WS #157 Driving MS Engagement: Lessons from Lebanon and Canada

Summary

This workshop focused on comparing multistakeholder Internet governance approaches in Canada and Lebanon. Participants from various stakeholder groups discussed how their countries engage diverse voices in Internet governance processes.

The Canadian approach was highlighted as having formal and informal mechanisms for stakeholder engagement. The government actively seeks input from different groups to inform its positions at international forums. Technical operators like CIRA play a key role in convening stakeholders and providing expertise on policy issues. The Canadian Internet Governance Forum (CIGF) was noted as an important platform for national dialogue.

In Lebanon, despite challenges from ongoing crises, efforts are being made to implement a multistakeholder model. The Lebanon IGF, supported by ESCWA, provides a platform for inclusive dialogue. Academic institutions like AUB contribute by hosting events and integrating Internet governance topics into curricula. However, engaging youth and students remains a challenge.

Both countries emphasized the importance of using technology to foster inclusivity and overcome geographical barriers. Virtual platforms and collaborative tools have become essential for stakeholder engagement, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Key takeaways included the need for both formal and informal engagement processes, the importance of convening diverse stakeholders, and leveraging technology for inclusive participation. Participants also highlighted opportunities for collaboration between Canadian and Lebanese Internet governance initiatives.

The discussion underscored that while approaches may differ based on local contexts, the core principles of multistakeholderism are applicable in both developed and developing country settings.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– Comparing multistakeholder Internet governance approaches in Canada and Lebanon

– Role of government, technical community, academia, and international organizations in fostering multistakeholder collaboration

– Challenges and strategies for inclusive participation, especially across large/diverse countries

– Use of technology to enable broader engagement in Internet governance processes

– Importance of both formal and informal mechanisms for stakeholder input

The overall purpose of the discussion was to share best practices and lessons learned on implementing multistakeholder Internet governance models in two different national contexts (Canada and Lebanon). Speakers aimed to identify successful strategies that could potentially be adapted or applied in other countries.

The tone of the discussion was collaborative and constructive throughout. Speakers were eager to share their experiences and insights, while also expressing interest in learning from others. There was a sense of mutual respect between participants from Canada and Lebanon, with recognition that both countries face challenges in multistakeholder engagement despite their different circumstances. The tone became more forward-looking towards the end, with participants discussing potential future collaborations.

Speakers

– Chafic Caya: Moderator

– Dana Cramer: Online moderator

– Charles Noir: Vice President of Community Investment Policy and Advocacy at CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority)

– David Bedard: Internet Governance Manager at Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

– Mirna El Hajj Barbar: Program Management Officer at ESCWA, leading the Arab Digital Inclusion Platform

– Maha Zouwayhed: Representative of American University of Beirut, Office of Innovation and Transformation

Additional speakers:

– Dr. Hosein Badran: Participant from the audience, involved in Arab IGF and Canadian IGF

– Manal Abdel Samad: Ex-Minister of Information from Lebanon (mentioned but did not speak)

– Zeina Bou Harb: Lebanon IGF Secretariat (mentioned but did not speak)

– Sabrina Wilkinson: Reporter for the session (mentioned but did not speak)

Multistakeholder Internet Governance: Comparing Canadian and Lebanese Approaches

This workshop focused on comparing multistakeholder Internet governance approaches in Canada and Lebanon, bringing together participants from various stakeholder groups to discuss how their countries engage diverse voices in Internet governance processes. The discussion was moderated by Chafic Caya, with Dana Cramer serving as the online moderator.

Canadian Approach:

David Bedard, representing the Canadian government, highlighted both formal and informal mechanisms for stakeholder engagement. He emphasised the government’s role as a convener, bringing stakeholders together to hear their concerns and priorities. This input is then integrated into Canada’s positions at international forums such as ICANN, IGF, and ITU. Bedard noted that virtual participation has enabled broader engagement, particularly across Canada’s large and diverse geography.

Charles Noir from CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority) explained how technical operators play a crucial role in convening stakeholders and providing expertise on policy issues. CIRA actively monitors both domestic and international policy spaces, looking at trends that may affect them as an operator or impact the global Internet’s multistakeholder governance model. Noir also mentioned CIRA’s community investment initiatives, which support Internet-related projects across Canada. He highlighted the Technical Coalition for Multi-Stakeholderism (TCCM) as an example of international collaboration among technical communities.

The Canadian Internet Governance Forum (CIGF) was noted as an important platform for national dialogue, bringing together diverse stakeholders to discuss Internet governance issues.

Lebanese Approach:

Mirna El Hajj Barbar from ESCWA highlighted the Lebanon IGF as a platform for inclusive dialogue, supported by regional organisations. She noted that digital platforms have become essential for collaborative decision-making and online preparation processes for regional forums. El Hajj Barbar also mentioned a survey conducted by ESCWA in 2004, which revealed a lack of awareness about Internet governance issues in the region, leading to the establishment of the Arab IGF.

Maha Zouwayhed, representing the American University of Beirut (AUB), discussed how academic institutions contribute by hosting events and integrating Internet governance topics into curricula. She emphasised how technology has played a transformative role in fostering internal and international collaborations, enabling inclusivity and accessibility by removing barriers to participation. It was noted in the chat that AUB has hosted the Lebanon IGF twice.

El Hajj Barbar pointed out that engaging youth and students remains a challenge in Lebanon. She noted that students were generally unfamiliar with Internet governance concerns and lacked proper engagement in processes at national, regional, and global levels. This was attributed to the absence of Internet governance topics in university curricula. Additionally, she highlighted challenges in implementing the multistakeholder approach in Lebanon, including limited resources and the need to align Internet governance with pressing national issues during times of crisis.

Shared Challenges and Opportunities:

Both countries emphasised the importance of using technology to foster inclusivity and overcome geographical barriers. Virtual platforms and collaborative tools have become essential for stakeholder engagement, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Hosein Badran, a participant involved in both Arab and Canadian IGFs, stressed the importance of inclusive stakeholder representation across different contexts.

Challenges in implementing multistakeholder models were discussed, including:

1. Engaging diverse voices across large and diverse countries

2. Aligning Internet governance with national priorities during crises

3. Lack of student familiarity with Internet governance

4. Need for sustainable funding mechanisms

International Collaboration:

The discussion highlighted opportunities for collaboration between Canadian and Lebanese Internet governance initiatives. Preparatory processes for international meetings, technical community coalitions across countries, and regional digital agendas were identified as areas for potential cooperation.

Key Takeaways and Resolutions:

1. Both Canada and Lebanon can implement multistakeholder Internet governance approaches, though with methods suited to their contexts.

2. Government plays an important role as a convener to bring diverse stakeholders together.

3. Technical communities provide valuable expertise to inform policy discussions.

4. Academia is crucial for fostering innovation and engaging students in Internet governance.

5. Regional organisations like ESCWA play a key supporting role for national Internet governance initiatives.

6. Technology and virtual platforms are essential for enabling inclusive participation across geographies.

7. International collaboration and knowledge sharing between countries is valuable for advancing Internet governance.

8. CIRA offered to engage in dialogue with Lebanese stakeholders around WSIS+20 and technical domain name system issues.

9. Participants were invited to contribute to the upcoming Arab IGF 7 in February 2025 in Amman, Jordan.

10. Stakeholders were encouraged to engage with ESCWA’s Arab Digital Agenda initiative.

Unresolved Issues:

1. How to sustainably fund national IGF initiatives, especially in developing countries.

2. How to effectively engage students and youth in Internet governance processes.

3. How to align Internet governance priorities with pressing national issues during times of crisis.

4. The potential for Lebanon to create an organization similar to CIRA to handle collaboration and coordination, as suggested by Chafic Caya.

5. Addressing Zainab Al-Hab’s question about using the national IGF platform to promote the new gTLDs program.

Conclusion:

The discussion underscored that while approaches may differ based on local contexts, the core principles of multistakeholderism are applicable in both Canadian and Lebanese settings. The overall tone was collaborative and constructive, with participants eager to share experiences and learn from one another. This exchange set the stage for potential future collaborations between Canadian and Lebanese Internet governance initiatives, emphasizing the value of international knowledge sharing and cooperation in advancing inclusive and effective Internet governance practices.

Chafic Caya: Hello, hello. One, two, three. Okay. Okay, great. So, good afternoon, everyone. On behalf of the Lebanon IGF and of the Canadian Registration Internet Authority, CIRA, I would like to welcome you all to this workshop entitled Multistakeholder Internet Governance from Best Practices in Two Countries, Lebanon and IGF. So, the main critical question for today will be how to drive multistakeholder and get diverse voices around one table in two different environments, Canada and Lebanon. And I believe Canada and Lebanon is the best example to show that Lebanon as a developing country with its diversity and political complexity is still challenging in its multistakeholder progress toward inclusivity and collaboration. While Canada, with its robust and well-established multistakeholder approach is another example and we’ll hear from the experts that they are with us today. So, before I start, thank you for CIRA, thank you for online participants, and thank you for Sabrina, the reporter of this session, and thanks for the Lebanon IGF Secretariat, Zaina Bouharb, for their efforts and support to make this session happen. So, thank you so much for being with us today. And just to give you the importance of this session, we have the ex-Minister of Information from Lebanon, Her Excellency Manal Abdelsamad, with us today. with a lot of the Esquire United Nations with Ayman, here our colleague with Rita, we have the Lebanon ISOC. So all the actors, the elites in the Lebanon ISOC are there just to get experience from you, dear friends from Canada. So let’s see what’s the difference between the Lebanese and Canadian path in the multi-stakeholder environment. So let me start. I will not address you, please. Can you introduce yourselves? So we can have some more time. And I will start, we have online, I will not forget our two speakers online. We have Mirna Barber, and we have Maz Weyhed from the Lebanon IGF MAG, who will join us online. And we have on site, our dear colleagues, David and Charles, they will be here on site. And I will leave the floor to our moderator, Dana Kramer, so you can introduce the speakers and give like an overview how this session will go during these 90 minutes. So Dana, I will give you the floor. Thank you so much, Shafiq, for such a warm welcome. It’s really great to see such a diversity of stakeholders in the room. And also too, I think it’s really inspiring that we’re seeing your Lebanese colleagues who have also come as well. It’s a wonderful show of support. And I know we have some really great Canadians and those based in Canada in the room, additionally. So I am the online moderator for this session. So if you are online and have any questions, please feel free to post them into the chat if you would like them read out.

Dana Cramer: Or you can raise your hand and we will work with technical support to unmute you. If there are any technical difficulties within the session for unmuting, we will read out your question from the chat to ensure that your perspective is brought into the room. In terms of introducing… the speakers. I think that everyone would probably be best at introducing themselves because they’ll be able to identify to their stakeholder position and where they come to this topic as well. So I’ll pass the microphone to Charles.

Charles Noir: Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Charles Noir, and I’m the Vice President of Community Investment Policy and Advocacy at CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority. I’m thrilled to be here in Saudi Arabia with you. Thank you to our hosts for this wonderful IGF. I’ll be speaking today as a Canadian, but from a technical operator perspective. CIRA runs the .ca. We’re a ccTLD and been quite active in the multi-stakeholder community and internet governance for some time. I’ll hand it over to my colleague, David.

David Bedard: Thanks, Charles. I just want to echo what a great IGF this has been, and thank you to the government of Saudi Arabia. It’s been wonderful, and thank you for everybody in the room and online. My name is David Bedard, and I’m the Internet Governance Manager at our industry department, which is a long name, but it’s our Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. The acronym for that, which I might reference, is ISED. In my spot, we are obviously a government stakeholder, and we engage broadly with the community. We manage both our participation at ICANN, so I’m the Government of Canada’s representative at ICANN as well, and we lead on the IGF as well as feed inputs to our Global Affairs Department on the WSIS process and broader internet governance discussions. That’s kind of where I’m coming at this discussion from. Thank you.

Mirna El Hajj Barbar: Thank you, David. I will go to the online speakers. Please, Myrna, go ahead. Good morning, everybody. My name is Myrna El-Haj Barber. I am Program Management Officer at ESCO, working within the Digital Cooperation and Digital Development Program. I’m also leading the Arab Digital Inclusion Platform at ESCWA, and I witnessed actually the launch of the Arab IGF as well as the Lebanon IGF.

Chafic Caya: Thank you, Yorna. Maha?

Maha Zouwayhed: Hello, everyone. I am Maha Zwayhed. I represent the American University of Beirut. I work at the Office of Innovation and Transformation at the university. I currently handle the Innovation Center, and I used to work in IT business development and was involved in many collaboration initiatives by the American University of Beirut. So we represent the academic sector, and of course, I’ll try to share some experience related to the national level collaborations in Lebanon.

Chafic Caya: Thank you so much. So as you can see, we have the five stakeholders, technical, government, intergovernmental, academic, and civil society. Thank you so much for being with us today. So my first question directly to Charles. To set the scene, give us an overview on the multi-stakeholder approach in Canada and how CIRA is implementing this multi-stakeholderism around or inside Canada to get all the stakeholders around one table.

Charles Noir: Well, thanks for the question, Shafiq. I think what I’d like to start off with by saying is as a technical operator in Canada, I’ve certainly noticed and benefit from a really active ecosystem within the internet governance community. And in terms of some of what we’re doing to engage, I think a lot of us around the room are doing. We’re very active in the ICANN space, for example, as a technical operator where we’re a member of the CCNSO, the Country Code Name Supporting Organization. As we run the .ca, it’s our primary purpose, we’re very involved in the domain namespace through ICANN. I think we’ve been an active participant in all IGFs since they were created and ongoing. We sponsor, sole sponsor of the Canadian IGFs, so we’re very active in the national and regional initiative space, which has been a real pleasure, particularly as we move into the WSIS process. I’d say that the global engagement that we do is very much reflected also in our domestic approach as well. We’re very active, not only in talking and working with registrars and registries, again, in the technical community across the country. As the .ca operator, we certainly are involved in policy processes along the way that can include both legislation at the federal level and at the domestic level, or sorry, federal and provincial levels. Largely, I would say that we have a fairly healthy multi-stakeholder environment in Canada. I feel that government in particular has been wide open to hearing from stakeholders. I feel that we’ve also been very lucky to have had an opportunity to convene and collaborate with other technical operators and organizations throughout the ecosystem. Overall, I feel that the participation as a technical operator is going well. I know there are some challenges and we might get into that in a bit, but largely that’s how we see ourselves playing in this ecosystem.

Chafic Caya: Thank you so much. I will go to Mirna. Mirna, you mentioned something interesting, the role of ASQA in supporting both the Arab IGF and the Liberian IGF. So can you give us Can you provide us an overview of the Lebanon IGF and how you manage to support this national activity?

Mirna El Hajj Barbar: Yes, thank you, thank you, Shafi. Actually, first of all, I would like to congratulate the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for hosting this year’s IGF in such an outstanding manner. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be with you due to personal commitments. I’m also very grateful to the invitation to participate in this workshop. Thank you to you, Shafi, Sabrina, Dana, and Zainab. It is really a pleasure to be part of this important discussion. Regarding actually the Lebanon Internet Governance Forum is, as you know, a national initiative that involves all the relevant stakeholders and provides an opportunity for open and inclusive dialogue. It also creates opportunities for knowledge sharing and exchange ideas on issues related to Internet Governance. The Lebanon IGF model follows actually the same structure and mechanisms that the United Nations approach actually suggests within its fundamental principles, from openness to transparency, inclusivity, and multi-stakeholder participation, and specifically a bottom-up approach. Now, regarding the role of ESCWA in supporting the Lebanon IGF, I would like to mention, first of all, that ESCWA has been and still is a key player in advancing Internet Governance, not only at regional and national level, but also at the global level. arena. Actually, UNESCO was involved in the internet governance process since its inception in 2005 and 2006, and we are continuing working on all these global processes. So, building on its contribution at the global level and its leadership in launching the Arab IGF in 2012 with the League of Arab States and all other stakeholders from all sectors in the Arab region, ESCWA actually extended its expertise to support the Lebanon IGF, where actually, while we recognized actually the need for a local platform for such an open dialogue on internet governance issues, ESCWA encouraged and supported and worked very closely with the main stakeholders in Lebanon, namely the Ministry of ICT and OJERO, and many other representatives from the private sector, the technical community, academia, and NGOs, in order to establish such a forum. Actually, that was launched in 2018, but the work took us between one year and a half or two years before. So, in addition to providing technical assistance and facilitating consultations towards launching this forum, ESCWA played also a very important role in drafting the Lebanon IGF Charter and the related terms of reference, based on the fundamental principles of the UN, and this to ensure actually a structured, multi-stakeholder and inclusive framework for the forum.

Chafic Caya: Thank you, Mirna.

Mirna El Hajj Barbar: Thank you.

Chafic Caya: Thank you for this overview. And this gives us a picture of how much important is the collaboration, not only between the stakeholders, but between the stakeholders and the international and regional organizations. From this, I will change with David, from the government perspective. How do you see the involvement of Canadian government in this multi-stakeholder approach in Canada? And how do you deal with all these different opinions and visions from the different stakeholder groups?

David Bedard: Thanks, Shafiq. That’s a great question. So I’ll just first start off by saying that within sort of the multi-stakeholder internet governance, we at ICED employ a variety of different strategies in terms of bringing voices together. We really see ourselves as a convener, especially from the government, to get stakeholders around the table to hear their concerns, hear their priorities, and figure out ways that we can integrate some of those concerns and priorities into our work as we participate in various international forum like ICANN or the IGF or the ITU. So domestically, when engaging in the multi-stakeholder process, we aim to collaborate with other stakeholders directly. So we work together to determine how to prepare our strategies collectively. So I think it’s really important for us as government to hear what our stakeholders have to say, especially when we’re heading into multilateral spaces that may not be as open to other stakeholder inputs. So we really rely on them for meaningful input and engagement. So one example of this engagement we have at ICED is we have Canadian preparatory committee calls before each ITU meetings, and we do this for ICANN as well and for IGF so we can share some Canadian priorities and we can hear from our stakeholders. to help inform our own Canadian positions on the ground. So we have these before each and every meeting. And it’s an opportunity to share best practices, to meet, talk about concerns, and just have an open and honest dialogue about their priorities and about where the government of Canada looks to push some of our priorities on the ground and how our stakeholders can help contribute to that process. We’re also sort of working with our stakeholders to make this a bit more of an iterative process. So we do a lot of conversing and engaging with our stakeholders before each and every meeting. But we’re really trying to work on reporting out after the meeting is done to make sure our stakeholders know, especially if they’re not able to participate in the meetings, if they’re smaller, for instance. So we want to make it an iterative process so they know how we’ve used their input on the ground as well. And so we want a feedback loop, a constant feedback loop with our stakeholders. And we’re extremely fortunate to have a wide range of experts in our internet governance space in Canada. And we need to engage and continue to engage with them, especially with the upcoming WSIS. So we actually just had our kickoff meeting with our stakeholders last week. Some of the people in the room here were there to articulate some priorities that we see in the WSIS to discuss how, in Canada, what we want to see out of that process. And so we really look forward to continuing engaging with them. So, yeah, so those are some of the ways in which we collate some of the stakeholder inputs in Canada. And, you know, there’s lots of work that we need to do in terms of making sure that it remains inclusive and we get lots of smaller voices in the room from smaller organizations as well. Thanks.

Chafic Caya: Thank you, David. Very interesting. And I believe this is the first takeaway for the Lebanon IGF. I believe my colleague Zeyna, IGF Secretariat, to have this coordination meeting with the Ministry of ICT in Lebanon before these big meetings, not to go in silence. So thank you, David. It’s interesting feedback from you. I’ll go to the academic stakeholder group. Maha, we know that AUB hosted one of the IGF sessions in the past, and during the last two days here, we heard a lot that there is a lack in academic presence in the IGF discussions. So how AUB, which is the American university in Beirut, one of the prestigious universities in the region, deal with this? How do you support the Lebanon IGF, and how can you encourage more academics to join these IGF discussions?

Maha Zouwayhed: Thank you, Shafiq. So first, thank you for having me in this session. Well, I’ll start by speaking about AUB specifically. We have established mechanisms internally to keep engaging the academic body. So, for example, as the Office of Innovation and Transformation, we have periodical meetings and designated communication channels. Nothing, absolutely nothing is rolled out without the involvement of academics. And the best example was when we hosted the event, and every year, in fact, when we are planning the Lebanese Internet Governance Forum, we also make sure to always incorporate the academic part. Yeah, so basically, whenever we want to roll out any initiative or take any strategic decision or initiative, we activate these channels. We make sure that the academic input is equally there, as well as the… business, industry, and technical input. Did I answer your question, Shafiq?

Chafic Caya: Thank you, Maha, thank you, yes, sure. Just I will go back to the online participants. We have about 20 online participants. Dana, if you, they have any comments, any feedbacks from the online, please let’s hear their voices, and I will come back to the room to see if there is any feedback for this first round of setting the scene.

Dana Cramer: We don’t have feedback at the moment, however, for those who are online, if you would like to begin typing in any questions or unmuting yourselves, or raising your hand to be unmuted, my apologies, then we would love to hear from you. We’ll just give five seconds to collect thoughts, and then move on.

Chafic Caya: I know the culture here is they try to take the microphone, so please put your feedback and comments in the chat room for the Zoom. Thank you. So, same here for the audience. If you have any feedback, if you have any comment, please raise your hand, and we’ll have your feedback, especially coming from, I see colleagues from RMUS, I see colleagues, you know, Canada here, Dr. Baderan, please, go ahead.

Dr. Hosein Badran: Thank you so much. It’s a great pleasure to be here. Thank you, Shafiq, for organizing this session, and Charles, Sarah. I am very fortunate because my background covers two continents, originally from Egypt, but I am a Canadian, so I have the pleasure and the honor to participate in the Arab IGF on the steering committee, and also in the Canadian IGF as part of the planning and program committee. I have the pleasure to participate with ISAD in the preparatory process for ITUT meetings, which is very important because technology and innovation needs to be aware of the developments and have a… a position to protect the investment, protect the intranet as an open and secure and trustworthy platform. And on the WSIS side, that’s very important and congratulations to the Canadian government to set up this process to engage multi-stakeholders from different backgrounds, from academia, technical community, business community and individual experts to convey their priorities and impressions about the WSIS process. I think this is a model to be followed by other governments as we have just discussed in the previous session on the Arab region preparation and priorities for the WSIS. It’s very important to have a common regional priority and agenda but also individual stakeholders are encouraged to approach their national delegations, national governments to set their priority on national level. Ultimately, the multilateral process will set the negotiations and set the priorities for the global process. So this kind of engagement, direct engagement with the government is very, very much needed and thank you for that.

Chafic Caya: Well said, Dr. Rouhani. Really, yes, this is what I would like to take from this workshop is experience from Canada, the government of Canada, how they work with all these stakeholders. Dana?

Dana Cramer: Speaking of another stakeholder group, Zaina had noted in a chat that AUB hosted Lebanon IGF two times, once at their campus for engaging students and I think that’s a great perspective to bring in that youth element to youth engagement within the internet governance area. So thank you, Zaina, for posting your comments. If there are any others, please post them and we will address them accordingly.

Chafic Caya: Thank you, Dana. Thank you so much. So I will change with Dr. Bedran on the support of the governments to this multistakeholder approach. Back to you, David. Please tell us more how the Canadian government work with the different stakeholder groups from academia to private to technical to civil society and What is your magic, let’s say, tool to get these people together? Thanks, Shafiq.

David Bedard: Thanks, Shafiq. I think that’s a… It’s a good question. I mean, we do have, like… So, I’ll start from… We have formal processes. Like Hussein was saying, and like I said earlier, we have the Canadian preparatory processes. They’re very formal. So, you know, sometimes we don’t… We don’t always reach everybody that we should, especially smaller players in this space. Particularly, you know, we like to see youth at the table, and now they’re very well engaged, or they’re very well organized now, so it makes it a little bit easier. We can reach out to Dana to get youth involved and to others involved, but we really also rely on our larger stakeholders, like CIRA has the Technical Coalition for Multi-Stakeholderism, so that’s a great initiative that we know where to go to so they can collate other smaller organizations and we can hear some of their voices who we might not… We’re not on the ground, so we don’t have the same reach as some people do that play in this space every single day and live and breathe some of these issues. So, it’s really incumbent on us to casually and informally reach out to as many stakeholders that we can outside of more formal processes in order to get as many voices around the table as possible. So, that’s one element. And the only other thing that I’ll add is that the relationship element is really important for Government of Canada, so we work very closely with our Global Affairs Department and we really try to institute a no-wrong-doors approach, but it’s important for government officials to be out at things like the IGF and at IT meetings and expanding our networks and putting faces to names so people know who in the government… It’s not just a big, scary bureaucracy, but they can actually see somebody they can speak to and they can develop relationships with them, so that’s a really important element as well. So, as much as I know everybody’s resources are an issue, but as long as… you can try to make the case to get out there and meet people, it’s really important as well.

Chafic Caya: Thank you, David. I believe that makes me a little bit more comfortable with myself because in this region, when we talk about Internet governance, we say, yeah, it’s the government who leads. So, Canada, the government leads, which is good. That means we are not doing things in the wrong way. Going back to Maha, just to make it for you, because, yeah, sorry, you hosted twice the Liberal IJF, not one. So, tell us about the experience. How you supported and how you will continue to support the Liberal IJF as an academia?

Maha Zouwayhed: Well, in fact, we enjoy a very good relationship with multi-stakeholder groups in Lebanon, including the governmental sector and civil society and, in fact, working in the Lebanese Internet Governance Forum group really added a lot to our sources for identifying priorities, also to bring value from what we are doing because we have a lot of other multi-stakeholder initiatives going on in Lebanon. For example, we support the .lb domain. We have the Tech Care Consortium that is a consortium of eight universities. We have international collaborations that have national impact, such as HPC for Lebanon. So, we try to blend all this and deploy it to integrate with the initiatives that the Internet Governance Forum is trying to support. All the way, it’s always with the academic part, for example. So when we did the National Cyber Security Day, it was the content was planned and composed between our academic faculty members in collaboration with CERN and multiple colleagues from the Lebanese chapter in IGF. And also we make sure that this is sustainable. So we always bring back this feedback and engagement to academia. And we try to foster and simulate innovation to this end. So we constantly also incorporate this into our innovation programs, innovation priorities, academic research and projects. One other thing we did is, for example, when we wanted to implement the digital accessibility on the national level, we also resorted to our colleagues in the Internet Governance Forum. And it was incorporated in several sessions and capacity building sessions that was presented by the Lebanese chapter. And also it’s now being rolled out in multiple universities as part of the consortium we are working with, with the syndicates, professional syndicates, industry leaders. So I don’t know Shafiq if I demonstrated enough how it works. So it’s basically fixed communication channels, collaboration platforms and events. And yeah, basically that’s it.

Chafic Caya: Thank you Maha. I think this is one strong point for IGF. So we have now one. One for Canada, one for Lebanon, not, you know. You talked about the innovation, about the capacity building. That makes me go to Charles as a technical community. In the region here, we open the doors with capacity building, with sharing expertise. In Canada, what the role of the technical community, how you engage with other multi-stakeholder groups?

Charles Noir: Yeah, that’s a great question. And I think the way that I approach it is we do two things, really. First, we think about ways that we can engage as an organization ourselves in the processes that we need to engage in. And then secondly, we think about ways that we can use our organization and our resources as a convening power to bring other stakeholders to the table that may be in the same community to start to understand where we have shared interests or concerns. And I’ll back up now and say from the first perspective, CIRA as an organization certainly monitors the policy space very closely. We have a team. I lead a team that looks at both the domestic and at the international space. We’re first and foremost looking to see where policy and trends are moving within the internet governance space or with internet legislation that may affect us as an operator, but also may affect the global internet in ways that we think may undermine the multi-stakeholder nature, bottom-up way that the internet is governed. So we have a framework. There’s three principles that we use. We’ll take any issue and look at it from a monitor, engage, and lead perspective. Very few things we lead. In this space, there’s a lot that we can be looking at as an organization, as a technical operator, whether that’s different visions of protocol, what’s coming out of that, coming in from the IETF, what’s coming in from a domestic legislation point of view. And we need to decide where is best our resources are spent. For example, we’ve invested a great deal of time and effort in participating in the cyber security legislation that’s before the parliament in Canada at the moment. We’ve done that because we believe that certain aspects of the legislation could be improved. And we do that because we also, our vision, our mandate, we believe, is to have a trusted internet for Canadians, and cyber security is a big part of that. So we really link into the domestic space where we feel that that’s most appropriate. In terms of convening stakeholders, for example, during the GDC process, we were very fortunate to have a strong working relationship, we have a regular working relationship with ISED. We also, with our partners at Global Affairs and our foreign ministry. During that experience, we reached out, we took on the role of reaching out as a technical operator to technical operators across the country, seeking their views on what was being proposed within the GDC process. And we took those back, and then we worked those up into a summary and provided that to our government, so that our government could bring that to the table and be able to identify the top three issues or so that as a technical community, collectively, we agreed on as being very important. So again, just to sum up, CIRA is in a unique position, I think, as a technical operator to be able to offer technical advice on legal policy issues that may not be necessarily front of mind for policymakers who are dealing with really difficult things like content regulation, really difficult social political issues. As a technical operator, we can bring a certain degree of expertise to that that others can’t. And at the same time, we have an opportunity to bring that community together within the country and connect that into a global system as well.

Chafic Caya: Thank you, Charles, really this is very interesting coming from the technical community who are involved in making policy or supporting making the policy, not making the policy. Because here in this region, this is a gap. And I look at Mirna from ESCOA, because I know ESCOA play an important role in supporting or doing research and papers to support making policies for the Arab region and in Lebanon. So Mirna, what are the challenges that ESCOA face in dealing with these topics at a national level in Lebanon?

Mirna El Hajj Barbar: Yes, actually, it is not an ESCOA challenge, it’s a general challenge, actually, implementing multistakeholder approach at national level or at regional level should take into consideration first of all the cultural environment and the local culture of the community. In Lebanon, also, there is some specificities for the environment. So some challenges were presented because or in light of the ongoing political security and economic crisis. And this is since 2017, actually, which have significantly shifted the national priorities away from initiatives like Internet governance, forums, discussions, dialogue, and something like that. The crisis in Lebanon created an environment where all stakeholders from all sectors, so from government, private sector, technical community, academia, students, everybody were driven to focus more on their immediate political and economic concerns. This challenge was, presented a big challenge on how, the question was on how we can align or adjust the discussions within the Internet Governance Forum in Lebanon with the urgent needs of the country. Also, we worked a lot to provide guidance or advices on how the digital inclusion and digital governance can remediate or can contribute to address some of the current problems at the national level or at the community level. Also there was another challenge regarding how to engage all groups. So mainly I would like to focus on one category which is very important because it forms actually our future, either in the dialogue or in the policy making, which is the group of students or youth. Actually in Lebanon, students were unfamiliar with Internet Governance concerns and lacked the proper engagement within the processes of Internet Governance at regional, global and of course at national level. And this is due to that our curriculum at the universities does not include any related the topics or something like that and here I would like to recommend that we need to introduce some topics of internet governance and policy dialogue policy making within the curriculum of at the university in order to get more students engaged. To remediate to this problem actually we thank a lot the technical community and the academia where we partnership a lot in order to provide capacity building workshops to provide necessary knowledge and skills to engage meaningfully youth into the IGF in Lebanon in particular and at the global and regional level.

Chafic Caya: Thank you Mirna so much for for this input and that makes the score two to technical community in both countries they are doing their well their job excellent. Thank you Mirna. I believe I will have a question from online.

Dana Cramer: We do have a question online from Zaina Bauharb in Lebanon saying Canada is a huge country compared to Lebanon how can the Canadian organizing committee include all voices from the different provinces and I’m assuming this would also be different between the Canadian IGF and the youth IGF in Canada but I’ll transfer it over to Charles I guess or David.

David Bedard: Sure thanks that’s a really good question and I’ll just from the government of Canada perspective I won’t lie it’s a challenge we have a vast country that is you know lots of rural and remote communities that are not as well connected as larger urban larger urban centers in southern provinces so It’s something that we are continually trying to improve. Technology always helps as communities start getting online and they’re more connected now than ever. So we definitely rely on technology to help us out. So all of our meetings and all of our strategies, our virtual participation is an option. And that’s a lesson learned from COVID. I think that everybody learned that lesson that we can operate more efficiently and more effectively and engage a lot of stakeholders when we have hybrid environments. So we absolutely always integrate that into our ongoing engagement. And also just connecting with larger stakeholders, we encourage them to also reach out to their networks and sort of create, cast a wider net for us. So we can’t be everywhere at once, but I think if we have good connections and good relationships with the folks that we do have, they can then take messages to their community as well and sort of bring their concerns to the table too.

Charles Noir: Just to echo a bit of David, in terms of the CIGF, yes, Canada is very large. We have a volunteer committee that organizes and I think you’ve heard Dr. Hossain talk about that. We rely very much on the community to come together from various parts of Canada to develop and to push forward ideas that we’re gonna take forward into an IGF for that year. We as CIRA are often looking as a national operator across from coast to coast, where we can reach out to folks that we may know that are interested or where we make calls to different parts of the country for participation and interest. On that same note, we. We have had the CIGF in different locations across the country, but this, as you alluded to, does take resources, time, and effort in a country the size of Canada, which can take six hours to get from one side to the other. Again, CIRA’s been fortunate enough to be able to support. We do rely very much on regional expertise and regional views. There’s really no sense of having a CIGF without having representation from different parts and communities across the country, and also from different backgrounds and different stakeholder groups. So we’re very conscious about trying to level that out. We’re not always able to do so. It is sometimes more centered around parts of the country than others, but we really work hard to reach out. Just really quickly, CIRA is very involved with also investing in communities across the country. That’s also under my remit. So we do take a percentage of the revenue that we take in, and we do put that back into community projects. Over the last 10 years, we put about $12 million back into the community, and that’s included also supporting youth IGF initiatives, as well as communities that are both in the north or in very rural conditions.

Chafic Caya: Thank you, Charles, for this. I believe that this is another point to be taken for the Lebanon IGF to create such an authority or organization like CIRA, so they can handle all this collaboration and coordination between the youth IGF and the academic, and to have some fellowship or funds to fund some people to join IGF. By the way, the main reason behind my colleagues, they didn’t attend this event, because there was no fund. And we know that we are volunteers. We are not paid for such volunteering activities. So I believe, yes, it’s important to have an organization to handle all these, even small details, but important details to make the national IGFs inclusive. I will go to Lebanon IGF, to Maha and Myrna. Talking about the technology tools as a tool to make this multi-stakeholder approach inclusive for everyone, in Lebanon at the IGF, how you use the technology to foster this inclusivity? I’ll start, Myrna or Maha, I give the floor for you. You heard the Canadian point of view, so please let us know how Lebanon IGF is dealing with this technology to get more engagement in the multi-stakeholder process. Myrna?

Maha Zouwayhed: Okay, so we always capitalize on the technical capabilities in Lebanon and the intellectual wealth, and we are so lucky for that. So technology played a transformative role in fostering either internal collaborations or international collaborations. In fact, it’s all what we have. And it proved very high value and very high return on investment. So first of all, technology enabled inclusivity and accessibility. This way we were able to reach everyone, everywhere, at any time, removing barriers. physical barriers or circumstantial barriers or cultural barriers. Today, with all the advanced conferencing and collaboration tools and AI, we also removed the language barriers. People of any ability and background are able to be involved and to enrich the collaboration. There’s also a technology enables knowledge sharing. We are able to create knowledge hubs and deploy collaboration tools to bring every input possible from every user group. It also enhances the stakeholders’ transparency. We deployed data-driven insights and interactive dashboards. We also utilized the national research and education networks on national level and on global level. This also availed many resources for the different players in the ecosystem. We also tried to foster innovation through deploying virtual innovation labs and open source platforms. And lastly, we also used the technology to scale our collaborations and initiatives nationally and globally. Mirna, did I forget something? Mirna?

Mirna El Hajj Barbar: Yes, yes. Excuse me. No, actually, I think you covered the… you covered the main pillars actually on how to capitalize on technologies in order to foster multi-stakeholder approach or very policy dialogue and also how to boost research and development within the technological labs and so on in order to serve these policies. From a broader actually aspect and within the work of ESCOA, I would like to say that ESCOA has always harnessed the technology to enhance collaboration, engagement across all stakeholders in the region, in the Arab region, at local level, within a community, small community, a specific community within a sector or also with the global forums. Actually, we use a lot everything related to virtual platforms, collaborative tools, surveys in order to actually gather all perspectives from different stakeholders. I would like to mention here, for example, the survey that ESCOA conducted during the first quarter of 2004 and this was actually to engage stakeholders and to overcome the geographical barrier for those stakeholders all over the region. in order to discuss very important topics related to digital cooperation related to the WSIS the plus 20 review and its linkages to GDC and this was perfectly conducted throughout all the region and we gather all the information we result and which is which which resulted with a very nice outcome document that was channeled to the UNGA in New York in order to actually transport or convey the voice of the Arab community toward these global processes. So the use of digital platforms supports a lot of the collaborative decision-making process. This is for me and for us we believe on that and it allow actually timely data-driven policy development. We should be on real time so we are all living on this digital space. We are in a one village, digital village. So I would like also to mention and here I will call up Shafi and Zeina and I don’t know if we have colleagues from the Arab IGF MAG but you remember that all the preparations for the Arab IGF 7 that will take place in Jordan between 23rd and the 26th of February 2015. All the preparations for the whole program went online. So this is a really fantastic tool. It is in our hand. We should use it to strengthen our regional and national collaboration and to engage and empower all stakeholders and minorities, all groups who are left behind. So this is all. Thank you.

Chafic Caya: Thank you, Vienna. Thank you so much. I think our 60 minutes as a discussion will come to the end, but before we open the floor to the audience and to the online participants, here just I want to give you one or two minutes for each speaker just to recap what’s the takeaway, how you see the way forward. David, please.

David Bedard: Yeah, thanks. I think for governments, I think it’s really important to implement both informal and formal processes for people to get involved in your preparatory processes for when you’re making decisions about Internet governance and when you’re developing positions for various meetings. And I think that’s I think governments can really, really, really benefit in thinking about a variety of stakeholders and creating forums that make it conducive for them to actually participate, making sure that the forums are diverse and making sure that you get out there and you meet people and you’re not just a big, scary bureaucracy, but you’re actually like a person that people can talk to and bring their concerns to.

Chafic Caya: Well stated. Charles, technical community.

Charles Noir: This thing that I would take away from this as a technical operator is there is, you know, we’re participating as a technical community within the technical community. So even within the technical community, for example, there’s a significant degree of players. with a number of different viewpoints. So no matter what group you’re coming from in terms of that multi-stakeholder position, there’s opportunities to organize, convene, and come together on issues that are very important. And from a technical perspective, for us, we’re very centered on critical internet resources, the domain name system, the root server, all of the aspects that make the plumbing of the internet work. It doesn’t mean that we’re not particularly interested in other things that are happening, but as our stakeholder group, we can bring the most to this discussion around those issues in terms of how the internet operates. And we can do that by convening both across Canada as technical operators, but we’re also doing so, as David mentioned, very internationally as a technical community for a technical, sorry, a technical coalition, technical community coalition for multi-stakeholders, I’m sorry, TCCM. Great. TCCM.global. Anyways, my point is that we can come together as operators, we don’t need to come together as all operators, and the same thing for governments, academics, civil society.

Chafic Caya: Thank you, Charles. Mirna, one minute to wrap up.

Mirna El Hajj Barbar: Yes, actually, thank you for this very interesting discussion. In conclusion, I would like to say that the ESCQA contribution to advancing internet governance at regional and the local level highlight its commitment to fostering and implementing global principles at national and local levels. So looking ahead, actually, ESCQA will continue. to champion these models and all its initiatives, such as Arab IGF, other initiatives. And here we have many initiatives that we would like to invite you to contribute to and to be engaged and involved in these tracks, such as, for example, you are all invited to participate to the Arab IGF 7 next February 2025 in Amman. Also, we developed this year the Arab Digital Agenda, which is actually a general framework covering all sectors from strategies to building the ICT sector to entrepreneurship, digital transformation, and so on. And we are open to have all stakeholders engage and in a collaborative way, in order to implement some of the goals and the targets, but also to expand its scope to cover many other sectors within its evolution towards edition number two. Thank you. We also just one final remark, Shafiq. Our track on regional collaboration regarding the WSIS plus 20 review, as well as the GDC implementation processes. So we have our platforms, we have our series of consultations, and we invite you all to collaborate and be engaged in these tracks. Thank you.

Chafic Caya: Thank you, and this is really important to get the national and regional voices to the global scene. And I believe ESCO and the United Nations, they are the right venue to engage and get all these feedbacks, and then. share it with the global IG processes, GDC, WSIS Plus 20, and the global IGF. Maha, one minute, what you have in mind at the end, as a conclusion?

Maha Zouwayhed: Well, my takeaway that technology, Internet, and governance, these are all public interests. So naturally, it cannot bring value unless every representative group of the public is engaged in it in order to have inclusive solutions and inclusive development and collective growth. Looking forward, well, it has been always the best thing we do. If we keep on doing what we know, we will never evolve. So the best thing we can do to evolve is to keep working together and involving as much stakeholder groups as it takes to do real effective solutions and move forward.

Chafic Caya: Thank you, Maha. Dana, the floor is yours. Any online participants, online comments, feedbacks?

Dana Cramer: We do have one from Rudy Shusani saying, being Canadian and Lebanese, how can we open bridges in between both IGFs for future collaborations?

Chafic Caya: Excellent question, and I believe Charles came this morning to me with the first initiative. I will let you talk about it, Charles.

Charles Noir: Right, well, so thanks for the question. I think in between these big meetings and events, it’s important to identify first who it is that you want to talk to. For example, CIRA is certainly open to engaging in dialogue around the WSIS Plus 20, if that’s of interest, or around the domain name system in general, anything technical that refers to country code top-level domains, we’re very happy to do so. Additionally, I would offer that we’re certainly also able to point in the general direction of folks within our technical community in Canada that would be open for dialogue at any time, and we certainly reach out to folks like Shafiq and others to come and be involved in various programs that we’re looking at setting over the next, I would say, eight months, particularly around WSIS Plus 20. Some of those are more invitation-based, others are more open, but a good starting point is to reach out to us individually, and so we can get people connected both at the working level and as well in the executive space.

Chafic Caya: Thank you, Charles. I believe that Sabrina is noting all this as a reporter for the session, so yeah, this will be an excellent action, call for action, coming from the, from CIRA or the Canadian IGF. Dana?

Dana Cramer: We have a question from Zainab Al-Hab, Lebanon. My question is to David. My GAC colleague, is it relevant using the national IGF platform to promote the new GTLDs program?

David Bedard: So the national IGF space for CIGF for the new GTLDs? Yeah, okay. Yeah, I think, I mean, to promote, I mean, I think it’s important that people know that it exists and that it’s coming up, and we think it’s gonna really, it’s gonna be a change space in terms of what’s gonna happen at ICANN, and it certainly is a priority. It’s a priority for government. I know that lots of folks are tracking it, so it’s certainly, we use venues, we engage very much with the CIGF, the youth IGF now, so I mean it’s certainly a space that we can bring our priorities to, and we can discuss our priorities with stakeholders, and priorities that I can, like the new round is certainly one of those priorities, so yeah, it’s certainly something that we can speak to, yeah.

Chafic Caya: So, we don’t have any other participation or feedback from online, so I know that now it’s lunchtime, and I know that people now they are hungry after a long day, you know, we give this 30 minutes in case we have any online participation or Q&A, but I am happy to give you your liberty if it’s done, and we don’t have any comment or feedback from online. Nothing? Perfect, because we did a lot, I think what we did in 70 minutes will take us the whole next year to, if we want to execute it, so once again, I would like to thank CIRA, David, Charles, I would like to thank Sabrina online for her efforts and for the follow-up, IGF Lebanon, Mirna, Maha, and the Secretary Zainab, really I appreciate your efforts, and hopefully next time you will be with us here on site. Thanks Dana for your support and online moderation, it’s really, it’s not an easy job to follow up on all this, and once again, as you can see, even though Lebanon is a developing country, Canada is a developed country, but both countries are working in multi-stakeholder environment with different approaches, but these approaches works, taking in consideration the environment that we or the stakeholders live and the challenges that we are facing every day. Thank you once again. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Agreement Points

Importance of multistakeholder approach in Internet Governance

David Bedard

Charles Noir

Maha Zouwayhed

Mirna El Hajj Barbar

Dr. Hosein Badran

Government as convener of stakeholder input

Technical community providing expertise on policy issues

Academia fostering innovation and student engagement

Regional organizations supporting national initiatives

Importance of inclusive stakeholder representation

All speakers emphasized the importance of involving diverse stakeholders in Internet Governance processes, including government, technical community, academia, and civil society.

Role of technology in fostering inclusivity

David Bedard

Maha Zouwayhed

Mirna El Hajj Barbar

Virtual participation enabling broader engagement

Technology removing barriers to participation

Digital platforms supporting collaborative decision-making

Speakers agreed that technology plays a crucial role in enabling broader participation and overcoming geographical, cultural, and other barriers in Internet Governance processes.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized the importance of collaboration between government and technical community in shaping Internet Governance policies.

David Bedard

Charles Noir

Government as convener of stakeholder input

Technical community providing expertise on policy issues

Both speakers highlighted the need for greater engagement of students and youth in Internet Governance processes, particularly through academic initiatives.

Maha Zouwayhed

Mirna El Hajj Barbar

Academia fostering innovation and student engagement

Lack of student familiarity with internet governance

Unexpected Consensus

Challenges in implementing multistakeholder models

David Bedard

Mirna El Hajj Barbar

Chafic Caya

Engaging diverse voices across a large country

Aligning internet governance with national priorities during crises

Need for sustainable funding mechanisms

Despite coming from different contexts (Canada and Lebanon), speakers agreed on the challenges of implementing multistakeholder models, including geographical barriers, national crises, and funding issues.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement included the importance of multistakeholder approaches, the role of technology in fostering inclusivity, and the challenges in implementing multistakeholder models across different contexts.

Consensus level

There was a high level of consensus among speakers on the fundamental principles of multistakeholder Internet Governance. This consensus suggests a shared understanding of best practices across different national contexts, which could facilitate international collaboration and knowledge sharing in the field of Internet Governance.

Different Viewpoints

Approach to stakeholder engagement

David Bedard

Charles Noir

Government as convener of stakeholder input

Technical community providing expertise on policy issues

While both speakers emphasize the importance of stakeholder engagement, they differ in their approaches. David Bedard focuses on the government’s role as a convener, bringing stakeholders together, while Charles Noir emphasizes the technical community’s role in providing expertise on policy issues.

Unexpected Differences

Focus on student engagement

Maha Zouwayhed

Mirna El Hajj Barbar

Academia fostering innovation and student engagement

Lack of student familiarity with internet governance

While both speakers are from Lebanon, they present contrasting views on student engagement in internet governance. Maha highlights AUB’s efforts to engage students, while Mirna points out the general lack of student familiarity with the topic in Lebanon. This unexpected difference highlights potential disparities in academic approaches within the same country.

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around approaches to stakeholder engagement, the role of technology in fostering inclusivity, and the level of student involvement in internet governance.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among speakers is relatively low, with most differences stemming from varying contexts (developed vs. developing countries) and specific roles (government, technical community, academia). These differences provide valuable insights into the diverse challenges and approaches in implementing multistakeholder internet governance models across different regions.

Partial Agreements

Both speakers agree on the importance of using technology to enhance participation and decision-making in internet governance. However, they differ in their specific approaches and contexts, with David focusing on national engagement in Canada and Mirna emphasizing regional collaboration in the Arab world.

David Bedard

Mirna El Hajj Barbar

Virtual participation enabling broader engagement

Digital platforms supporting collaborative decision-making

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized the importance of collaboration between government and technical community in shaping Internet Governance policies.

David Bedard

Charles Noir

Government as convener of stakeholder input

Technical community providing expertise on policy issues

Both speakers highlighted the need for greater engagement of students and youth in Internet Governance processes, particularly through academic initiatives.

Maha Zouwayhed

Mirna El Hajj Barbar

Academia fostering innovation and student engagement

Lack of student familiarity with internet governance

Key Takeaways

Both developed (Canada) and developing (Lebanon) countries can implement multistakeholder internet governance approaches, though with different methods suited to their contexts

Government plays an important role as a convener to bring diverse stakeholders together

Technical communities can provide valuable expertise to inform policy discussions

Academia is crucial for fostering innovation and engaging students in internet governance

Regional organizations like ESCWA play a key supporting role for national internet governance initiatives

Technology and virtual platforms are essential for enabling inclusive participation across geographies

International collaboration and knowledge sharing between countries is valuable for advancing internet governance

Resolutions and Action Items

CIRA offered to engage in dialogue with Lebanese stakeholders around WSIS+20 and technical domain name system issues

Participants were invited to contribute to upcoming Arab IGF 7 in February 2025 in Amman

Stakeholders were encouraged to engage with ESCWA’s Arab Digital Agenda initiative

Unresolved Issues

How to sustainably fund national IGF initiatives, especially in developing countries

How to effectively engage students and youth in internet governance processes

How to align internet governance priorities with pressing national issues during times of crisis

Suggested Compromises

Using both formal and informal engagement processes to balance structure with flexibility in stakeholder participation

Leveraging larger stakeholders to help reach and include smaller organizations and voices in the process

Balancing in-person and virtual participation methods to maximize inclusivity while maintaining relationship-building

We really see ourselves as a convener, especially from the government, to get stakeholders around the table to hear their concerns, hear their priorities, and figure out ways that we can integrate some of those concerns and priorities into our work as we participate in various international forum like ICANN or the IGF or the ITU.

speaker

David Bedard

reason

This comment provides insight into how the Canadian government approaches multi-stakeholder engagement, emphasizing their role as a facilitator rather than a top-down decision maker.

impact

It set the tone for discussing concrete practices of stakeholder engagement and prompted others to share their approaches to inclusivity.

CIRA as an organization certainly monitors the policy space very closely. We have a team. I lead a team that looks at both the domestic and at the international space. We’re first and foremost looking to see where policy and trends are moving within the internet governance space or with internet legislation that may affect us as an operator, but also may affect the global internet in ways that we think may undermine the multi-stakeholder nature, bottom-up way that the internet is governed.

speaker

Charles Noir

reason

This comment highlights the proactive role that technical operators can play in policy discussions, bridging technical expertise with policy implications.

impact

It expanded the discussion to consider how different stakeholders can contribute unique perspectives to internet governance, beyond just participating in forums.

Actually in Lebanon, students were unfamiliar with Internet Governance concerns and lacked the proper engagement within the processes of Internet Governance at regional, global and of course at national level. And this is due to that our curriculum at the universities does not include any related the topics or something like that and here I would like to recommend that we need to introduce some topics of internet governance and policy dialogue policy making within the curriculum of at the university in order to get more students engaged.

speaker

Mirna El Hajj Barbar

reason

This comment identifies a critical gap in education and engagement of youth in internet governance, particularly in developing countries.

impact

It shifted the conversation to consider long-term strategies for building capacity and engaging future generations in internet governance discussions.

Technology played a transformative role in fostering either internal collaborations or international collaborations. In fact, it’s all what we have. And it proved very high value and very high return on investment. So first of all, technology enabled inclusivity and accessibility. This way we were able to reach everyone, everywhere, at any time, removing barriers.

speaker

Maha Zouwayhed

reason

This comment emphasizes the crucial role of technology in enabling inclusive participation, especially in challenging contexts like Lebanon.

impact

It prompted a deeper discussion on how technology can be leveraged to overcome geographical, economic, and cultural barriers to participation in internet governance.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by highlighting diverse approaches to multi-stakeholder engagement across different contexts. They broadened the conversation from formal processes to include proactive policy monitoring, education and capacity building, and leveraging technology for inclusivity. The discussion evolved from describing current practices to identifying challenges and proposing solutions for more effective and inclusive internet governance, particularly emphasizing the importance of engaging youth and overcoming barriers in developing countries.

How can the Lebanese IGF implement coordination meetings with the Ministry of ICT before major international meetings?

speaker

Chafic Caya

explanation

This was identified as a key takeaway from the Canadian approach to ensure national priorities are represented in international forums.

How can Lebanon create an organization similar to CIRA to handle collaboration and coordination between youth IGF, academia, and provide funding for IGF participation?

speaker

Chafic Caya

explanation

This was suggested as a way to improve inclusivity and support for the Lebanon IGF, addressing the lack of funding that prevented some participants from attending events.

How can internet governance topics be introduced into university curricula in Lebanon?

speaker

Mirna El Hajj Barbar

explanation

This was recommended as a way to engage more students and youth in internet governance processes and discussions.

How can bridges be opened between Canadian and Lebanese IGFs for future collaborations?

speaker

Rudy Shusani (online participant)

explanation

This question aims to explore potential partnerships and knowledge sharing between the two national IGFs.

Is it relevant to use the national IGF platform to promote the new gTLDs program?

speaker

Zainab Al-Hab (online participant)

explanation

This question seeks to understand how national IGFs can be used to raise awareness about important ICANN initiatives like the new gTLD program.