The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. 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, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Good morning, everyone. My name is Anriette Esterhuysen. I am from South Africa. I am associated with the Association for Progressive Communications. I'm the previous Chair of the IGF MAG and I have been involved in the IGF since the very beginning which gives me the privilege of having seen National and Regional IGFs first emerge with the European dialogue on Internet Governance, the African IGF, and the Asia Pacific and the Latin American IGF, and then they just became this up surge of bottom up.
So this is my first NRI session, so forgive me if I'm taking advantage of it. I really want to commend and congratulate everyone who is involved in NRI because it's not easy to get the resources. It's not easy to get the volunteers.
It's not easy to get the different stakeholder groups to participate. So this session today is about the principles for safeguarding and strengthening the core principles of a trusted Internet. And to start us and make opening remarks, another IGF Veteran, very valued colleague from Argentina, Olga Cavalli. She is a remote co‑moderator. She got up early in the morning. So I hope you have good coffee.
I think Africa coffee is better than Brazilian coffee, but I hope it's African coffee in your cup, but can you give us contextual opening remarks before we go to our NRI speakers? Welcome, Olga, and welcome online participants.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: The idea of this session today, and we don't want to take a lot of time of you because of them, but I know from the experience of the last year this meeting that there is a lot of interest for different national, Regional IGFs to speak and to share ideas and experiences. How are we going to organize the session there? We have three special ‑‑
>> MODERATOR: Olga, can you pause a minute? I don't see the transcript on the screen and for those who are hard of hearing like myself or do not have English, can our tech team help us to make sure that the closed captions are up?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much, Anriette. I was saying my coffee is from Colombia, but every time I go to Africa, I buy African coffee. Can you see the transcript? I don't see it in the screen.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: We can't see the transcript, but I suggest you go ahead while we give tech support a chance to bring the transcript up.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Good morning, good afternoon, afternoon wherever you are. It's 3:00 a.m. in the morning. So we will start with a session, with the participation of a number of National and Regional IGF representatives, and we will structure the participation in relation with three following areas, shared testimonials on what you see as the core principles which are important to build trust on the Internet.
This is the focus, how to support the principles through policy making and acting and how to support the principles through the technical side of the Internet. I have examples here for you to share, for example, a local specific issue related to global issues or local issues affecting this core principles of the Internet.
You can share good practices or successful mitigation to harms to security, for example. You can focus on ethics, AU, potential impacts on the Internet, of these policies of these new emerging technologies.
This is quite important for Developing Countries that in the case of Latin America, most ever us are users of technology that is not developed locally. We are developing this regulations right now. On the technical side, all of Internet Exchange Points for countries that are very, with the big extension like some countries in Latin America like Argentina, for example, play a fantastic role in helping with the traffic of the Internet, how the ISPs promote local infrastructure and traffic, Internet in relation to ICT infrastructure, and in your countries.
Anriette, should we wait for the transcription. I don't see it on the screen so far.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I think do we not have our speakers.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I see it now, not in my screen but small screen in the right, I can see it below. I don't know if you can see it.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: We have Nathalie with us, and maybe we can start with her and I will check if everyone else is with us. I can tell you we have Tijani Ben Jemaa, Nigel Hickson.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I have a list, but I don't know if we have all of the participants in the list.
>> NATHALIE JAARSMA: Good morning, I was actually in Addis over the last couple of days, but I returned yesterday home. So great to be able to join again online. So as I understand it, you first wanted me to talk about our principles and then later give a couple of good examples, right? So in air second round. Okay. So for us, the principles are sort of five principles are at our core the first is for human rights. We advocate for an open, free, safe and secure Internet, and this is really the free. So it's really that privacy, freedom of expression and access to information need to be respected.
Then the rule of law, Governments and companies should operate obviously within the rule of law and ensure that their actions are fair, transparent and accountable. Then the third principle is multi‑stakeholderism and its multistakeholder governance and obviously the Internet is governed in a multistakeholder way, but we also tend to do a lot of our policy making and a lot of practical operational things in a multistakeholder way and even sort of the way we try to come up with new legislation.
So that's obviously Government, civil society, private sector, technical experts, universities, so the whole ecosystem. Then the fourth principle is openness and transparency, Governments and companies should be open and transparent in their decision‑making processes, and should provide clear and accessible information about their policies and practices.
Obviously we see that sometimes it goes wrong also within Government. Then the fifth, the last one, and that's really the UN centric approach, Government and companies should prioritize the needs and rights of users and should ensure that their policies and practices are designed to serve the interests of individuals, and, of course, we also see that there needs to be done more, but these are sort of the principles by which we design our policies and then I am happy to share a couple more operational lessons learned, so others can perhaps learn from that. Back to you, Olga.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Nathalie, and I would like to commend the Netherlands for the work you do in helping develop cybersecurity, different dialogue spaces and helping countries to build regulations in relation to that. By the way, we met in New York at the time of the open‑ended Working Group of the United Nations for cybersecurity. Thank you very much.
I see Anriette is pointing to Benjamin or.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I think we can have Benjamin from the Nigeria IGF. He is online and ready to go.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Benjamin the floor is yours.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Perhaps we should go to Tijani Ben Jemaa. He is sitting right next to us. Are you ready? North African Regional IGF.
>> TIJANI BEN JEMAA: Thank you very much. Yes. My name is Tijani Ben Jemaa. I am the Chair of the MAG of the North African IGF. So today our mission is to speak about the core principles for a trusted, safe, and secure Internet. My point of view, before speaking about that, about trust and secure and safe Internet, with he have to speak about the Internet first.
First, we have to have Internet. And in my opinion, the core principle of Internet is its uniquicity. Internet is unique. And when Internet come to be not unique, we will not have Internet anymore. So the existence is in its uniquicity.
Now, we have unique Internet. It's okay. It should be used because if it is not used, it is as if it doesn't exist. So another core principle is the access. Anyone in the world should have the infrastructure to access Internet. Now that we have the Internet, we have access to Internet, physical access to Internet. If the content is not accessible, it is as if we don't use Internet.
So the openness of Internet is another core principle of the Internet. So now we have an Internet that can be used. It's okay. Now, we speak about trust, safety, and security of Internet. In my opinion, the first core principle is the human rights. The rights of anyone on the globe should be protected on Internet. If it is not protected, Internet is not trusted at all.
Second, very important principle is the confidentiality. I know we have technical means to overcome this issue, but whatever the complexity of the model of encryption you are using, there is always someone who can decrypt it. So it's right that it is a good tool, but it is not sufficient. In my point of view it's not a technical issue, it is more of an ethical and sometimes a political issue.
The other core principle is privacy. You know that surveillance destroys trust and Internet is not trusted when there is surveillance, and when I say Internet users, I don't mean individual users only, I mean companies, I mean organisations, I mean states, I mean everything, every user, every kind of user.
The other core principle is the data protection. There is a war of data. People are fighting for the data. If there is illegitimate collection of data, illegitimate processing of data, illegitimate transfer of data, this will make Internet not trusted because our data is used by other people, and they are not always used for the good reasons.
So the principles I just mentioned, the breach of these principles led good people, honest people, I'm not speaking about the other, I will speak about them later, think that the solution for this breach is digital sovereignty. And digital sovereignty will make little bit some borders for the use of Internet, and it is contrary to the principle of the Internet. Internet is cross‑border.
On the other side, there are people who think that any kind of digital sovereignty will lead to Internet fragmentation, and they are right because it might lead to that, and this I hear also, I am speaking about fair and honest people. Because if you want, there are also unfair people. There are, for example, dictator regime who wants to close the Internet for their people and they ask for digital surveillance.
On the other side, there are also those who make the breaches, those who make the surveillance, those who make or take the data of people who want Internet, who doesn't want the digital sovereignty. I am not talking about those.
I am talking about honest people, and I think those honest people can work together to reach an Internet, trusted, 156 and secure without fragmentation, and without borders for the Internet. Thank you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much, Tija ni. One point about content I remember the first domain in IDNs was in Arabic and I found that very, very remarkable for the Arabic speaking community. That was very interesting some years ago, but for me that was a turning point. Not everyone's rights in the way that some people like me think that we are all write in the same way, so that was very good for your community.
So I have next, I have a list, I will call the first in the list, which is youth Myanmar IGF, Ms. Phyo Trl, are you on site? Sometimes it happens that you cannot unmute. It happens to me that ‑‑
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Can I ask our tech support just to unmute and give right to speak. Thank you very much. It's done. Phyo Trl, I think you are record to go.
>> PHYO TRL: Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone, for giving me a chance to attend the NRI session although we are UNI anyway. Today we are discussing about the trusted Internet, so from, I would like to share from the UNI perspective that what we see the Internet is itself. I think we are asking whether we can trust the Internet or not. Of course, it might be trusted itself, but some people use the Internet for hijacking people frequently, and sometimes taking advantage of other people while other people are trying to improve and pay for the safer and more trusted Internet.
For instance, there was a cybercrime that happened very recently in our country that the cybercriminal developed an application and hijacked millions using that application. And then he was disappeared. So I think the core principles are very important because when we discuss the cyber issues there is open discussion for finding the solution for our community. Following this principle, we can get diverse background without biases by listening to the different prosperities and moving forward with the community as well as for safer place for everyone.
Depending on the various situations, the core principles are not very easy to follow and meet all of the time for those UNI who are facing ordinary stories in their countries or region, and as they are needing to work and as they are needing to stay ahead of engagements, for beating the trusted Internet. And also my colleague, Jeremy is also here so if we can get one more minute for him, I would like to add on his opinion on this matter as well. Thank you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thanks to you.
>> PHYO TRL: Jeremy, are you here?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: He cannot unmute.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Tech support, can you please unmute for us or make cohost Jeremy, someone who is called Jeremy. His name is just Jeremy in the Zoom.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: If you make me cohost, I can help. Let's move onto someone else until they can enable Jeremy.
>> I am Jeremy from Myanmar. I would like to continue what my colleague shared before. The Internet related policy is difficult. The issue be consensus stay with us to follow it, and then proceed the policy development process. And finally to implement policies.
I surely living in the Asia‑Pacific region needing to engage with more young people to location and consensus policy making. According to the Asia‑Pacific IGF, we can also accept that there are challenges such as the engaging more young people to participate. Private companies that support our collaboration are much needed for hosting IGF in Asia‑Pacific region and the open discussion.
Moreover, I think that the regulators and the policy makers are also as vital as the other stakeholders. So there are many stakeholders that advise people to develop policies and laws and regulations. Of course, the law of privacy is also crucial in the policy making process for implementation in the policy discussion or dialogue. Dialogue will be fruitful listening to their opinions and engaging with them at the policy development level.
That is the main point. Thank you very much.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Jeremy. Thank you very much. We have a list of speakers and then we have time for comments and questions from the audience, so I really beg you to be brief and we are expecting one speaker per NRI. I have next Benjamin Akinmoyeje from Nigeria IGF.
>> BENJAMIN AKINMOYEJE: Yes, I am here. Thank you for the opportunity. From Nigeria, our consideration and contribution to the conversation is we believe that since Internet has become mainstream right now and in digital transformation, it's important that safety it is guaranteed, however, it would be better if it's more empowering for our users, especially will the young people so that things like our language, our identity are reflected on the infrastructure that supports the Internet. And in this way, we can easily and carefully protect ourselves.
So those are the things we believe in. Also we believe as data has become paramount in this phase of the world economy, it's important that users participate actively in data governance, in all of the processes that surround decisions that are made to power these huge platforms, huge ecosystems in every area individuals, youth, end users, at various processes should be engaged actively and let their voice be reflected.
Also, we just don't want the Internet to be a tool of culture where a particular group of the society or the world just consume and cannot find the real reflection on the Internet. And that's why we are hoping that moving forward, we will have tools that reflect our cultures, that reflect our identity, and it's ingrained in part and parcel of all of the tools we use.
In this base, we are seen and we are represented and surely too our identity would also be protected if it reflects who we are. So these are some of the discussions and we are hoping to encourage the frameworks that will be developed or agreed upon. Thank you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank to you, Benjamin. Thank you for being concise and to the point. I think the idea of having tools that reflect our identity is a fantastic role, a major role of the Regional IGF to focus on localities and languages and culture of each country and region. I don't know if Ms. Eka Kubusidze is online or on site. Is she around. In the meantime I can go to our colleague from Colombia, Ms. Martha Sanchez from the Colombian ISOC chapter. I'm drinking Colombian coffee. If we went somewhere in the world, bring coffee from Colombia. I always miss it. Welcome. The floor is yours.
>> MARTHA SANCHEZ: Hello, Olga, I hope you can hear he many. Greetings from Colombia. I'm jealous that you are having coffee from my country. It's so good. I met you in Colombia at some point in time and it's good to be here on this panel with you. I'm here on behalf of the IGF Colombia, and as part of the Internet Society chapter our fundamental basis is to have an open and reliable and trusted Internet for everyone.
So it's a challenge for the Internet Society and for the Colombian chapter because you are seeing that trust is being affected and this affects users in and all stakeholders. We do not have basic safety in many of our countries, and we are facing many cyber-attacks which are under mining trust of users and the Internet Society needs Internet to grow and for Internet to grow, we need fully developed trust among users, Governments, and all multistakeholders.
And we have been thinking and working on four pillars that are key in relation to trust. One is trust among users which is based on human rights frameworks, confidentiality, in short, privacy, protected consumers, we also need to have a legal framework for users to access Internet.
Another pillar is to have trusted networks. In this case, it may be trust in cyber policy so that Governments will ensure safety and security among all stakeholders, and we also need reliable connectivity among all networks. The third principle is technologies to develop trust because this cannot only be words, we also need facts.
And one of the main technologies is encryption, having encryption can ensure that confidentiality that users are looking for, the lack of encryption may go against this basic principle of trust in the Internet. And the fourth and last principle is having a trusted and reliable ecosystem, and by this I mean having a governance system developed by multistakeholder approach.
We need to include all stakeholders, all sectors. We need transparency, we need to work based on shared accountability because we are all accountable when it comes to using a secure and trusted Internet.
We also need the cooperation of all national and international stakeholders. These are the principles I would like to share with you related to Internet of trust in the IGF in Colombia. Thank you so much.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Martha, the focus on encryption and security is very important, particularly considering the importance of awareness among citizens, companies and all stakeholders. In this respect I believe that the regional and national IGF play a key role in terms of raising awareness in the community.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Is the Georgian IGF speaker in the room?
>> I don't think so. You can go ahead.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Martha. I go to our dear colleague Andrea Beccalli from the Italy IGF.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: The Italy IGF is almost bigger than the global IGF. So we have to congratulate you, Andrea, and also Constantinena, this has been an IGF that has really showed what a national IGF can do.
>> ANDREA BECCALLI: Thank you. And I will convey your remarks to my colleagues. Indeed, what you can see on the background is actually the Italian IGF main session that just happened over a couple of weeks ago. I cannot be there in person, but it's as good as it gets with this remote participation. It's always inspiring to be in these NRI sessions where you learn and always confront with other experiences and you have really a taste of the variety of the Internet across the globe.
Within our IGF we did work of basically rewriting almost the Constitution of the IGF, a term of reference that takes inspiration from the global IGF, so it enshrines all of the principles of the global IGF, multistakeholder, bottom up participation enshrined in the modality of the organisation of the forum.
And kind of we tried to bring it along to the community of people that participates in the Italian IGF. In terms of larger core principles that we discussed and we support, being a European IGF, we kind of have a European framework that in a way directs us. So while just a few years ago regulation of the Internet was something that was almost threatened but never happened, we are now living in an environment in Europe where there are a lot of regulation on different parts, and particularly trying to ensure the core principles of the Internet.
So I'm not going to bore you with the acronyms, but regulation defining the freedom of speech or what is fake news, or what is the future of AI, or how you have the control and use of personal data.
All of these are part of regulatory initiatives. So what we try to do in the Italian IGF is make the stakeholders aware, because not everybody is as passionate as we are in these environments in following what's happening in Brussels, what's happing at the regional framework on regulation, and often not even the policy makers are.
So what we try to do is to bring those to discussions. We have them in the main session in data in IGF. We had the main session on Digital Services Act where we invited the Director General of the European Commission that is leading the initiative. Actually, the approval of the Digital Services Act was up just before the IGF.
But what we see in Italy is that the Government is, as many other Governments across the region in the world is working on a national cybersecurity strategy, which will, of course, take inspiration from the European directives and regulations, but it also kind of crafts particular requirements. So there is always room for interpretation for the national Governments.
So we actually hosted a session with them because we want to bring also to this national processes the multistakeholder approach, the variety of experiences into the process. It's not always easy and particularly when it's in the field of security, there is the sense that it is something that the state has to do in the top down model is the one to go.
I'm not saying that it is completely wrong, probably for certain issues it is when you have police forces involved, but having a consultation on that, on the strategy is key, and that's what we did in the internal IGF and we continue to do. I stop on the core principles. We don't have much time, but it is always great to listen to others experiences. Thank you all.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much, and it's good to know that the Italian IGF is so big and important. I am Argentinian, but I am also Italian because my four grandparents were Italian so that's part of my heart as well. Thank you for your remarks. We will give the floor to Nigel Hickson from the UK IGF. Are you around, Nigel?
>> NIGEL HICKSON: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. It's a pleasure to with you, and it's more of a pleasure to be able to follow Andrea. Andrea, bonjour. I know that's not the right word, but I used to work with Andrea, and it's a real privilege to follow him.
Perhaps I could start by just showing you a movie, and if our good friends from the technical side of the house here could just show a brief clip of what happened at our UKIGF just recently.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I think, tech team, if you can run the video that we gave you this morning now, please.
>> NIGEL HICKSON: That would be really good. The video is better than me, you know, better than me talking.
>> As an annual event and it's for multi‑ sector participation talking about IGF and topical issues for the United Kingdom.
>> I have been here this morning talking to the Conference about labor's plans to ensure that the digital age works for everyone. I think the biggest discussion point is the online safety Bill. I found it to be a very helpful discussion. It's helped me in thinking about when I'm going to do next.
>> My name is Sharon Gaffga, people may recognize me from season 7 of Love Island, but I am a Violence Against Girls campaigner and celebrity to refuge. The biggest point is how do we protect children, how do we protect young women, especially young girls online. A lot of young women are suffering from daily harassment and trolling. I receive three unsolicited photos a day. So that's one of the biggest talking points, of course, I am passionate about.
>> What we see in the discussion is the wide range of interest.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Hello. Can you hear me?
>> The U.K. IGF is an annual event and it's specifically for multisector participation in discussion about Internet Governance and topical issues for the United Kingdom.
>> I have been here this morning talking to the Conference about labor's plans to ensure that the disability age works for everyone. I think the biggest discussion point is the online safety Bill. I found it to be a very helpful discussion. It's helped me in thinking about what I'm going to do next.
>> My name is Sharon Gaffka, people may recognize me from season 7 of love island. I am also a Violence Against Girls campaigner and celebrity Ambassador to Refuge. The biggest discussion point surrounding online safety is how do we protect children? How do we protect young women, especially young girls online? A lot of young women are suffering with daily harassment and controlling. I myself receive three unsolicited photos a day, so for me that's one of the biggest talking points also I'm very passionate about.
>> What we have seen in the discussion is the very wide range of interests from safety concerns, how do we address self‑harm and suicide as a problem? Do we have to change the law to make sure we have a proper regulatory standard. How is data used? How will there be transparency? How do we have age verification tools for children when children don't have ID and credit cards? The fact that we have such an engaged conversation or a wide range of really important topics on the part of the debate shows you what a big issue this has become.
>> I think it's been fascinating. I are met interesting people and had great discussions, cost of living crisis. That's a concern if you are a student or working in some form of digital employment, then you need to also pay for WiFi and whether or not you will be able to, whether or not you will able to work and study effectively without having any sort of detrimental effect on your life.
>> AI is here, and in all its various forms whether it's voice or voice recognition or machine learning. We need to make sure it's deployed in a transparent, trustworthy and responsible way. I think that that's what is being explored here today.
>> NIGEL HICKSON: Thank you very much for playing that. I will be brief speaking because I think some of those clips underlined some of the principles that we think should underpin the Internet. Let me just go over a couple of sort of messages, if you like, from the U.K. IGF, which I think exemplify principles that many of us have talked about in this room that should underpin our work on the Internet.
Safety online, absolutely critical as we have seen. I won't give U.K. examples. I'll give examples here in Africa at the WSIS forum this week, an incredible session hosted by the ITU. We heard about African parliamentarians that are now afraid to go online, that you if like come interface ‑‑ can't interface with constituents because of the hate speech that they receive.
We must stop this. This is undermining our trust in the Internet. The digital divide, how can we have principles if some of our population, a billion or so are still not online? We must do more to connect those that are not online.
Trust in encryption as has been said by others, we need encryption for privacy for the online experience that we all need to have trust in what we do. And we need trust in encryption, no back doors, we need trust in encryption. Data, we need trust in data. Data as many people say is fueling the fourth industrial revolution. Data is incredible, open data is enabling us to do things in our public services that we were never able to do. We take Google Maps, you know, we take it for granted.
We take bus timetables for granted. It's incredible what data can do. But also we have to trust our data, and that is also in relation to AI fragmentation, we have to have interrupt in the Internet. We have to be able to reach the people we want to reach. That's a fundamental tenant of the Internet, the end‑to‑end experience.
We would not have the services we have today unless we have this end‑to‑end principle, and we must safeguard that, and Internet fragmentation is something high on many of our agendas. And finally, it comes down to people. It comes down to all of us. What we do, what the difference that we make as people on the Internet. Trust and people. Thank you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much, Nigel. We have finished our list of speakers. I think we have heard a coincidence of several principles that are similar to several National and Regional IGF care for human rights, care for local content and culture, awareness in with cybersecurity, participation of young participants and young people, online safety, and interoperability, the value of data, and trust.
So I think this is very interesting, and the first part of my session I will give the floor to Anriette. The floor is yours.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much Olga, you request now have a bit more of that good Colombian coffee that you need this time of the day in Buenos Aires. We are starting the open segment now. I want to tell everyone we have 55 participants online, and I think in the room we have about 150 maybe or just under 150.
So just everyone have a sense of how many we are together online and on site. I would like people to know, ask questions and make comments briefly and concisely responding to two compensations of these principles that have emerged from NRIs and their work.
The first is how do we support these principles through policy making and acting. So how do we concretize them, how do we integrate them into our policy work and into our Internet practice and development?
And secondly how do we do this through the technical layer. So those are the two dimensions. Concretizing these principles, integrating them into our work through policy making and through development and capacity building and secondly at the technical layer.
The floor is open. I know we have some NRIs in the room that want to speak, and Olga will keep her eye on hands in the Zoom room. I see a hand there, that Nigel. My eyesight is not as bad as I thought. Please stand up, take the mic, introduce yourself and make your contribution.
Jennifer, why don't you start.
>> AUDIENCE: I am from the Caribbean Telecommunications Union and we convene the Caribbean IGF, so there is Regional IGFs, part of the NRI network. We basically subscribe to most of the principles that other speaker have stated. Would like to point out that for the Caribbean apart from things being accessible, trusted and so on. A resilient Internet is important because we have very vulnerable developing states.
We also want it to be useful and inclusive. So those are the basic principles that are important to us, and we have been in the IGF since 2005 in order to harmonize the views of the Caribbean that went into the final session of WSIS and they have been annual ever since.
As a forum, we are one year older than this one. We had our 18th annual IGF last August, and very interestingly we included a Caribbean youth IGF for the first time, a formal thing run by our youth and we reached out to other Small Island Developing States to form the first Small Island Developing States IGF.
Now, the CTU, the CARICOM Telecommunications Union is in a position, and if I'm to address the questions you raised about supporting principles through policy development and also via the technical layer, so we have focused on ‑‑
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Can someone take Nigel water?
>> AUDIENCE: Harmonizing regional, and those priorities have included broadband infrastructure, the Internet technical infrastructure, and this is the technical layer you are talking about. We focus on legal frameworks, and very importantly for the useful and inclusive part are local content development and awareness and capacity building.
And finally, research and most recently now some outreach that we have done to the other SIDS around the world. In the work that we have done, we have spawned at least three national IGFs in the Caribbean and we have maintained linkages with them, so we have national and regional coordination going on there.
Policy development, the CIGF, has always focused on harmonizing proposals coming out, harmonized proposals coming out of our discussions and we have documented these in a document that we call the Caribbean Internet Governance policy framework and we have updated that twice so far and I'm just about to issue a third release of it because it evolves. Our priorities evolve as time goes on.
We use the vehicle of the CTU, which is an intergovernmental organisation to impact our policy makers and our 20 Member States of the Caribbean.
So I think this vehicle of the C IGF has basically been useful to inform our policy makers and as I mentioned in terms of the priority listing that I have gone into there, we address policies, priorities for the Caribbean through all of those areas and including the technical layers as well.
As far as the SIDS are now concerned, we have offered the benefit of our 18 years of experience to support Internet Governance development in other SIDS. The 18th IGF this year held with the first SIDS IGF we saw over 600 participants from 78 countries, and we worked with persons in SIDS in the Mediterranean, Indian ocean and Pacific regions to put this together and we addressed policy development areas that are necessary for this open accessible, trusted and resilient uninclusive Internet, the usual, cybersecurity, digital strategy, digital economy, the environment is very important for us as vulnerable SIDS, and telecom regulatory issues and we also looked at a way forward for the SIDS coordination. I'll stop there.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks, Nigel. And Nathalie Jaarsma has her and up. Nathalie, do you want to respond for make a similar contribution? Please go ahead.
>> NATHALIE JAARSMA: Thank you, Anriette. I don't want to respond it that. I already raised my hand but really this is what the IGF is about, I think, learning from each other and it's fantastic to listen to everybody, but I wanted to contribute to the knowledge sharing as well.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Speak a little bit slower for the interpreters, please.
>> NATHALIE JAARSMA: Yes, certainly, I will do so. I wanted to share some of our experiences just for others to, perhaps, take advantage of that. On the principles that I shared earlier, on the policy making, let me talk a little bit about multi‑stakeholderism and then go into the technical side that you have asked for, Anriette.
So multi‑stakeholderism, we really sort of include that in all of our policy making and specifically when we talk about capacity building and I realize that there are a lot of people in the room, and, of course, one of the first speakers said the principle of Internet, the first one is to get access, and I think he is very right, but, of course, once you get access, you also open up the possibilities to be attacked, et cetera.
So you need to be prepared. So what we realized is when we started to think about capacity building, we realized that it needs to be done in a multistakeholder way, so together with other countries, other stakeholders, we established then a global forum on cyber expertise, and it's really a group of members like businesses, NGO's, private sector NGO's, then Governments and sharing best practices, very practical, so from practical things like how to set up your first national CERT, how to make it more mature. What do you need to think about when drafting certain legislation, for example, cybercrime. So very practical sharing experiences and it's very much demand driven so it's not sort of donors offering a lot, yes, sure, online, but it's really a place where demand and donors and practitioners can come together and deliver.
So the global forum on cyber expertise. Perhaps at a more soar of technical, the more the technical operational part where I wanted to share a couple of examples, and those are more national. Some of my colleagues talked about Internet.NL at a previous session. I think that's a very good example of multi‑stakeholderism. It's a platform where technical standards are being shared to improve the security of your Internet.
It is done with some seed funding from our Ministry of Economic Affairs, so sometimes some seed funding really helps, but now it's driven by the multi‑stakeholder community. And what is interesting is that other countries are using it because it's open source, anybody can use it and sometimes countries build a new front end because culturally that is more appropriate, but please have a look, Internet.NL.
Another example that you may want to have a look at is when our police were confronted with a lot of ransomware attacks and I think that's a problem all over the world, they decided to work together with others and they established a website where basically the keys to unlock your ransomware, so to remove it from your systems are being shared, and, of course, it doesn't contain all of the keys, but at least you can check out the website first.
So this is really for law enforcement people, and people around in sort of that ecosystem. That's called no more ransom.org.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I'm sorry, I have to ask you to wind up, please. We have less than half an hour left.
>> NATHALIE JAARSMA: I wanted to say reach out to IGF the Netherlands in the room because they are capable of sharing more good examples. Thank you.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much, and Benjamin, I see you have your hand up, but let's take more hands from the room. I really want to ask people to be brief though. So. We have the Bangladesh IGF, Jennifer first, but Bangladesh and we have the gentleman over there. Okay. Good, Jennifer, you go.
>> My name is Jennifer Chung. I am the Secretariat for the regional IGF, and responding to questions Anriette posed earlier and responding to the core Internet principles that our esteemed colleagues have mentioned, I guess speaking from the Asia‑Pacific point of view, we have over half of the world's population, the population of the world has just past 8 billion, we have 8 billion living in the Asia‑Pacific region and 2.5 billion are online. And looking at this statistic, you realize that there are so many people that are not there, that are not online, and we need to have them online.
I think my colleague next to me, Tijani has mentioned if you are not there and not using the Internet, how are we able to connect these people? And most of these people also don't have English as their first language. There are many, many languages in the Asia‑Pacific region. There are many, many languages in the Africa region.
Responding to the policy making aspect of it, it marries the policy making as well as the technical layer how to get these people who do not speak English, do not use English as their native language online. And I think there is a very interesting and, of course, multistakeholder effort going on with the universal acceptance steering group where you are trying to work with engineers, you are working with people who code, tech, you are working with civil society, you are working with linguists trying to get the technical part of the Internet to work for people who can surf, people who can look up their languages and also local context in their own language online.
I think that really represents an amalgamation of what we are trying to achieve as a core Internet principle to get these people online. Another thing that a lot of colleagues have touched upon is trust, and I think trust is being undermined right now. I only want to talk about really that to be able to get these people online, there is a difficulties that are faced both politically and technically.
There is a last mile connectivity issues, middle mile connectivity issues, as well as Internet shutdowns. So I think collectively in a multistakeholder way, we will be able to try to solve these problems in the best way possible. And I guess this is the contribution for the APAC region. Thank you.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much. Remember to do very concise responses, how are you applying these principles in policy and technically. We will have Bangladesh and we will go over to that lady, woman there, and then I will go to the rest of you. Please be brief. Introduce yourself.
>> AUDIENCE: Very good morning. My I am working with Bangladesh IGF. Our honorable moderator thank you for this session, and you are also our great mentor also and also panel member, basically Bangladesh IGF established in year of 2006 and from 2006 we have created a multistakeholder platform and also community. I would like to mention some communities here. We have a community in IGF as well as youth IGF, women IGF also working in Bangladesh, and we have created focus on Internet Governance with initiative of Bangladesh IGF and as well as we are running Bangladesh School of Internet Governance.
So this is a community, Bangladesh IGF actually developing the community with the multistakeholder norms. Now, I would like to raise a point for consideration regarding NRI. Secretary‑General of the UN has declared already Global Digital Compact.
What is our position regarding NRI with Global Digital Compact. Second one is the last 20 yards. We have some good practices, good initiatives, good activities. So now we can add to publish all knowledge with one book. This is one part of NRI. We have no strategic plan of NRI, so I think through this morning session and to the woman strategic plan for NRI.
Last but not least, 2025 we are WSIS review. So in this WSIS review process, what is our role. So we need to identify. Thank you, our mentor, Anriette.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you, you went further than answering the questions but those are topics that should be picked up by the NRI community in the coming year. How do you apply these principles nationally, technically and in policy?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you for the opportunity. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you may be. Mine is just a question that I want to find out, we have a lot of for the past three, four days we have been talking about Internet Governance, data protection, IGF, what we need to do as global society, but I have a challenge when it comes to Africa.
My name is Lydia, I'm a member of Parliament of the Parliament of Ghana, and I am a member of APNIC, and a member of the communication Committee of the Ghanaian Parliament. We looked at the issue of Internet Governance and data protection.
We also know that in Africa we have a lot of challenges, especially when it comes to rural and urban development. The rural community of the Ghanaian community is lagging behind when it comes to Internet and data protection or data governance.
So there anything that, best practice we are sharing together today from all over the world can be taken into other countries for us to also have what is good for the other places so that we can replicate it in Ghana and other African countries?
Then another thing that I want us to look at is the fact that we as Africans, what can we do ourselves to make sure that we create this environment for equal opportunities for both the rural and the urban areas. If you look at it from the research point of view, the figures, 25, 50%, it is not too good for we as Africans, and that if we really want catch up with the rest of the world we should be looking at a multistakeholder approach with both Government, stakeholders, telecos to make sure that Internet is accessible, it's available, it's affordable to the rural folks so that we can all be part on this Internet platform. Thank you very much.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much for that question. We have less than 15 minutes left, but I would suggest that you talk a little bit with Nigel, because I think when we see in the Caribbean is how after years of working at having National and Regional IGFs and working with anchor institutions, you know, from the regulatory institution to Government to business, how they actually manage to share best practices, and I think Nigel you also talked about the Small Island Developing States who face huge challenges, but they are slowly but surely able to share best practices and apply them.
So maybe the two of you should just have coffee together after this session. But I think you absolute I are right. This gentleman over here.
>> AUDIENCE: Yes, good morning, my name is Salan I am from the Sierra Leone IGF, and also have been a member of the U.K. IGF as well. Firstly, on the issue of policy, I think making the IGF a lot more stakeholder aware because most of the time when we talk about stakeholders, we are always talking in a sort of like just a community of IGF activists.
Example, the Conference we are here today. How many people globally are aware of IGF 2022? Not that many. We all have IGFs in our countries. Do we inform the greater community about those IGF sessions? No. So we need to ensure that if we want to have the relevance here today, we should be having CNN, BBC, Al‑Jazeera relating to not only our people who are using the Internet, but also to the policy makers so that they can hear us and know what we are talking about here.
That's happened a few weeks ago with COP. It should be happening here as well. Thank you very much.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks. Very valuable point. We have two lines on lane. Andrea wants to make a response, and Benjamin. Benjamin, be very brief, please.
>> BENJAMIN AKINMOYEJE: Thank you. In order to make a quick response to Anriette's questions, I think it would be fair for IGF and the NRIs to have some kind of evaluation tools to look at some of these principles or ideas we want to see permeate in our interventions and yearly review the tools and see how each NRI is doing, and taking from what Nigel said too, I think NRIs would do well to collaborate with more advanced NR Is so see how agendas, summaries that are agreed upon or frameworks that we have decided to work with or principles have been implemented in our countries, our societies, and practical implementations of them and this should be some of the things we should come back together when we congregate to discourse and see how to move forward, support those who are lagging in different areas, and gradually move forwards the centre.
I think this is the only way we can either make this possible in policy making, technical, approaches, and also what the Netherlands also have been doing how we can see these best practices implemented at various NRI and we should be regularly rewarded or encouraged when we see different NRIs ensuring this happens in their countries. Thank you.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I have to call out Benjamin. He was a participant in the first African School on Internet Governance where he almost talked all the way from Nigeria to South Africa to participate in it. So it has been a pleasure to see your work since 2013.
>> BENJAMIN AKINMOYEJE: Thank you.
>> ANDREA BECCALLI: I wanted to just quickly respond to the intervention from the gentleman before, I couldn't get his name, about the media participation, getting more people to learn about the national IGF, and also what the NP from Ghana mentioned on what could be good impact. On the latter, I completely agree with him, and we try to do that, and I think we succeeded in Italy involving national media, calling them, really both inviting media to be there as a moderator for the sessions, but also reaching out to the local press, the national press, making our case, and it worked.
These are issues that are as relevant and get the attention of the audience as climate change. And it's true that for many years this community has been probably too wonky, too technical, not really good in bridging the gap between the Internet, let's say, experts and the larger audience.
So we did put that as a major challenge for us and we are happy to share our experiences on how we did that and how it worked. So we went all the way to the national main news on public channels.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Can you wind up, please.
>> ANDREA BECCALLI: Yes, I will wind up with one thing. So the IGF community is never done in a way, and Government comes and goes. What I want to say is Italy in 2015 was very far ahead and we drafted a charter of Internet rights in 2015.
It was very, it was a product of the multistakeholder consultation, and it went to the Parliament, it was adopted as kind of, as a kind of framework decision from the chambers and it sat there and I think five or six Governments, we have a lot of Governments changing in Italy come and go, and it kind of stayed there almost forgotten.
What we do at the Italy IGF is that every time we call for the new Government representative, we call different parties, we bring this back and we say, look, we had this work done. It needs to be taken into consideration. It needs to be evolved, further discussed. And it kind of works.
Sometimes you see these are issues and not everybody wants to have a discussion with, even the European level, but we keep bringing it forward, and we don't mind being the one that bothers.
And every year we have a session on the Internet digital charter of rights and every time we call the new Government to be there and ask them what are they doing on that, so we kind of keep them accountable.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Sorry to cut you short, but thanks for making the comment because without continuity we cannot apply the principles either at the policy level or the technical level, and I think what we see from this example and also from the Caribbean example, continuity is really the only way you get results.
Expecting results in the short term, I think we see that from the Dutch and the U.K. as well. Many NRIs only really begin to show impact a few years into the process. We have a participant from UNICEF with a question the I think that's, can we just get the mic to UNICEF to make their contribution? And please keep it brief, introduce yourself.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you Madame Moderator, I am from UNICEF Ethiopia country office. I will be very precise. My question is about children, especially elementary children nowadays, even the school exposes them to Internet. They are home take assignment. So this has a huge risk of exposing them to toxic information. The last speaker on the podium said about trusting as the system. Yes, human element always has a bias and error, so we are not simply leaving it to the school guardian or parent.
So this there should be a system. My question is there any system right now in place or in the future to protect them from toxic information, toxic data. Our children are very smart, even elementary children, very smart, grade 3, grade 4, but it doesn't mean they have the maturity level to sort out toxic information.
So I'm thinking similar thing like I'm not minor anymore. So it's better to trust the system rather than trusting as a person. So is there anything in the system protects them? Thank you.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you for that question, because we live in an era where children have rights, where we are in a stronger position to respect and honour their rights, but we also have to take that into account. I would like to point you, there is someone here from the Dynamic Coalition on Child Online Safety. She is sitting in the front of the room. So Jutta, put up your hand. Maybe the two of you can have coffee, and maybe Nigel you can respond as well.
So I now am going to take us into, I'm sorry, everyone, we have to come to a close. I can't take more hands. Some of our panelists would like to respond and then Olga and I will make closing remarks. I'm very sorry. Can you be 30 seconds? Just introduce yourself and literally 30 seconds. They are bringing you the mic. That's like ten seconds gone already.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi, my name is Dulagi, I am from here. I am worried about the connectivity of Internet in Africa. We are talking about security, cybersecurity, data security, and so on. That is for European or American who has gone through too far. So we as an African, we have a connection public so what this Conference has planned to are resilience and connectivity and so on. Thank you.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I will respond to that later. So, thanks, everyone, sorry to cut people short. I think you have some responses, Jennifer, I think you have some responses and Olga has remarks she wants to make as well.
>> NIGEL HICKSON: The response in terms of online safety for children, it is a fundamental problem I think our societies face. We must protect our children, but at the same time we can't shield them from everything. We have to give them the opportunities that the Internet envisions. So it's a difficult problem indeed, but we have to have systems to put those protections in place.
And as many of you know, the U.K. is putting through legislation on online safety. It's incredibly difficult to get it right, but perhaps others can learn from us or learn from our mistakes. The other point I wanted to make about the vitality, about the continuity, the excellence of what we are seeing across the NRI network, yes, the challenges as well, but this is real democracy in action. Many of us that were around in the World Summit on Information Society in 2003 and 2005, I don't think when we thought we could set up the IGF or, we never thought that perhaps it would be like this, this national and regional democracy, this feeding process that many take part in.
So I think it has to be a two‑way process as well. The UN IGF has to learn from the NRIs, but the NRIs also can feedback the messages into their local communities that come from this marvelous Conference as well. Thank you, Africa, for hosting as this has been incredible.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks, Nigel. Africa is not a country. Just remember that. I'm just making ‑‑ Tijani Ben Jemaa, very brief.
>> TIJANI BEN JEMAA: I realized I forgot to mention another core principle, which is the public interest. Public interest should be on the top of all interests considered on Internet. And it was supposed to be reached by the multistakeholder governance model because the stakeholder come, sit with their interest, and discuss a rich consensus, and in this case they will balance all of the interests and at the end you will have the public interest that will be considered.
So this is in my point of view a core principle for a good Internet. Thank you.
>> Just in quick response to the colleague from UNICEF, we do have NRI session on actions needed to keep children safe online, if you want to hear what NRIs are doing come to CR6, 1:45. Just a quick response to all colleagues that have spoken. I think collectively the NRI network has a lot to offer, a lot to do, and a lot to learn from each other as well as the IGF which my colleague has eloquently put.
I think together it is important for us to work towards making all of the discussions we are having right now, to affect actual policy in our national jurisdictions and I think that's something we have to do together. Back to you, Anriette.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much. I will respond to the question about the connectivity challenge and make some summary marks. I think we know how to address the connectivity challenge. I think we need, our Governments and all other stakeholders not to be ambivalent about the value of the Internet.
There are threats and challenges we have to address, but we can only address them if everyone has access.
We know that Internet shutdowns doesn't work. We know that monopolies don't work. We know that competition, reducing the cost of access, having independent telecommunications, regulators that enable a vibrant Internet industry and market, we know it works. We know community networks and small delinked networks work. We know we need solar power and renewable energy, and off grid power solutions if we are going to have the electricity that we need in Africa to have connectivity.
We know we need human capacity, and we know we need money, but I think sometimes we are too obsessed of what we don't have, and we don't actually act and mobilize resources we do have. Frankly, I have been working in access for 50 years and I think we know what to do and I'm just distressed that we are not doing it sufficiently at national, local, and continental level.
I'm happy to have coffee with you. I think what stood out for me was the commonality of the principles. There was a lot of overlap between the principles from the different NRIs, but also some differences, and I think those differences also tell a story, you know, the emphasis on the data wars that Tijani mentioned, and we saw excellent examples of how NRIs are applying these principles, the strong regional collaboration that you have in the Caribbean, for example, utilizing anchor institutions as they do in the Caribbean, the Netherlands very strong emphasis on capacity building and using capacity building in collaboration with the technical standards community and in every NRI we saw excellent examples of how to apply these principles.
I think that we just need to take home that it can be done, but that we need continuity. I think that was the point that also came up. We need to continue with NRIs, and NRI, you might have a bad NRI one year. Don't give up. It can be better next year.
It's hard work, but over time they have impact. We heard the point about reaching out, using the media, reaching audiences and actors that are not currently part of the conversation. That's a challenge for every NRI and it's a challenge for the IGF as a whole.
But change takes time, and I think we also need to acknowledge and appreciate the hard work that's being done. Olga, any last words from you?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much, and congratulations to all colleagues online and onsite. I would like to quote Jennifer, all NRIs have a lot to offer to the whole community and to the Internet. We should let people know about the NRIs much more than what we do now. So we encourage the participation and we encourage others to organize other NRIs.
We never have to forget, and our colleague from Africa said that the rural population, especially for Developing Countries and in Latin America this is especially issue to have in mind and it's not bad to have the same issues bought as technology changes, having the same issues in the program is not bad but you have to keep evolving and reviewing all of them. I would like to thank all of you for having me online and I would like to be with you. I'm in my soul, I'm a companion with you there, and thank you for allowing me to Chair this very interesting session. Have a good day!
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks, Olga, and thanks to Colombia for the coffee that helped you be with us. Thanks to the interpreters and the tech team. It's fantastic. It's not your fault that the laptop froze when the high bandwidth consuming U.K. IGF video came on. And thanks to everyone who participated and all of the speakers, all of the NRIs, to Anja Gengo from the figure secretary and the NRI coordination team.