 15 minutes over time, I think.
>> Hi, I'll be brief. This is Kase speaking for Japan or Japan IGF. Let me comment on what support do we need on the secretariat and the UN.
From a point much view, I don't think many players in Japan need much financial support, but we of course we do appreciate if we have, but if government and the industry find Internet Governance is necessary they will spend what they think they need. And, it in turn enables Civil Society to participate. So, please keep sending a strong message that multistakeholder approach and it should be at a national level. This is more or less a personal observation, but I believe this helps quite a bit in Japan.
Thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you very much. Alison.
>> I'm Alison Jones, I represent the (?) I would like to ask the colleagues here to take account participation when you (?) your national and regional forum. Perhaps not (?) but also let the organize of the (?) the Brazilian forum is fundamental to changing the way to look to the Internet. I think other youths deserve to have these opportunities.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you.
One word.
>> As the requirement, thank you as the support. We want to ask whether that is possible that the letter that the general Secretary of UN writes and puts on the website with special letters could be sent to our government from the -- on this or whatever sign it and to create to help with what the commission IGF says so that the high-level people will be able to understand. And, we want them to be in the room when we are sharing the administration of the NRIs.
Thank you.
>> I can do a quick summary. I've heard a lot of praise first of all. Which is nice. Praise for the people next to me on the podium, not so much for me, but that's good. That also shows that we're not doing everything wrong when we are selecting our (?), so that's good. Because we hear that as well.
The other point that I want to make is those of you that may not know, UNDESA is (?) based and we don't have a regional national presence. And, very often we are perceived as sitting in an ivory tower and perceived as turning out documents and especially tool kits that then supposed to be treated as the bible or the holy grail and everybody is supposed to at various documents. And, what I'm seeing here is the exact opposite, and it's very, very refreshing and encouraging to see that you amongst yourself have developed your own tools and guidelines for yourselves with a little bit of facilitation, and I'm not -- by no means, minimizing the role of Anja and Chengetai and the secretariat and Lynn and Marilyn and everybody else.
So, it's very nice to see that this actually works, that with very little facilitation from our side you amongst yourself can produce these kinds of documents of that quality and you can translate them into the six languages, which we in New York always have problems doing, honestly, because it's a very expensive exercise for us.
So, I'm taking this message back to my director and to my division. I'm also taking the message back that it would be a very good idea, and I have fully endorsed that to link the work of the NRIs somehow to the development in general. To bring this to a forum, maybe to bring it to the SDI, for em, sigh in technology forum, and I will go back to New York and discuss this. Because I think you as a group are actually a very good best practice for (?) whatever cooperation.
Then, in terms of support, so I've heard and it's nice to hear from (?) that they have dedicated funds from what I'm understanding for traveling people and participate and allow people to participate in national IGFs.
We do not have that much funding, as you know, and I say Arnold's comment that he wants us to use this really, really great contribution by the Netherlands for these kinds of purposes and the message is loud and clear and understood. We do have, however, for those of you who have had looked at the project document of the current phase of the IGF, we have actually for seen funding for capacity building, and specifically for focusing on regional national IGFs.
(Captioning will conclude in three minutes)
>> What we also put in there is that this should come up upon
request. So, we would encourage you, maybe through your
governments, and I hear that there is always -- that could
potentially be a problem of being visible vis-a-vis the
government. So, if you and your government would request support
from the IGF secretariat, we can definitely look into funding
these kind of activities.
This is not a donor's meeting and if it would a donor meeting people would likely accuse me of sounding lying a broken record. We do not have sufficient funds. If you, somehow, consider our main fundraisers, if you can convey the message to your governments that this initiative needs support and it can be generated through us, it can go directly to you, please let us know, please convey this message, and then make sure that we can have, and we can support you. I mean, definitely beyond more support.
We definitely have also some financial means to help.
So, the IGF secretariat up until the middle of this year was financially in a bit of a crisis. We are a little better off right now. We're not really out of the (?) there, but it's getting better, so we're definitely hearing you that you would like to get access to this kind of support.
I think I will leave it there.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you very much. Marilyn would like to say something.
>> Marilyn: Marilyn Cade speaking. Thank you for giving me the floor. I am not trying to speak on behalf of any other NRI who is here, and I am not telling you that this is a problem for the IGF USA for us to, we would not be asking for this support. However, I am going to tell you that based on my close collaboration with a number of the NRIs, it is not either practical or helpful to ask them to go to their government to ask for endorsement for requesting this. Perhaps we can think separately that the chair and Anja and you and I about sort of following the model of the IGF SA. The IGF support association, if they are approved by the secretariat, and they're from a developing Country, then they get the small grants. So, maybe we could come up with that kind of idea so that you know there is authentication, but it's very difficult for many of them to get this kind of access. After getting this kind of training, they may be much better able to have the visibility and to get the access.
>> Understood.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you, Marilyn. Any last comments from your side before we give the floor to chair?
Mary.
>> I just want to follow up from what was said from UNDESA, and we want to see for that collaboration between the UNDESA and the IGF secretariat. Probably if just to follow up with what those NRIs that find it difficult to go to that government, there are some that be organized by their government. So, those that will find it difficult may be walking through the IGF secretariat will be better than working for UNDESA.
Thank you.
(End of scheduled captioning concluded)