DC-SIG Involving Schools of Internet Governance in achieving SDGs | IGF 2023

Audience

During the discussion on Internet governance schools, it was highlighted that these schools strive to build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions. Institutions like the Internet Engineering Task Force and ICANN were cited as examples of inclusivity and effectiveness in the field of internet governance. Schools of internet governance expose students to different institutional forms, including NGOs that manage standardization or open-source communities.

Another significant aspect of internet governance schools is their role in promoting peace and cultural understanding. By connecting people from different countries, these schools leverage the internet as a tool to combat prejudice and foster peace. The schools invite guests from various countries to demonstrate the world’s diversity and encourage cooperation and mutual understanding.

Furthermore, these educational institutions have the potential to reduce unemployment and empower individuals economically. For instance, the Pakistan School on Internet Governance includes sessions on leveraging the internet for entrepreneurial opportunities, highlighting successful digital initiatives that inspire youth. By training individuals on internet governance and fostering entrepreneurship, these schools contribute to employment generation and economic growth.

In areas with limited internet access, it is crucial to inform local communities about the plans of local operators and regulators. The Pakistan School on Internet Governance, for instance, invites local operators to share their internet access plans, while regulators and government officials inform the audience about their visions and strategies. This knowledge exchange helps bridge the gap in connectivity by ensuring that affected communities are aware of plans to improve access.

The African School on Internet Governance focuses on leadership development, gender equality, and addressing the gender digital divide. This collaborative initiative between Research ICT Africa, the African Union Commission, and the Association for Progressive Communications targets middle to senior management in government, regulators, and civil society. The school aims to provide a platform for women thought leaders, promote African expertise, and address gender-based violence and the digital divide.

Internet governance schools also facilitate discussions on sensitive topics, such as internet shutdowns. By creating an inclusive environment for dialogue, these schools bring together civil society, human rights activists, and government and regulatory representatives from African countries. This enables open and constructive discussions on internet-related issues, including internet shutdowns.

Overall, internet governance schools play a crucial role in building effective institutions, promoting peace and cultural understanding, reducing unemployment, bridging the urban-rural divide, and addressing societal issues. Through education, inclusivity, and dialogue, these schools contribute to the sustainable management of the internet and the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals.

Speaker 1

The Japan School of Internet Governance, which started this year, aims to promote Internet Governance on a larger scale and raise awareness of its importance. An announcement by Toshi from the school showcased its successful launch. Notably, the school conducted a full-day session with youth participants, emphasizing its commitment to engaging the future generation in discussions and decision-making processes regarding internet governance.

To achieve its goals, the school intends to foster information exchange and facilitate meaningful discussions on various topics, including contentious issues like the Manga Pirate Site. These subjects are incorporated into the curriculum, equipping students with the knowledge and skills needed to navigate internet governance and address potential challenges.

The efforts of the Japan School of Internet Governance align with SDG 4: Quality Education and SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By focusing on these SDGs, the school contributes to improving the quality of education and promotes the development and innovation required for a robust internet infrastructure.

The establishment of the Japan School of Internet Governance is a significant step towards increasing awareness and understanding of internet governance in Japan. It strives to create a well-informed and proactive society by facilitating dialogue, promoting information exchange, and addressing relevant issues.

In conclusion, the Japan School of Internet Governance, which began its activities this year, seeks to elevate the importance of internet governance and expand its reach. Through its curriculum and initiatives, the school empowers individuals, particularly young participants, by equipping them with the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate the complexities of internet governance. By addressing significant issues such as the Manga Pirate Site, the school demonstrates its commitment to fostering dialogue and nurturing a well-informed society.

Olga Cavalli

During the session, the speakers emphasized the importance of finding connections between internet governance schools and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Olga Cavalli specifically highlighted the significance of discussing activities related to the SDGs at different schools of internet governance. This highlights the need for these schools to align their work with the broader global agenda of achieving sustainable development.

One of the main topics discussed was the energy consumption of the internet, with predictions suggesting that it will double by 2030. This raises concerns about its environmental impact. It was also highlighted that there are still parts of the world that lack access to electricity, exacerbating energy disparities. The emergence of the Internet of Energy as a new field further emphasizes the need to address energy consumption and sustainability in the context of internet governance.

The schools of internet governance were commended for their role in promoting understanding and action around energy consumption and sustainability. The South School of Internet Governance, in particular, focuses on issues related to energy consumption and its potential impacts, such as climate change. This demonstrates that these schools are not only educating individuals but also becoming platforms for addressing pressing global challenges.

The approach of organizing schools in different cities was endorsed as a means to reach and include diverse communities in the discussions. The Pakistan School on Internet Governance, for example, rotates among different cities, allowing more diverse communities to access education and engage in the dialogue on internet governance.

Efforts to bridge the gap between urban and rural communities were highlighted, particularly by the Bangladeshi School of Internet Governance. The speaker, Ashrafur Rahman, who is a coordinator of the school, mentioned their endeavors to involve rural and transgender communities and promote innovation in rural areas. This showcases the school’s commitment to inclusivity and addressing the digital divide between rural and urban populations.

Another notable aspect of the schools of internet governance is their focus on the SDGs and the integration of the goals into their programs. Olga Cavalli organized a school in Rio with Fundación Getulio Vargas that placed specific emphasis on the SDGs. By incorporating the SDGs into their curriculum, these schools are contributing to the realization of the global goals.

The evolving nature of the schools of internet governance was emphasized, with references to partnerships and collaborations. The Argentina School of Internet Governance was highlighted for partnering with a university to offer certifications from Fortinet, a leading cybersecurity company. Additionally, the production of a document for the Global Digital Compact involving over 80 fellows from around the world further demonstrates the schools’ evolving and expanding role in the field of internet governance.

The schools of internet governance were also recognized for their role in enhancing communication and learning among schools. The usefulness of the dynamic coalition in supporting these endeavors was acknowledged, as it provides materials and helps schools understand the multi-stakeholder model and its evolution. Furthermore, the availability of a website with a map showing the locations of the schools was noted as a means to share and consult information between the schools.

However, the issue of limited time for active participation in these activities was acknowledged by Olga Cavalli herself. This suggests that despite their commitment to internet governance, time constraints can hinder active engagement in these initiatives.

On the positive side, the availability of school content on their YouTube channel in multiple languages serves to disseminate their knowledge and insights to a wider audience. Additionally, students are kept engaged through a telegram group, where they can access fellowship opportunities, job opportunities, research, and news about internet governance. This further strengthens the sense of community and provides students with ongoing learning and development opportunities.

In conclusion, the session highlighted the importance of integrating the works of internet governance schools with the SDGs. The energy consumption of the internet and the need for sustainability were key concerns discussed. The schools of internet governance play a significant role in promoting understanding and action around these issues. They reach diverse communities through their approach of organizing schools in different cities and strive to bridge the gap between urban and rural populations. The schools’ focus on the SDGs and their evolving nature, as well as partnerships and collaborations, contribute to their expanding role in the field of internet governance. Despite time constraints, the schools continue to enhance communication and learning, with the dynamic coalition and the sharing of information and documents through their website. Overall, the session provided valuable insights into the achievements and challenges faced by internet governance schools and their contribution to a more sustainable and inclusive digital future.

Satish Babu

The analysis of the provided statements reveals several key points and arguments made by the speakers. Firstly, Satish Babu is associated with two schools, specifically the Asia Pacific School on Internet Governance and the India School. These schools were founded in 2015 and 2016 respectively, with the purpose of providing capacity building and building awareness in the field of internet governance. The primary function of these schools is to equip individuals with the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively navigate the complexities of internet governance.

Furthermore, it is highlighted that there is a need for schools on internet governance globally. Many countries and regions, including Africa, Asia Pacific, Argentina, Armenia, Chad, Ghana, Europe, North America, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Russia, have already established their own schools in response to this need. These schools serve as platforms for individuals from different parts of the world to convene, collaborate, and share ideas related to internet governance.

Another important aspect discussed is the incorporation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into the curricula of these schools. While the two schools that Satish Babu is associated with do not explicitly highlight the SDGs, it is mentioned that the curriculars were developed without considering the SDGs, as they were adopted after the schools were already operational. Nevertheless, Satish finds value in discussing how these schools naturally address many of the SDGs, emphasizing the alignment of their educational programmes with the broader goals of sustainable development.

Satish also advocates for the enhancement of cybersecurity efforts and the development of online education resources. It is emphasized that cybersecurity is a central issue in internet governance, and the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise, as well as the London Process, provide opportunities for African colleagues to engage and address this issue effectively. Additionally, the successful workshops conducted by the schools in collaboration with various stakeholders have led to the development of new projects.

Moreover, the speakers acknowledge the proposal for global schools on internet governance, highlighting that two schools have already evolved from regional to global stages. Satish also emphasizes the importance of content evolution in internet governance education, specifically citing the India School of Internet Governance as an example. The school has made its course content available on their website, demonstrating the journey and evolution of the curriculum over eight years.

In conclusion, the speakers address the importance of quality education, partnerships, and the SDGs in the field of internet governance. The schools on internet governance play a crucial role in building awareness and capacity, and there is a global need for such schools. Satish Babu advocates for the enhancement of cybersecurity efforts, the development of online education resources, and emphasizes the importance of content evolution in internet governance education. The analysis provides valuable insights into the current landscape of internet governance education and the efforts being made to address the challenges and opportunities in this field.

Avri Doria

Avri Doria hosted the Dynamic Coalition on Schools and Internet Governance session, emphasising the importance of education in internet governance and the role of schools in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The session was divided into three sections: presentations from new schools, discussions on SDGs and the actions schools are taking, and an examination of the objectives of the Dynamic Coalition on Schools.

Despite some participants initially being absent, Avri Doria ensured that the session followed the outlined agenda. She highlighted the dynamic coalition’s significance in supporting schools and promoting governance education. The coalition has developed useful resources for schools, such as documents and materials, to aid learning about governance and the multi-stakeholder model. Avri Doria believes that the dynamic coalition could be an invaluable resource in teaching governance and enhancing understanding of the multi-stakeholder approach.

The session also delved into discussions on the SDGs, specifically focusing on SDG 5 (Gender Equality), SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions). Avri Doria stressed the importance of addressing these goals within schools and internet governance. This emphasised the need to incorporate the SDGs into school curriculums and promote gender equality, clean energy, and peace and justice within educational institutions.

During the session, Avri Doria highlighted the collaboration between the dynamic coalition and the IGF Secretariat. She suggested the need for a follow-up to evaluate the impact and outcome of this collaboration, examining its success rate and feedback on the collaboration document. Avri Doria believes that additional elements could be included to enhance the effectiveness of the document.

Furthermore, Avri Doria advocated for the use of modern internet standards and global good practices to enhance justified trust in the internet and email. She referred to the Global Forum for Cyber Expertise, which includes a track focused on enhancing justified trust. Avri Doria mentioned the availability of resources and a handbook explaining these modern internet standards and their significance. She considers these resources valuable assets for schools and encourages their use in educational settings.

Additionally, Avri Doria discussed a website aimed at open educational resource sharing for internet governance. The website features a map function and sections dedicated to fellows, faculties, and a dynamic coalition wiki. While only one school has contributed materials thus far, Avri Doria encouraged others to contribute resources in order to enrich the website and promote collaborative learning among different schools.

In conclusion, the session hosted by Avri Doria underscored the importance of education in internet governance and the role of schools in achieving the SDGs. The discussions emphasised the significance of teaching governance, integrating the SDGs into school curriculums, and fostering a deeper understanding of the multi-stakeholder model. The session also highlighted the collaboration between the dynamic coalition and the IGF Secretariat, as well as advocating for the use of modern internet standards and global good practices. The importance of sharing open educational resources for internet governance was also emphasised, promoting collaboration among schools to enhance education in this field.

Sandra Hoferichte

Schools on internet governance play a significant role in promoting gender equality and empowering women. These schools have been successful in attracting a greater number of female participants compared to males, contributing to a more balanced gender representation in this field. For example, the European Summer School on Internet Governance has seen a higher turnout of female participants. These schools provide a comprehensive education that equips young professionals with the necessary knowledge and skills to pursue leadership positions.

However, despite progress in educational initiatives, there is still a lack of advancement in women’s representation in managerial positions in Germany. The proportion of women in managerial roles has only slightly increased from 21% in 2014 to 23% in 2018. Continued efforts are needed to address gender disparities in leadership roles.

To address this issue, more emphasis should be placed on adult education for promoting gender equality. Schools on internet governance can serve as a valuable platform for adult education, helping to bridge the gap and empower women in various aspects of their lives. By providing access to education and empowering women, these schools contribute to the progress towards achieving gender equality, aligned with Sustainable Development Goal 5.

In the context of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Japan has shown greater awareness and promotion compared to Europe. Japanese society demonstrates a visible commitment to SDGs, with initiatives such as displaying SDG symbols on windows and cars. Europe could learn from Japan’s approach and consider adopting similar strategies to raise awareness and garner public support for achieving the SDGs.

Furthermore, it is important to address the limited utilization of digital resources like the wiki and website for global networking. Despite the availability of these platforms and partial funding from the Medienstadt Leipzig association, their usage has been relatively low. Sandra Hoferichte expresses concern over this limited engagement and emphasizes the need for financial support from other schools or organizations to sustain these digital resources and the work of the dynamic coalition. Such support would contribute to the effective dissemination of information and knowledge sharing among a wider network, enabling greater collaboration towards achieving SDGs 4 and 10.

In conclusion, schools on internet governance have proven to be instrumental in promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. However, there is still work to be done to address the underrepresentation of women in managerial positions in Germany. By embracing adult education and adopting Japan’s approach to SDG awareness, progress can be made towards achieving these goals. Additionally, supporting the wiki and website for global networking through increased funding would enhance their effectiveness in facilitating collaboration and knowledge exchange for the SDGs.

Wolfgang Kleinwaechter

In the analysis, the speakers delve into the multidimensional nature of internet governance and its intersection with education. They emphasize that internet governance encompasses the evolution and use of the internet, covering both the technical and application layers, as well as various public policy issues related to the internet. It is noted that the complex and evolving nature of internet governance makes it difficult to study within a traditional university setting.

The importance of specialized courses in internet governance is highlighted. The speakers point out that new questions and issues have arisen in recent years that were not previously on the agenda. These require accurate understanding, as seen in the example of artificial intelligence (AI) governance. The speaker mentions growing confusion surrounding concepts such as digital governance, AI governance, and cyber governance. This underscores the need for courses that provide clarity to address the evolving landscape.

Furthermore, the speakers stress the significance of academic independence and proactivity in developing educational programs. They advocate for taking inspiration from the global community while also thinking independently about what is beneficial for one’s own country and community. They emphasize the need to be proactive in addressing the challenges and opportunities presented by internet governance.

The analysis also draws attention to the importance of judges with knowledge of internet governance. It is stated that in a world where many conflicts may end up in court, judges without understanding of internet governance may make incorrect decisions. This underscores the need for education and expertise in this area to ensure fair and accurate rulings.

Additionally, the analysis touches upon the topic of cybersecurity and the establishment of the Global Forum for Cyber Expertise. The origins of the Global Forum for Cyber Expertise from the London process are mentioned, with its focus on cybersecurity. It is noted that the Global Forum will be hosting a world conference on capacity building, emphasizing the importance of collaboration and partnerships in addressing cybersecurity challenges.

Overall, the analysis reflects a comprehensive understanding of the importance of education, collaboration, and continuous development of expertise in the field of internet governance. The speakers provide valuable insights, highlighting the multidisciplinary nature of the subject, the need for specialized courses, the significance of academic independence, the role of judges, and the importance of cybersecurity. These observations are crucial for navigating the complexities of internet governance and addressing its challenges effectively.

Alexander Isavnin

The analysis examines various arguments and stances on different topics, addressing issues such as internet governance schools, travel and international exposure, Russia’s societal norms, the obscurity of UN processes, access to water and healthcare, the government’s decision-making, and the perceived obscurity of certain Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

One argument posits that internet governance schools can contribute to the development of effective and inclusive institutions. It highlights the importance of including diverse stakeholders, with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) serving as an example. This argument stresses the need for governance frameworks that accommodate different perspectives and foster collaboration.

Another argument emphasises how travel and international exposure promote understanding and peace. It cites a quote from Mark Twain, asserting that travel has the power to eradicate prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. The widespread availability of the internet is also seen as a means to bring diverse experiences from different countries into people’s homes, further enhancing global understanding.

In contrast, a negative stance suggests that Russia is slowly reverting to its old societal norms. However, the analysis lacks specific supporting facts for this claim, making it somewhat speculative.

Furthermore, concerns are raised regarding the obscurity of UN processes in the Russian Federation. It is highlighted that these processes are not widely publicised and are considered opaque by the local population, thus raising questions about transparency and accessibility.

On a positive note, the analysis acknowledges that Russia generally has good access to water and healthcare, attributing this to the legacy of the Soviet Union, which laid a solid foundation in these areas.

A negative argument contends that the government may hold the belief that certain actions should not be taken in other areas. However, no specific evidence is provided to support this claim, leaving it open to interpretation.

The analysis also notes the perception of certain SDGs, specifically the 9th and 16th goals, as being obscure. However, without specific details or evidence, this argument lacks substance.

In addition, the analysis highlights a dedicated course aimed at explaining UN processes and SDGs. This course aims to provide information to attendees, ensuring they are well-informed and understand the objectives behind the SDGs and the workings of the United Nations.

In conclusion, the analysis covers a range of arguments and stances on various topics. While some points are supported by evidence, others lack specificity or supporting facts. The analysis provides insights into the significance of internet governance schools, travel and international exposure, concerns about the obscurity of UN processes and certain SDGs, access to water and healthcare, and the government’s decision-making. The course dedicated to explaining UN processes and SDGs is seen as a valuable resource for enhancing understanding in this field.

Avri Doria:
Let me start. My name is Avri Dori and I want to welcome you to the Dynamic Coalition on Schools and Internet Governance session. We have a fairly full agenda. We don’t quite have everybody in the room yet but we can get started. So the first thing is let me just go through the agenda that we’ve got. We’ve got two moderators. We’ve got Satish and we’ve got Olga who will be joining us. I’m not sure if we have any of our report reporters in the room but but we’ll take care of that. We have basically there’s three sections in this. In the first one we’ll be talking about schools and we’ll invite Satish and Olga we’ll invite new speakers to people that have new schools to come up. What we had showing before and hopefully can keep showing for a little while is that single slide from many of the schools that we’re not going to invite to speak a lot about their schools but just to have their slides appearing for for a short bit of time. Then we’ll have a second section where we’ll basically take three of the SDGs and we’ll have presentations on those SDGs in terms of what are various schools doing in them. And then finally we’ll have a discussion with what time we have left of what the dynamic coalition on schools would like to do. So with that I’d like to pass it to you Satish to sort of go into the introduction of the schools and such, thanks.

Satish Babu:
Thanks very much, I’m Satish and I’m based out of India part of the ICANN at large and also I’m associated with two schools. First one is the Asia Pacific School on Internet Governance which was founded in 2015. The second one is the India School which was founded in 2016. So we have a bunch of slides on different schools. We can quickly run through them. We don’t want to kind of stop and present each. Can you advance to the next one? This first slide is about the African School on Internet Governance. Next please. This is the Asia Pacific School. As I mentioned it was founded in 2015 and we are planning this year’s edition in Manila in November. Next. This is Argentina SIG. As you can see Olga is unfortunately not here but she is the one that is part of this. Next. This is the Armenian SIG. Armenia has also been having quite continuously actually their SIGs. Next. The Chad SIG. We have a representative from Chad so later on in the interaction we can speak about it if you want to highlight anything. Next. Ghana. Anybody from Ghana school here? No, nobody’s from. Sorry. Yeah, next. This is the European Summer School. I am myself an alumni and Sandra is here from the Euro SIG. Next. This is India School founded in 2016. Couple of weeks back we had the eighth edition in India. Next. NASIG. NASIG is a school, a North American school set up by the ICANN community at large people, Glenn and others. I don’t think there’s anybody here from that school here. Next. This is the Nigerian School on Internet Governance. Is anybody here from Nigeria or the school? I know. Next. Pakistan. We have Akash here from Pakistan. The PK SIG from 2015. One of the earliest schools in Asia Pacific and certainly in South Asia, the first in South Asia. Next. The Russian School on, Summer School on Internet Governance, St. Petersburg University. Next. This is South School. Oh, Olga School. So this is one of the oldest again in the world actually. This is Sri Lanka IGF which also doubles as a SIG. So it’s a kind of combined structure. Next. Virtual School. This is set up by again, Glenn McKnight and Alfredo who are part of the ICANN community. And when the COVID shutdown came up, this was their response to the shutdown. And it is now continuing as a virtual school. Next. Chad, second time it’s coming I think. That’s it.

Avri Doria:
So these are the schools that we have having this slide set, slide deck. Are there anybody from any other school not mentioned so far? If so, we can quickly introduce yourself. Yeah. Okay, I’m from Benin and, from Benin School Internet Governance. Yeah. Thanks for that. This is from Benin. We have one more school which is brand new and Avery is going to introduce that school. I’m actually gonna invite an introduction to that school. And Tadashi, if you would like to, I don’t know if you could hear me. Would you like to introduce the new Japan School? While we’re talking about it, let me talk about an event that they had. KCG this year, just before this meeting started, had basically a whole day session where there was a youth session and they introduced, they basically had a session of the school. And it was really quite an interesting day in terms of the students and having sessions and such. Would you like to actually come and introduce the new school that you’re doing in Japan, the Japan School? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Lee.

Speaker 1:
My name is Toshi from Japan School of Internet Governance. We start this spring. Last year, I met her at the Ethiopia Addis Ababa ISGF last month. So I know slightly about School Internet Governance, but what is School Internet Governance? What is the use? I was just very confused. But at the time, I found out what is School Internet Governance. So in 2018, we have a big discussion about Manga Pirate Site. Probably you may know at the ISGF village, there are the big booths about that pirate site. So then in 2019, I started to teach in the university, talk about a pirate site and internet governance. So I also, I’m a professor in Kyoto. So then I start again this year, about the, how can I say, internet governance. So then, I’m very happy to many of you to Kyoto, and I hope that we have, how can I say, promotion of School Internet Governance and exchange for more information and help us. Thank you. Thank you very much. And quite looking forward. So back to you. I don’t know if there are any other new schools here that wanted to do some results before we move on. So I’d like to ask anybody who’s online, whether they represent any schools of, internet governance schools or internet governance. If there are some, if there is someone,

Satish Babu:
then please raise your hands. I don’t see any hands, so I’m assuming that. So we have quickly gone through the slides, but towards the end of the session, we have some discussion time. We have Olga, our moderator, who’s coming up just now. So we have time at the end of the session to discuss. Yeah, so back to you, this is the pre-gathering. Thank you. So yeah, give yourself a chance to breathe,

Avri Doria:
but we basically have gone through the new schools, invited new schools. The new Japan school discussed a little bit. I talked a little bit about the event that occurred earlier this week at KCG. And we’re now at the point where we’re gonna talk about SDGs and schools. And that’s good that we’re giving this a fair amount of time. We’re gonna have three of the SDGs are gonna be discussed. The first one, and I’ll just start this. The first one will be on SDG 5 on gender. The second, SDG 7 on energy. And the third, SDG 16 on peace, justice, and strong institutions. So I don’t know, Olga, if you wanted to introduce the whole theme more than I just did.

Olga Cavalli:
One of the purposes of this session is to try to find linkages in between what we do at the different schools of internet governance and the sustainable development goals. There are some of the activities, I would say that several of the activities that we do with the schools in different focuses of training are totally related with the different SDGs. So this is why Sandra, myself, I don’t know if we have other colleagues talking about different SDGs. We would like to explain some of the activities that we do in relation with these SDGs. And perhaps some other schools that are in the room could maybe jump up and share some other activities that are related with this issue. Sandra, would you like to go to the gender issue? And then I will follow with energy. Yes, thank you very much.

Avri Doria:
Welcome, everyone.

Sandra Hoferichte:
My name is Sandra Hoferichter. I’m the organizer of the European Summer School on Internet Governance, which is a global school other than the name suggests. The euro just comes from the fact that we are based in Europe, but we are inviting globally. And I’m proud to say that we were the first school on internet governance, and it’s really amazing to see how many schools evolved over the years and how this became a movement with a really greater impact. Speaking about impact, I would like to focus a little bit on SDG five, which is achieve gender quality and empower all women and girls. And there are several under achievements or under goals that are defined, and I looked at those who are most relevant to schools on internet governance, which I believe is 5.5, ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all level of decision-making and political, economic, and public life. I do believe that schools on internet governance do contribute to this goal because most of the schools are not only focused on youth engagement and youth participation, but indeed are an opportunity for young professionals to get a holistic knowledge about internet governance, which then helps them to serve on certain boards or take leadership positions and organizations that are dealing with internet governance. In SDGs, usually there are a lot of young people in SDGs, usually there are also indicators mentioned that support or that are supporting numbers for the respective goal. I have here a number from Germany, only the proportion of women in managerial positions in Germany in 2014, it was only 21%. And in 2018, not much progress has been made, it’s only 23%. So you see there’s still a lot of work to do in order to get really the woman into managerial positions. Same applies for women in parliament or local governments. Also here, little progress has been made. If I look at the numbers, it even lowered, but this is in a very small range, so I would not go into much detail, but it’s around 30 to 40% of women that are in Germany. In local governments or in parliaments, in national parliaments. But I want to focus a little bit on the second goal that applies to our schools, which is goal 5.B, enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology to promote the empowerment of women. The respective indicator is not really related to what we are doing at our schools because it shows the proportion of individuals who own a mobile phone by sex. I think this is nothing that is relevant for us, but I think the overall goal, enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology to promote the empowerment of women. I do think this is really indeed the goal where the schools of internet governance should possibly provide an indicator because here I can say, speaking from the European summer school, I can realize that over the past 10 years, the participation of women and the application rate of women is much bigger than the application and the participation rate of men. So what does it tell us? Women are obviously more often willing to dedicate vacation time or education time and travel costs or participation costs in order to participate in such a summer course. And speaking from this Euro SSIG, I indeed, in order to have parity in our classes, I sometimes indeed looking for male participants that are qualified and can participate in our school. This is something that might look other in different regions of the world, but I wanted to give you this very personal view or this very local view from the school that I’m running. But I have also consulted with UNESCO and we had a discussion this year in Meissen at our school and UNESCO numbers prove that the gap, at least in primary schools, have narrowed tremendously over the past years. There is still a gap remaining in adult education and here I do believe we can pick up the qualified women that are coming from a really good qualification in the primary school, we can pick them up and include them in our courses and here I do believe the schools on internet governance, looking at them from a perspective of what they can contribute to the SDGs can really do and are doing a wonderful job and are creating a good opportunity for adult education, which of course then at some point should also lead to bring women into more leadership position, not only in managerial, but also in parliaments and governments. I have some resources here, so whoever is interested, I’m happy to share those. They are from, as I said, UNESCO, from Sciences Po Paris, but also from the World Bank. If you would like to have some more details, I don’t go into these details right now.

Olga Cavalli:
Thank you. Thank you very much, Sandra, and apologies for being late. I was confused, I thought the session was at 11 and I was running from other session this morning. My name is Olga, I didn’t present myself properly. My name is Olga Cavalli. Me and my colleague, Adrian, and other colleagues from Latin America, we run the South School of Internet Governance. I think it was the second one in the history. And it is interesting what Sandra says that after the pandemic, we went to a hybrid format and now we have fellows mainly from Latin America, which is the focus, but we have fellows from all over the world. We have a translation all the time between Spanish and English. And also this year, we organized it in the Northeast of Brazil, also in Portuguese. So it has become somehow global, but the focus is Latin America or the Americas because it has been organized also in North America and in the Caribbean. About the SDG that I wanted to comment, which is number seven, focused on ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all. Access to energy is important pillar for the well-being of people, as well as for economic development and poverty alleviation. I think schools have a major role from different perspectives related with energy, and also we have to think energy very, very much linked with climate change, which is a problem for several, for the whole world, but especially for developing countries that are suffering consequences, perhaps happening in other parts of the world. So, about energy, we have, in our school, we had several panels about the impact of what would happen if we would achieve a connectivity for all. What would happen with climate change? What would happen with the demand of energy? So, powering the Internet consumed 800 terawatts of electricity in 2012-2022, and it is expected to really increase this year and the next year, and I have some information from different resources. The energy consumption of the Internet will double by 2030, so the consumption of energy will be a major issue, and the impact that it may have in climate change may be relevant for many countries, including the demand that we have by artificial intelligence and other new developments, Internet of Things, and many automatic devices all over the world. There is another aspect of the energy, which is, there are, it’s difficult to understand or believe, but there are areas in the world that don’t have electricity today. So, in the schools, we can talk with different stakeholders, professionals from developing economies, developing countries, in trying to bridge that gap of areas that don’t have electricity. Imagine having no electricity, it’s, perhaps for many of us, we cannot imagine. We were talking in Brazil with fellows from living in the Amazonian area. They don’t have roads, they only get there by boat, and the only Internet that they are having today is the one by Starlink, with some mobile, starting with the low Earth orbit satellites, and government is installing some fiber-optic cables through the Amazons. But some parts of that region don’t even have electricity. So, the work that we do in the schools, in talking with different professionals, governments, and different stakeholders in trying to enhance the reach of electricity, and the good use of electricity, and the impact in climate change will be, it’s very important. Also, there is a new concept called the Internet of Energy. It means the Internet of Things, but focused on energy, focused on all the devices that control and manage the energy as a critical infrastructure. So, includes generation, transmission, functionality, and energy usage. So, that is a new area of work that we may include in the issues that we review in the schools. So, this is what I wanted to share with you. I have some resources here also about energy and climate change. If you want, I can send them to you. And maybe, in the audience, there are schools that could share some ideas about the Sustainable Development Goals. Do you think that’s good? Do we have time? We have one more speaker. Okay. I think that would be good. I think after we finish with Alexander, we can

Avri Doria:
then see if others want to comment, either on the schools that have, I mean, the SDGs that have

Alexander Isavnin:
already been discussed, or on others. Hello. My name is Alexander Savnin, and I teach Internet Governance in Moscow University in Russia. And I would like to talk about SDG 16, which sounds promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels. So, I would like to start talking about how schools of Internet governance could help build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions. Actually, one of Internet governance institutions about which you have to talk at your school, it’s an Internet Engineering Task Force, and this is the most effective working standardization body, because actually, if things work, it becomes standard. If it does not work, or no one needs it, it’s not standard. It’s much more effective than ITU, for example. Or another example which we are bringing in school to our students at schools of Internet governance is actually ICANN, which is, first of all, demonstratively inclusive, with different group of stakeholders, different group of possibilities, and for sure, it’s keeping diversity, which might not be enforced in some societies. So, like Sandra and Olga from very developed countries in society meanings, Russia is actually now slowly going back to previous centuries, and then we have to bring this to our students’ information about how governance works. Actually, in our school, we talk not only about classical Internet governance institutions, we also touch different bodies, well, classical like ITU, also different NGOs, which govern standardization of technologies, or working with communities like open source community managing as NGOs, or like Wikimedia, who manages well-known Wikipedia. So, such examples of inclusion and effectiveness, again, if you are not in the West, and as a stakeholder group, could be really impressive. One of my students reported after our course that we were telling like science fictions about universities that doesn’t exist. But anyway, if you can bring such examples in your country, you can bring examples of such working institutions, and actually, people usually know that Internet works. You can show relations to what people see if they access Internet, to how it existed. So, I can talk a lot of this. Maybe just to save time, I will not give exact targets of this goal, but there are like 16.7, 16.8, something like which are more precise in this case. Also, this goal is about peace and promote peaceful things. For us, it’s very important, and I will give just one quote from a very favorite American writer, Mark Twain. Yeah. Once, many years ago, when Internet had not existed, he said that travel is fatal to pre-justice, bigotry, and narrow mindlessness. And actually, all these words are a source of current wars and conflicts. Now, from many countries, young people are not able to travel and actually be cured from pre-justice or something like this. Internet, first of all, bring us to many different places. Internet governance, demonstration to our students’ Internet governance, shows experiences from many different countries. It allows us, usually, schools of Internet governance invites guests from different countries, different other schools or something like. So, demonstration to students that world is different, world is interesting. That other people in the world and their activity, they are not aliens, they are just interesting. They are so interesting for you and your students are interesting for them. And Internet is not just a source of dangerous information, but via governance, people start cooperating, understanding each other, and spreading this into their countries, and that could bring peace to our planet more effectively. Thank you. Thanks to you. We have a mic. Maybe you can join in the mic.

Audience:
Hi. My name is Vakas, and I’m part of the team at Pakistan School on Internet Governance. We last week, we had our ninth edition in this seventh different city of Pakistan. So, our model is a bit different. We don’t, we’re not located at a central location in white people. We actually go to a different city every year. That has its pros and cons as well. I won’t go into details. But there are two SDGs that I wanted to mention, which are actually part of why we do things at SIGS. One is 8.6, which says, by 2020, substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education, or training. Since we educate people, we train people about Internet governance, and we also, at least in our school, we have a full-fledged session about Internet for entrepreneurial opportunities. So, invite people who have digital initiatives that led to successful business ventures in the end, just so as to, you know, inspire the youth about seeing the Internet as an economic empowerment tool as well. The second one I would like to mention is 9.5, subclause 9.5C, it would be then, eventually. It says that significantly increase access to information and communication technology, and strive to provide universal and affordable access to Internet in these developing countries by 2020. I’m sure many of the other schools do this as well, but we also invite mobile Internet operators to the schools, just to provide information about their plans on going to these particular areas where we go. For example, last year, we were in Gilgit, which is actually the hometown of K2. It is a mountainous area, tough terrain and all, so Internet access is a big problem there. So, we invited the local operators to talk to the people who are there at the school and to share with them what are their plans to actually provide Internet access to these areas. Similarly, we also invite our ministry and our regulators to come up and inform the audience about what are the plans, eventual plans, and what is their vision to provide Internet access to different areas of Pakistan. So, I just wanted to mention these two issues that are relevant to the

Olga Cavalli:
work of our schools. Interesting. Well, you mentioned that you rotate among cities. We do exactly the same. We organize the school every time in different cities in the Americas, which is, as you said, has good things and complicated things, because you have to start from scratch in every school, but at the same time, you are more keen to go into different communities and different countries, and so I commend you for that. It’s a new challenge for us every year, being organizers, but it’s much easier for that community to, you know, become

Avri Doria:
part of the school. Thank you. Thank you. We have another. Henriette, welcome. Thank you.

Audience:
Apologies for being late. There are also new security measures, by the way, so you cannot go through the other entrance, so everything took longer. My name is Henriette Esterhuizen. I’m the organizer of the African School on Internet Governance. We’ve just had our 11th school. It’s a joint initiative of Research ICT Africa at University of Cape Town, the African Union Commission, and Association for Progressive Communications. I wanted to speak to SDG 5. I know Sandra’s already spoken, so I’m not sure that I covered, but maybe we covered in different ways. AFRICIC is a little bit different from some of the other schools in that it’s more of a leadership development event that targets sort of middle to senior management in government, in regulators, and in civil society. This year, for example, we had members of parliament. We had six members of parliament that are also here, part of the UN parliamentary track, and we often have deputy director level heads of regulatory agencies, so we actually target people that are active in the digital internet or ICT policy context, but that don’t have a strong grasp of internet governance. The way we deal with gender is that, well, firstly, we always have at least 50 percent of our participants are women, and faculty. We really emphasize having women presenters, women thought leaders. We also actually really emphasize having African experts. There’s a lot of training that’s done in Africa, particularly even by the African Union, and it’s done by Diplo, and Diplo does excellent work, but they bring mostly presenters that are from other parts of the world, so we really try to focus on having African experts. We deal with gender-based violence, so that’s the one SDG 5 target we address. We deal with the one on leadership development, which I think EUROSIG does also really brilliantly. I have the pleasure of participating in EUROSIG, and then on the one on policy, and there we focus particularly on access, and we look in quite a granular way at what conditions in African countries lead to a gender digital divide, both at the demand side and the supply side, and then at how regulators, for example, by making universal service funds more gender aware, can actually have a positive impact on that. And yeah, I can share more, and we also do evaluations, and I mention this every year because I think it’s such a good methodology. I want to share it with the other schools. We do tracer studies, where we look back on four, five, ten years of the school, and have independent research done on how people that were in the school have had their thinking about the multi-stakeholder process change, and how it has influenced their career. We have an alumni network like EUROSIG as well, and would like to actually collaborate more with EUROSIG on finding innovative ways on strength, because we’re quite similar in some ways. Thank you. Thank you, Henriette. More comments about the SDGs? Yes, go ahead. Which is a very interesting and a very difficult thing to do. We deal with LGBT issues, and we try and deal with them in a very sensitive way, because if we have people from African governments and regulators, but we bring them together with civil society and human rights activists. We try and deal with some of these sensitive issues, including internet shutdowns, in a way where we create a trusted environment where you can actually have a conversation, not always reach consensus, but actually build better understanding of the differences of the perspectives. Interesting. Thank you very much, Henriette. More comments?

Avri Doria:
Yes.

Audience:
Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. I’m Ashrafur Rahman. I’m the coordinator of Bangladeshi School of Internet Governance. I just want to share a few information about the Bangladeshi SIG. We are trying to make a bridge through our school with urban and rural people, because you know, always the rural people have a behind-the-scenes scenario that cannot connect with the mainstream people. I’m sorry, but is it about SDGs? Because this part is about SDGs. Yeah, yeah. So here we focused on the SDG 5, which is gender equality, and I should mention we are trying to include transgender communities also with the SIG. And another one is SDG 9, where it is the mainstream industry innovation in the infrastructure, because the rural people have, our rural students have lots of ideas, but they can implement, like the urban students or the school and college. So we are trying to work on that. Thank you so much.

Olga Cavalli:
Thanks to you. And you said you’re from Bangladesh? We have several Bangladesh students in the school. Since we started to become hybrid during the pandemic and after the pandemic, it’s very interesting. For some reason, Bangladeshi like Argentina. Maybe it’s because of football, but… We’re also a big fan of Argentina. Good to know. Thank you. Thank you so much. If I can add, as part of what was going on this week in Japan at the Kyoto school, they gave a very extensive presentation on their school, which was really quite enlightening. Fantastic, thank you, thank you so much. Bravo. More comments about SDGs. Do we have someone in remote that maybe want to say something? I’m not in the.

Avri Doria:
Is there anybody from the Zoom room that would like to make a presentation? Yeah, by the way, I do wonder whether our remote moderator is here because I haven’t been following, I haven’t seen them, so I’m sort of doing that role. He’s not there, Raymond is not there online. Right, I’ve got, yeah, I’ve got one comment here, which was dynamic coalition. Actually, the comment is about ethics, whether the courses cover ethics, and that was the original comment, and then you have. And then there was one that robotics talked about e-health access in remote areas, so I’m wondering whether that, you know, the schools, but it really didn’t talk about a school and an SDG. We’ll take it up in the next part. So shall we move on? Yeah, sure, I don’t know, Anridh, if you want to add something. I have a question, I have a question.

Audience:
So to all of you, and including ourselves, who deal with the SDGs, do you deal with them explicitly? So we, for example, also deal with some of the other SDGs, you know, we have human rights, I’m sure other schools have too, but do you actually, in your curriculum and in your agenda, have sessions that go over the SDG process that links it to the WSIS process? So, you know, I’m just curious. It’s not something we actually do. We talk about the WSIS process, and indirectly we address SDGs, but we’re not directly. So I’d like to know how you feel about that. If I may, in 2017, the whole school that we organized

Olga Cavalli:
in Rio with the Fundación Getulio Vargas was totally focused on SDGs. At that time, we prepared the whole program in trying to focus on all aspects of SDG. What we do every year is we have a kind of a general focus. This year was sustainable development and generative artificial intelligence. So although we go through all aspects of internet, we try to bring some experts and some special focus on some days on these issues. In 2017, we did especially focus on SDGs. But, you know, you have those issues in the program always, especially with climate change. We have had several also with energy, not all of it, but sometimes.

Alexander Isavnin:
Yes, please. Yeah, okay. Actually, in Russian Federation, all these UN processes are a bit obscure. So it’s not very public and so on. Because maybe since Soviet Union, we have the country at home, generally, have good access to water, have good health care and something like. And then maybe government thinks it should not be done in other things. And some SDGs like 9th and 16th are a bit obscure. So we have a separate part of our course, which does explaining how things are going around United Nations. We also are talking about SDGs, where did they get it, just an informational purpose for people if they come to such audiences, not to be wondering what SDG is, why it’s happening and something like.

Satish Babu:
The two schools that I’m associated with, neither of them explicitly highlight the SDGs. We have subjects and topics around them, but not directly as SDGs. The SDGs were adopted in 2015. At that time, many schools were already running. And so the curriculars were developed without looking into SDGs. But I think it’s good that we are using this session in particular to see how our schools naturally address many of the SDGs. And I found it very valuable also the comments from the audience, what SDGs are relevant in which region.

Sandra Hoferichte:
Because as Alexander said, also in Europe, you don’t read much about SDGs. And I’m pretty impressed how visible the SDGs are here in Japan. You can see them in some windows, you can see them on the cars that remove the trash. And it’s pretty amazing to me that there’s a much greater awareness of these important goals here in Japan than I could realize that is the case in Europe and possibly also elsewhere. So I think we could pick up what Japan is doing in this regard.

Satish Babu:
There is a comment for Vakas. This is about, because he mentioned the mountainous areas where internet access is poor. This DTN has been proposed as an access solution. DTN is delayed tolerant networks. So that has been proposed, it’s come up as a comment for you. So any other SDG related discussions or interventions? Yes, please. Hi, everyone. It’s Bashar from Chad.

Audience:
So thank you for the speaker about SDG. But as you know, we are doing, we contribute to SDG now with our school because what we are doing is good quality of education. So with the school, we teach people, we interact with them. I think that it’s contributed to SDG. So SDG is not like physical persona. It’s like the objectives that we can help to attain, like gender. So when you bring women inside and the leadership, teaching them, I think that is contribute to gender balance. When you talk about climate change, how to save energy, what Olga said is very important also. Because what we are doing, our first edition of SDG, we have problem of electricity also. So we bring the school and at the hotels to have a sustainable electricity. Because when you don’t have electricity, you don’t have projection of light, you don’t have anything. So the school is down. So I think that everything what we are doing is linked to SDG. So what Aria said, how we can improve that? Because SDG, the mandate will be a start and something like this, and how we can incorporate in our agenda is very important. As she said, so we can have a workshop to link it to SDG. But in Africa, we have agenda 2063 also. So how to localize this SDG and grassroot. So thank you so much. Thank you. More comments? Some comments from remote? No? No? No more comments about SDGs?

Avri Doria:
No?

Olga Cavalli:
So we move to the next section. So it’s roundtable discussion, which is not round, but it’s conceptually roundtable. It’s really hard to get a real roundtable at these meetings. So how do we see schools and training in internet governance evolving? So we want to discuss with you this concept and also the value of schools in reinforcing relevance of multi-stakeholder model. I have some names here in the list, but I don’t know if someone wants. Yeah, sure. So like I said, I am associated with two schools and one of them is the India School. And let me share very briefly what we have achieved.

Satish Babu:
The primary function of a school of internet governance is awareness building, capacity building basically. But beyond that, that is the first deliverable. But what we have done, we have experienced is that in large countries like India, this provides a platform for people to come together from different parts onto one table. So that is actually quite an enabling thing because what the India School did was after two editions, it started incubating the India Youth IGF. Now that has just completed six years now. So that’s a mature organization now. The second thing we did was we associated with the GFC, and Martin is here from GFC, and we started this GFC IIII series of workshops. And this is a capacity building again, awareness building on cybersecurity related norms and best practices and so on. We just, two weeks back, we finished the fourth edition of that workshop. So it gives us a platform to kind of take up new things, which otherwise cannot be taken up because we are getting a lot of people from different backgrounds. Actually, that is the multi-stakeholder system itself. In many countries, we don’t have, unlike Brazil, which has a kind of CGI.br, we don’t have anything similar to that in India and many other countries. These schools actually provide the initial part of a multi-stakeholder model. It is without any mandate. Nobody’s kind of given a mandate to us. We have kind of assumed that mandate. So what India School did then was to kind of, the third part is that we pushed for the India IGF, which was not happening for the longest time. So the school itself took the initiative and pushed the government and got everybody together. So now we are in the third year of the India IGF now. Again, that’s an achievement of the school. And another project which is going to come up as an action item, not awareness building, is that we’re going to start an India project measuring internet, the quality of internet. Again, that’s come out of the school. So a school is not just a school. It is actually an organization that can have much broader ramifications. So I’ll stop here.

Olga Cavalli:
Thank you, Santish. This is very interesting. I would like to share with you some evolution, talking about the IG schools of internet governance evolving. We started 15 years ago. This is our 15th edition, just happened in September. And after, once we finish each school, we do a survey with the fellows and with the experts. And they started to ask information previously to the week. They needed more, they wanted to be more prepared. So now we have included in the last three years a self-assisted virtual training prior to the school. It lasts two months, not all the time. Of course, it’s three hours per week with videos that we have produced and material that we have produced. It’s not copy-paste. And then the school. And what we did last year, we partnered a university. So for those students that have complied with the evaluations of the first two stages, the virtual and the hybrid, whether they are virtual or on-site, they can do a research with the university and receive a university diploma on internet governance and regulations. None of these things is paid for the fellows. Everything is for free for the fellows. And in the Argentina School of Internet Governance, we have partnered another university from Argentina. And we will offer this year certifications from Fortinet. We have some fellowships, I think like 40 fellowships for doing a certification for free in cybersecurity. So I think we are, I think Satish said a very interesting thing that schools become kind of a vortice of activities related with internet governance at the national level. And last, at the beginning of this year, we did a survey with the students and we produced a document for the Global Digital Compact, which is published in the Global Digital Compact. We did that with more than 80 fellows from all over the world and we did that in three languages, Spanish, English, and Portuguese, always working online. And now, with the student this year, we’re working on a different document in how to enhance the multi-stakeholder model through participation of fellows. I have the material, I have to work with the team to do a document, but this will be in the near future. Maybe other schools would like to comment or? Okay, perfect.

Satish Babu:
So we have roughly half an hour for discussions after which we’ll have to wind up. We have several speakers already lined up. First is Olga, would you like to go again about South School or you’re done? We have Wolfgang here from Euro SSIG. Please, can you come over here? Wolfgang? The father of all the schools. Applause for the father. The internet governance father.

Wolfgang Kleinwaechter:
Thank you very much. As Swin said yesterday, it’s always suspicious if you clap your hands and you get an applause before you have said anything, because probably I will say something where you disagree, which will not produce any applause. But I think it’s always good to remember where all this comes from, and it’s fantastic to see how a crazy idea has triggered a development where we see now so many schools which are inspired by the basic idea. As you remember, the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis adopted a broad definition of internet governance, which included the evolution and the use of the internet. That means the technical layer and the application layer, which are the so-called internet-related public policy issues. And this goes from cybersecurity to the digital economy, to human rights, to artificial intelligence, a lot of other things. And so the problem is that internet governance is such a multidisciplinary approach which you cannot study in a regular university. You have to study law or political science or informatics or cultural science or something else. So that means the idea of the founding fathers of this summer school was to find a format which would be realistic and allow this multidisciplinary presentation, both from a technical and a political perspective, from a practical and an academic perspective. So I think this was the challenge, and so the pilot project was why not to use the format of a summer school, of a one-week course? So over the years, what I think we have seen is that this is really an interesting format because it’s very flexible. So you can adjust this to special needs, special local needs or to special target group needs, and you can have one week or you can have a one-year virtual course, so just a weekend course. But if you follow more or less, or if you based the concept on the pro-definition from the Tunis agenda, then you can pick some elements, but you are rooted in this process. I think this is also important for the self-understanding of the school, that they contribute to a process which is inspired by the program of action and the principles of the World Summit on the Information Society. So for instance, when we had the pre-conference here with Kyoto University, the Brazilian school presented its model and say, we have weekend courses, we have full-year course and this, and you can have also courses for special target groups. So we are discussing now to have a special course for parliamentarians or for governmental officials or for judges. I think we heard in the open plenary there was a judge from Africa who said, I’m the only judge here. So we have the legislative, it’s the government, the parliament, the executive is the government, but what about the third form of power, the judges? And a lot of conflicts in the world of tomorrow will be at least then go to a court. And if you have judges who have no idea what internet governance is, they probably, they make stupid decisions. So in so far, judges are an important target group and you can, that’s why the format is a very good one, is flexible, and that’s why it’s an encouragement also for academics or other groups in many countries to take this as a source of inspiration. There is no single model. So we have started this in Meissen and it was testing out, so we are learning by doing. If you go to our first course in 2007, it’s so different what we offer today. So that means you have to be open to a changing environment. And as you have seen also here, issues like AI were not on the agenda 10, 15 years ago, but now say, and you have new questions, how all this is related. confusing concepts like what is digital governance? Is this different from internet governance? Do we have AI governance, cyber governance? So that means growing confusion. And insofar, schools are important, you know, to bring more clarity to the processes that you avoid this confusion and chaos and then we have a better understanding. So it’s work in progress. It will never finish. As Bill Clinton something have said in an ICANN meeting, internet governance is like stumbling forward. So that means small steps are better than big jumps. So but be very careful and be inspired what you want to achieve and what is the target group. I think these are two or three key questions you have to ask yourself if you start to develop a program and feel free. So because the beauty of an academic person, so independence of thinking is important. Do not try to please somebody. So take your inspiration from the global community and say, what is good for my country? What is good for my community? And then be proactive. Thank you. Thanks to you, Wolfram.

Olga Cavalli:
Thanks so much.

Audience:
Bravo. Does anybody have any question? We have Andrea that wanted to speak. I want to speak about the evolution. Can I come and stand here? Of course, of course. Go ahead. I think this point is really interesting to look at the evolution. And I agree with everything Wolfram said. I think we have to be, there is no perfect model. But some things I think are standing out. I think, firstly, there is a lot more other people. Mic is off. Other institutions that are delivering training. For example, UNESCO is training judges and judiciary in internet-related policy. But they’re not really part of this network. There’s also quite a lot of training for regulators as well that are not a part of this network. And I think the big difference is that they don’t emphasize the multi-stakeholder approach to the same extent. I think what’s unique about what we do is that even when we are focusing on a particular group of practitioners or professions, we always bring that diversity to the conversation. But the other things that have struck me is that there’s increased need. And it came out a little bit at EUROSIG this year. I’m, you know, EUROSIG is my inspiration. And about the social impact of the internet. I feel there’s more a demand now to not just learn how internet governance operates and who’s involved in internet governance, but to have a deeper understanding of how do we as an internet community respond to some of the social impact issues. So looking at misinformation, looking at education, looking at democracy, at political processes, looking at the media and how the media environment is affected. And I find this very challenging, you know, because it kind of is crossing over out of the narrow internet governance and maybe even out of the broad definition, Wolfgang. But I think it’s interesting to do that and to think about it. And the other thing I think that we might want to think about is sometimes taking the same cohort

Olga Cavalli:
of people and doing a follow-up. So, you know, doing like a EUROSIG or AFRISIG, I can’t speak for the South School, sorry. But having a group of people like that and then having maybe the same people rather than having a new group every year so that you actually deepen the engagement. I don’t know if we have the capacity to do that, but it is something that has occurred to me that might be quite a useful thing to do. I do think we need to evolve. Thank you, Anne-Marie. And we do have fellows that come to several schools. And that’s very interesting because they evolve with the group. Not all of them. This year we had 400, 200 on-site and 200 virtual. And a group of them are coming to several schools, which is extremely interesting because they have seen the evolution. And some of them become speakers in the experts or they start to work in companies or in governments and they become experts in the next editions. And do we have, we have some names here, but I don’t know if they’re. Muriel Alapin. Yeah, would you like to make a, your name is listed here as one of the short intervention. Can you make a short intervention about the Benin?

Audience:
And we spent the break for, I think we’ve got another half an hour. Oh, okay. Thank you. This is Ben Rashad-Sanosi from Benin. Can I go in French? Yes, I can. Yeah, but maybe I can also. If we have someone that can do, we know what I’ve learned is called consecutive translation. But you have to be really slow because my French is. Right, but no, we would need somebody to translate. He would speak a couple of lines and then someone. So if we have someone that volunteers as being good enough to do it. I can do it if he speak slowly. I will do it in English, don’t worry. Okay. I was wanting to try my French, okay. Okay. This is Ben Rashad-Sanosi from Internet Society Benin Chapter. So we also organize the School of Internet Governance. Last September, it was from September 11 to 15, September. So it was five-day training. So we have some participants from Benin, from Togo, from Cote d’Ivoire, and also from Chad. So there were about 32 people who were trained. So during the five-day, they have many session and many training as well. So it was really amazing because the Francophone region were engaged. They learn a lot about internet governance, how they can be engaged. And now some of the fellow are here on site also attending the IGF like me. Thank you. Thanks to you. Thank you very much. Bravo. Thank you also. We have Andrietta Abdelhaji. Oh, sorry. How do you pronounce it? Oh, that’s difficult for me. Abdelhaji. Yes. Hi again. It’s Abdeljalil Bashar from Chad. So I’m coordinator in National School of Internet Governance. It’s not national, but it’s School of Internet Governance. So we founded in 2019. It’s funded by House of Africa. And the main objective is to bring, as you know, Chadian ICT student, youth, digital professional, closer to the global internet ecosystem. Because what you saw that there’s not many Chadian. It can be in ICANN, it can be in IGF and other ecosystems and ITU. So main objective also to fill the gap, as I said, observe during the year in term of effective participation of Chadian and the policy development process related to internal governance, national, regional, and international ecosystems. So the first edition we organized in partnership. So a civil society partnership with government is a national ICT agency called ADETIC. So organized with them. So for 14 to 15 December, 2020, it was in Yemena. So we bring people from outside also. There’s Sebastian from France, Tijani Benjama from Tunisia. There’s Estelle from Cameroon also. And there’s some people in ICANN also, Yaowi, he did intervention online and some people from Africa also. So it is the first time that we organized this kind of school in Chad. Very appreciated. Political side also. The minister congratulated us. It’s the first time that we teach people from this sector and no sector also. So in this year, so we have, yes, 15 participants from 35 entities, government ministry, parliamentary, civil society, youth, et cetera. So this year also we will organize our second edition. It will be from 60 to 8 December. So it will be in Yemen also. So we need your support, your contribution also. It can be online, it can be to coach the people also because it’s very important for us. So I need to stop there. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you very much. I’ll do it in French also. I’ll do it online, shall I do it now? Yeah, sure. I suggest the inclusion of children in 10 to 18

Satish Babu:
in the emerging STEM that is trying to found their way to mathematics. Is it a good idea to start with a program from the start? Or you start there? Yeah, I didn’t understand. Sorry, I suggest, this is a comment from Abdullah Kamar who is an alumnus of PK SIG and AP SIG. I suggest the inclusion of children aged 10 to 18 in emerging STEM education programs. STEM, of course, is science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Within the framework of internet governance, it is a forward thinking and crucial step towards achieving SDGs. By providing them with early exposure to STEM disciplines in the context of internet governance, we can foster a generation of digitally literate, responsible, and socially conscious individuals. Furthermore, teaching internet governance principles to young minds can instill values of online safety, digital ethics, and respect for human rights in the digital sphere, aligning with several SDGs that emphasize inclusivity, peace, and justice. Was that a question or a comment? It’s a comment.

Olga Cavalli:
Okay, I would like to comment on that. In the Argentina School of Internet Governance, we do have a lot of high school students attending the school, especially high school students of their last year, where they are mainly technical schools. And some of them are quite engaged after that and interested in following IT careers and following also online discussions about different issues about internet governance. Not in the global one. We have young people. We don’t have age limits, but I don’t remember we had high school students, but mainly young professionals. But in the Argentina one, yes,

Satish Babu:
we had a lot of high school students, which I think it was very interesting. Yeah, we have something called the India Youth IGF, which also covers young people. Not in the school, but above school. So I think the floor is now open for any comments. Other comments? Yeah. Avery? I’d like to make a comment that’s within this theme,

Avri Doria:
but more about the dynamic coalition itself and its role in doing that. I don’t organize a school. I just go to a bunch of them. And one of the things is the dynamic coalition and its usefulness, both in having the schools communicate to each other, having the schools learn from each other, and also doing the multi-stakeholder model. One of the things, for example, we try to a moderate degree of success and failure, we mix it both ways, is to have the dynamic coalition be extremely bottom up. And basically sort of always, I don’t know if you guys notice, that follow it constantly begging people to say something, to do something. And where the dynamic coalition started, it wrote documents. It produced materials that hopefully could be useful to schools. And it may be the kind of thing that would be useful to look at again, whether there’s something, for example, in the notion of the multi-stakeholder model, how it’s seen, how it works, that would produce things that could sort of help the schools themselves sort of bootstrap programs in that. The dynamic coalition cannot obviously force any kind of learning on anybody or any kind of curriculum, but certainly as a way to make these things available to the other schools. And so I’m just sort of wondering whether that makes sense to people that there is a help in the dynamic, and can we use it more for the schools? What would the schools want from a dynamic coalition to help them in teaching governance and understanding the multi-stakeholder model and the evolution of the model? And those are just kind of things I was thinking about, that I don’t do a school, but I do dynamic coalitions. And I teach at schools. In the website where we have the map, I think we have the possibility of sharing information, documents. Yeah, that should be. Yeah, that’s right, perhaps. That should be interesting for us to remember, even myself, because sometimes I forget. Oh, yeah, we have a wiki space where any school that wants to, and some have, for example, the North American school, Glenn has been amazing in terms of contributing pieces of curricula and others, and it’s open for anybody to be able to do that. Yeah, let me see if I can bring that up while we keep talking. That document in three languages for the Global Digital Compact,

Olga Cavalli:
we are working now on a different document about multi-stakeholder model. Those and other things that we all may have, it’s a good space to share, because we have the map. We can see the whole map of all the schools, and maybe others can consult and share information. Honestly, it’s lack of time. It’s not lack of interest. I actually forget, because a part of this I have to work. This is not my work. Just a quick question for Avri. Sorry, Martin. It is lack of time.

Avri Doria:
Avri, what happened with the collaboration between the DC and the IGF Secretariat on the IGF capacity building? Yeah, that was last year. That was basically a one-time thing where they took the document that we had spent several years developing and produced there, and I guess you were, were you secretary, or were you chair at the time? I don’t remember, but basically, and produced a document of their own that I haven’t followed up to see how it gets distributed, whether it gets distributed, whether there’s been any feedback on it, and said, gee, nice document, but it would be great to have X, Y, and Z added to it. I have not followed up, and that might be a good thing to do in the next year is follow up with the secretariat and say, did you use this? Did how many schools came and got it? How many schools tried to use it? How many schools found it useful? How many schools didn’t find it useful, and why? So it’s a good idea as a thing to follow up on. Martin.

Audience:
Thanks, Martin Boteman. Amongst things I also support, indeed, as was said beforehand by you, that the Global Forum for Cyber Expertise, and there we have a track on triple I, on enhancing justified trust of the internet and email in the region by use of modern internet standards and global good practice. Now, if you go to GFCE triple I, you’ll find there is a handbook that explains these modern internet standards and why they matter, and they also relate to some of the global good practices that you could refer to. So maybe this is also a resource that could end up on this page as a possible resource for schools. Basically, to teach it, you only need one person who understands the issues good enough to explain it, because the material is there, so. Thank you. Can you repeat the website? GFCE for Global Forum for Cyber Expertise,

Avri Doria:
and then triple I.

Audience:
If you Google for that, you’ll find it. Okay. By the way, the Global Forum for Cyber Expertise, which came out from the so-called London process, which started the UK government 15 years ago, will have a world conference on capacity building

Wolfgang Kleinwaechter:
end of November in Ghana, so in Africa. And I think this is probably a good opportunity for our African colleagues, you know, to link to this. So the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise, expertise had its root in the issue of cyber security. This was also the main target of the so-called London process to concentrate on cyber security, less on the broader internet-related issues. But cyber security is such a central thing, and I would recommend, in particular, our African friends

Satish Babu:
to make use of this opportunity in Ghana. It’s easy to get involved. It’s GC3B to Google on. You need to get an invite. Thanks, Martin. I think, for us, it’s been very useful. We’ve been running these workshops. This is the fourth one we just completed, and it’s been very useful. And it has even put us on a path towards an action item, a new project. I have two comments online. I’ll read them out. Both are from Keiko Tanaka. The first comment relates to the children. On the previous comment, dynamic teen coalition may be the place to go for focus on teens. It’s a new effort. Question, any chances of opening up education resources, or youth MOOC, or OER? I don’t know what OER is. I think it is online education resources. Open education. Open education. Oh, OK. OK. Do you want to respond to this question? I am a teacher. Oh, you are a teacher. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Does anybody want to respond to this? I think that it’s really good that you are raising that. And I think UNESCO is actually reinvigorating

Audience:
a bit their open educational resources program. But I don’t see it coming to the IGF. And it’s not really coming to the IGF. So I think it’s actually important. There’s also some MOOCs that have been established. So in Africa, there’s a MOOC on internet governance training for journalists that was actually developed with also some support from UNESCO. If anyone’s interested, I can’t remember it right now. But I think that the thing about if we were to work on open educational resources, we would have to standardize. And I think that’s the challenge. Because with open educational resources, it kind of works if you use standardized templates and formats. Otherwise, you just have a repository. And in a way, the dynamic coalition already gives us that space for the repository. But it’s a good conversation to start. Thank you. If I can, I’m trying to share the website. And I don’t know whether it’s something that, yeah, OK.

Avri Doria:
So OK, it’s up now. And I can go through it a little if people want in just a few minutes. So there is a website that has been maintained. Basically, there’s mailing lists and archive. There’s about DC meetings. There’s the schools on IG. I think that’s the one that may have the map. Yep, there’s the map. And so basically, each of the schools is offered, is requested. Obviously, it’s up to each of the schools whether they want to. But basically, there’s a form that you fill out. And you get your school with a marker on the map. And then you click on it. And you get the name of the school and some information. So that’s good. There’s a fellow section where fellows who basically want to put themselves in a list of fellows so that they can be found by others. They could perhaps be reached out to as possible teachers, et cetera. So if you’re looking for a teacher for your school, especially remote, then it’s a place to go and say, oh, OK, this person was a fellow, et cetera. Faculties, some of the faculties list each other. I don’t know how many of us have listed each other. But we can. And at that point, others can find pieces of faculty, members of faculty, not pieces of faculty. Somebody should teach me how to talk. Then we have a DC WIKI that lists a lot of schools and is editing the schools, sort of listing when they are, when they were formed. There’s current work. There’s a place, let me see, where you can basically put, I’m looking for, I didn’t. Not for the form, OK. Then there’s materials. It’s still only one school that’s done it. But there’s the materials provided by schools participating in the D. So any of you that are really proud of your curriculum, really proud of a course you put together, really proud of whatever it is about your school, you’re really proud of that you’re willing to make public and available to the other schools, you’ve got it. So the North American school here basically provides a whole set of individual provided material, operations manual, introduction plan, recruitment. So there is already a rich collection of information there. It could be so much richer. It’s purely a voluntary effort, but it could be so much richer if those of you that want what your school does to be visible and usable by others, you took advantage of it.

Sandra Hoferichte:
Since Afri is mentioning the wiki and the website, it’s up for a while already. And I find it a bit sad that not really many have made use of the wiki, because I think it would be a great source for a global network of faculty, of fellows, of schools, of exchanging material, et cetera. The point is, and I’m saying that here on the record on purpose, because it’s getting difficult meanwhile, the wiki and the website and Afri’s work is only supported by our association who is organizing the Euro SSIG, which is Medienstadt Leipzig e.V. So if anyone here in the room, any school, or any other organization have some leftover budgets to support our work, that would really help to engage more into the dynamic coalition. Because doing it on voluntary work is one thing. And everyone who is contributing to the dynamic coalition is contributing on a voluntary basis already. But at least a secretariat and the digital sources that we all need to work with, they need to be funded. And at the moment, Medienstadt Leipzig, the Euro SSIG, is the only source of funding. So we are taking it basically from our Euro SSIG budget. I could believe that most or many of the school could dedicate a little bit of, it doesn’t need to be big money. I think if everyone contributes a little money, that would really help to maintain these resources and also to help the dynamic coalition to move forward. I needed to say that, sorry.

Avri Doria:
Thank you. So we have one hand up there. Yes. Two things, one is a question, one is a comment. First question is, has there been an effort or an initiative or a talk about having a world school on internet governance or a global school on internet governance?

Audience:
I know there are regional, there are national. This network has expanded so much over the last years that maybe now there is a time that all of us could pool in resources and look at something like organizing a global school on internet governance or something like that. We are at the IGF. This is the global forum for discussion on IG. But over here, we are, this room is the room which develops capacities for internet leaders to come over here and to talk about these issues. But what about our own forum? I know this DCSIG is here, and we organize a session every year at the IGF. But if we cannot pull in resources to organize a global school, can we leverage this particular DC, maybe organize more events around this, maybe have quarterly calls with the schools who are interested, could share what they did, just to have more collaboration within the SIGs, rather than having, let’s say, one meeting per year where we come down for one and a half hour, talk to each other. This is so inspiring, honestly, coming from Pakistan and seeing that how other schools are doing it. And since this network is growing, I think this is an opportunity to actually leverage this potential and probably make something which is global or at least cooperative within SIGs. Thank you. Thanks, Vakas.

Satish Babu:
I think global schools, there are two people sitting on either side. This is the first one. This is the second one. Both of them have become from regional to global. So there are these things already in place. Now, the discussions in here in the DC are at the meta level, where we don’t work at internet governance, but we talk about the things associated with it, how to run the school, what are the constraints, what is evolution, and so on. So we have to probably think about this kind of proposal that you have put up. One other thing I want to mention is that in terms of evolution, the India School has put all their content from the first edition to the eighth edition on the website. So it’s very interesting to look at the 2016 course content and then the later ones and see where it has taken us. So there is actually a very clear journey that has happened in terms of the course content on this eight years. We have five minutes more. Are there any burning questions?

Olga Cavalli:
I would like to make a comment. All the content that the school has is published in our YouTube channel in two or three languages. So after each school, our team divides each of the panels or keynotes into different videos with a clear sign who’s talking and the issue and the languages. So all that content is available. And also, one good experience that we had since almost the beginning is that with all the group of students, we create a telegram group that is active since the school, and it doesn’t stop. And some members of our team are feeding all the time different fellowship opportunities, working opportunities, research, and news about internet governance. So that has been working very well and keep on the momentum in between the groups of students. Thanks. I think we have to now think of winding up. So Avri, would you like to make any closing statement?

Avri Doria:
Not really. I mean, I invite, I don’t know if our rapporteur wishes to make a quick summary statement that was listed on the agenda, but you don’t have to unless you feel comfortable. But because what we do have to produce is we’ll have to produce a statement or two that comes out of here. And if you have such a statement that you can give to the group, that would be great. You want the mic? Yeah. You can come here. Please. Thank you. Do we have a mic? We do. You want to go? Yes, go ahead. I’ll speak after. Hello. Hello. Hello, everyone. Excuse me, I’m going to speak in French for the linguistic diversity because we are in the last row. What? I can translate. No, no, no. If you speak slowly, I can translate. Yes, because we are in the IGF. All the countries are grouped here. I can speak in English, but my English is not very good. I prefer to speak in French.

Audience:
He will speak in French because his English is not so good. Yes, because in my country, the Ivory Coast, we speak in French. So I would like to speak in French to be more comfortable. My name is Fanny Saliou. I am the country coordinator of the Internet Governance Forum. We are giving you this opportunity to inform you that the Ivory Coast is organizing its first Internet Governance Forum which will take place in the month of… He’s from Cote d’Ivoire and you’re organizing a first IGF? No, school. School of Internet Governance. Sorry, my French is limited. We had the opportunity this year to organize and host the West African Forum. So they are going to open the West African Forum? Yes, Cote d’Ivoire had the opportunity to host it this year. So you’re hosting the West African IGF this year? Yes. You both helped me. That was too much for me. So Fanny is from Cote d’Ivoire. They organized their first school of Internet Governance in December. So they need to bring all the people together. So they need the support of the DC, all the people here. It can be a speaker, it can be financial, it can be human resources. So what he need to tell us here. So he’s very happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you so much. So me to my English is very new. So at some time I was lost with my translator in my head. So I have a few takeaways that I picked and write it down. Hello. Oh, excuse me. So… We’re losing about two minutes because we are over time now. Yeah. So… We’re losing about two minutes because we are over time now. Yeah. The topics was the SIG and the SDGs. I noticed that for the SDG 5 on gender, Ms. Sandra from Euro SIG shared with us the work that SIG doing to have an inclusive and have various thematics or topics about these SIGs. For the SIG CDG 7 on access to energy, Ms. Olga explained that access to energy and climate change have a great link. So in her SIG they have a few panel discussing on this topic and his impact of the consume of energy. So excuse me if I made some mistakes. I will put it down later. Mr. Alexander from Russia SIG speaks about SDG on peace and justice and say that the SIGs can help build new standards, help enforce the multi-scholars process like in ICON and also enforces inclusion and effectiveness. From the SDG 5, Ms. Henriette from AFRISIC talked about the new era of AFRISIC which is leadership development and she said that this year they have a lot of parliament who came to enforce their knowledge about internet governance and many of these fellows are here to discuss with the parliament track.

Olga Cavalli:
Thank you very much. Thank you everyone. So final words. I think we have to use the wiki more. Can you remind us the URL? IGschools.net IGschools.net. Go to IGschools.net and we should contribute more. It’s always a time issue. It’s not like a volunteering but it’s a time issue. Apart from the school I do have to work which this is kind of a hobby. So thanks to everybody who came to the session online as well as physically here. It was a very great session. So we are now looking forward to working closer with the DC. Thank you. Thank you everyone.