Results from the consultation and the NETmundial+10 draft outcome document

World Net Plus 10 session explores the future of multistakeholder internet governance

At the World Net Plus 10 event, Renata Jabali introduced a pivotal session dedicated to discussing the outcomes of a public consultation on internet governance. Bertrand de La Chapelle took the stage to present the findings, which would significantly influence the event's draft outcome document and the future of multistakeholder governance.

De La Chapelle began by contextualising the current state of internet governance, referencing a statement from former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2004, which called for innovative management of the internet. Despite two decades passing, progress in establishing an effective institutional framework for internet governance has been minimal. He highlighted the stark contrast between the rapid technological advancements and the stagnation of institutional systems, which remain "stuck in time."

The consultation results revealed strong support for the multistakeholder governance principles established in 2014, with a consensus on their continued relevance in addressing today's digital governance challenges. The need for better coordination between various governance processes, the importance of transparency, inclusivity, and the operationalisation of governance principles were key points of agreement among respondents.

Audience feedback, including that from remote participants, touched on various concerns. Some noted the need for clearer delineation between internet governance and broader digital governance, while others emphasised the importance of security and safety. The lack of inclusion, rather than mere participation, was identified as a pressing issue, with calls for more equitable representation in the governance process.

De La Chapelle concluded the session by stressing the importance of a clear and concise message from the community, advocating for a multistakeholder approach to governance that involves relevant actors in addressing issues on an issue-by-issue basis. He called for the final document to be sharp and focused while still gathering contributions during the event.

The session underscored the success of the multistakeholder approach in scaling the internet and its resilience during the pandemic. However, the institutional architecture for governance on the internet was described as an "inchoate system" by Laura DeNardis, lacking the tools necessary for addressing the challenges of the digital age. The session also recognised the need for unprecedented cooperation to tackle transnational digital challenges.

In summary, the World Net Plus 10 session delved into the complexities of internet governance, highlighting the community's agreement on the relevance of multistakeholder governance principles and the urgency to refine and operationalise them. The session concluded with a call to action for the community to unite and deliver a coherent message on the significance of inclusive and equitable multistakeholder processes in navigating the intricate issues of the digital world.

Renata Jabali:
We will like very much the next part of the event. The next session is the presentation of the results of the consultation and the minute of the document of the World Net Plus 10. So, we will present the results of the public consultation, the general status and the preparations for the integrals of the World Net Plus 10. Please, Bertrand, you can start.

Bertrand de La Chapelle:
Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. As the title indicates here, you know that there has been a consultation that has been run before this event. And the purpose of this session is to basically report on the result of this consultation and also to explain how it articulates with the structure of the event itself and the structure of the draft outcome document that you have had the opportunity to have a look at. As a little bit of context, you know what the background is. You know about the history. And as we have a little bit less time than what was planned, I will go quickly through this. But I want to highlight one thing, which is the discrepancy between the speed at which the technological revolution is going and accelerating and the fact that our institutional systems are quite stale. They are stuck in time. One of the challenges is that we have been talking about the institutional framework for quite some time. And if you go back to 2004, Kofi Annan was then Secretary General of the UN. was saying that in managing the Internet in our lives, we need to be as creative as the people who invented it. Unfortunately, 20 years later, we haven't really progressed. And one year after Kofi Annan's comment, the World Summit on the Information Society, as you know, adopted this definition of Internet governance, covering both the evolution and use of the Internet, what we now often qualify as the governance of the Internet and governance on the Internet. You all know that the multistakeholder approach and the distributed mechanisms for the technical governance of the Internet has been functioning well. It has allowed the Internet to scale to the size that it is today, and it has allowed the Internet to withstand the stress test of the pandemic. By contrast, the institutional architecture to deal with governance on the Internet is what Laura Denardis called an inchoate system. We do not have, really, the tools to deal with those issues, and we're still struggling to generate the cooperation, the unprecedented cooperation that is needed to address the transnational challenges of the digital age. In 2014, as has been mentioned several times today, the first NetMundial gathered about 1,000 participants and adopted an outcome document in which there is a subpart that deals with multistakeholder governance processes. And I want to emphasize very strongly that when the high-level executive committee began planning this event, it was a full agreement that the goal was to address the institutional dimension. of internet governance and governance of the digital world. Not the different issues, not the governance of AI specifically, not the governance of misinformation, et cetera, but the tools that we use to address those digital issues. And in particular, how to make sure that the principles for multi-stakeholder processes that were adopted in 2014 are operationalized, are made more accessible so that all the different actors can have guidelines, can have information that will allow them to put those principles into action. Dealing with this is why we are all here. And NetMundial plus 10 is a very particular event because it is something that has been initiated and organized in a full multi-stakeholder manner because it is something that, unlike a lot of other processes, something that focuses, as I said, on the institutional, the procedural aspects, on the tools that we use to address our technical and policy questions. And the third element is that it is unique because of you, because of the people who are here who I believe and we believe share something in common regarding the belief that putting the different stakeholders around the same table is a prerequisite for addressing the complex transnational issues that we're addressing. And mind you, this seems self-evident for you in this room. and also the people who are maybe attending online. But it is not at all something that is shared by everyone. And in this environment, the purpose of this event is to bring people together to precisely clarify and formalize this message in the context of many other processes that are discussing how the governance of the digital world should be organized. And so the purpose, as I said, is to present the results of the consultation and the structure of the document and how this event itself is going to be organized. It has been organized around... All of this is actually organized around three big legs. One is related to the principles for multi-stakeholder governance processes that were adopted in 2014. How relevant are they to today's environment? How can they be implemented better? The second axis is precisely operational elements regarding the actual implementation of those principles. And this is, in a certain way, the next step. After adoption of the principles 10 years ago, it is the moment to look at how to do it concretely. And the reason why we need to do this is because we need to be honest with ourselves. It is not easy to do multi-stakeholder processes. And people need guidelines, need guidance and process steps. And finally, the third element is this event takes place, as has been mentioned before, in the context of other processes. It's the Global Digital Compact Consultations, it is the WSIS Plus 20 Review, it is the processes normally of the IGF, the WSIS Forum, and it is also the Summit for the Future. And it is important, we all believe, that this community shares a certain number of messages regarding the importance of this approach and how it can be operationalized. So now I will use a certain number of slides, starting with the process of the consultation and going through a certain number of themes that have been addressed. So in terms of the methodology, I put forward here a reminder for the ten principles for multi-stakeholder governance processes. Multi-stakeholder, open, participative, transparent, accountable, inclusive and equitable, distributed, collaborative, enabling meaningful participation, access and low barriers. And once again, this is about the processes, there are other principles in the Declaration of 2014 that deal with law issues. The objectives of the consultation were basically one, to measure the degree of consensus in this community around a certain number of ideas and topics. It was also, with more open questions, to collect insight on how the multi-stakeholder approach can be concretely implemented. Third, it was to use those inputs as the basis for the draft document that has been circulated before this event and that you have had the opportunity to have a look at. Very quickly, this was organized by a so-called high-level executive committee, chaired by Renata Mealy, with a few co-chairs from different stakeholder groups and regions, and altogether about 40 people were involved actively in the preparation of this event and the consultation. In terms of the responses to the consultation, which was, let's be frank, a little bit for a shorter period than we would have hoped because it took a while to put in place, but nonetheless there were 154 responses coming from the different communities, and you see that there was a strong representation from civil society, which is not surprising. You know that the responses are all available on the website, and I want to highlight one thing, which is that beyond what I'm going to present now, there will be an extensive reporting on the results and analysis of the result of the consultation and of the two days after the meeting, and I want to give kudos to Ricardo Mateos and his team at CGI for the intense work that they've done to process the responses. So first category of questions for those of you who have participated, and by the way, just a quick check, how many of you have actually filled the consultation? Can you raise your hand? Yeah, quite a significant group. Thank you very much, because it was a relatively long questionnaire. And I'm really happy that you took the pain to do it, and thank you very much for your comments. So, if you took the consultation, you know about Likert scale question. One goal was to have something that was more nuanced that yes and no questions. And I will go quickly through the different questions to show the results because I think it illustrates remarkably well how convergent the ideas of the people who participate in this event are. The first question was related to the relevance of the 10 principles that I've shown that were adopted in 2014 to the current situation, to the technical evolution and the new problems that we have. And if you see, almost 90% of the respondents said that they believe that these principles remain relevant to address today's digital governance challenges. This is a very important message that we want to carry forward. Two questions afterwards were dedicated to also the relevance, but why we have difficulties to deal with digital issues. And the first one is, one of the key difficulties or one of the key reasons is because there's not enough participation of the stakeholders. And here, there is a strong majority saying, yes, it is a reason why we struggle with digital issues, but there are still a certain number of people who disagree on this, which is not the case for the second question related to the same thing, which is one of the reasons we struggle is because people have really very different interests, priorities, and so on. i.e. there is no consensus on the issues, and what we're trying to do here is to gather a consensus on how we need to address the issues, not a consensus on the issues themselves. The next question, and here again almost 90% support this. You all know that basically since 2005 and the WSIS, there is a whole debate about the notion of the respective roles of the different stakeholders. The principle adopted in 2014 mentioned the respective roles and responsibilities of stakeholders should be interpreted in a flexible manner with reference to the issue under discussion, which was a refinement from the relatively strict mechanism that is in the decisions made in Tunis. The following question was to try to refine this and talking about the connection with the topic and the phases of the governance processes. And here again, there is a very, very strong message that yes, the respective roles vary according to the type of issue, the venue, and the stage of the discussion. And this is going to be discussed in more detail in the document. So that's about the roles, and there's another question regarding the roles, and this one as you see is a much more varied set of responses. People don't agree in the same way because the question was most of the digital governance processes apply this principle of variable roles. And here, the main message is that there are very diverse perceptions regarding how the different roles are being handled in different processes. There were a few questions regarding coordination, and here what is very interesting with Likert Scale is that you can ask two questions that go in opposite directions. Regarding coordination, there's a first question, if you have several processes that deal with the same issue, is it increasing the risk of conflict and incompatible outcomes? And there's a strong majority saying, yes, there is a risk there. But what is interesting is that people are a bit ambivalent. There is a stronger than in other questions, neutral answers, as if people are not completely certain about this. And what is interesting is that there was a second question on almost the same topic, but that says, on the other hand, if you have multiple processes, it is also potentially a way to have different angles on the same process. And here, likewise, almost 80% agree or strongly agree that, yes, you can cover the diversity of issues with multiple processes, which leads to the next question, which is an extremely strong message regarding the need for better coordination between processes dealing with the same overlapping issues. Another set of questions was, has the capacity to participate in multilateral processes improved? And here, it's another question where the perspectives are pretty dispersed. People think that, overall, it has evolved in a positive direction, but there's still a lot of contention regarding how much this has been the case. I'm losing the slides. which is making it hard for me to follow. Maybe I can do it this way. Waiting until it comes back, I get the next one. Yes, yes, it's back. Another very strong support was for the notion of how to make sure that when there is an input by non-governmental actors in multilateral processes, people know what has been done with this input. And so you see here, not only is it almost 80, 90%, but there is a big wait for the people who strongly agree. And I think this is a very important message, the first message of transparency. Another element regarding transparency is the notion of non-governmental stakeholders be able to attend or observe. It's not about decision-making. And here again, there is a strong message coming from this community or those who answered that yes, being able to observe, being able to know what is being said, for instance, on our behalf by our ambassadors and diplomats, makes sense. And it is the same for the capacity to contribute. Here again, the emphasis, and it's important to understand that this is not about yet decision-making, it's about, as Jennifer Chung was saying this morning, solution shaping, being able to contribute, being able to know how the input is being taken into account, and being able to understand what is being discussed. Finally, a few points regarding existing processes. Relatively positive, sorry, relatively positive support for the IGF as an effective space for debates and cooperation on internet governance. Also, a strong message that the IGF lacks the required financial resources to properly perform its mission, and you can see that here, unlike in many other topics, the weight is on strongly agreeing, even if there is a higher number of people who have skipped the question. Maybe they didn't want to publicly take position on that. And a sort of vote of confidence, conditional, that the IGF is a potential vehicle if there are appropriate evolutions and changes, and that it will be able to innovate multi-stakeholder approaches. And that in this case, the strengthened IGF would be a good preferred place to improve coordination. You remember that there was an answer saying we need coordination between parallel processes, and this is a strong message, again, almost 80%, saying yes, this is a space that will enable cooperation and coordination. These were Likert scale questions, and you can see that there is a remarkable degree of convergence, usually between 75% to 90% of people agree or strongly agree with those statements. And I think it's the kind of messages that we can collaboratively and together carry outside. I will go quicker on a second category of questions, which is we suggested a series of guidelines, or potential guidelines. I don't know why. Yes. There are two, 12 guidelines, and something escaped in the translation of the document. But we suggested 12 guidelines, process guidelines. and asked people to rank them by order of importance and how they felt that they should be taken into account. I don't get into the details of them. You can see them online and you will see them in the reporting. What is interesting is you could have imagined a scope, which is mentioned at the bottom, if everybody had voted to support the same guideline or to minimize another one, the range would be from 150 points to 1,800. And you can see that here, those 12 principles are indeed distributed and there's a strong emphasis on empowering the stakeholders with information and with the capacity to participate, of the importance of deliberative decision, interactivity between the different actors and also the importance of mutual respect. And it goes down, but all those principles are relatively in a narrow range because they are all apparently considered relatively equally important. And we even asked separately, if you had to pick three, which one would that be? And here it is the empowerment of stakeholders, the accessibility to all, which is something that was discussed this morning and a point that has not been mentioned so much, but the need to have cooperation across borders and also across silos and across stakeholder groups because people have a need to basically have a joint responsibility. And finally, a third category of questions was open questions and there were boxes with contributions. And here, we received almost 3,000 snippets of suggestions. that we are processing and that we used, and that the team used to prepare the draft document, because it was one of the core bases for the document. I will not go through the questions, but they basically tried to expand on the Likert scale questions around the three big blocks that I had mentioned before. One is regarding the principles and how relevant or sufficient they are. Should they need to be supplemented? Can we get suggestions for improving the implementation? How much coordination is needed? And the points that are highlighted there, you will see are used and are reflected later on on the document itself. The second thing was the guidelines for multi-stakeholder consensus building and decision-making. And here, and I think it goes what the Danish tech ambassador was, or somebody was mentioning this morning, the distinction between the contribution of the non-governmental stakeholders in multilateral processes and the development and implementation of fully multi-stakeholder processes themselves. And here, in each time, there is a request to provide examples of good functioning mechanisms. And the third building block was the input into ongoing processes with the ones that I've mentioned. One, the IGF and the strengthened IGF environment, the global digital compact consultations, the WSIS Plus 20 review, and any other processes. So, let me finish with the outcome. And, actually, the meeting structure, and I'm really sorry there were glitches in translation from Google Docs to PowerPoint, apparently. The outcome document that you have seen, and you had the opportunity to read and to approach, is structured around four parts. One is something that is connected to the panel we had this morning, the global challenges for the governance of the digital world. And the three other parts are directly connected with the three elements that I mentioned before. The principles for Internet governance processes, the guidelines for implementation of multi-stakeholder mechanisms, and the input into ongoing processes. Very quickly, so that you own, in a certain way, the structure of this document before we get into the working sessions. The first part, I leave aside the first element, which is the global challenges for governance of the digital world, because in a certain way it's an expanded introduction. But the first part has three blocks. The relevance of the Internet Mondial 2014 process principles. The multi-stakeholder process principle, which is the respective roles of the different stakeholders, and go a little bit deeper in this. And the third part is the question of coordination that I've mentioned in the Likert scale. So you see, the first structure is picking from the questions we asked and structuring it around this. The second, actually the third part. is about the two elements that I mentioned. The guidelines for the implementation of multistakeholder processes, participation in multilateral processes, and actually guidelines for multistakeholder consensus building and decision making. And here I want to highlight one thing that you will see in the document is the distinction between the guidelines themselves, the operational guidelines, and what we call the process steps that look at what is the workflow of governance, what are the successive elements that need to be taken to move from the agenda setting to the actual adoption of a governance framework. So you see the structure of the whole document is four big parts, and each of the three key elements reflect the consultation. And the fourth part is related to the contribution that we want to make as a community into the processes that I've mentioned. And so to complete the coherence in general, this is reflected in the meeting structure because we have three working sessions. The first one will take place, I think, immediately after this, and the other ones later on. For each of them, the goal is to refine the outcome document. And here I really want to make a call, and I've been tasked in a certain way by the high-level committee to make this call to you in saying when you will make comments on the document, keep in mind that the goal is not to include absolutely everything, but to have as concise and as sharp messages focused on the process aspect. so that the external world has a clear message that comes from this community. It is extremely important in the current environment that there is a clear message and that we focus on being as concise as possible. However, this doesn't mean that in the working sessions you should be exclusively doing sort of drafting or so. You can also make contributions like you did in the open questions of the consultation because we are still collecting them during this event and we will indeed report on everything that has been said afterwards because this is material that will go into other processes. So working sessions to refine each part of the outcome document and to collect further contributions and most importantly, to formalize meaningful consensus messages. So that's the main objective. With this, this is the conclusion and I want just to share one thing which is that in the current geopolitical environment of tensions, it is extremely easy to despair and it is extremely easy to think that we're going on a bad trend. This community has the capacity to share an aspiration to a world where the governance brings together around the same table the people who are relevant on an issue by issue basis. And the question of what is the message that we give to the world? I think there's a very strong message which is we can do better. and it is our responsibility to show the world how to do it. And I want to finish with one thing, which is it is striking for me and for a certain number of people of my generation, the greybeards, to see in this room people who were barely born when we were dealing with the WSIS in 2005. And I think it is extremely inspiring to see that the new generation is continuing this discussion and that we will have meaningful discussions on how to carry this torch and generate the energy and gather the energy to carry forward this spreading the multistakeholder mission. With that, we have, I think, about 10-15 minutes max. If you want to come to the different mics, keeping on the good tradition of NetMundial 2014, there are five microphones in this room on each of the stakeholder groups. So if I'm not mistaken, I have the list here. So the technical community is over there. The private sector is next. The government and intergovernmental organizations are here. Civil society is there and academia is there. So my question to you is, one, was this presentation clarifying the approach and does it show enough the coherence of the method? What are your first reactions, knowing that you will have the three working sessions to go into the substance, but do you have first reactions? Are there things that struck you in the results that I presented? And what are your first comments? So let's open the floor for the first time because you had a lot of questions. sessions this morning, so if you want to make comments, please stand up behind the mic and don't hesitate to contribute. I can recognize some people. Please, sir, introduce yourself.

Audience:
Sorry, sir. Sebastien Bachelet, I will not answer your question, but I have a lot of friends who are online and get trouble with interpretation with the ways they participate, and furthermore, the fact that we change the hour, it's quite complicated for the people. We have really, we say, we put hours for people, and when you are abroad, when you are far from here, it's quite difficult to reorganize your life. We can go to lunch later, but we can't when you are family to take care. Please, please, let's keep the timing.

Bertrand de La Chapelle:
Okay. Please. Okay, let's go, because you were first and there was nobody then. Let's go from one extreme to the other. Please. Thank you.

Audience:
Yes, Pierre Bonnet speaking from AFNIC.fr. Thank you to call me an extreme. Just first of all, for your question, that was very clear, so thank you very much. Just a remark. It's not seen in the result of the consultation, but it seems to me that we are very quick to pass from the Internet governance to the digital world governance, or what is called the digital realm in the consultation, in the outcome, and I would like someone to elaborate on that, because it seems to me that it's very different. And, by the way, the discussion we had this morning within the technical community, talking about what is a technical community, is it Internet infrastructure technical community or is it broader, illustrates this change of paradigm between Internet governance and digital governance. Thank you.

Bertrand de La Chapelle:
Thank you. Jameson.

Audience:
Yes, thank you very much. My name is Jameson Olufoye, I represent the Concerned Private Sector Organization for Africa, Africa City Alliance. Well, we've been following the consultation very well and carefully, and one thing that strikes me, based on your presentation, is that we have moved beyond debate, really, because there is a lot of kind of aggregation of opinion or view on the acceptability of multi-stakeholder participation and engagement. And I used to say that we are more in the state of dialogue, we are now dialoguing with ourselves, how can we improve this process? And I think that is a major, major shift from debate to dialogue. So it's a very good outcome that I've seen, and I'm happy with it, thank you. Thank you. My name is Paul Blaker, and I represent the UK government, and we'd like to congratulate and thank the organizers of this excellent and important meeting. This is a critical moment for the community to come together, to get organized, and to develop and reaffirm a clear agenda for multi-stakeholder governance. We welcome and support the draft outcome document, and thanks to all those involved. And thank you, Bertrand, for your summary presentation. It's important that the document has impact, and we'd encourage those holding the pen to consider adding a summary to ensure that this meeting sends some clear and compelling messages. The key messages for us from the consultation and the document are, firstly, the need for policy-making processes to continue to reform and improve to live up to the NetMundial principles, whether it's in ISTAR organisations or in multilateral processes or other policy-making spaces, all of us have work to do to make sure that these processes continue to be fit for purpose, and we think the document could say that more explicitly. Second, the need, as you said, Bashun, for coordination between processes. That means taking a more strategic, long-term view and strengthening the IGF so that it can more effectively bring people, organisations and processes together and help stakeholders shape more coordinated approaches. And finally, the need to avoid duplication. The landscape is already so complicated. I work for a government in a developed country, and we find it hard to follow so many different processes. I can't imagine how difficult it is for a small business, for a developing country government, for a civil society organisation. Inventing new bodies, new processes, new reporting mechanisms can have damaging consequences for good governance and undermine inclusion and representation. We need to get better at improving the processes we already have and making sure they really follow the net mondial principles which are as relevant today as they were 10 years ago. Thank you.

Bertrand de La Chapelle:
Thank you. As I see, before I come to you, is there a question from the remote participants or contribution? No, not at the moment, but please, I should have said that. Please don't hesitate if you're following remotely to put your questions in the appropriate basket. Yes? Aha. Nothing like talented people. Do you want to read it? That's probably the best way.

Audience:
Thank you very much. Thank you, Bertrand, for this excellent presentation. So it was very clear what is expected from us. Excuse me. Can you speak just a little bit louder, if you can? Try to get closer. Is this better? Yes, that's better. Okay. Thank you, Bertrand. Thank you for this presentation. I think you very excellently explained what we're going to do in the coming days. On behalf of the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Standards, Security and Safety, which is an IGF, Dynamic Coalition, we would like to stress that we think that security and safety of end users is severely underrepresented in the text. And that I think it's important when we're talking about internet governance, that security and safety of all users of the internet should not be a topic that is almost overseen in this text. So that would advocate it to have it in the text, for example, in guideline number six. Thank you very much for the opportunity and have a very successful meeting in Sao Paulo. Thank you.

Bertrand de La Chapelle:
Thank you very much. Thank you, Wout. I think you can go, Wolfgang, because it was in this way and I was nobody from civil society yet. And then I can go over there. Wolfgang, please, please go ahead. Because we were going one past there and then we'll come back to you.

Audience:
Thank you very much. My name is Wolfgang Kleinwächter. I'm a retired professor from the University of Aarhus. And I think an important message is in the title here when we speak about the governance of the digital world. I think this title is based on the pro-definition. 193 member states agreed in Tunis on Internet governance. The definition was proposed by the Working Group on Internet Governance, the WGIC. I was a member of the WGIC and we had a long discussion about a narrow definition or a pro-definition. And finally, we proposed to the summit in Tunis to accept a pro-definition which goes far beyond the management of the technical resources and included also Internet-related public policy issues. I think this is important because since the last 20 years, we have seen the emergence of so many new issues which have raised governance issues. We have now a language like digital governance, data governance, ICT governance, cyber governance, AI governance. So there's a little bit confusion in the terminology but going back to the Tunis agenda, the essence of the definition in Tunis was that the complexity of the issues is such a big one that you cannot manage these problems in one stakeholder approach alone. No stakeholder alone is able to manage the processes. You need all stakeholders. And this is relevant for AI, this is relevant for cyber security, this is relevant for ICT. I would add here one point, that what was missing in Tunis was that we had no set of principles. This gap was solved 10 years later in the NetMundial with the NetMundial principles, so we have a framework of principles. But what was missing 10 years ago was procedures. And I think this is now extremely important, that we have now in the section on guidelines, have criteria for a measurement, you know, what really multi-stakeholder processes are. So it's about not only the yes or no for multi-stakeholder, but the how. And the how is important, and the guidelines give us now a mechanism in the hands where we can measure, you know, how multi-stakeholder processes are. And I invite the academic community beyond NetMundial Plus 10 to develop a mechanism where they can measure multi-stakeholder processes. This could be a good task for Giganet at the next ITF. Thank you very much.

Bertrand de La Chapelle:
Thank you. We will, if you don't mind, I will close the queue, no, no, I keep the people who are there, but I will close the queue afterwards to catch up with the time. If there is one person online, I will make an exception. Is there somebody? Okay. So if you don't mind, if you wait one second, I will go to the online contribution. It's on. No? Okay. Yes, there is.

Audience:
Sorry for trying to, Cheryl, and there's a slight delay in unmuting when we're online. Just as one of the online participants, and there are many of us, we have been putting comments in the... appropriate comment methodology in the chat. So you're not talking to no one out here outside of the room you're looking at. And in response to your question, in general from many of the stakeholder groups, it was clear, it was concise, it was appreciated. So just so you know, when you ask, are there comments online, apparently the only way we get to be recognised in commenting is actually putting our hand up. But there is a lot going on in chat. Just want to make sure you knew. Thank you.

Bertrand de La Chapelle:
Thank you. Thank you very much. Your turn, sir.

Audience:
Hello, good afternoon. I'm Anderson Santana, a journalist from the Northwest region and activist. I congratulate the event for its vital role in discussing the present and future of the internet and ask that our sectors are increasingly committed to ensuring more inclusive and equitable representation. NetMundial is crucial to shaping the future of internet governance, but we must recognise the present need to expand the participation of rural indigenous, quilombola communities and tools. Thank you.

Bertrand de La Chapelle:
I'm sorry that the last sentence was lost. Can you try to see if the last sentence was lost?

Audience:
The NetMundial is a crucial tool shaping the future of internet governance, but we must recognise the present need to expand the participation of rural indigenous, quilombola communities and tools with low connectivity. Thank you, thank you

Bertrand de La Chapelle:
Thanks for your patience, please. Yes Yes

Audience:
Okay, now it works Nicola fumarelli from the technical community Internet Society Uruguay chapter for now, then I will talk about others in other opportunity Yes, one thing that is important to consider the in the in the liquor questionnaire The answer say or show that there is a lack of inclusion, but it's not mentioning lack of participation So it's not an issue may be of patient but about inclusion of all the voices, right? so these they are About the how how how we can do it. There is a moment ideas Talking about this AI driven Alternative to the institutional or the classic multi-stakeholder ism This is an approach that removes these traditional barriers such as waiting times and queuing That could hinder equal food and equity participation as we talk in the early morning so by facilitating a more procedural asynchronous with documents after the sessions and immediate and massive involvement without geographical or temporal constraints I will have a better multi-stakeholder process

Bertrand de La Chapelle:
Thank you very much so with that In order to send I'm in the oh, yeah, sorry. Oh, listen, please

Audience:
Thank you very much. I'm Allison Gilwood from research ICT Africa and University of Cape Town Thank you very much. I'm Bertrand. That was very clear I just wanted to make the general point you said we're going to deal with that introductory expanded introductory section Which really places the context? I think it's absolutely critical that we do Before we go into some of the procedures and processes and things we actually Explain what how different and complex this environment is and the need and the potential of multi-stakeholderism in that process So, I think setting up that introduction in a way that critically engages with the concept of multistakeholderism and acknowledges the failures and what could be done to rectify those, including locating multistakeholderism in the ICT ecosystem where it's required now in its multiple dimensions, and identifying the extreme inequalities, you know, opportunities in this environment. When we speak about equitable participatory stakeholderism, separated out from the underlying inequalities, we're going to be having the same conversations 10 years from now again. The inequitable participation of stakeholders, particularly from the majority world, is because of the structural problems that are there. So we just need to acknowledge those up front. Otherwise we keep, in the Global Digital Compact, in the WSIS, we keep rhetoric around inclusion and not equity, which I think we really need to include. I think the missing principle here is not just inclusion, but equitable inclusion. And it can only happen in multistakeholderism if there's more equitable inclusion in the digital realm, digital economy, digital society. Thank you.

Bertrand de La Chapelle:
Thank you very much. I close this session. Of course, I had said that I was... I'm sorry, Susan, because we had to catch up a little bit on the delays this morning. So just a quick remark, because there was a question that was raised about the idea of a summary, or an executive summary. It's something that has been discussed, and I think I'm not revealing a secret, within the High-Level Innovative Committee. One of the goals is not to draft something that is completely different, but maybe with your help. to abstract a certain number of the sentences that will be in the draft final document to make a sharp and concise message, if we can. But here again, it is extremely important that we share the knowledge that we have only a day and a half to design a sharp message, not only for ourselves, but also for the rest of the world. We will not solve everything. We will not find the perfect system for multicultural participation. But what I think we are all here to do is to join forces to have a coherent message externally, not that there is one single model, that we do believe that getting the different actors around the table is necessary to solve the different issues. And as Wolfgang has answered the question that was raised before, this is indeed about the digital world, the governance for the digital age, and the large interpretation of the definition of Internet governance, so that it is not restricted in a defensive manner to the protection of the existing institutions, but that it is also about improving the other ones, and a positive vision. With that, I thank you very much, and I turn the baton to the next speaker.