SEVENTH ANNUAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM BAKU, AZERBAIJAN

SUSTAINABLE HUMAN, ECONOMIC, AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT 9 NOVEMBER 2012

9:00 AM WHY IS THE PARTICIPATION OF THE SOCIAL SECTOR IN THE INTERNET

GOVERNANCE IMPORTANT FOR EVERYBODY?

* * * * * * * *This text is being provided in a rough draft format.Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is providedin order to facilitate communication accessibility and maynot be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.* * * * * * * *

>> CINTRA SOOKNANAN: Hello, good morning. We're about to begin.

(Pause).>> Good morning, my name -- can we just confirm that the

recording has started? Thank you. My name is Cintra Sooknanan. I'm the vice-chair of the

Constituency in the Internet Corporation for Assigning Names and Numbers.

Today it's my pleasure to welcome you in the session which is dealing with why is the participation of the social sector in Internet governance important for everybody? Starting from my right, I would like to introduce our panellists today. We have William Drake, who is an international Fellow and lecturer in the media change and innovation division of the institutes of mass communication and media research through the University of Zurich. We have Poncelet Ileleji from the computer training center and digital studio. We have Marco Pancini from Google. To my left starting from the end of the table, we have Theresa Swineheart, executive Director of Global Internet Policy at Verizon. We have Hong Xue, Director of the Institute for Internet Policy and Law at Beijing Normal University, and we have Osman Gunduz, from the Azerbaijan Forum, as well as his associate, Mr. Azar Hasret. I want to get straight into the discussion, so I would ask Mr. Drake just to start us off as to his thoughts on this topic.

>> BILL DRAKE: Thank you very much, Cintra, and good morning, everybody. Unfortunately, I have to give my apologies, I'm supposed to go say something in the main session on taking stock in about ten minutes, so I am just going to make a brief intervention, then I'm going to have to sneak out. I am sorry about that, but the IGF is unfortunately an environment in which double bookings are not something that can be avoided. In any event, I understand this panel to be about the role of civil society or as the panel description says, the social sector in Internet governance and why that's important ask so on and I think this is a topic of great interest to me. I should probably point out that I'm not only an academic, I've been the President of a global NGO in the past called Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility that was active for many years in the United States and then around the world, and I'm the incoming Chairman of the Noncommercial Users Constituency in ICANN and I am also a founding member of the Internet governance caucus, which is the main Internet governance civil society grouping in the IGF historically and in the WSIS before that and I'm also on the civil society advisory economy of the OACD, so I view these issues not from merely an intellectual or academic standpoint but also from the standpoint of somebody who has been very actively involved.

Let me say a few things I guess maybe based on those experiences about how civil society's role has been carved out here. You know, we talk now all the time about how far the various I star organisations, that is to say, ICANN, ISOC, engineering task force and so on are all multistakeholder and give great scope for civil society participation and of course the IGF as well. It wasn't always that way, though, it should be noted. I was in Washington, D.C. in the 1990s working at a foreign policy think tank, I went to a lot of the meetings talking about launching the so-called corporation which is what eventually became ICANN and I can tell you at the time that it was very much the mindset of people in the Clinton administration that what we were doing was building a mechanism for private sector self-regulation. That's the way they saw it. They did not -- they did not really create in the original concept a space for civil society participation at all. That had to be fought for. The Noncommercial Users Constituency, which as I mentioned I am involved with, was formed early on in the ICANN process because basically there were a number of civil society people who showed up at these open meetings and said, look, this is not right, you have to have some sort of counterbalancing interest representation for people who

advocate in the public interest for the noncommercial sector. And ICANN was slight slow to figure out how to deal with that, and indeed, NCUC I would have to say in its early years really struggled for a long time with the fact that there were a lot of people in the private sector and in the ICANN leadership that regarded it as somewhat unwelcome because it was pushing for human rights, civil liberties, limitations on Intellectual Property, base claims and so on. So in other words, it wasn't getting with the programme. It was advocating views that were or that go natural to -- that were orthogonal to the driving interest over ICANN. UCIC has continued on grow despite the staff resources or anything else and despite a lot of opposition from some quarters because a lot of people in civil society have come to recognize that the kinds of decisions that ICANN takes with regard to who is, with regard to new gTLD's, with regard to a whole variety of issues really do have strong interest implications. Now, it's very difficult to maintain a strong level of engagement by civil society people sometimes in ICANN without that kind of support and so on that other players may have because, quite frankly, volunteer labor is difficult to mobilize, particularly when you've got a process like ICANN where you've got three meetings being held a year and extensive and intensive set of working groups and ongoing activities. You know, it is true that ICANN has, I think, the best -- well, alongside the IATF has the best possibilities for remote participation and virtual collaboration of any governance process I've ever seen, and I'm a great supporter for that. Nevertheless, it's a great challenge to people engaged and interested if they don't see that they'll actually ever be physically involved in meetings or be able to play any kind of a civil change. In recent years, NCUC has grown substantially to over 250 members with strong representation from around the world and recently ICANN has been in a position financially to agree to provide support for at least three constituency members, our constituency as well as others to attend each ICANN meeting, this means now that we can get people to come to meetings, that gives them more incentive to engage more, but the point I'm making is as much appears the structure is form -- as the structure is it formally open to the participation in civil society, it has always been a struggle to maintain that engagement and maintain -- and to get the acceptance that is needed. Nevertheless, NCUC has been very effective in impacting policies in a number of cases and just recently in the Toronto meeting we had a month ago, we had written to the privacy commissioners in Europe and said we

think the provisions being contemplated in the new gTLD programme are not consistent with European law and they came back and said you're right and now the Government Advisory Committee is looking at establishing a procedure whereby not just the law enforcement agencies but also privacy commissioners are consulted in relevant decisions. So there are a number of cases where I can point to where we've been able make some difference.

In the kiss of the IGF and the WSIS, the Internet governance caucus and other players also had to fight to get established. I was involved throughout the WSIS process going back to early 2003, I remember initial meetings when we were literally thrown out of the room by governments that did not want civil society representatives to be around, we were constantly challenged and we had to fight to get the recognition that even though the United Nations had said all stakeholders should be participating, there was no clear map for how you do that in Internet governance deliberations and the WSIS had not really been given a very clear set of instructions about how this should be done. So that meant everything had to be created on the fly, and we built a big coalition, actually, not just the IGC, not just the caucus, but a whole variety of groups that worked together throughout the WSIS process to try to promote public interest, values, and a people-centered human rights based approach to the WSIS negotiations. IGC was launched in February 2003 and at the time was just a small group of people. We've now grown to I think about 150 members and remain sort of the primary vehicle for aggregating civil society interests around the IGF now on a continuing basis, but of course now that we're not in a decision-making mode, as in WSIS, keeping everybody engaged, and forcing everybody to collaborate effectively has been a lot more difficult. In the WSIS we had to come up with responses, governments had texts, they had negotiating positions and we had to get up and say in the meetings, no, we oppose this, we support that, so that forced people to collaborate. Now the IGF is different, it's not a decision-making board, so there's not really as much a scope for taking strong positions, we have tended to focus on the procedural issues, maintaining the multi-stakeholder character of the IGF and so on and trying to improve the overall architecture of the IGF.

So these are just two examples and I guess the main point I would make then, it is clearly recognized, I think, by all parties within the Internet specific institutions, the multi-stakeholder institutions, that civil society's engagement

is important and valued and it's clear that we've been able to make some substantial differences on a number of dimensions that matter, but nevertheless, it is always going to be a challenge to keep civil society people in a position to be able to work effectively, to promote their interests because of resource constraints and everything else, this is inherent in the beast, there's nothing we can do about it.

The last point I would make, sometimes we forget Internet governance is a broad phenomenon that doesn't just pertain to names and numbers and critical resources, Internet governance takes place in a wide variety of bodies, there are global rules for Intellectual Property, trades, services, privacy, all kind of other things being created in bodies where the governments that support multi-stakeholderism and civil society participation here do not necessarily want civil society involved. So there are external limitations. I mention, for example, the International Telecommunication Union, we know that they have this World Conference in international telecommunications coming up. Civil society effectively it's almost impossible to support in the ITU. Now they're making some adjustments and encouraging people to apply for fee waivers to participate, et cetera, but historically we've been effectively locked out of that body. That's pretty significant. The important point about this is when there were proposals from a few countries to try to open the process up to civil society, the industrialized democracies that have strongly supported civil society engagement here did not support us in the ITU. And so I would suggest to you that sometimes everybody says, oh, we love civil society, we want them involved, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but there are certain decision-making processes where in fact still we're not really that much encouraged, let's put it that way, to actively engage. So these are things to be dealt with over the long term and I imagine the rest of the panellists will have interesting things to stay about them. I have to run to the main session, so I'll stop there. Thank you very much.

(applause).>> CINTRA SOOKNANAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Drake, for

making that introduction. And thank you for your time here.Next I would like to move onto Hong Xue so that she can give

us some of her thoughts.>> HONG XUE: Thank you very much, thank you for your kind

invitation. I think the topic of the workshop is very, very interesting, especially using the wording social sector and I guess it's a very important and interesting thinking about

participation nongovernmental sectors, participation in Internet governance. This word is not so much used as multi-stakeholders but it's actually widely accepted in the international community. I remember about two years ago there was a submission jointly submitted by China, Russia, Uzbekistan, to the security Council of the United Nations of guidelines of security on the Internet, and ICT actually, they used the word social participation of all social sectors in the document. The document was strongly criticized for denying multi-stakeholderism, that is not there, they used the word social sector, actually they include the meaning of multistakeholders, right, social sector include, it implies that nongovernmental sectors can participate in the governance process, so I am happy that this word is being used right here. Probably I can share my little experience from Asia-Pacific and talk about the participation of small and middle sized enterprises, the business sector, in Internet governance and also civil society in Asia-Pacific and participation in Internet governance. In Asia-Pacific, which is a growing economic zone in the world economy, GDP is booming with two very big economy in Asia-Pacific region, China and Indian, and in these emerging economies, we can see the most important and most robust and dynamic part of the small and middle size enterprises. They do have a stake in the Internet governance, they are stakeholders but unfortunately they're being very much marginalized in the decision-making process. I want to use one example on Intellectual Property law. In Asia-Pacific, we can see so many bilateral trade agreements between these Asian countries with the United States and with European Union. In these bilateral trade agreements, they're normally very strong, rigid requirement in Intellectual Property protection and the enforcement. All these provisions will be applied to these Asian countries and will be enforced on these small and middle-sized enterprises that may be set up on the Internet. For example, with respect to liability of intermediary liability of these Internet service providers, it seems pretty clear these are big trade partners from either U.S. or Europe, they're trying all the ISP's in this emerging economy to diligently protect copyright as being transferred through their system, and they've asked all these Asian countries to implement and notice and take down mechanisms similar to the United States, DMCA. This is quite burdensome to small and middle sized enterprises. These enterprises just began their business, not only do they not have a law department or in-house legal counsels for what type of content is protected

by copyright, and whether those notices from copyright industry should be verified and is really credible, so they've tremendously increased the operational cost, so the issue here is that if these small and middle size enterprises from Asia would be able to participate in the negotiation of this bilateral trade agreements, they voice their opinion, their concerns, so for the IP enforcement provision, there could be consideration for these small businesses in this region and we're really concerned in what is going on in the negotiation of TransPacific Partnership Agreement, TPPA, it will include almost all the big countries except China from Pacific all the way to east Asia. Now from Asia, we have participation of Australia, New Zealand and Brunei and hopefully in the future with Japan and the Korea. So it seems that this will be the world's largest trade zone that could be established through this arrangement. And in this TPPA, there will be a very long intellectual property chapter and it seems the chapter is even more strict than many U.S. intellectual property law. So think about the burden of the enforcement in these developing countries being included into this regime and the small and middle size enterprises have to assume the cost of IP protection in their daily operation, and this is from the private sector, the business in Asia-Pacific and the very last point is on civil society's participation in Internet governance from Asia-Pacific, what I can see is that there are many civil society organisations right here, they are from Asia-Pacific, I'm really happy to see the colleagues from that region joining this global dialogue on Internet governance, especially the active, probably the Australia, New Zealand, we also see some colleagues from civil society, southeast Asia, this is very good, south Asia, India, Pakistan, these are very good. But I would say there's still very much underrepresented from east Asia, probably there's a culture issue here, the East Asian people are normally very quiet, we are very shy, so it is difficult to draw in this very invigorated global debate. I guess many East Asian civil society activists just fighting in the way of the bloody microphone in this global forum, we believe in Confucianism and the Confucius says you should always use, so that's really some culture issue that should be taken into account. We talk about equal participation, not only multi-stakeholder, so equality among stakeholder groups and within stakeholder groups should be taken into account, so this is my very limited experience from Asia. Thank you very much.

>> CINTRA SOOKNANAN: Thank you, Hong, for that perspective.

We do appreciate you being here. I know you also have to run, so thank you.

Next I would like to hear from Theresa Swineheart and she's going to provide a bit of public -- a company view of the role of civil society.

>> THERESA SWINEHEART: Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here, and the topic couldn't be more timely, if I can put it that way. In looking at this and looking at the overall discussion and description, I think the best way to stay is that all sectors are really the fabric of the Internet and the fabric of the dialogues that need to be happening around Internet policy issues and over time because of ICT and because of the rapid means of communications and types of communications that we have been able to see, this importance has been raised even higher, so as we've seen dialogues around Internet governance and Internet policy in national dialogues, in regional or global dialogues, the voice of social sector, the voice of technical community, the voice of business and governments has become exceedingly important and it's noticeable if it's not a participant and I think that's an important thing that we've seen over time and Hong had touched on some of these, as did Bill. I'm just going to touch on this briefly from two angles. One is a more direct business perspective because I was asked if I might touch on that as well and over time the private sector has noticed that the importance of corporate responsibility is really increasing and the recognition of the importance of corporate responsibility has increased as well. Businesses serve customers, but they're also members much communities and they're participants in communities, and as this is a serious area, the areas of corporate responsibility have also been taken very, very seriously, whether it's around sustainability or social issues, around education or youth or women, whether it's around community services, we recently have a situation in the United States with the hurricane and we have a lot of companies going out and working with different organisations and sectors to try to deal with the recovery process. From Verizon's perspective, the corporate responsibility is actually a very, very important part of what the company does and it's linked in with what we refer to as shared success, and our solutions there really focus on education, healthcare and energy and in that obviously we work closely with different community organisations, but we've taken it to the point of this year instead of just having a annual report and a corporate responsibility report, we've actually combined for the first time the corporate

responsibility and annual report into the financial and corporate responsibility performance, and this is found online and I think it's a unique combination of the importance we place on community, responsibilities and the combination of showing the performance in those two areas. From a global business perspective, if I take a step back, then, and move from the local community to the global community and discussions around Internet policy issues that impact all stakeholders, I think we've already heard that the multi-stakeholder dialogues are incredibly important and have become a, how do you say, an accepted term and norm and have started to set a precedent also for other types of dialogues, whether around environment, health initiatives, governments are starting to realize that not only does business play an important role, but civil society plays a very important role. Over the years I think in part also because of technology, we've been able to move from silos to engaging more closely with each other, starting to hear each other and understand each other's views, during the WSIS process, private sector, civil society, technical community, weren't always let into the room. They were towards the end. This forum in particular shows the importance of how we're all starting to work together. One example from this year, the first time ever, ICC basis, ISOC and APC worked together with several governments in order to do a preIGF session on advanced cooperation. We had this theme on how to move forward continuously be discussed through this IGF in part because of the kickoff at the beginning. Working with all stakeholder groups, though, is not easy, and we've heard some different conversations throughout the course of this event. How far do we hear each other, how do we understand where our concerns are, how do we identify areas of mutual agreement and how do we respect each other in areas where we may not agree but how do we find the way to move that ball forward for a more timely discussion? The elements, though, that I think are important and I think have been very highlighted by civil society in particular and have really gained ground are the focus on, you know, transparency, accountability, legitimacy, representation, and these are themes that we've seen evolve in the Internet policy dialogues and have brought an important element to the table as we try to reach very good solutions. And I think we've seen some successes around that whether it's in the dialogues around enhanced cooperation, whether it's in the acceptance of multi-stakeholder models as a concrete ingredient in all dialogues, whether we've seen it around discussions of

principles and multi-stakeholder principles, whether we've seen it in discussions around how legislation and regulations are formulated. So from a private sector perspective, the community is not just one company. It's not just one sector, it's not two sectors, it's actually everybody working together to try to find the right solutions and to be heard. And I think the Internet Governance Forum and the Internet policy dialogues that we've seen over the years have demonstrated that and have had an impact and ripple effect domestically, regionally and obviously internationally. So I don't think any one can actually play without the other. Thanks.

(applause).>> CINTRA SOOKNANAN: Thank you so much, Theresa, for your

input. Next, I would like to get another business perspective, and that's from Marco. So Marco will give us the Google perspective on things.

>> MARCO PANCINI: Thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you today. Google strongly believes in the multi-stakeholder process, for this reason we are investing in the IGF process in terms of resources, in terms of time of our Googler, I want to stress the concept that it's not only about the global IGF, it's also about the national and regional IGF where really we are trying to gather around the teams of the Internet governance, the emerging issues, discussion we need to have in place, all the representatives from the civil societies. I think we have also a problem of participation to the IGF, I discuss about that with my colleagues from all the regions, in particular Latin America and Africa, we need to work all together in the direction of improving the participation of the civil societies from these regions to the IGF process. The reason why this is important I think can be summarized in two main arguments. The first argument is the multi-stakeholder process represents in this moment for concern for the Internet but I would also like to say for the future of our societies, the right way to approach governance and discussion of policy issues. This does not mean that governance, Government, does not have any more role in policymaking, this means that Government needs to involve all the stakeholders in the system, so in the case of the Internet, the civil society, and the industry in the decision-making process if they really want to come out with rules and regulations that are effective and also are felt by the parties as friendly. I would like to take an example, one was very interesting, the example from the Asia-Pacific region, the impact of the possible takedown of small and medium enterprise,

we have the same issues in Europe, talking about Europe, let's talk about ACTA, the main reason it failed, lack of transparency, probably not very effective choice to put together piracy, counterfeiting, but the real reason was that it was negotiated in closed door, was negotiated without getting feedback involving in the decision-making process important in interested parties like the industry and the civil society. And since decision-making in the field of Internet governance has a huge impact in the day-to-day life of Europeans on their business, on the way to express their opinion, the way to express their opinions, there is no more other way forward than involving getting feedback from all the interested parties.

The second is, the second argument that I would like to put forward is that we cannot give for granted that this will be forever. Let's take, for example, other fora where there is not the same approach to involving different parties in the eco system. We can mention talking about Europe, the way the European delegation are creating, involving the stakeholder does not include adding delegation to the 2012 civil society and the industry, and that's not good because in the moment of decision-making, they will lack the opportunity on get feedback from these important interested parties.

What is our commitment in this direction? We, as much as we can, through our services and through our policy activities, we are trying to get continuous feedback from the civil society, we are working together with the civil society in shaping also our policy positions when we feel that there is the need of more coordination and thinking about the future because one of the focuses is around the IGF process, that there is not always medium and long-term vision about the issues that we are discussing, but thinking about the future, we want to guarantee that our commitment in the governance process of the IGF will be continuous. This is why we are already working on the organisation order, local IGF in France, personally looking at important moments from a region, Europe torques get together, this process that we'll start next year.

I think in all this fora, we'll try very hard to have participation effective and numerous participation from the civil society and hopefully successful in terms of influencing the process.

>> CINTRA SOOKNANAN: Thank you very much for that. I would like to hear from Mr. Gunduz next and maybe he can share some of the local perspective on the role of the social sector.

>> OSMAN GUNDUZ: Thank you, Cintra, thank you for the

invitation as a panellist. I think this is attention to civil society. I understood the panel about civil society audience, so I would like to talk about civil society sector in Azerbaijan in Internet governance. Experience again within the last five years, effective Internet governance is possible only within joint collaboration and function of Government sector, civil society sector and private sector. Certain activities have been conducted in Azerbaijan. First of all, I would like to draw your attention to the Internet sphere in Azerbaijan. During some years, Internet, this dynamic attempt in Azerbaijan. Some studies, the number of Internet users extremely increased approximately 65% and broadband users approximately 30%. Access to Internet with new technology is available, 3G, 4G, cable, et cetera. Internet was for 15, 20 times, three, four, five years, for example, 1 megabyte Internet, 2008, 2007 years, approximately $700, but now approximately $15. And Azerbaijan last year has back the regional Internet provider. Last year Azerbaijan provides Internet, Georgia, Iran, Turkmenistan, education of the Internet, social media, blog sphere, space development. And we have now approximately 1 million Facebook users, and approximately 1,400 Twitter users, and for example, last 2005, 2008 years, it was approximately 100 Facebook users.

It is a positive aspect. Now I would like to describe a map Internet governance map in Azerbaijan. For a long time, the Government and business sector was very strong in Azerbaijan. Some international borders played a rule in establishment of national Internet signal. Telecommunication and information technology and service, this is the main Government. And private sector, delta Telecom. For a long time, from civil society was very small in the Internet sphere. The most professional borders on Internet policy in Azerbaijan is Azerbaijan Internet Forum, and multimedia Centre. Organisation, media and Human Rights structure, experts took their place in civil society maps.

But on Internet policy, it's on a lower level. Azerbaijan Internet Forum as presently is possible to have an influence on Internet governance in the country. Achievement and issues in Internet governance in Azerbaijan, last year's activists in Azerbaijan to Internet increased the level of attention to Internet governance. As I note above, not only professional bodies but organisations dealing with media and Human Rights protection issues started playing great -- paying great attention to governance issues. There were various actions. Before the IGF, Azerbaijan Internet Forum adopted Internet

governance in Azerbaijan that is very essential for interested parties of this sphere. Main problems of Azerbaijan Internet were stated, Internet Governance Forum was held on October 2012.

Participants of all interested parties were provided in that forum or national forum. There were held discussions of various problems of Internet sphere with participating Government organisation. Civil society is the part of filtration process held in educational system. Civil society has successful activists with Government and private sector on protection of children, and serious public discussions with special resources was prepared from organisation. Among international organisations was supported in providing the civil society with the issues of information safety. Civil society along with the interested parties took active part on adapting the adaptation of information.

Now, I would like to talk about problems. In Azerbaijan sphere, the very main problem, I think it is access and regulation in the national domain and online transfer of information safety. There is some difference of opinions and problems on Internet governance between Azerbaijan Government and civil society. The most serious problem I think is Azerbaijan Internet Forum is that civil society is not given an opportunity to take part in regulation in the national domain. International and local legislation is not observed in Azerbaijan in registration of AZ domain. There is no transfer, now we have online registration and all interested parties is not created. The consensus on this issue is not achieved yet, but now continued process with Minister of communication about this problem.

There is a problem of quality Internet access throughout the nation, of the country, approximately 40% of people live in the region, but in the region, we haven't quality Internet, worldwide Internet.

One of the most frequent issues made during the meeting of Internet access is related to information safety. It includes security of professional accounts of simple Internet users and sustainable function of news resources. But most ago, there were established two more organisations by the President. First, is the state agency responsible for the safety of Government resources, Government information, and second electronic security Centre in Minister of communication responsible for information safety, the Government organisation.

Hope this body to be participants with civil society will

make a positive change in this sphere. Among Azerbaijan state borders, approximately 35%. We have very democratic law about obtaining information, by this law, Government organisations have to spread a lot of information, approximately 35 type information, but now in this area of problem, transparency, approximately 35%. Once again, I would like to underline, despite we have certain success, Internet governance is still high in the country, there is no independent regulating body in the telecommunication sector. In the telecommunication sector, we haven't independent regulator. All three function in the regulation function, governments, and commercial function, now in Minister of communication.

I think international organisation will often invite local civil society borders to join the dialogue process. It can possible improve the situation. It can be helpful in increasing potential of nonGovernment sector and in the global and regional problems. Liberalization of Government sector threaten free and independent competition should be kept as the focus of attention for international and local civil society organisations. I think local civil society organisations should become more active in international discussions on Internet governance. International borders should support them in this point. Thank you very much.

(applause).>> CINTRA SOOKNANAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Gunduz.Coming up next, I would like to ask Poncelet if you can just

chime in with your perspective coming from the Gambia and also being a member of civil society.

>> PONCELET ILELEJI: Thank you very much, Cintra, I'll just give you all a brief background of myself and where I'm coming from, before I go into this discussion. I'm part of the ICANN for profit constituency, which the main aim is to look into service delivery for basically civil society, not for profits, in regards to the work of ICANN and they are part of the GNSO and we're approved by the ICANN board in the Prague meeting in this year, in 2011 or so. I'm also part of the association and work for the YMCA, I focus a lot on ICT for development and Internet governance, which is the foundation of really, I've got a lot of experience on. When we look at the topic we are talking about today in terms of the role of civil societies in Internet governance, we should first take a very good realistic check into have civil societies really acted well to make them to be respected. And to make them be respected, I'm saying this because it's something I've been involved in development and I don't think there's one agency if you want to know about

commitments to volunteerism and being part of the community than the YMCA. In most countries in the world where you have disputes that are called between civil society and governments in bringing up an agenda, it's because of lack of trust, and it's lack of trust because most civil societies, the international ones, they don't really engage down at the community level. There has to be ownership. Ownership has to come from the community level, and I will give you one good example or two good examples that I really respect, and those are organisations that I also consider them as part of civil society in a way, they are research-based organisations like the medical research Council, UK based Council that has been operating in parts of Africa, they have been in Gambia for the last over 60 years now since the late 40s, and the CDC, Centers for Disease Control, these are big organisations, do a lot of great work, and engage communities even in so-called, in quotes, authoritarian states that some civil organisations or not for profits make noise about of engaging these people and stuff like that.

But we have to look, when we talk of advocacy, because the role of civil society is to be able to advocate properly for communities to have a voice and how do communities have a voice, by those communities claiming ownership, and they can only claim ownership if there are digital traits. We take a look at the millenium development goals, we have a problem with access to water, access to education that are still challenges, and Internet governance is a tool we can use to reach those areas. So I will really want to say that within civil society in any context we operate in, we should try as much as possible to really try to have a forum when we agree to disagree, especially in dealing with national governments and looking at the cultural diversities that exist in each country we operate in. And that is where really Internet governance as a tool for change will take big roots in this community. We can, as they say, the people is the voice of God, and when you look in Rome, you behave like the Romans, even as much as possible we kiss agree, we have to understand that certain fights are only won when we look at people on the ground are able to understand what it actually means, how many civil society movements at a grassroots level really even understand about the whole Internet ecosystem, so there needs to be more advocacy. When advocacy has reached a setting stage, then issues that are pertinent now in regards to freedom of expression, which a lot of strong civil society movements are fighting for, can now take top issues. But when people don't really know about

actually about what the whole system does or means, it's a real problem. I was in a brief meeting with colleagues from the ICC business today, one mentioned about 16 million people in the United Kingdom not being digitally literate. I mean, that is the United Kingdom. Just imagine places like in Africa or in Latin America, all these communities, how many of them are that are not digitally literate. If you have 16 million in the UK not digitally literate, which is supposed to be one of the top economies in the world. So civil society's role should be mainly focused on getting access to the young people who make up the world today to become more digitally literate to understand how the Internet works, how the Internet can change their lives, how it can improve education. Today, everybody is talking about Malala. She only started through blogging about the rights for her to have an education in Pakistan. As a girl child, that is very important. If every girl child in the world, they are the most marginalized, have an education, they will be the one that will bring the issues of freedom of expression in all parts of the world they live in, whether they are living in some village in Timbuktu, most of our heritage there has been destroyed by Islamists, but it's because they're not educated. So we have to focus on that civil society to get this agenda down digital literacy, making people understand about the digital ecosystem, then we can move gradually into issues of expression, because issues of expression vary in different contexts. I remember years ago when the French Government banned hijab in French schools, there were some shouts, you want to be French, we don't want hijab in the school, but in my view, it was a breach of those who wanted the wear the hijab and their fundamental human rights, but that's what the French Government wanted and it happened, so if we want to engage a civil society in setting governments that we feel are authoritarian, we have to listen to them and come down to community level and give people who will be the voice because we can sit somewhere in New York and say what you want to say but at the end of the day it's those people on the ground that will make the change and my focus here is all those involved, those involved with companies with social responsibility, like Google, Google did a great job in Japan during the Tsunami with all the technology they provided, those are things that make change, that will bridge the big digital divide that is happening. Before we were talking about accessibility, today we are talking about how to use Internet appears a tool for development and that should be the focus of social civil society and then we move into the big issues,

depending on the context, in terms of the rights to free speech. Thank you very much.

(applause).>> CINTRA SOOKNANAN: Thank you very much, Poncelet, for

your interventions. Certainly your perspective coming from Africa is very important to this discussion. Right now I want to open up to the floor if there are any questions, just some discussion. If not, I will pose some questions to the panel. Yes, we have a member of the audience in the front. Please let us know your name and your organisation. Thank you.

>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Laurie, the Charter Institute for IT. I was very pleased to hear talk about small businesses because the only business constituent seems to be here is large companies in the ICT sector and yet the Internet is becoming so important, I was really disappointed there was no one from China talking about the Internet of Things, but they lead the world on this, and that has effects on the whole construction industry and all of our lives, and the same is true for the retail industry. Most people's first transaction online is to buy something and I feel that the voice that isn't here that represents a lot of people on the ground and in civil society is small businesses, businesses from other sectors in the ICT sector and I would like to hear the panel's view on that.

>> If I just chip into your question, that's a very valid point, when Michael spoke from Google, he mentioned about Google trying to engage more in the national and regional forums of the various IG's that are happening especially in Africa and in Latin America, and when you look at those kind of interventions, when you go to national or especially national IGF's, you discover the majority of the participants are small businesses who work in all these local communities and also work with civil societies to change lives. So I think the Google approach trying to get into all the national level and regional IGF's should also be the approach of the bigger companies like Hahowi (sounds like), the big company, that is big in terms of the development in Africa they have to try to go down to the local level of national IG movement. There has to be a bottom-top approach. Thank you.

>> MARCO PANCINI: If I can add a word on this topic, we have a strong focus on small to medium enterprise, so the question is very well posed. How to involve the small, medium enterprise in the Internet Governance Forum, that's a challenge we need to space. Absolutely we have a bigger participation in local and regional IGF, I would also stay in the multi-stakeholder process, for example, with the European

institution, in European countries, small and middle enterprise, through representation through the association, here at the IGF we lack this participation, probably this is an issue that we need to put on the table and next year we need to be sure that businesses are represented small and middle enterprise are present.

>> CINTRA SOOKNANAN: Okay, thank you. There is another question here, and then a couple at the back.

>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, hello, I'm Eric from the national youth service in Luxembourg and I'm representing also the European network, you gave good contribution, thank you very much, but like mentioned in the speech a little bit, what we are missing especially if you talk about governments and what could be the future of the Internet, there's one group also missing quite a much in the room, which is the young people, and they should be physically also present. While I know myself since we work on this kind of issue regularly, it's very difficult to get young people coming to such events because it might look a bit boring, second, it also is very important that they are not just speaking on their own behalf, they must speak about general issues, and unlike us who ten, twenty and more years work in ICT field, they of course have a much smaller background about how to work on the issue, on the other hand, they are the future, so they are going to shape it, they are going to be there on the other side of the panellists in the future.

The positive thing is indeed there are panels, there was one yesterday, there's going to be another one at 11:00 where young people are here, so actually some countries do already manage to get them involved and to get them present. Again, great forum, but the question would be how can we get them and really if we talk about multi-stakeholder, we already have this mixture where they're on unequal ground, because I can't tell you how it went where the young people were leading the panel, they were the ones leading the panel, the industry was present, but it was, and again, not on equal ground, and this this is what maybe can be a future for IGF that there are panels that are more on the equal ground. Thank you.

>> CINTRA SOOKNANAN: I wonder if I can put Edmon Chung, right behind you, on the spot, he is with DotAsia (inaudible) and they have done a lot, thank you.

>> EDMON CHUNG: Thank you for putting me on the spot. As you mentioned, DotAsia, we have been consistently supporting younger participants and also training them to be able to participate in IGF and Internet governance issues, and as was

just mentioned it could be rather daunting when, not just for young people, in fact, for anybody coming into the discussion and trying to bring their point of view into these discussions, especially when it gets more intensive and a lot of jargon and a lot of words, a lot of history behind some of the things, but besides bringing, actually every year we have this programme called NetMission which brings young people to IGF and also ICANN meetings, but besides this actually I wanted to pick up on one of the things that Hong mentioned earlier on in the session and that is what we also find is that a lot of the not just younger people but people from Asia and Asia-Pacific are relatively more reserved and have a culture of not so much -- not speaking up and in a way more in a conflict situation, if you will, or argumentative speaking, and that's I think an important aspect to think about in terms of civil society participation and how they do participate eventually in the Internet governance discourse, because we can say whatever we want in terms of, hey, the forum is open for participation, but if their culture doesn't support them in this type of participation, their voices will not be heard. How far we do it, I'm not sure, we're still trying to figure it out ourselves as well, but this is certainly one of the things, even though it's open, even though remain it open, which is important, but it also means that certain voices might be louder, certain voices might be weaker just because of certain backgrounds and preferences.

>> CINTRA SOOKNANAN: Poncelet, please? >> PONCELET ILELEJI: Contribution to what you said, still

one of my biggest emphasis, it has to be bottom top and national IGF's have to be made strong. Where do these young people get their voices? It will be at the national IGFs because they are more comfortable in their own environments, they will discuss things of pertinence to them, which in the whole Internet ecosystem, in the country, so by the time they are able to do that, mingle with your Government Ministers, mingle with civil societies, some of the young people mingle with academics and business people, when they come into the global IGF or any forum, they are able to discuss issues relevant to them and relevant to the context in which they live in, and that is the most important thing I've always said within the West African and Internet governance, which Gambia is part of and other countries, if we do not develop our national IGF strongly enough, because most of people, when people from Afghanistan were giving all these Facebook statistics, you check in most parts of the world, who are they?

They are the young people. Their voices over a national level, before we start talking at this global level, that is what we have to do, to answer your question.

>> MARCO PANCINI: If I may add, by the way, we have representation here at the IGF of the European Youth Forum. They were meeting before the event and they will do some reporting after the workshop, they are very active in the regional IGF, so we can improve but there is still a good example of representation of the youth.

>> AZAR HASRET: In regard to youth participation, I would like to add to say something because I saw a lot of young people here around for the last five days, and in Azerbaijan we have dozens of young people attending this event, and most of them usually are better at knowing Internet usage than some older people, so this is due to young people's attitude towards learning new technologies, so people, of course, the governments or just civil society organisations must do more to engage more young people, and I would like to touch the speech of my colleague from Azerbaijan, he was talking about access to Internet, so he said there is a problem with access. Of course, this means a bit of explanation, what does it mean, a problem with access, just that there is not blockage or just there is restriction imposed by Government, just this is due to some infrastructure, it doesn't reach yet some high mountainous areas, some villages, so this is not some type of censorship or restriction imposed by Government. Government is doing everything to reach all regions of the country. Biff the way, all three mobile service operators provide Internet services also and it's reachable everywhere. Thank you.

>> OSMAN GUNDUZ: I would like to say about the access problem, I think governments have to do, because, for example, in our country, in our region, we haven't accessed, if in Azerbaijan Internet Forum, we ask private sector, from the providers, why don't have you in village a structure, and they said they haven't business. If you have business, I think the government has to have infrastructure in village. Thank you.

>> CINTRA SOOKNANAN: Thank you. Now we have a couple questions from the back.

>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm Sarah, I work at university in Uganda, I have a few questions. Poncelet, you mentioned something about using ICT in development and but I wanted to hear your views about the people who are deep down in the villages, they're illiterate, they can't read and right, they don't have access to these ICT's, they live on less than a dollar a day, don't you think there would be more consent about

immediate needs, food n shelter, do we have to deal with first things later and then deal with the others later? Thank you.

>> PONCELET ILELEJI: To answer your question, Sarah, when people generally talk in all villages around the world, when they generally talk about they live on less than $1, whether it's Asia, Latin America, whatever, people forget those families who live on less than $1 a day to a large extent may be up to -- sorry -- yeah, okay, so may be close to it's not 100%, but the majority of them their children go to school. Most governments based on the millenium development goals have worked hard to try to make sure kids have access to public education. Now, those kids that have access to public education, those are the particle attachment area because (particular) because once we bridge them with digital literacy, the parents invariably get access. It doesn't have to start as you look at it as a farmer in the village who doesn't have access but his child is going to school, so we should be able to equip that child, whether through a community telecentre or something that has access to information. We check in Africa alone what the penetration of mobile telephones have done around Africa and we should be able to get Smartphones to these kids and that is where companies like Google, Verizon, all these with social responsibility can help in those aspects to get these children and they in turn directly will get it back to their parents to include it in their life. That's where I'm coming from.

>> CINTRA SOOKNANAN: Next question? There was another from the back.

>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, I'm part here of civil society, and I have just a commentary remark to this session. You have shared experiences about multi-stakeholder participation and importance of civil society participation in Internet governance. All this sounds good, but the final decision will be taken in December in Dubai in Internet governance could attend if we are part of Government delegation. Not all governments are plan to go sponsor civil society or add them to their delegation, and if these -- if the Government does, how much freedom have the civil society, first, and the second, we are discussing governance topic but finally we won't be part of the important decision because we won't be there as a civil society to show our opinion or point of view. Who insures rights or ideas will be respected? Multi-stakeholders be included with positions about Internet, including meetings or activities?

(Pause)

>> PONCELET ILELEJI: What I will suggest to you with this big event happening in Dubai, if you look -- in Dubai, if you look at the role of civil society, they have to be very active in the national level at the national level, because you are bringing in the governments, at most governments, no matter how rigid they are, there's always a compromise, big companies operating in China, you have all the big major players, they're in China, that's why the restriction, they operate. So when you talk about small countries if at local level, at national country, at the national IGFs you have all these civil societies being active within the countries they are because there you have the national regulators that were coming, even some civil societies, and I'm not talking off the record, they don't even know what regulations operate in their countries with their national regulations. When this happens, what you hear from colleagues from different parts of the world I'm talking about civil society, what happens in America in civil society or in Europe is different from how they operate in developing countries, so we have to try to bridge that divide because most governments and most of the people in the civil societies that would like to go from especially in developing countries, if they were really active, the Government would sponsor them, because in a lot of developing countries, especially like Nigeria and all these big countries, they like to go with the show to make everybody really feel a part of the whole process. So our national movements, civil society has to be actively involved from there, and then from there, at the global level, governments will listen and be more.

>> CINTRA SOOKNANAN: I just want to add as well that it's also important for civil society not just to be active but also to be aware of what is happening, you know, many members of civil society don't know the actual implications of WICIT, so who is to educate them? Is the onus on civil society or on civil society to create awareness and to level as an equal player in the multi-stakeholder model? So yes, I welcome. Well, let's have Mary first and then you can respond.

>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. Just to develop a little bit on what you were just saying, I agree with you, and I think that as civil society, I guess we all wish that we should -- I mean, we would like to be everywhere all the time and be represented in all those forums and spaces, but indeed, it's our responsibility to be strategic and to identify the spaces where we can go and develop some kind of strategy and take decisions and say, well, if there's no space at the regional

level or international level in this particular forum, then let's go and meet with the Government and identify the spaces at local levels and let's be active there because let's stop complaining and let's be strategic like businesses do, like governments do. That's basically my point. Thank you.

>> MARCO PANCINI: I would like to add a word on this. First of all, I think the comment made around civil society participation on the WICIT is very important, we need to find some creative way to put pressure on the Government in order to get on board the civil society groups that are active on this topic. So we are more than happy to work on this if you are interested, we can discuss how to do it.

The second thing I like a lot the last comment that was made because when we talk about the IGF, I think we need to keep the spirit of the IGF as a decision-shaping process, at the same time there are a lot of decision-making process and institutions and fora going on in the world, we also need to make sure that in environment, the multi-stakeholder process is taken into consideration, the feedback from the different stakeholders are taken into consideration.

>> CINTRA SOOKNANAN: I think there was a question? No? No? Okay. Are there any other questions from the floor? No? Okay. All right. Well, in this case, I did enjoy this panel discussion quite a lot today, including, you know, the participation from the audience. I think overall we've come to agreement that social sector input in IG policy is critical but should not be limited just to ICANN. Instead, it also includes engagement in the legislative process to add to transparency, accountable and legitimate dialogue. While many business now combine corporate responsibility and social community responsibility as part of the bottom lines, there are still challenges in particular with regard to improving participation from developing countries. There was also discussion about the role of civil society in social sector, advocacy, education, outreach, access, opportunity creation, particularly with regard to youth and the impoverished. Social sector rules are quite wide, they cut through many aspects of our lives and deal with many gaps that the Government and business cannot fill due to lack of resources and other factors. If there are any other closing views from the panel, please, we'll just take them in line. Thank you.

>> PONCELET ILELEJI: Thank you very much. This discussion is ongoing, and within this period of the multi-stakeholder approach, we within civil society shall always try to have a compromise and never think governments will push us aside

because they can't push us aside, they're no know we're equal partners, grassroots, civil societies to make that happen. That breach between civil society and Government when it happens very well at grassroots level, that is what makes all these big corporations, the businesses like the Googles, the Verizon, come and say okay, we now have a good working environment to be able to put in resources to make things happen so we should continue to engage and agree to disagree. Thank you.

>> MARCO PANCINI: Again, I hope next year to be in a similar panel ask discussing about also some steps that we took in the direction of improving the participation and solving some of the issues we talked about today.

>> OSMAN GUNDUZ: I think the civil society sector is very important in the Internet governance area. And I think in developing countries very great problem, step by step, Government sector strongly, but civil society sector, not strongly. So I think international organisations and also international structure has to support local civil society sectors. Thank you.

>> CINTRA SOOKNANAN: Okay. Thank you for your attendance, and making this panel discussion side session so interesting.

(10:30 AM) 

* * * * * * * *This text is being provided in a rough draft format.Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is providedin order to facilitate communication accessibility and maynot be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.* * * * * * * *