IGF2024

Summary

This open forum session focused on governing the future internet, particularly Web 4.0 and virtual worlds. The discussion explored why governance of these emerging technologies is important, what principles should guide it, and how a multi-stakeholder approach can address governance needs.

Participants emphasized the need to anticipate challenges posed by increasingly immersive and data-intensive virtual environments. Key concerns included data privacy, user rights, cybersecurity, and protecting vulnerable groups like minors. The importance of transparency, inclusiveness, and accountability in governance frameworks was stressed.

Several speakers highlighted the need for a human-centric approach that gives users more control over their data and experiences in virtual spaces. The potential for new business models centered around data agency for individuals was discussed as a way to create a fairer data economy.

There was agreement on the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration, including governments, industry, civil society, and academia. Participants noted the need to involve youth and consider perspectives from different global regions. The value of building on existing internet governance structures rather than creating entirely new frameworks was emphasized.

The discussion touched on the role of emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, and quantum computing in shaping Web 4.0. Speakers stressed the importance of assessing how these developments impact core internet properties and existing governance mechanisms.

Overall, the session highlighted the complex challenges of governing rapidly evolving virtual world technologies while preserving an open, secure, and inclusive internet. Participants agreed on the need for continued dialogue and research to develop appropriate governance approaches for Web 4.0 and virtual worlds.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The importance of a multi-stakeholder, inclusive approach to governing Web 4.0 and virtual worlds

– The need to protect user rights, privacy, and data in increasingly immersive digital environments

– Balancing innovation with ethical considerations and societal impacts as technologies advance

– Ensuring the existing internet architecture can evolve to accommodate Web 4.0 without disruption

– Involving youth and diverse global perspectives in shaping the future of the internet

The overall purpose of the discussion was to explore governance approaches and key considerations for the evolution towards Web 4.0 and more immersive virtual environments. The panel aimed to kickstart a broader conversation on how to ensure this development happens in an inclusive, ethical way while preserving the open nature of the internet.

The tone of the discussion was largely collaborative and forward-looking. Panelists emphasized the importance of working together across sectors and regions to address emerging challenges. There was a sense of cautious optimism about the potential of new technologies balanced with concerns about protecting users and society. The tone became slightly more urgent towards the end as speakers highlighted the need for continued dialogue and concrete action on these issues.

Speakers

– Pearse O’Donohue: Director for Future Networks at DG Connect, European Commission

– Barbora Kudzmanaitė: Research manager at BPMI, supporting European Commission’s work on Web 4.0 and virtual worlds governance initiative

– Rafał Kownacki: Director of the International Cooperation Department at the Ministry of Digital Affairs of Poland

– Israel Rosas: Director of Partnerships and Internet Development at the Internet Society

– Sarah Nicole: Senior Policy and Research Associate at Project Liberty

– Toshio Obi: Professor Emeritus and Advisor for CEDAW University, Advisor of IT Secretary General for Academia, Chair for CEDAW Project on Silver Innovation

Additional speakers:

– Sandra Hoferichter: Representative from EuroDIG

– Abdulla Al Hamed: Representative from Intermid

– Audience member (unnamed): Member of the technical community

Expanded Summary of Discussion on Governing Web 4.0 and Virtual Worlds

Introduction

This open forum session focused on the governance of future internet technologies, particularly Web 4.0 and virtual worlds. The discussion explored the importance of governing these emerging technologies, the principles that should guide such governance, and how a multi-stakeholder approach can address the complex needs arising from these advancements.

Key Themes and Discussion Points

1. The Need for Governance in Web 4.0 and Virtual Worlds

Speakers agreed on the necessity of governance for Web 4.0 and virtual worlds, citing several reasons:

a) New Challenges to Privacy and User Rights: Rafał Kownacki highlighted that immersive technologies present unprecedented challenges for privacy and user rights. The invasive nature of these technologies, as noted by Pearse O’Donohue, requires stronger user protections.

b) Potential Threats and Opportunities: Kownacki emphasized that Web 4.0 technologies bring both potential threats and opportunities that need to be addressed through governance.

c) User-Centric Approach: Sarah Nicole stressed the importance of a user-centric approach and data agency for individuals in these new digital environments.

2. Principles and Approaches for Web 4.0 Governance

The discussion highlighted several key principles and approaches for effective governance:

a) Multi-stakeholder Model: Rafał Kownacki advocated for a multi-stakeholder, transparent, and participatory model. This sentiment was echoed by Israel Rosas, who emphasized bottom-up processes with collaboration from all stakeholders.

b) Transparency and Accountability: Kownacki underscored the importance of transparency, inclusiveness, and accountability in governance frameworks.

c) Open Source and Alternatives to Self-Regulation: Sarah Nicole emphasized the need for open source protocols and alternatives to self-regulation by large tech companies.

d) Data Security and Privacy: Kownacki stressed the critical importance of ensuring data security and privacy in Web 4.0 environments.

3. Global Cooperation and Inclusivity

Speakers stressed the importance of global cooperation and inclusivity in governance efforts:

a) Global Solution: Pearse O’Donohue emphasized the need for a global solution to address the challenges of Web 4.0 and virtual worlds.

b) Addressing Digital Divides: Toshio Obi emphasized the importance of capacity building and addressing digital divides globally.

c) Youth Involvement: Sandra Hoferichter stressed the crucial role of youth involvement for fresh perspectives in the governance process.

d) Private Sector Innovation: Abdulla Al Hamed suggested that private sector innovation should inform governance approaches.

4. Balancing Innovation and Protection

A recurring theme was the need to balance technological innovation with societal impacts:

a) Assessing Impacts: Israel Rosas emphasized the importance of assessing how new developments impact core internet properties and existing governance mechanisms.

b) User Rights and Data Protection: Multiple speakers, including Sarah Nicole and Pearse O’Donohue, stressed the need to protect user rights, privacy, and data in increasingly immersive digital environments.

c) Cybersecurity: Rafał Kownacki highlighted the importance of robust cybersecurity measures in Web 4.0 and virtual world environments.

d) Protecting Minors: Kownacki also emphasized the need for special protections for minors in virtual environments.

5. Evolution of Internet Architecture

Speakers discussed how the existing internet architecture might need to evolve to accommodate Web 4.0:

a) Assessing Impacts on Critical Properties: Israel Rosas stressed the importance of assessing how new developments impact critical properties of the internet.

b) Avoiding Disruption: An audience member raised concerns about clarifying the scope of Web 4.0 governance and avoiding disruption to existing internet architecture.

c) Building on Existing Structures: Pearse O’Donohue noted that the aim is not to create entirely new structures but to build on existing internet governance frameworks.

Additional Points of Discussion

1. Citizen Panel: Sarah Nicole mentioned the importance of a citizen panel on virtual worlds to gather diverse perspectives.

2. Societal Impacts: Kownacki discussed potential societal impacts of virtual worlds, including addiction and social exclusion.

3. Risk Assessment: Israel Rosas emphasized the need to assess whether new technologies present risks or threats before addressing them.

4. New Business Model: Sarah Nicole proposed a new business model centered around data agency for individuals.

5. Capacity Building: Toshio Obi stressed the importance of capacity building and human resource development in the context of Web 4.0 governance.

Conclusion and Next Steps

The discussion highlighted the complex challenges of governing rapidly evolving virtual world technologies while preserving an open, secure, and inclusive internet. Participants agreed on the need for continued dialogue and research to develop appropriate governance approaches for Web 4.0 and virtual worlds.

Pearse O’Donohue mentioned the European Commission’s upcoming communication on virtual worlds, which will address governance issues. The Commission also announced plans to host a conference on March 31-April 1 in Brussels to further discuss Web 4.0 governance issues. Additionally, outcomes from this discussion will be fed into the next IGF meeting in Norway.

The session concluded with a call for ongoing collaboration and research to address the unresolved issues and develop effective governance frameworks for the future internet.

Pearse O’Donohue: Okay, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you to those who are online. This is an open forum session number 40 on governing the future internet focusing on web 4.0 and virtual worlds. Even though anyone in the room may also need to wear headsets, in order to hear us over the background noise. And if any of you wonder what’s going on online, it’s just that it’s a relatively open room. My name is Pierce O’Donoghue. I work for the European Commission and DG Connect. And we’re very happy to sponsor this open forum on issues which I will just speak about briefly. And then we have a great panel, which our moderator will see us through. Over a year and a half ago, at the beginning of last year, the European Commission adopted a communication on virtual worlds. Some of you know that as the metaverse. We didn’t want to get into branding issues early on. So for us, it’s virtual worlds. But it’s very much some of the components which will make up web 4.0, moving from the on-screen or on-headphone immersion to full immersion, to virtual presence, to extended and virtual reality, and to 3D surround sensory experiences. And which are not just for entertainment purposes. It’s not just people playing video games with 3D masks on. It’s, of course, a massive number of applications in the industrial, social, health, and other areas. The Commission is very interested in the challenges which these technologies will have, of course, on society, on the services delivered over the internet. But we also have to look at the impact on the internet technology. into a functioning self. And that’s really why we wanted today to focus on one thing which we in the European Commission said we must look at. It is the governance of Web 4.0, the impact particularly of virtual worlds. And what I want to stress from the start is that we want to do so in a multi-stakeholder process. We are not in the business of building new fora. We are not in the business of creating new structures. Rather, we could have picked other technologies to have the same discussion, whether it’s blockchain, obviously artificial intelligence, while we’ll all be talking about quantum. How does that impact on the current multi-stakeholder process? And what lessons can we draw from the multi-stakeholder community as to how we need to adapt the current process, including particularly the IGF itself? What will be the impact on ICANN? Although they will of course be leading as well in those technical discussions. And what else, particularly what new stakeholders do we need to bring into the discussion? And that’s very much why we are here launching this discussion here at the IGF. We hope to have good input into the next IGF in Norway, and not as a sidebar, but as part of this consideration and why we really appreciate everybody’s input to this discussion. That’s… Noah’s back. As you all know, we have the WSIS plus 20 process at the end of next year. And we believe that that process should be looking not necessarily at architectures, because we believe that the current architecture is the right one, but actually looking forward. What are the new challenges that the multi-stakeholder process needs to address? What does that mean in terms of stakeholders? What configurations do we need? How does the IGF and others, other for that need to adapt? Starting from the technical layer, we have representative from the IETF in the room, all the way up to the service layer, the applications layer, and then the governance principles as such with regard to protection of the individual and society and other securities. So these are issues which we wish to hear from you. This will help us in our thinking, but also we feel should help to give a good input collectively to the WSIS process and build then the basis for work beyond next year in these fora for actually working it out. And here we rely on your input. We, of course, maintain the same values that have driven collectively our work in the past on internet governance. Maybe I could say digital governance, but that in itself is a political discussion which we won’t get into today. But it is really to ensure that as these new technologies come on, that those principles of open, secure, inclusive, and accessible… internet technologies remains the basis for all the work that we do and that we actually are able to anticipate challenges there will be, not least the fact that new technologies are moving so fast and we have to keep up with that. Others may otherwise step in. In the past we’ve had various bogeymen in the internet governance world. At first it was the bogeymen of the huge global company controlling everything and everybody. More recently it’s been the bogeymen of governments and states who want to control the internet and control their citizens on the internet. Whatever about those rather stereotypical extreme cases, what we do know is that the technology is itself presenting us with challenges and we need to talk about it. We need not be afraid of discussing it so that we are actually ahead of the curve. With that therefore I am very happy to to hand over to our moderator for this session. Thank you for being with us. That’s Barbara Kudzmanaiti who will now present herself and the panel. Thank you so much.

Barbora Kudzmanaitė: Thank you so much Piers for the opening remarks and thank you for initiating the session. Hello everyone, thank you for everyone joining us in the room and those connecting online. I hope you can hear us and be with us throughout the discussion. With the increasing maturity of technologies enabling virtual worlds and the evolution of the internet towards web 4.0, it is important to kick-start this conversation about how we can ensure that this development takes place in an inclusive ethical way while also preserving very much the global and open nature of the internet as Piers just reiterated. I cannot wait to deep dive with my panel members to discuss these questions around approaching web 4.0, what challenges that raises and what opportunities that raises and what also this means for how we approach the governance of the next generation. of the internet and virtual worlds. So to kickstart, maybe a bit of who’s who in the room here today and with us online. I am Barbara Kuzmanita, I’m a research manager at BPMI and we are supporting European Commission’s work on this Web 4.0 and virtual worlds governance initiative. And if you wanna chat more about what we’re doing to support the European Commission, I will be very happy to talk to you also after the session and happy to answer any questions in that regard. And today I’m joined by a fantastic panel of panelists from across the world. So to start with us here in the room, we have Professor Toshio Obi, who is Professor Emeritus and Advisor for CEDAW University, also Advisor of IT Secretary General for Academia and Chair for CEDAW Project on Silver Innovation. So several titles and thank you so much for being us here today. Online joining us, we have Ms. Sarah Nicole, who is a Senior Policy and Research Associate at Project Liberty, where she focuses on technical and academic governance frameworks. And next to me, I have sitting Mr. Israel Rosas, who’s a Director of Partnerships and Internet Development at the Internet Society. Across myself, I have Mr. Rafal Kornacki, who’s a Director of the International Cooperation Department of the Minister of Digital Affairs of Poland. So thank you for being with us here today. And online, let me check if we have joining us, we should have Mr. Raymond Selormamata, who is a Founder and President of e-Governance and Internet Governance Foundation for Africa. So I will just look a little bit at the screen to cross-check that Mr. Mamata managed to connect and is able to be with us here today. I see some shaking, so in case Mr. Mamata manages to come back, we will welcome him into the panel as well. And finally, we have Mr. Pierce O’Donohue, Director for the Future Networks, Director of DigiConnect European. and commission. So as a researcher, I have a lot of questions that I cannot wait to unpack together with you going forward. Maybe just a quick format on format, we’ll have roughly three, four minutes per remarks, and we have some time at the end for questions for anyone in the room to have a chance to speak up. So please reflect as we discussed on any questions you might have. So to start, I would like to explore a little bit the why of the governance equation, why in the first place, it’s important to talk about the governance of Thought4.0 and virtual worlds, and how will emerging technologies that are also already quite maturing, like AI blockchain, virtual and extended reality, but also quantum computing, as Piers was mentioning, might reshape or influence the evolution of Thought4.0 governance. So to start, Rafał Kownacki, please, the floor is yours.

Rafał Kownacki: Thank you very much. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you, the host, for having me in here. It’s such a pleasure and honour to be the part of the panel with so many people all around the globe who are really experts in the field. So very concrete to the point. From the point of view of the government, I believe any democratic government, internet governance nowadays is a kind of a stable, but still evolving environment with already well-established global institutions, and which is quite important, multi-stakeholder model, kind of strong one. That’s why we are all here. And this is IGF is just the proof that we are already in the very democratic environment. So of course, it’s nothing new, like to try for the very new occasion to manage or plan to manage the requirements for the new era of internet. However, of course, the advent of 4.0 internet, web 4.0, it presents both and of course, the threats, the opportunities. And of course, we have a long list of questions, whether the current system of existing Internet governance is ready for this new, maybe not revolution, but evolution to the next generation of Internet. When we consider the previous Internet revolutions we already observed, Web 4.0 can significantly impact I would believe that most of the aspects of our lives, lives in terms of daily routine lives, domestic lives, but also in international sphere. So discussing and the urgence to discuss the governance is crucial. It’s quite crucial just to steer technological development towards transparency, which is the first, inclusiveness, which is the second, and accountability. I believe those three are the pillars. So by anticipating technological changes, we should ensure that this evolution of the Internet is guided in a way that it prevents Internet, but of course most of all the users of Internet from being divided into different categories of virtual users, of different words managed by rules, imposed by some entities, not guaranteeing the equity and not guaranteeing the equality of all the users and all the governments, all the stakeholders from all around the globe. So of course when we think about opportunities, what Web 4.0 can bring to the world, of course first of all I think about education. So remote learning, even more developed one, training, medicine, entertainment. infrastructure development and of course which is quite important nowadays so natural resource management, it should bring the positive. Of course one of the very most positive opportunities is the creation of virtual twins of real world objects and it can of course improve operational efficiency, safety and skill and development across various sectors with medicine as the priority I would say but also there are many factors which are quite maybe not pessimistic but they’re post threats. So first of all we should try to make an efficient way to exclude the chance or the risk for any social exclusion and of course any disparity in access to information and education. It should be the priority for all the governments. We should try to establish new set of rules fighting against crime in virtual spaces with regards to all the new aspects of web 4.0. Also the use of or misuse rather of biometric data, mental health issues also should be kind of important for all the governments and all the stakeholders. When we think about addressing those issues, those threats, we need to have in mind, bear in mind that it requires a multi-sided approach. So it should include ensuring data security and privacy, it should enhance cyber security, it should be based on a deep analysis of societal impacts and of course which we can’t forget. are quite important to protect miners, so underage users. The evolution of Web 4.0, it will be likely influenced by emerging technologies. It’s quite obvious, such as AI, blockchain, virtual and extended reality, quantum computing, which was already mentioned. So the governance of Web 4.0, it will need to evolve into even more transparent and participatory model than nowadays we do have. The example I can give is the integration of AI and quantum computing, which will raise ethical questions about surveillance, data use and privacy. So governance framework, it will need to establish clear policies for protecting user rights, to ensure transparency, especially of AI systems and to handle ethical dilemmas around automation. The governance of this new kind of internet will need to ensure that these technologies can interoperate seamlessly while maintaining user control over the data. Summarizing, because I wouldn’t just to use over my time of three minutes. So Web 4.0 governance will need to be flexible, adaptive and transparent. It should incorporate input from a wide range of stakeholders and for sure it must balance the potential benefits, benefits of emerging technologies. The one I mentioned, AI, blockchain, XR, quantum computing, we’ve the need, which is the most important, we’ve the need to protect individual rights. privacy, security in this very complex new digital ecosystem. So I would say that’s all for now. Thank you.

Barbora Kudzmanaitė: Thank you very much for sharing your views. And indeed, we see with Web 4.0, it is indeed all about creating this really immersive real time through the environments. And already these days, we’re talking a lot about in the forum as well about children’s safety online. So of course, all of these issues extend to these very much immersive environments. You already alluded to some of the things of the what and the how. We will be coming back to those as well as we proceed with our panel. I will just do a last check whether Mr. Ramon Mamatai is with us, just to cross check if we have him online. In that case, I will turn to my colleague next to me, Israel Rosas, from the Internet Society to still take a look at the why question a little bit further, maybe from also this technical perspective, why we need to talk about governance of Web 4.0. So looking at the evolution towards Web 4.0. Hi. Hello? Unfortunately, it seems it’s difficult to have Mr. Mamatai with us. So then back to Israel Rosas. Looking at the evolution towards Web 4.0, does the existing core internet architecture provide a sufficient foundation to accommodate the needs and complexities of Web 4.0?

Israel Rosas: Well, thank you very much. First of all, I want to thank for the invitation. I think this is the right way of discussing new topics in which we have the opportunity to have a voice in the conversation. At the Internet Society, we are following up with a lot of attention these developments. We understand the general idea behind what it is mentioned as Web 4.0, but we would like to know more details. details on the specific, like what kind of applications would be deployed. We’ve seen that in general, the internet has been developed since the early beginning as a technology neutral, a general purpose network is this collection of networks, more than 70,000 networks interconnected, exchanging information. That core infrastructure has been flexible enough to accommodate needs all over the decades. We’ve seen the different applications, different services being deployed. And that’s why we are interested in these debates because as of now, it is really difficult to understand, for instance, what are going to be the border cases in which some of these developments, we will need to be tackled from a different point of view in technical debates. In general, what we are seeing is that the internet has a group of critical properties that permit that the internet exists and thrives. And that’s the key issue at play. Any new development, either technological, political, social, business should be assessed to identify whether it impacts these critical properties of the internet, because in some cases, we’ve seen that there are some unintended consequences when some new proposals are being put out there. So I think this is the right configuration to have opportunity for all stakeholders to participate. We’ve seen that there are diverse mechanisms within the technical community to address new challenges. For instance, the ITF has open bottom-up processes where all people can participate, can propose new solutions, can test new solutions, receive feedback on the feasibility of these developments. So in general terms, we are interested in how these conversations are progressing. and just to keep understanding better what are going to be the concrete implications for the internet. So it’s difficult to have like a concrete answer right now, but we are willing to keep engaged in the conversation, keep informed other stakeholders, but also hearing from other stakeholders.

Barbora Kudzmanaitė: Thank you very much. So just to summarize in short, it’s important to assess any new developments and their impacts on the internet going forward. I will turn now to what I understand, and we have Mr. Mamata with us online. So I will also ask again this why question, but maybe more from the global community as well. Looking globally, why is it important to talk about the governance of the evolution towards Web 4.0? Mamata, looking forward to hear your perspectives. Unfortunately, it still seems there is an internet connection issue. So I will then move on to the what, so talk a little bit about the foundational principles that we can have in mind as we look to the future of the increasing immersion and real-life experiences. And we heard a little bit on why we need to talk about this. So I would like to turn to Sarah Nicole. So what we just heard of some of these challenges and opportunities you must keep in mind, and also the importance of doing this impact as assessing the impacts on the internet. What do you see as some of the foundational values and principles that should underpin the governance of Web 4.0 and this evolution towards increasingly immersive virtual environments?

Sarah Nicole: Thank you for the invitation. I hope you can hear me well. There’s never a discussion over the internet. that do not encounter technical problems. So this is just the normal state of things. I generally agree with everything that’s been said. So let me give you my two cents and push this a little bit further. So while we have hundreds of national, regional, international frameworks, foundational value that are fit for the digital age, or that are even prior to the digital age, like the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, we have always struggled to apply them effectively. And I believe we will certainly do so when we’re 4.0 and virtual worlds. Every time there’s a new technology breakthrough, we always ask the same question, how we should preserve privacy, transparency, accessibility, and so on. And this might be because the main issue lies primarily in the business model of the digital platform, allowing us to interact online and the lack of alternative business model as well. So I think that adding more values and more principle is not the exact solution and would not be constructive to this discussion. I’d rather think that there needs to be a shift and rethink of how we’re conceiving the place of individuals in the digital world by giving them rights and control over their data. And at Project Liberty, we believe in three things mostly. We believe that we should give people voice in the governance of the spaces they log into every day, over their individual experience online, expended opportunity to manage also their data. And the third is a stake in the value created by their own data. And this might be the first step towards a fair data economy that is characterized by competition, innovation, instead of a few monopolies that are capturing people’s data. In virtual world, in a web 4.0, the data generation will be even more important than in our current two-dimensional digital services as interaction will need to be seamless, we’ve said it, and there needs to be actual immersiveness. So this is therefore crucial to have this rethinking before we get into this very moment of even more extensive data collection. And for effective governance, we will need to have a new business model centered around data agency for individual. We need to think of governance and business model as going hand in hand. And this is the effort that we are leading at Project Liberty Institute by focusing both on governance and especially the governance of a protocol that we steward, an open source and decentralized protocol that is called the DSNP, the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol. It’s a protocol that allows users to have more control over their data. We have over a million users on it now. And by focusing also on building a fair data economy, and we did that through a research effort with key leaders, including the latest economy Nobel Prize, Darren Oshimoglu, where we focused on four main areas of action, digital infrastructure solution, new business model, strategy, capital allocation, and policy framework. So for Web 4.0 and virtual world to truly thrive, they must embrace the shift towards user centricity, supported by innovative business model that enabled multi-stakeholder, bottom-up and transparent governance framework. But one last thing about this bottom-up and multi-stakeholder approach, I wanted to always highlight the European citizen panel on virtual world that took place, I think two years ago. I was invited as an expert for a full day and talking to over 150 randomly selected EU citizen that were asked to design the approach to virtual world. It led to recommendation among which I believe there was eight fundamental principle for ethical development of virtual world. And I believe these principles should be kept as they were brought by. all of us, they were brought by citizens that represent us. And I believe also that this concept of the citizen panel is key in the process of making policy and bringing ethics to digital innovation. Thank you.

Barbora Kudzmanaitė: Thank you, Sarah, for these very timely remarks. Indeed, one note is on the competition in virtual worlds. And maybe if I can summarize a bit that we should also really focus on end users as users rather than consumers in these environments. And also mention of the citizen panel. Indeed, we have end users, users. And they should also drive the principles that shape these environments going forward. I would also now turn to Professor Toshio Obi to further maybe elaborate a little bit on these principles that can guide this user human-centric virtual environment. In these environments, we heard a lot of mentions of data, the importance of privacy. Could you share also a little bit more from your perspective and research how might privacy involve in these more immersive environments? And how can we further protect the rights of the users of these spaces?

Toshio Obi: Hello? Who’s speaking on? Thank you very much for a very interesting talk. And frankly speaking, I’m not European. I’m Japanese. And I thank you for attending KOTO Japan IGF last year. Whatever we are talking about the next generation of the internet, I think we are really concerned with the multistakeholders. My issue is very, very clear. Multistakeholder has two different aspects. One is the more so-called the… government, business, civil society, academia issues, and another one is the more global issues like Europe and Asia and Africa and some other continent and I’m talking about the later one because Asia is a very very vast territories starting from South Pacific to Saudi Arabia is Asia so what we should do is Asia we call the in terms of the GDP it’s almost a half of the world GDP belong to Asia also population is all China, India, Indonesia, Japan, we have Pakistan they have a huge populations so what we should cooperate with European Unions I think the Asia group need a platform to work with European Unions and you did in the Kyoto meetings last year and this year we have a very interesting talk so-called wave 4.0 it’s quite an important transition to so-called the metaverse in the future so in other sessions so just I listen to AI issues and some other sessions talking about children’s human rights on so one stakeholder is really a big one. So this issue might be so-called European Union, EU-oriented programs. And I think Japan can, or Asia as a whole, might be very interested in working with you, the European Union. That’s one thing which I should say. And the second one is I’m the policy professor of the Japanese universities and policy advisor to NTT, which somebody told about. So between academia and business, we need more collaborations. Somebody said PPP. That’s very good. And the third one is the sustainabilities. And this project or program called Wave 4.0 might continue as sustainabilities for another five, six years to complete our missions. So please consider the Asia is a part of these programs and how we can work together. No, that is my comment first. Okay.

Barbora Kudzmanaitė: Thank you very much, Professor Obi. I think this is actually a very timely transition, more to the question of how, how we can work together on approaching this next evolution of the web and how we can work together to guide and govern these, approach the governance of these immersive environments. So I would turn back to maybe Piers O’Donohue to reflect a little bit on how can we work together in this multi-stakeholder approach to best address the governance needs of that 4.0. Thank you very much.

Pearse O’Donohue: Well, first of all, it’s by listening to informed speakers, such as we have today. No, genuinely, this is the process that we have to go through. So I was actually very attracted to the brief model that Israel said that, first of all, we have to, with those who are informed, but with different perspectives, analyze whether a given technology or a given advance is a risk or presents a threat, in other words, it’s a challenge to then best assess how we go about addressing it. And in that context, then listening very carefully to what Sarah had to say, taking the user very much into account and introducing, I know that these terms have been fought over, but what we would consider to be a human centric approach. It seems a given that when we are talking about technologies, which will be to the point of being invasive, they will surround the individual or have the potential to do so and will not be a two dimensional interface, but a 3D, 360 degree interface, where because of the nature of some of the technologies, it might not be possible to put on mute. If you wish to have a private conversation and where the sensors are not tracking you, there will be devices which look at biorhythms and other bodily measurements, as well as being able to hear your environment. So the nature of that technological advance, while we’ve talked about protection of data, personal data for a long time, it’s a whole new thing. And therefore, the human centricity, the focus on the user, giving control to the user, which I also heard from Sarah, is very important. And then it’s a question, as I’ve said, of saying, right, these are the challenges. these are the strong, the principles which we have to either introduce or in this case with the human centricity strengthen and as I’ve said not then design something totally new but with those challenges look at how we need to develop and advance with regard to the internet governance processes that we have. Are they appropriate? Are they fit for purpose? Do they bring the right people to the table? Do they put the right focus? And also are we not talking about theoretical problems if for example it turns out that the technology is not a problem or let’s not forget maybe we already have the solution. Maybe the technical community has provided a solution and we just need to know about it and it needs to be properly implemented or properly mandated. It might be voluntary codes which with the evolution of technology have to become something that are more mandatory in order to protect the individual or protect society and so on. So it’s that ability to look around what we have and what we need and I just go back my conclusion to that point is again once more to stress that this involves talking with one another. Professor Obi this is not a European centric analysis. We are doing a work because we feel it’s very important in Europe but we feel that every region is challenged. We will need to work together to address it. If we believe in a global internet we have to have a global solution and we hope to learn from what others have done. But I was nevertheless flattered that Sarah referred to the citizen dialogue that we have. That is again how we felt from the outset before we even issued a policy statement as to how we were to address virtual worlds going forward. We entered into negotiation with stakeholders and citizens and we will continue to do so and we hope that everyone will engage in that process as well. Thank you.

Barbora Kudzmanaitė: Thank you very much for these remarks. I will start now a little bit jumping around to kind of explore further this question of how we can work together and how we can harness of us all being here today to reflect on this multi-stakeholder approach and how we can position this discussion within that. Sorry, Nicole, I saw you nodding quite actively. So I will, I will jump on that if maybe you have something further to reflect on and add to what Pierce, I don’t know who was saying.

Sarah Nicole: Yeah, I fully agree with one part of your comment, which is about sometimes the technology already exists. It’s already available. The problem, and especially when we talk about virtual world and social media spaces, basically is the problem of network effect. The big players will keep on having the users because they just have everything already in place. And so whatever is the new digital innovation, and we’ve seen this with AI, these big players will keep on, on, on gathering the users, despite having some technology that is more privacy enhancing, and that could be better for users. And I think this is where policy gets into place. This is where framework gets into place of recommending, for instance, that future digital infrastructure should be based on open source protocols, that it cannot be proprietary. And I feel like, as a general community, we’ve given too much importance to self-regulation by those big tech. And there was, I think, in 2023, the White House voluntary AI commitment. And this is essentially letting this company write the exam by which it will be evaluated. And the result is that today, most of AI system and large language model are still very opaque. There’s still black boxes, and there’s no transparency in the audit is very complicated. And so it’s the same for virtual world, right? There was back in 2021, this video by Meta to advertise for their for their metaverse where it was the vice president of the division that was featured in this video and he said if you were to be harassed in the metaverse, well we could give you superpower, like you could create a bubble so you cannot be harassed anymore. And I think this is the kind of comment that we precisely need to focus on and find alternative trust and safety framework for effective regulation because we cannot let those private company with mostly for-profit motives be in power for what they define as a public square.

Barbora Kudzmanaitė: Thank you for sharing. I think indeed the list of things we need to explore, we need to research is growing increasingly long as well. I will turn to also Mr. Rafal Kovnatsky to maybe also reflect a little bit on this. How can we work together? How can we learn from each other? Also not just in Europe but also globally. How can we harness this multicultural approach to discuss virtual

Rafał Kownacki: worlds and 4.0? Thank you once again for the question. So I would like to thank Professor Obi just mentioning that we are not only EU oriented in here in this room. So what I say, it goes beyond the European Union. I’m proud to represent one of the member states of the EU but what I really believe can answer your question should be also covering all the possibilities all around the globe from the governmental point of view. So I believe that this governance framework we need to establish, it should be based on clear rules. So I would once again emphasize how important is transparency? How important is protection of user rights? How important are both of them with regard to artificial intelligence? So we would like to by law but also by practice and by collaborative cooperation between all the stakeholders answered to the need to face some moral ethical dilemmas. Of course, at the moment we have been already facing those issues not only in the EU but in many states all around the globe. Luckily, in European Union we already established some legislation, just say a few like to some extent DMA, of course DSA, AI Act, so we already have got some regulation of online platforms, how to moderate their practices and of course with regard to moderation it is really important to emphasize how crucial it is to ensure the user that with regard to artificial intelligence they are not based, their situation is not based on the decision of AI itself but they have got the rights to appeal to the human being. So of course this is quite important, I believe we should have the same protocol all around the globe that AI is never the last resort, so there is always this right to appeal to the human being. I wouldn’t mention because we have no time but only say a word that already we have trialed in many countries not only in EU but also in states of the of the United States some procedures within judicial system, so we have the countries where you can just sue anybody and go to the court and the court wouldn’t hear you but AI would hear you on behalf of the court but still in all those soils you you have the right to appeal to the human being. So I believe that this protocol is quite crucial. The other issue quite important is the integration of artificial intelligence and quantum computing. And in case of governance frameworks, of course, it will raise several issues like devices which enable access to visual words, they possess a huge threat as a new attack, potential attack vector. So we need to bear in mind that with virtual twins, digital replicas of real world objects, they are quite obviously new potential targets. So high level of cybersecurity based on private public cooperation, private public sectors cooperation is quite important. It’s really essential, especially for the meta versus viability. There is a lack of comprehensive analysis, I would say, unfortunately, on the societal impact of virtual words, I would say real life societal impact, but it’s really important to continue the works and research to investigate the addictive potential, which is the first. Threats and specifically among vulnerable groups. Minors are, I would say the target group number one, which is also important to virtual words must be supervised from the outset to protect all the minors for all the kinds of usage. Some studies we’ve already faced with the results of them indicate that existing, already existing platforms contain numerous inappropriate contents for users under 18. with inadequate access restrictions and moderation. Of course, in EU, we have more strict rules, but in many, many places all around the globe, it wasn’t still applies. In case of data, okay, so summing up, summing up of web 4.0 governance, we will need to have, we will need to evolve towards a more transparent and participatory model because of the technologies and the nature of them itself, and building on principles that address this risk and challenges of virtual worlds in web 4.0 requires a multi-faceted approach. So let me summarize with once again, prioritizing data security, privacy, enhancing cybersecurity, analyzing societal impacts, protecting underage users as crucial steps we need to go and establish all around the globe. Thank you.

Barbora Kudzmanaitė: Thank you very much. I will also turn back again to Mr. Israel Rosas. You mentioned this important point about internet impact assessments. Hearing what we just, discussing what we just heard on the importance of this transparent and participatory approach, how can then the multi-stakeholder internet governance approach best address the governance of web 4.0?

Israel Rosas: Well, thank you. I, and I was pleased in hearing that this openness to go and discuss these topics with different parts of the community, because in some cases, I believe that when we see some tensions and some opportunities, the trend is to jump directly into the solution mindset and come and try to gather all the stakeholders to discuss how to solve a problem and going ahead. But the multi-stakeholder approach. also includes gathering the stakeholders to determine if effectively there’s a problem or not, if effectively there’s something broken or not, because in many cases, as you mentioned, there are already working solutions. And then it’s easier to go, for instance, to the ATF and to see what are those building blocks that are working, why those voluntarily adopted protocols and technologies are voluntarily adopted, and to have that conversation. That’s important, because at the end of the day, we are defending these technical, critical properties of the Internet, because they are the ones that are enabling that the Internet is a force for good, that is available to adapt, to evolve, to accommodate new applications, technologies, services, no matter the name, they are grouped. So in general terms, we are advocating for bottom-up processes with collaboration, with transparency, with accountability, with full inclusion of all stakeholders, because all of the stakeholders have a specific set of knowledge and expertise that is needed to inform these decisions. The technical community has a concrete set of expertise, but it’s the same with the other stakeholders. And that’s why it’s important that these kind of collaborative, open conversations are still happening to assess the best way forward.

Barbora Kudzmanaitė: Thank you. Maybe to borrow from what Rafal was saying, let’s not jump to a revolution when maybe it’s an evolution of things, and we can work with the stakeholders to discuss and identify approaches together. I will call back to Professor Obie as well, maybe to share a little bit, lessons if any, on existing approaches and how we can work again to better govern emerging technologies in Web 4.0 and virtual worlds.

Toshio Obi: Yes, thank you very much. And since we have very limited time, seven minutes, I can say as a professor of the universities, we need more attention to so-called the capacity building, human resource development for this issue. Because Japan, China, India, Indonesia, ASEAN and the Middle East, we call the Asia. Quite number of the population is behind, left behind already. So European Union group, is your so-called the, what do you call, the horizontal societies, very close to a level of the humanities. And we, Asia, from Japan, Singapore, Korea, you see a quite high level of the well-beings, but we have more than 10, so-called the less developed countries. I should not mention the name, but, so how we can, so-called the, what do you call, transformation to a metaverse, or on the way, the Wave 4.0. But we are confusing the concept of Wave 4.0, simply because you had Wave 3.0, and you have Industrial 4.0, and how they can link to each others for the future internet societies. That’s Asian people is wonderings, and… I think Pierre might answer very quickly about it. And also, I really enjoy listening to, how do you pronounce, Rafa, Rafa, okay, yeah, about the future of the European Union itself, because Poland is the next presidency of the EU, and Norway will be next IGF. So it’s really good time for European Union to consolidate or more attention to wave 4.0. So just I can say from a Japanese perspective, this is the best stage right now, the Saudi to Norway of the IGF. That’s my final comment.

Barbora Kudzmanaitė: Thank you very much. We are running shortly out of time, so I would also like to turn to the audience if there are any questions in the room, looking at WAP 4.0. All right, we have two questions.

Sandra Hoferichter: Hello, my name is Sandra Hoferichter from Eurodig, which is the European IGF. Not a question, but a comment. When you talk about stakeholder inclusion, although I’m not anymore, I strongly suggest to involve youth in a meaningful manner. We just had today a very good session about youth participation where it was mentioned that you really involve them by involving also drafting policy. And I know that it’s sometimes hard because they are changing so quickly from one place to another, but I think it’s worth the effort. because not because only if it’s that it’s their future they might have a totally fresh look on all this and give a really good input on on all these things and might even come up with creative

Abdulla Al Hamed: solutions that others might not think of. Hi good afternoon this is Abdulla Al Hamed from Intermid. I believe while we are discussing so many areas in web 4.0 in terms of regulations or policies or strategies I believe the private sector have already moved super forward in so many areas including academia and research. So what we need to do is to pay more attention towards what’s going on in the industry capture those things and then see how can we treat them similar to some other industries like the fintech and others. So web 4.0 should be driven by innovation and youth and we should capture those things and then see how can we really enhance the experience for every user. Thank you. So the importance of innovation and youth involvement

Barbora Kudzmanaitė: maybe any reactions and we have a final question as well. All right go ahead and then we can maybe respond together. Yeah so I just had a couple of comments. First I’m very heartened by what I heard

Audience: in the panel which is this human-centered focus on internet connectivity but I’ll say as a member of the technical community I have a number of questions and I think that I really very much appreciate the multi-stakeholder consultation that’s that’s happening here. Do we really need to unpack some of the scopes here about what is the focus of what we’re talking about? I’ll just observe from the technical community the word web and the internet are not interchangeable and they mean very different things and it’s you know it leaves me wondering are other internet applications in scope here or are they not and then because we’re borrowing words from the technical community about versioning the web which is which is a little bit challenges that typically involves breaking changes and I hope what we’re not talking about is we have an internet today and tomorrow we have a different internet because typically when we involve the internet architecture it’s an evolution because we certainly wouldn’t want to risk disconnecting the five billion users already on the internet. We want to incrementally give them more capability and kind of more

Pearse O’Donohue: protections. Thank you very much. Pearse perhaps you can start. Yeah those are very good very good points. First of all, yes, when I talked about multi-stakeholder consultation we wanted to be inclusive, so including groups. The weakness that we’ve identified is particularly the barriers to representation of stakeholder groups from the Global South and from developing countries, which we really must work on. But also then the point was made about industry innovation. It’s the same thing as if there’s a solution there already, maybe a solution which can be quickly adapted to a new challenge, then we should look at that and not reinvent the wheel. And finally, I will apologise. As I said at the start, we started talking about virtual worlds because it was a very large company which had part of the word metaverse in its name and we didn’t want to confuse people too much. We have played very fast and loose with Web 4.0, partly because we wanted to differentiate from Web 3.0 the things that are going to happen, which maybe you, the technicians, will help us to understand will be absorbed into that architecture. There shouldn’t be a break, and certainly we’re not trying to break. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It’s one of the new challenges. So it’s just to get understanding, maybe to grab attention as well, that we have spoken in these terms. But we have had serious discussions already over a number of years about, even though we thought it was part of 3.0, what hasn’t been delivered under Web 3.0? But that’s another conversation. So I’m very happy that we’ve got your attention, because we really need your participation. Thank you.

Barbora Kudzmanaitė: The organizers of the panel will not send very angry stares at me. I have a final question I’d like to ask from the chat. That was raised by Mokabedi from Iranian academic community, and it’s a bit long so I will try to read it in full. The existing internet governance system is not sufficient to respond to the policy issues related to data, domain name, safety, health, common infrastructure content, and requires the adoption of a comprehensive approach and a new architecture. So can the smart combination of a multilateral governance model plus multi-stakeholder consultation model be appropriate here? Can the model of the International Aviation Organization, for example, be a good example to ensure this legality, health and safety of cyberspace in the new generation of the web? Any takers on this reflection? Maybe Israel, I’m looking at you.

Israel Rosas: Yeah. Just quickly. I don’t know the framework that this person is referring to, but I think that we will need like an additional session to discuss whether the framework is working or not. Because in general, governments are part of the multi-stakeholder approach. So I think it’s like a longer conversation.

Barbora Kudzmanaitė: It’s a longer conversation. I think a lot of which we’re hearing around this week at IGF as well. So thank you very much for your responses. I see we have out of time. So maybe I’ll just hand over to Piers and on a final future looking remark on the road ahead.

Pearse O’Donohue: Well, thank you, Barbara. And thank you to all the speakers. Part of a process of consultation and one which we hope to continue. So we look to your forward participation. And on that piece of unabashed publicity, but taking this part, do you see as, no, you’re not hearing me. Okay. How’s that now? Is that working? I’ll. National food. Conference. Time. It’s the conference on the 31st of March and the 1st of April in Brussels, which is on this exact theme. And we would really like to have as much participation as possible. We’ll be examining the possibility for offsite participation as well, but it is really to continue and dig deeper on some of these issues. One hour is not enough time. Some big questions have been asked. So we really need to have a full discussion, which we then hope to feed back into the IGF in Norway. This is part of the multi-stakeholder process. This is not building new paths. This is to feed back in, as I said, intersessional work. So with that, just to say that we’ve put the issues on the table, but we need to listen to what others think as to whether they are the right issues and what are the possible solutions to them as this technology rolls out. Thank you to everyone. Thank you to the speakers. And thank you, Barbara, for your time. And I hope that everyone has a great IGF. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

Agreement Points

Need for multi-stakeholder, transparent and participatory governance model

Rafal Kownacki

Israel Rosas

Pearse O’Donohue

Multi-stakeholder, transparent and participatory model needed

Bottom-up processes with collaboration of all stakeholders

We are not in the business of building new fora. We are not in the business of creating new structures.

Speakers agree on the importance of a multi-stakeholder approach that is transparent, participatory, and involves bottom-up processes for Web 4.0 governance.

Importance of user-centric approach and data protection

Sarah Nicole

Pearse O’Donohue

Rafal Kownacki

Importance of user-centric approach and data agency for individuals

Invasive nature of immersive technologies requires stronger user protections

Focus on transparency, inclusiveness and accountability

Speakers emphasize the need for a user-centric approach in Web 4.0 governance, focusing on data protection, user rights, and privacy in immersive environments.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the importance of assessing the impact of new technologies on the existing internet infrastructure and the need for global cooperation in addressing these challenges.

Israel Rosas

Pearse O’Donohue

Need to assess impacts of new developments on core internet properties

We are doing a work because we feel it’s very important in Europe but we feel that every region is challenged. We will need to work together to address it.

Unexpected Consensus

Importance of youth involvement in governance

Sandra Hoferichter

Abdulla Al Hamed

Youth involvement crucial for fresh perspectives

Private sector innovation should inform governance

While coming from different perspectives (civil society and private sector), both speakers unexpectedly agree on the importance of involving youth and fresh perspectives in Web 4.0 governance.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement include the need for a multi-stakeholder, transparent, and participatory governance model, the importance of a user-centric approach with strong data protection, and the necessity of assessing the impact of new technologies on existing internet infrastructure.

Consensus level

There is a moderate level of consensus among the speakers on the fundamental principles of Web 4.0 governance. This consensus suggests a shared understanding of the challenges and potential approaches, which could facilitate the development of coherent governance frameworks. However, there are still varying perspectives on specific implementation details and regional considerations, indicating the need for further dialogue and collaboration.

Different Viewpoints

Approach to governance of Web 4.0

Rafal Kownacki

Israel Rosas

Multi-stakeholder, transparent and participatory model needed

Existing internet governance may not be sufficient for Web 4.0 complexities

While Kownacki advocates for a multi-stakeholder, transparent and participatory model for Web 4.0 governance, Rosas suggests that the existing internet governance system may not be sufficient to address the complexities of Web 4.0, implying a need for a potentially different approach.

Unexpected Differences

Scope of Web 4.0 governance discussions

Pearse O’Donohue

Audience

Invasive nature of immersive technologies requires stronger user protections

Clarify scope and avoid disrupting existing internet architecture

While O’Donohue focuses on the need for stronger protections due to the invasive nature of Web 4.0 technologies, an audience member unexpectedly raises concerns about the scope of the discussion and the potential disruption to existing internet architecture. This highlights a tension between addressing new challenges and maintaining the stability of current systems.

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around the approach to Web 4.0 governance, the balance between user protection and innovation, and the scope of governance discussions.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among speakers is moderate. While there is general consensus on the need for governance of Web 4.0 and virtual worlds, speakers differ on the specific approaches and priorities. These differences highlight the complexity of the issue and the need for further dialogue to develop a comprehensive governance framework that addresses various stakeholder concerns.

Partial Agreements

Both speakers agree on the need for stronger user protections in Web 4.0 environments, but they differ in their proposed solutions. Nicole emphasizes giving users control over their data and a stake in its value, while O’Donohue focuses on the need for stronger protections due to the invasive nature of the technologies.

Sarah Nicole

Pearse O’Donohue

Importance of user-centric approach and data agency for individuals

Invasive nature of immersive technologies requires stronger user protections

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the importance of assessing the impact of new technologies on the existing internet infrastructure and the need for global cooperation in addressing these challenges.

Israel Rosas

Pearse O’Donohue

Need to assess impacts of new developments on core internet properties

We are doing a work because we feel it’s very important in Europe but we feel that every region is challenged. We will need to work together to address it.

Key Takeaways

There is a need for governance of Web 4.0 and virtual worlds due to new challenges around privacy, user rights, and data protection in immersive environments

A multi-stakeholder, transparent and participatory approach is crucial for developing Web 4.0 governance

Governance should focus on user-centric principles, data agency for individuals, and open protocols rather than self-regulation by big tech companies

Global cooperation, especially between regions like EU and Asia, is important for addressing Web 4.0 governance challenges

Existing internet architecture and governance models may need to evolve to accommodate Web 4.0, but should build on current foundations rather than creating entirely new systems

Resolutions and Action Items

European Commission to host a conference on March 31-April 1 in Brussels to further discuss Web 4.0 governance issues

Outcomes from this discussion to be fed into the next IGF meeting in Norway

Unresolved Issues

Specific technical details of how Web 4.0 will impact internet architecture

How to effectively include stakeholders from the Global South in governance discussions

Balancing innovation from private sector with need for regulation

Clarifying the scope of ‘Web 4.0’ vs internet more broadly in governance discussions

Suggested Compromises

Using existing technical solutions and protocols where possible rather than creating entirely new systems

Combining multilateral governance models with multi-stakeholder consultation approaches

Web 4.0 governance will need to be flexible, adaptive and transparent. It should incorporate input from a wide range of stakeholders and for sure it must balance the potential benefits of emerging technologies with the need to protect individual rights, privacy, security in this very complex new digital ecosystem.

speaker

Rafal Kownacki

reason

This comment succinctly captures the key challenges and requirements for governing Web 4.0, emphasizing the need for balance between innovation and protection.

impact

It set the tone for much of the subsequent discussion around multi-stakeholder approaches and the need to protect individual rights in virtual environments.

Any new development, either technological, political, social, business should be assessed to identify whether it impacts these critical properties of the internet, because in some cases, we’ve seen that there are some unintended consequences when some new proposals are being put out there.

speaker

Israel Rosas

reason

This comment highlights the importance of carefully evaluating new developments in terms of their impact on the internet’s core properties, introducing a cautious and analytical approach.

impact

It shifted the conversation towards a more measured approach to innovation, emphasizing the need to preserve the internet’s fundamental characteristics.

I’d rather think that there needs to be a shift and rethink of how we’re conceiving the place of individuals in the digital world by giving them rights and control over their data.

speaker

Sarah Nicole

reason

This comment introduces a paradigm shift in thinking about user rights and data control in the digital world, moving beyond just adding more principles.

impact

It sparked discussion about user-centric approaches and the need for new business models centered around data agency for individuals.

If we believe in a global internet we have to have a global solution and we hope to learn from what others have done.

speaker

Pearse O’Donohue

reason

This comment emphasizes the need for global collaboration in addressing internet governance challenges, moving beyond regional perspectives.

impact

It broadened the scope of the discussion to include global perspectives and collaboration, particularly in response to Professor Obi’s comments about including Asian perspectives.

The multi-stakeholder approach also includes gathering the stakeholders to determine if effectively there’s a problem or not, if effectively there’s something broken or not, because in many cases, as you mentioned, there are already working solutions.

speaker

Israel Rosas

reason

This comment provides a nuanced view of the multi-stakeholder approach, emphasizing the importance of problem identification before solution-seeking.

impact

It led to a more critical examination of whether new governance structures are needed or if existing solutions can be adapted.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by emphasizing the need for a flexible, transparent, and globally inclusive approach to Web 4.0 governance. They highlighted the importance of balancing innovation with user rights protection, careful assessment of new developments, and the need for a paradigm shift in how we conceive individual rights in the digital world. The discussion evolved from initial broad concepts to more nuanced considerations of existing solutions, global collaboration, and the critical role of multi-stakeholder approaches in both problem identification and solution development.

How can we ensure that the evolution towards Web 4.0 takes place in an inclusive and ethical way while preserving the global and open nature of the internet?

speaker

Barbora Kudzmanaite

explanation

This is a fundamental question that underpins the entire discussion on Web 4.0 governance and requires further exploration to ensure responsible development.

What new stakeholders do we need to bring into the discussion on Web 4.0 governance?

speaker

Pearse O’Donohue

explanation

Identifying and including new relevant stakeholders is crucial for comprehensive and effective governance of emerging technologies.

How does the current multi-stakeholder process need to adapt to address the challenges of Web 4.0?

speaker

Pearse O’Donohue

explanation

Understanding necessary adaptations to existing governance structures is important for effectively managing new technological developments.

What will be the impact of Web 4.0 on ICANN and other internet governance bodies?

speaker

Pearse O’Donohue

explanation

Assessing the potential effects on existing governance bodies is crucial for maintaining effective oversight of the evolving internet.

How can we prevent social exclusion and disparity in access to information and education in Web 4.0?

speaker

Rafal Kownacki

explanation

Addressing potential inequalities is essential for ensuring that Web 4.0 benefits all members of society.

How can we establish new rules to fight against crime in virtual spaces?

speaker

Rafał Kownacki

explanation

Developing effective measures to combat criminal activities in new virtual environments is crucial for user safety and trust.

How can we address the potential misuse of biometric data in Web 4.0 environments?

speaker

Rafal Kownacki

explanation

Protecting sensitive personal data is increasingly important as technologies become more immersive and data-intensive.

What are the specific applications that will be deployed in Web 4.0?

speaker

Israel Rosas

explanation

Understanding the concrete applications will help in assessing their potential impacts and governance needs.

How can we shift towards user-centricity in Web 4.0, supported by innovative business models?

speaker

Sarah Nicole

explanation

Developing user-centric approaches is crucial for ensuring that Web 4.0 serves the interests of individuals rather than just commercial entities.

How can we implement more effective trust and safety frameworks for Web 4.0 environments?

speaker

Sarah Nicole

explanation

Developing robust safety measures is essential for protecting users in increasingly immersive digital spaces.

How can we address the potential addictive nature of virtual worlds, especially among vulnerable groups like minors?

speaker

Rafal Kownacki

explanation

Understanding and mitigating potential negative psychological impacts is crucial for responsible development of immersive technologies.

How can we better involve youth in the governance and policy-making processes for Web 4.0?

speaker

Sandra Hoferichter (audience member)

explanation

Incorporating perspectives from younger generations is important for developing forward-looking policies.

How can we better capture and incorporate innovations from the private sector and academia in Web 4.0 governance?

speaker

Abdulla Al Hamed (audience member)

explanation

Ensuring governance keeps pace with rapid technological developments in industry and research is crucial for effective oversight.

Summary

This discussion focused on cybersecurity challenges and solutions for community networks and data-driven health technologies. Speakers highlighted the importance of community-driven connectivity initiatives in connecting underserved areas, while emphasizing the need for cybersecurity awareness and practices. Osama Manzar stressed the importance of local, contextual cybersecurity education for new internet users in rural communities. Renata Santoyo discussed Brazil’s regulatory approach to community networks, including asymmetric regulation and cybersecurity guidelines. Leandro Navarro presented a decentralized digital identity system for community network members, addressing security and privacy concerns. Talant Sultanov shared Kyrgyzstan’s experiences in implementing community networks and cybersecurity education initiatives, emphasizing rural-first and local language approaches. The discussion also covered the challenges of implementing cybersecurity measures in resource-constrained environments and the importance of making providers accountable for security practices. In the health technology segment, speakers addressed the paradox of digitalization in healthcare, highlighting improved services alongside increased cybersecurity risks. Dr. Houda Chihi presented various cybersecurity threats in the healthcare sector and provided recommendations for securing health data and infrastructure. The importance of artificial intelligence in enhancing cybersecurity for healthcare was also discussed. Overall, the session emphasized the need for collaborative efforts in implementing cybersecurity measures, raising awareness, and building capacity in both community networks and digital health technologies.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– Cybersecurity challenges and solutions for community networks and rural connectivity initiatives

– The importance of education, capacity building, and cyber hygiene for users of community networks

– Regulatory approaches to facilitate community networks while ensuring security

– Decentralized digital identity systems for community network members

– Cybersecurity considerations for digital health technologies and telemedicine

The overall purpose of the discussion was to explore cybersecurity issues and best practices for community-driven connectivity initiatives and digital health technologies, with a focus on serving rural and underserved communities.

The tone of the discussion was informative and collaborative, with speakers sharing experiences and recommendations from different perspectives (regulators, community network operators, researchers, etc.). There was an emphasis on practical solutions and the need to balance security with accessibility. The tone remained consistent throughout, maintaining a constructive approach to addressing challenges.

Speakers

– Luca Belli: Professor at FGV Law School, co-founder of DC3 (Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity)

– Renata Santoyo: Telecommunications expert, International Affairs Department of ANATEL (Brazilian telecoms regulator)

– Talant Sultanov: Policy Advocacy Advisor for Global Digital Inclusion Partnership, member of IGF Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Committee

– Osama Manzar: Founder and director of Digital Empowerment Foundation, connected over 35 million people in India

– Leandro Navarro: Co-founder of Pangea.org, academic in connectivity studies and community networks

– Dr. Houda Chihi: Expert on cybersecurity in healthcare

Additional speakers:

– Amali De Silva Mitchell: Coordinator of Dynamic Coalition on Data-Driven Health Technologies

– Wout de Natris: Consultant, runs dynamic coalition on internet standards, security and safety

– Momodu Sombai: Works with telecom regulator in Liberia

– Jörn Erbguth: Member of Dynamic Coalition on Data-Driven Health Technologies

Cybersecurity Challenges and Solutions for Community Networks and Data-Driven Health Technologies

This discussion brought together experts from various fields to explore cybersecurity issues and best practices for community-driven connectivity initiatives and digital health technologies, with a focus on serving rural and underserved communities. The speakers shared experiences and recommendations from different perspectives, including regulators, community network operators, and researchers.

Community Networks and Cybersecurity

A central theme of the discussion was the unique cybersecurity challenges faced by community networks. Osama Manzar, founder of the Digital Empowerment Foundation, emphasised the hyper-local nature of community networks, stating, “Internet is global, but users are local. Again, internet is global, but community networks are local. Not only local, it’s hyper-local. And not only hyper-local, but it is used by those who are otherwise unserved by the telcos.”

Renata Santoyo from ANATEL, Brazil’s telecoms regulator, highlighted the importance of asymmetric regulatory approaches to facilitate community networks. She noted, “We have a very asymmetric relationship with this comparing community networks to big providers or small providers because we are not treating them as an equal. And so it’s a possibility to develop more and more the community networks.” Santoyo also mentioned that Anatel has developed a cybersecurity manual to support community networks.

Leandro Navarro presented a decentralized digital identity system for community network members, addressing security and privacy concerns. He realistically assessed the progress and challenges, stating, “We have seen that it’s possible to make it work, although complex, of course. And then, well, I mean, just that many things about the challenges, of course, we are not finished with this. We have just started one year ago.”

Luca Belli discussed the impact of data protection laws on community networks and emphasized the importance of changing default passwords on routers as a basic security measure. He also mentioned the website “comconnectivity.org” where reports on community networks can be downloaded.

Community-Driven Approaches to Cybersecurity

The discussion emphasized the importance of community-driven approaches in cybersecurity. Manzar stressed the need for critical digital literacy for users of community networks, arguing that “The cyber safety, cyber security, and cyber data protection is not only a subject of top-down model, it is a subject of bottom-up social and behavioural norms based cyber capacity building, and somehow, that is not taken into consideration in most of the planning.”

Talant Sultanov highlighted the effectiveness of storytelling and local trainers in delivering cybersecurity messages. He also mentioned initiatives such as the Global Digital Inclusion Partnership and the Women in Digital Economy Fund, which aim to support digital inclusion and security in underserved communities.

Cybersecurity for Digital Health

Dr. Houda Chihi presented various cybersecurity threats in the healthcare sector, including ransomware attacks, data breaches, and insider threats. She provided recommendations for securing health data and infrastructure, emphasizing the need for cybersecurity skills training for healthcare staff. The importance of artificial intelligence in enhancing cybersecurity for healthcare was discussed, along with the need to modernise IT infrastructure security in healthcare organisations.

Jörn Erbguth raised concerns about patient data privacy and consent in digital health applications. The speakers agreed that while telemedicine and e-health services offer significant benefits, they also face substantial cybersecurity risks that must be addressed.

Amali De Silva Mitchell introduced the Dynamic Coalition on Data-Driven Health Technologies, which focuses on addressing cybersecurity challenges in digital health.

Regulatory and Policy Approaches

The discussion highlighted various regulatory and policy approaches to address cybersecurity challenges. Renata Santoyo discussed Brazil’s implementation of asymmetric regulation for community networks. Wout de Natris suggested that exposing weaknesses can make organisations more accountable for their cybersecurity practices and mentioned the internet.nl tool for checking website security.

Luca Belli proposed fiscal incentives to encourage cybersecurity investments, while Momodu Sombai emphasised the importance of collaboration between regulators to share best practices.

Talant Sultanov shared an example from Kyrgyzstan that illustrated the unintended consequences of security measures: “So in Kyrgyzstan they decided to block TikTok. And because it’s such a popular application, people still want to access it and they’ve been downloading VPN to be able to. And, of course, they are not downloading the paid quality VPNs, they are downloading the free ones which come with all kinds of viruses and junk and they are actually becoming more exposed to dangers than before it was blocked.”

In conclusion, the discussion emphasised the need for collaborative efforts in implementing cybersecurity measures, raising awareness, and building capacity in both community networks and digital health technologies. The speakers highlighted the importance of considering local contexts, user behaviour, and resource constraints when developing cybersecurity strategies for community-driven initiatives and digital health technologies.

Luca Belli: So good afternoon to everyone, my name is Luca Belli, I’m a professor at FGV Law School, we’re at the Center for Technology and Society. I have, I’m one of the co-founders of the DC3, the Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity, which is one of the organizers of this event. We have organized this together with another coalition called the Dynamic Coalition on Digital and Data-Driven Health Technologies, led by our friend Amali Mitchen and our co-panelist Amado Spinoza, that should be online. So if we could have actually online, our online speakers on the screen as well, so that we can have a nice family picture, they should be Amado Spinoza, Oda Shoshi and Leandro Navarro. If we can have them, if we can have them on screen, that would be useful. So I’m going to quickly present the speakers and then quickly introduce the team of our session, so that then we can start our conversation. We have here, starting from the left, Renata Santoyo, who is a telecommunications expert and working with the International Affairs Department of ANATEL, the Brazilian telecoms regulator. Welcome, Renata. Then we have Talant Sultanov, who is Policy Advocacy Advisor for the Global Digital Inclusion Partnership, an institution I have the great pleasure of sitting on the board of. Welcome, Talant Sultanov. He is also a member of the MAG, the Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Committee of the IGF. Then we have here Osama Manzar, that doesn’t need introductions for those who are in the connectivity field, so he is the one of the funder and director of the Digital Empowerment Foundation and he also, he is a senior fellow at the, he’s a British Chimney Scholar, International Visitor of the Leadership Program of the U.S. State Department. He is also Advisor of the Women in Digital Economy Fund and many other very interesting hats that he wears, having connected more than 35 million people in India. Then we have our online speakers. I hope they are already here with us. I see On top of my head on the screen, our friend Leandro Navarro. It’s a great pleasure to have you with us, even if only in online. So he’s co-founder of Pangea.org. He’s one of the most well-known academics in connectivity studies and community networks. He also is a member of the Giphynet and Aishokat community networks and has done a lot of very interesting work and studies, also co-chairs the Internet Research Task Force Working Group, GAIA, Global Access to Internet for All. Then we have our friends from the Data-Driven Health Technology Coalition that will be part of the second segment of our session. We will have Amadeus Pinoza, who represents the private sector. He has a strong medical informatics background and he founded the Institute for Medical Informatics at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara in Mexico. And then we will have Oda Choshi. Not seeing them on the screen, but I hope they will arrive. So Oda is from Tunisia Telecom. She is a senior engineer and she is expert also in telecommunications, of course, and cybersecurity. All right. So now that we have introduced all the speakers, let me provide a little bit of introduction as regards to the theme of today’s session in two parts, more or less. The first one, we will present some of the findings of this booklet that you can find here and also available online on the IGF website, which is a pretty Byzantine website. So if you want to have a direct link to all the reports that we have been doing over the past years, there is a website called comconnectivity.org where you can freely download all the reports. This year report. is dedicated to cyber security and community networks. So over the past almost 10 years, nine years actually, we have been working on a lot of different issues exploring community connectivity. So for those who are new in this field, let me just remind that community networks are community-driven, bottom-up, crowdsourced connectivity initiatives that are usually built in the remote area, rural area or peripheral areas or low income area as an alternative option to connect the unconnected or to provide better connectivity to the poorly connected, right? So they could be developed by local communities, a group of individuals that have no technical expertise at all. They could be also driven by local administrations, local entrepreneurs. So it’s really the beauty of the community network is it is an effort driven by the local community for the local community. We have explored over the past years which are how to build community networks, how to regulate them, which funding models are more appropriate for making them sustainable. What is their impact with regard to the promotion of human rights? What is their impact with regard to the promotion of digital sovereignty? They are very good example of community-driven digital sovereignty, meaning the local communities understanding how the technology works, developing it and regulating, self-regulating it. Now, something that we have not analyzed yet until this year where there are the cybersecurity implication of this because there is a double-edged sword to some extent. The fact that the infrastructure is created by people that do not necessarily have a strong technological background means that a lot of open source infrastructure and equipment is used. Maybe not a lot of knowledge as regards. existing legislation that can impinge upon infrastructure like not only telecom regulation, but also we will see data protection regulation that must be complied to and create some cybersecurity issues. So as the beauty of the community network, the fact that they are community driven can become a vulnerability. The fact that the infrastructure is built without thinking to bad faith actors that can hack the infrastructure, that can transform the infrastructure into a botnet or into a easily targeted with distributed denial of service attacks. The fact that even very basic controls of information, security, such as knowing which kind of software you are utilizing, knowing which kind of data you are collecting, having a resiliency plan, having a plan to recovery when you will be attacked because we know very well that pretty much any kind of digital system at some point will be attacked. So if you don’t have a recovery plan, a resilient strategy, you are very likely to be highly disappointed. And so these are very similar challenges what community network face to what also we will see in the second segment, digital data driven technology in health. Ways and very different types of resources as well. Because again, let’s remind that these are community networks are community driven, local community driven. They are not necessarily driven by people with a lot of resources and with a lot of training on cybersecurity or even in with legal training. Some of the points that we raise in the book is that there are almost 160 countries in the world have data protection laws. And if you don’t comply with it, you may be not only a threat to your privacy, liable according to civil law, but in some cases, even responsible according to criminal law. So when you create a network and you don’t consider applicable legislation, basic data information security policies, resilient strategies, plans for recovering in case of cyber attack, mapping the kind of software and data you have at your disposal under your responsibility, well, those are all potential systemic vulnerabilities. Now, after this very long introduction, let me give the floor directly to our speakers. We had planned to start with Renata, but as Osama, who is a very busy man, has to leave us in 15 minutes to go to another session, I would like to redefine slightly our agenda starting with Osama and then going to Renata, hoping that she agrees with this. So Osama, it’s a great pleasure to having you with us again. The floor is yours.

Osama Manzar: Thank you very much. Everybody who knows our work will not expect anything technical that I’m going to talk because I don’t know the technology. We work with communities. I want to give you a little a heads up on this chart. This chart is basically the geomap of all the community networks that we have done in the last 15 years. In India, they are 280. That means, that doesn’t mean that they are the only community network, there are many more, but we have been able to do it and Luca has been able to look at many of those networks and document it also. There are three things that I want to say. Internet is global, but users are local. Again, internet is global. but community networks are local. Not only local, it’s hyper-local. And not only hyper-local, but it is used by those who are otherwise unserved by the telcos. Unserved by, or underserved by any of the normal telecom service providers, and therefore, these are the people who are non-technical, but still user, and the provider of the network of such people are somebody who also have to be appropriated locally, so that you can manage the network. So I just want to give you a scenario that we go to the village, we find that they’re not connected, then we build capacity, then we involve them, and then they build a network, or a Wi-Fi, and then towers, and then we also work with them how to take care of the network. Now, this cyber security is the latest, you know, elephant in the room of all those people, right? And I’m talking to you everything not from the technology service provider, or a server provider, but the people, you know, I am first time introduced to my network, I am getting a message, I am sitting on a computer and working, and my service provider is not AT&T or somebody else, but somebody very local, and then I get a message which says, please click here, and I click that, and I lose money from my bank, right? Then another friend of mine, who is actually had no jobs, is now working for similar kind of job who is actually making people fool locally, and actually doing cyber frauds, you know, by sending you information, and they are collecting the local numbers, local contacts, and giving it to somebody else, and they are getting messages. and since you are first time user, you are being very naive and very simple that, oh, some message has come, I must act.

Luca Belli: Just to stress, he’s a hypothetical friend, so he’s not describing a real friend.

Osama Manzar: No, no, it’s a real, in fact, if you come to the next session, I’m going to explain even in detail, but what I am saying is that cyber safety, cyber security, from technical perspective, but from the user perspective, what is the behavioral change being required? What kind of critical digital literacy we required from the user is the biggest issue of this area, but somehow, most of the work that is going on in the cyber security, cyber safety, is very technical, as if we think that only firewall will solve all the problems, or we think that just identification of something or surveillance or data protection will solve all the problems, but actually it will not, because I, as a user, even without violating, I am getting fleas, I am being compromised, I am being trolled. You know, my online data is being, you know, it’s something like I’m a member of a matrimonial site, I have given my face and everything, and then it is just taken from there, and you are sitting just in the corner of a village and you have no idea how to deal with this one. When you go to cyber crime office and do the complaint, they say that even we don’t know how to trace such people. You know, where are they? So I’m actually, I’m not trying to give any solution, but I want to tell that the cyber safety, cyber security, and cyber data protection is not only a subject of top-down model, it is a subject of bottom-up social and behavioral norms based cyber capacity building, and somehow, that is not taken into consideration in most of the planning. And when we are working in an alternative. community networks, or providing a last mile access, it is very important that we have our own capacity building framework. We have our own content. We have our own local, hyperlocal, contextual content to make people know what are the do’s and don’ts of being connected, to be cyber safe, to be cyber preventive, rather than curative. You must be knowing what are the things that we need to know. And that is what the experience that we are doing in many of our communities. There are three things that we are doing. Number one, we are trying to see if women could take the responsibility of the hyperlocal situation so that they do not indulge into unnecessary information flow than what is needed. Education, domestic issues, business, day-to-day lives, and all that. The second thing what we are doing is that we are creating hyperlocal information trustees, which you can say information trustee is a describing name, but we are trying to create a situation that they become local fact checkers. You know, they actually tell what are the do’s and don’ts of the people who are coming to the center or the place where they get connected. And the third thing is that we are doing a role play of cyber safety security by doing street plays, by doing local language oral content so that it can be disseminated with lots of people. These are the things that I wanted to share, but basically trying to highlight that the global technology, the global access issues, the problems are always local. And when we are talking about cyber capacity, we need to have a local solutions. Thank you.

Luca Belli: Thank you very much, Osama, for this very important words. And again, I think that this is a very key message. that comes in a very recurrent way in cybersecurity discussion about cyber hygiene, capacity building. At scale, we have reports by Microsoft saying that more than 90% of cyber incidents actually happen because of phishing. And for considering what usually it is considered the weak link, which is what stands between the screen and the chair, the human. But actually, I think that one can revert this logic through education and capacity building. The individual becomes the strong link. So when you are the ones understanding and even the basic things about cyber hygiene, like do not use one, two, three, four, five, six as a password, which is still the most used password. So again, if you understand this, you really go much farther than at the very early stage, especially in community network where those who are connected are frequently unconnected. So really is the first approach with technology they have. Now, I would like to give the floor to the regulator. So there is already a lot of norms and regulation people need to comply with. And it can also to some extent guide them into the definition of their policy, architecture and practices. So please, Renata, it’s a pleasure to have you with us. The floor is yours.

Renata Santoyo: Thank you. Thank you very much, Luca. Thank you very much for all for having us here and invite us as Anatel. So I’m speaking from the perspective from the telecom regulator. And first of all, I’d like to do a very brief historic and an update about our history community networks. It was something that we started being more involved from 2020 when we had a memorandum of understanding with UK. And we did a work, sorry, with a partnership with APC. And we have some very interesting outcomes as a policy briefing. with the framework from the regulatory status, and also a manual for lay people with a video that it was very interesting because we had the opportunity to teach and help community that don’t know anything about connectivities or how to deal with regulator to construct their own community network and how to deal with regulator. That’s something very complicated sometimes, which license they need to take, how to use the spectrum to not break any rules. So it was very interesting beginning. After that, we had the opportunity to internalize this work as a temporary committee in Anatel. We had under the presidency of one of our… Hello, hello, hello, one… And they did this work for two years. And it was very interesting because they had the goal to make some regulatory adjustments, hearing from network representatives, Ministry of Communication work together and also subsidy providers. So it was very interesting to map all the situation and the needs and what kind of regulatory measures we need. And it was necessary. And very recently, like two weeks ago, we had this temporary committee. It became a permanent committee and we have now public consultation. That’s also a space to hear from the whole society, all the actors in this environment. And considering the results of this committee, the intention about this is continuing this important work, improving and solving a lot of remains, difficult and challenges. And I can highlight some examples of the proposals that we are doing. First of all, it’s interesting to remind that we have a very asymmetric relationship with this comparing community networks to big providers or small providers because we are not treating them as an equal. And so it’s a possibility to develop more and more the community networks. And in this public consultation that it’s now for 45 days since December 5th, they have the proposal about anticipate some benefits of the new act of authorization of use of radio frequencies. Also evaluate adjustments in the regulation on the spectral use to address possible incompatibilities between the application that the community networks that wish to implement in Brazil and the allocation, the destination of the frequency band of interest. About foundings, we forward the management board

Luca Belli: of telecommunication services, universalization fund. That’s a very old fund that we have and it’s very difficult to use. And they had some change in the law. So we are trying to use it more and more each day for interesting and useful things like community network. Also prioritize the penalties, not with fines but with obligations to do. And prioritizing specific actions aimed at the population served by community networks. And so it’s possible to see that we have a lot of challenges. Lack of financial resources is one of them. Regulatory barriers to the establishment of networks. Difficult in mapping the benefit communities. Obstacles related to geographic isolation. And of course, cyber security. And about cyber security, we have a specific regulation for the whole ecosystem and cyber security. And security of course is a priority for us, especially for a successful model of community networks. And in August of this year, Anatel reviewed the cyber regulation. And a new article that we have in this review, it’s about the telecommunication service providers. They need to communicate any accidents, security incidents to the national data protection authority. This includes community network. That’s the way we think we can maintain all the principles and guidelines that apply to all the actors in those ecosystem. Large and small providers, also community networks. And we believe that this way the ecosystem can flourish. But they’re still being treated as an asymmetric approach. And then we cannot apply the same rules, of course, because they are like, for us, restricted interest. For example, they have a license that’s a private limited service. And big providers are collective interest. And so they don’t have the same obligations. So it’s something. to help and to foster the development of community networks. So the principles were maintained, but as well as this asymmetry in processing this new regulation of cybersecurity. And so we also, to materialize this resolution of cybersecurity, we developed some guidelines that’s very interesting of cybersecurity regulation

Renata Santoyo: applies to the telecommunication sector and approved by the cyber revolution, emphasizing the adoption of good practice and national and international standards related to cybersecurity. It’s all available on the internet, and it promotes the dissemination of a culture of cybersecurity and the safe and sustainable use of telecommunication network and services. This was a work that was developed for our cyber working group, and they prepared also another guide. This one is more basic guide, it’s more accessible for lay people. And we have also another one that incentivates the security by design and the development of the softwares. But in this basic guide, that’s the first one I was talking about, you can have instructions like data protection, access and account control, activating and monitoring your account, data backup, and all this lot of different instructions just to help. And also in the same way about literacy, we have a partnership with OAS and Cisco Academy to capacity building and to also help to teach how to be more safe when you are navigating and connected on the internet. So I think we believe that all these guides and this partnership with academia, with courses, we kind of lead us for the meaningful connectivity, helping and teaching people how to use internet, because I think that’s the third pillar. Because we kind of talk about infrastructure, then security, and now we need an effective way to use community networks. And have the best, they can give you the best performance. And as our friend Ozamat said, it’s not top down. We need to do all together just to see what’s the real needs we have. And we are also involved in the Partner to Connect and ITU. We did a pledge about community networks to being followed on Oasis this year. So it was very, very interesting. And it’s also on the internet. So I think for now, that’s it. Luca.

Luca Belli: Thank you very much, Renata. And very interesting to understand that there are very few regulators in the world that have had this proactive approach to engage with community networks, try to understand them, reduce also the regulatory burden to facilitate them. Because what we have been discussing over the past 10 years is that, of course, you could not have the same regulation for enormous tech giant, sorry, telecom giant, not telecom operators, and small ISPs, micro ISPs, or not-for-profit ISPs. So it’s very good that the Brazilian regulator, Anatel, together with a few others, has had this sensitivity. Now, a very frequent problem in cybersecurity debates is how to identify users, how to make sure that they are not bad faith users, where they are the real user they claim to be. And here, I wanted to bring to the fore the work that Leandro and his colleagues have conducted and is also described in this booklet about decentralized digital identity and verifiable credentials for members of community networks, which is extremely interesting because it gives us an approach and understanding of how technical solutions, even not particularly expensive technical solutions, can be used to enormously help people engaging with community networks. So please, Leandro, I hope you are still here. Yes, I see you now. Can we unmute Leandro so that he can present? Welcome, Leandro. We can see now your presentation, almost. Yes, we see it in full screen. Can you speak?

Leandro Navarro: Yes, can you hear me?

Luca Belli: Yes, we can hear you loud and clear.

Leandro Navarro: Wonderful. So this is the pattern of representation, but instead of decentralized, it could be self-sovereign. Digital identity and verifiable credentials for communities. So this is the work partly funded by the Philippine Commission, which involves, as you see in the heading, several communities, several organizations that were involved in the development. So just to give you a bit of definitions, we are talking about digital identity in ourselves. Ourselves, our themes, our content, our organizations that they want to be identified in the cyberspace, let’s say. And then there is a concept called decentralized identifiers, which allow you to have different identities, different tags, whatever. And once you have an identity, people, organizations can say something about you. Like, for instance, you as a member of a community, you live there, this is your education. You are a vulnerable person and this accreditation from an NGO that knows your situation, something like that. In the end, whatever plays. So this is a bit abstract. And then I’ll give you an example. For instance, this is one of my multiple identities, leandro.art. It is a community project where we collect and refurbish second-hand devices for community members to be connected because, well, I have to connect to the Internet, you need that device. This is my PGP, GPT key ID in case you want to check my names that come really from me or someone else. So my DID could be, it’s not exactly like that formally, but it could be the email leandro.art. And then from that, you could find out my public key, whatever, and then verify an email that I send it to you. So in the decentralized ID world, there are, they call it methods, the web methods for key. And here you have your public key embedded in this long name or identifier, but also there is the did web method that allows you to kind of encode a typical, let’s say, website, which identifies my personal identity in the GiphyNet network. And then you see, again, an ugly kind of JSON data structure that is structured like you imagine, like the source code of an email, where there is a part that says who is saying what. This is the GiphyNet community network that is saying me as a subject that I’m this person with this identifier as member of the GiphyNet community. And then there’s a signature which allows the third party to verify that whatever is said here, who issues the credential, who is the subject of the credential is valid because there’s a signature in it. Well, this is a very technical description of the data structure, but imagine that you have a batch like this, which says that I’m a community member of GiphyNet. You can scan it with a QR code. You can verify that this information hasn’t been tampered with. And this is my email address and public key, okay? So what we can do with this? Well, we can talk about the properties, the rights, the different aspects. What we try to do in this case is we try to develop open source software that works and allows community networks and all the type of communities. providing services on their own. And then, well, you can see that there are strange concepts like the issuer of an organization that says something about me, for instance, so I have a wallet where I can hold these data structures, these badges or credentials, and then different elements that I’m not going to enter into discussion. If you want to know more, we have a, let’s say, public repository on GitHub. You can leave us a star if you like it, and also this is our development repository. So I can tell you a bit more about the pilots, the communities we’ve been working or we are working with them. So for instance, the first three are three NGOs. Pangea is an NGO that I was co-founder for using that identity, which we provide ourselves. Or there is another NGO, also in my neighborhood, let’s say. They can use these credentials to access another online shops from other NGOs and a federation of NGOs that provides different credentials for, for instance, when they go and apply for funding, they can accredit that they are members of La FEDE and you can provide this credential to confirm that this is sure and verifiable. And one particular interesting example in this context is this collaboration between… is an NGO that works in neighborhoods, in vulnerable neighborhoods, and then they know the families, they create… issue credentials for them. They might not even have a legal ID at the time, but they can have an accreditation from this NGO and showing their level of learnability so they can use this credential and go, for instance, to the GIFINET community network or to a cooperative that provides telecom services and submit that credential. And this third party, they call it verifier, is gonna be able to see that this is a vulnerable person according to criteria without revealing details about them and with signature that allows us to see that it’s not themselves who claim being vulnerable, but there is a well-known NGO that accredits that. And the same, we do it for giving computers, laptops to families or children that need them. And then we manage this kind of multi-organization identity management system in the community. So with this, you can show that you are a member of a certain community, you have a credential from someone else and go to third parties and prove that this is true. And this model is based on the European blockchain service infrastructure or identity infrastructure that is a bit complex, but you see that there is a public registry of actors and well, I can have my own credentials issued by imagine like an NGO that has been accredited by the government or whatever. And then you can submit my credential to any organization in let’s say Europe or in the world and be able to prove that this information that I’m submitting is valid and correct. Even though I might not have a, let’s say a legal identification myself, so that’s a self-sovereign part of it. We have seen that it’s possible to make it work, although complex, of course. And then, well, I mean, just that many things about the challenges, of course, we are not finished with this. We have just started one year ago. And then, well, it’s difficult to do for adoption. It’s difficult to manage governance issues. It’s difficult to maintain the software and make it interoperable with third parties and especially with public services, if any. And then, well, there is a lot of things to do in the future and keep working with the communities to understand their needs and to address them and to be able, as with many community members, to solve the problems on your own on using free software that enables people not to just, let’s say, do advocacy, but also solve their problems with some technical means to include not only digitally, but also in the community, but providing whatever services to them. So that’s my presentation. Any comments, questions are welcome. Thank you.

Luca Belli: Thank you very much, Leandro. And to bring this very interesting initiative into the picture and also to highlight that there are challenges, right? It’s a work in progress. And one of the challenges also is to make this adopted by the local community members and to educate them in order to understand that there is this could be a solution for a problem. And as we were mentioning at the very beginning of this session, education, capacity building, and cyber hygiene, to some extent, is very important. So it’s very good that we have here Tant Svortunov speaking about the cyber education and cyber security capacity building. He has been leading in Kyrgyzstan. So please, Tant, the floor is yours. That’s OK.

Talant Sultanov: Thanks so much, Luka. It’s a pleasure to be here to present the case of the Kyrgyz Republic. I’m wearing the hat of a global digital inclusion partnership where I’m working as a policy advocacy advisor. And I’m happy that Luka is a board member. this organization is implementing an initiative called Women in Digital Economy Fund implemented by several organizations, CARE, GSMA, and GDIP. Osama is actually in the advisory board of Women in Digital Economy Fund, so two of my bosses are in this panel, so I better make a good presentation. And the GDIP and Women in Digital Economy Fund identified five core areas where there is a biggest issue with gender gap, and two are related to one is access and affordability, and the second is safety and security, and I’m glad that in this session we are talking about these two issues. And in Kyrgyzstan we have launched community networks, and actually we call Osama the godfather of Kyrgyzstan’s community networks, so he mentioned I think 380 CNs maybe, we can say plus two or three in Kyrgyzstan to this map. And what we felt is that once we are connecting the people to the internet for the first time, they are very trusting of the internet, they believe everything that they see there, they believe the people who are there, and we felt responsibility that if we are helping people to get online, we also should equip them with information and skills on being safe on the internet. And that’s why we in parallel launched a project called Tech for Society or Technology for Society, where we have initiated several activities. One is a help desk where citizens and civil society organizations can call and get advice if they are having any issues with cyber security, and the logic here was that for example private sector can hire cyber security experts, government agencies they have specialized agencies that protect them, but the civil society organizations and ordinary citizens often left vulnerable, and we thought that we should also help protect through the help desk. Second activity that we are doing is cyber hygiene trainings and training of trainers in local levels, so that then they can continue helping the local communities. And the way we are delivering these messages is oftentimes through traditional storytellers, because we are, as Osama mentioned earlier, working with rural communities, and for example these storytellers would explain in very basic terms what cyber hygiene means. So one storyteller said that when you leave your house, you lock your door not once, but twice. Your door and the gate. Same with the password. You should have at least two-factor authentication and a very strong key. Otherwise, your phone can be broken very quickly. And in addition to these activities, we are doing also research. One research we did is on cyber forensics. And we wanted to see if government is actually prepared to deal with cyber crimes. And we developed some recommendations for our policymakers and regulators in this area. And not to take too much time, I just wanted to conclude with several principles that we have been using in our work. One was rural first. So all our work is focused on rural communities. Second is a local language first. So there are lots of materials if you speak, for example, English or Russian is a lingua franca for us. But in Kyrgyz language, which is our local language, there is very little info. So we’ve been doing a lot of information in a Kyrgyz language. And another main principle that we’ve been employing is girls first. So all the activities that we are designing, they should be convenient, safe, and interesting to girls and women in rural communities so that they could be better protected. And with that, I’d like to conclude my part and be ready to respond to questions later on.

Luca Belli: Excellent. So as the next segment of the session will be primarily dedicated to data-driven health technology, I think it would be good now to open the floor for comments, reactions, questions from the floor. If you have any, feel free not to be shy and to raise your hand and ask if a microphone can be… Yes, we have a question here and three questions. Could we kindly ask to… Well, I will give you my mic because I am British. Can we bring a mic for the…

Audience: Am I audible? Yeah. Thank you. A nice presentation from everyone. I have a question for Sanathya if I’m pronouncing it right. I’m interested to know what kind of cybersecurity model have you implemented? The narration that you have, the experience and the narration that you have put the story from your ISPs was nice, but I’m curious more on what kind of models have you implemented in the regulatory processes?

Renata Santoyo: Thank you. Actually, as a regulator in Brazil, we have a working group in cyber because we are not really responsible for cybersecurity. For example, we are more focused on cyber safety and we have different institutions and each one of them has different responsibilities. So we have the army with their responsibilities. We have presidency with their responsibilities and in Anatel, we specifically, we feel focused more in safety. As I told before, you have this manual and with some guidelines that try to educate. It’s focused more in meaningful connectivity as trying to open mind to how to defend yourself when you are using the basic risks, the base cares you need to have. So as a regulator, our responsibility is more focused on this one, on this. Are this material openly accessible to complex? Yes, it is. I just, I’m not sure if it’s on a website. Our website, it’s Anatel, that’s the name of regulator. But yeah, and I’m sure it’s in Portuguese, but unfortunately, I’m not sure if it’s available in English. But yes, it’s all available. Yeah, I can, I don’t know how can I share. I can share like, I can share with you after the session. No problem.

Audience: Thank you.

Renata Santoyo: Thank you.

Luca Belli: Just to, can I just make a quick compliment also to mention that besides making sure that equipment that is used in Brazil is if role of Anatel, also there is a regulation on cybersecurity in the telecom sector that provide, that define specific obligations such as having a cybersecurity policy or having audits of your equipments or having the obligation for providers to change the default password because some of the largest cyber attacks that happened in the past, Mirai attack in Germany, it basically infected 1 million routers in one weekend simply because the seller of the routers had kept the default password. And this was very easy for attackers to identify and then to penetrate the network. So having an obligation, a regulatory obligation to change this is a very simple step that can make a huge difference. So that is, again, most of the steps that help increase cybersecurity are not rocket science and having a regulator that prescribes them, it’s an enormous step forward. I see there is another question there and then there’s a gentleman here. Yes, thank you.

Wout de Natris: My name is Wouter Natris and I’m a consultant in the Netherlands, but I run one of the dynamic coalitions here on internet standards, security and safety. And I think what you’ve just been saying is exactly what we’re trying to promote. As no matter how good the initiatives we’ve been hearing are, this one girl and the whole villages is still a botnet. So yes, we have to train at that level, but at the same time, they’re vulnerable because the service providers higher up do not have a routing security or do not have a DNSX security or they don’t have whatever. So people can be attacked where they don’t have any. influence at all. I can’t change my network to DNS security or put in a routing security or whatever. So I think that that is where other institutions have to become more proactive to not perhaps regulate in a traditional sense with fines or whatever, but in the way to expose weaknesses in networks. And I’ll make a little promotion here, but I’ve been asked to become the coordinator of a community that’s going to be started next year on internet.nl. And internet.nl is a tool, and look it up, internet.nl, and then put in your local bank, for example, and see how secure it is or it isn’t. If we bring organizations together that’s going to implement this tool, it’s going to expose the weaknesses of your institutions and of your internet service providers, etc. And that also means that they become accountable because it becomes visible. And we have to train people not to be gullible, but on the other hand, we have to make the tech organizations, whether they’re small or big or small, more accountable to the tasks that they have and that one of them should be protecting us as end users. So when you move forward with this initiative, I would suggest that you have these two components in it. You keep training, tremendously important, but also start exposing. And when you expose, people become accountable. Thank you.

Luca Belli: This is an excellent comment. And actually the fact, I mean, if we want to add an additional layer on top of your comments, besides training and also making accountable, it’s also, in my experience, also facilitate to some extent the creation, the integration of these practices, which have a cost. So let’s also be honest about it. The reason why most devices or most services may not be cyber secure is because cyber security has a cost and the consumer do not perceive this as a criterion of quality. When they buy something, they want the shiny features. They don’t necessarily want the most secure object or service. And if the most secure object and service costs more, they will go for the cheaper one. And if we want to apply this logic to community networks, they are usually created with very cheap Wi-Fi equipment and not necessarily the most secure, right? So something that actually is very interesting also in Brazil is that if you have costs for cyber security now in Brazil, you can declare them in your fiscal declaration as costs that are deduced from what you have to pay, which is an enormous incentive. Very few people know it actually in Brazil, but actually there is a very… If cyber security becomes a fiscal advantage, then a lot of more people will do it. Because people, I mean, from the individual to the large corporation, their rationale is driven by costs. If something is very costly, even if it is an excellent thing, most people maybe will not have the resource to do it. I think that adding this very interesting discourse, also the fact of help facilitating achieving the regulatory result with financial help or tax cuts could be a very interesting further element. Yes, sir.

Momodu Sombai: Thank you for the lecture. My name is Momodou Sombay. I’m from Liberia, West Africa. I work with a regulator in Liberia, the government. So I was kind of thinking with the community networks, how can we learn from experience, so are you willing to lend us some of the knowledges that you have given, if and when we ask you, or are you willing to help other, like in Africa or in other countries? Thank you.

Luca Belli: You know, there is a thriving community network community, like in South Africa, we can put you in contact with some of the members of this quality work there. I don’t know if talent, because talent has been focusing on Kyrgyzstan, but his work is global. So and then maybe Anatel wants to do a partnership with their Liberian counterpart. We have here two representatives, so we can discuss this. But I’m pretty sure that talent could be your man here.

Talant Sultanov: Yeah, thanks so much. It’s actually a very good question. I’m very glad that you asked. The Women in Digital Economy Fund, where I’m working, areas in addition to funding for women-led organizations is a policy advocate. focusing on governments in Africa and Asia. And we are publishing this document that’s a collection of case studies from around the world on best practices. And one, we would like to disseminate it more widely. I’ll share the link. And also we’d like to collect other promising practices from around the world to learn from. So, yes, we’d like to share the experiences that could be interesting and relevant to you and also learn from you as well. Maybe after the meeting we can exchange contacts. And also I wanted to add one interesting fact about the cost that you mentioned. So in Kyrgyzstan they decided to block TikTok. And because it’s such a popular application, people still want to access it and they’ve been downloading VPN to be able to. And, of course, they are not downloading the paid quality VPNs, they are downloading the free ones which come with all kinds of viruses and junk and they are actually becoming more exposed to dangers than before it was blocked. So that was an interesting lesson for us.

Luca Belli: Thank you for this talent. Now, I think I’m mindful of time and we still have 40 minutes and we have now the, or maybe less, 30 minutes and we have to get into, exactly 30 minutes, and we have to get into the second segment. Can we have again our online speakers on the screen? Can we have our online speakers on the screen? I saw that also Amali. Amali, do you want to provide some introductory remarks to the second segment? Yes. Can we have Amali?

Amali De Silva Mitchell: Yes, please. So I’m the coordinator of the Dynamic Coalition on Data-Driven Health Technologies. I’m located with the IGF as well. And we have a team here. We have Dr. Huda Chehi. We have Yon Abkut. He should be a co-moderator with me online. I think Dr. Amado may not be with us right now. So what we are is we are a group that looks from the patient or really grassroots level user of the internet services to gain health information. Either it’s getting the information or it’s connecting. We all know of the telemedicine that we had recently with COVID. It became very important to use the internet connections to get services maybe from a doctor, maybe from the pharmacy and so forth. Now, for us, when we see reaching the last mile, it means rural areas. It also means communities, vulnerable communities in urban areas who can’t afford to get the service from an expensive telecom. So they often will use a community internet service to get this information or have this access with the doctors and the pharmacy and so forth. We also have people like the local doctor and the local pharmacy. They may also be using just the community network. Now we’re dealing with health data. It’s highly confidential data. And so we are very concerned of the level of security. And it was wonderful to hear all about the initiatives that all of you spoke about. So that’s really something wonderful for us to hear. So that’s just a little spiel on who we are and we welcome everyone to join us. So we are very much grassroots. We’re very much the end user supporting healthcare services. I’m going to pass this on to Yon, actually.

Luca Belli: Just perhaps before Huda Chihi gives his presentation, if you can spend five minutes, I think there was a couple of questions from our own team as well and perhaps some other online questions. Over to you, Yon. Hello, Yon?

Jörn Erbguth: Yes, I’m switching on. Basically, you said it already, privacy is a major concern in health and when data is used for commercial purposes, of course, this is a concern that we should base this on informed consent and not have it done without the consent of the patients.

Amali De Silva Mitchell: Joao, while you were there, would you like to share a comment? Dr. Joao Gomes, are you there?

Luca Belli: Is Joao Gomes here? He must be here with us or online?

Amali De Silva Mitchell: Online, he’s online.

Luca Belli: Do we have Joao Gomes online? We do, we do. Can you allow Joao Gomes to speak? Can you allow Joao Gomes to speak, please? There is a speaker online called… The name is Joao…

Jörn Erbguth: I don’t see that speaker currently. Maybe his connection broke down.

Luca Belli: So, we don’t have Joao Gomes. Alright, okay. Do we have any other speaker from the Coalition on Data-Driven Health Technologies? Do we have any other speaker?

Amali De Silva Mitchell: Dr. Huda Chihi, please. Fantastic. Introduce herself.

Dr. Houda Chihi: Hello, could you hear me, please?

Luca Belli: Very well. Go ahead.

Dr. Houda Chihi: OK. Thank you so much. Hello, everyone. So thank you so much, Emily, for this great introduction. It’s a pleasure participating in such an amazing session. And thank you for joining us. So let me start by sharing my screen and see if it is visible. Could you see it? We are seeing it on the screen, yes. Fantastic. OK, that’s great. OK, that’s great. OK, so my today’s presentation is about cybersecurity tips and recommendations for digital health. First of all, let me start by presenting the roadmap or the content of today’s presentation. I will start by the context. Next, I will highlight the tech solution for health care. After that, I will present what are the different types of cyberattacks in health care sector. After that, I will come up to the importance of cybersecurity in health care. And I will sum up by the different tips and recommendation and best practices for cybersecurity in health care. And I will present the importance of artificial intelligence integration in health care. And by the end, I will conclude by the different key takeaways of my presentation. In fact, here we speak nowadays of a paradox of digitalization. In one side, health care services improvement with the digitalization, but we find also some threats coming up behind this digitalization. So another important thing is we find that there is a transition of health care services due to autonomous application, lots such as artificial intelligence and machine learning that we will see in further slides. And we speak especially due to COVID-19 in different kind of cyber crimes, which is the result of e-health or remote and virtual application of e-health care. So another important issue is there is a lack of awareness and lack of cybersecurity tools application in health care sectors. So, and we find that the majority of health care centers using the legacy tools, which is useless due to a rise of new and emergence of cyber attacks. Every day we find emerging of new threats, especially in health care sectors, because it’s the threat, the life of patients is very important. So nowadays we speak about ransomware as a service. So it’s a very dangerous. For health care sector. Another important center is that they don’t have enough budget to improve their health care infrastructure that we will highlight in next slides with more details. So what are the tech solution application in health care sector? So we speak about, so virtual reality, extended reality or the metaverse application in health care sector. We speak about the blockchain application, the artificial intelligence. intelligence, machine learning, telemedicine, which is based in the data storage of patients in the cloud. And we speak the different of e-health, which is enabled basically in the application of internet of medical things. So all of this technology, so improve the healthcare services due to and make the healthcare services for both the doctors and the patients who suffer from disability, or older people who came to move to hospitals. So in particular, and the application of internet of medical things enable the remote of medical operation and improves the experience of patients. So here we highlight the importance of digitalization, but in other side, it’s very important if we take care of the security threats that we will highlight in the next slide. So digital ecosystem is very important for both patients and both medical sector, but because it’s enabled like a landscape of exchange and opportunity of improving the quality of digital healthcare services. But to improve more the quality of healthcare services, we need to improve the collaboration between the virtual labs and the IT experts that we help healthcare staff to improve the infrastructure with the low costs. And another important thing is we need to improve the skills of healthcare staff to understand the importance of the application and of digital services in safe way without harming the patient life and without harming the infrastructure and leading to disruption of digital healthcare services. So here the digitalisation role here is very important in terms of customer optimisation, quality, service quality improvement and the patient experience improvement. Here another important thing that we need to highlight is the importance is of the adoption and collaboration with the operator or ISPs offering high quality of connectivity such as 5G and beyond to for example that help us to improve services if we are in, if we speak about healthcare in metaverse. So let’s speak now about the facing challenges is we speak about the digital device especially for hospital or rural areas they don’t have the enough connectivity to adopt and to exploit the different digitalisation services. We speak about bias and inequality. Here to overcome such kind of problem we have to convince decision makers, regulators and policies. policy makers to help these rural areas hospitals to have enough connectivity and to exploit and the benefit of digitalization. And another challenge is nowadays with the importance of digitalization, we can’t, we don’t know the different number of connected devices in healthcare sectors, which is a very critical issue. So another challenge is related to cyber security skills gap. So we have to teach all end users, whether it is patients or medical sectors or staff, the importance of exploiting the digital technologies in a safe way, especially when we hear, when we speak about healthcare sectors and as cyber security is very important and it can help us to create more values rather than be suffering from threats of cyber attacks. Another important issue is to take care of the trust of our patient if we overcome the problems of security and cyber attacks. And we can overcome also the problem of financial problems, especially if we open the door for around somewhere that we take, we demand a lot of money if they have access to our data. So here we have three pillars. So we have to teach staffs too about the importance of cyber security. By this way, they will have enough skills to secure the budget of the healthcare sectors. So let’s highlight in this slide or in this step the different cyber attacks that all hospitals or healthcare sectors, they can suffer from it. We speak about distribution, distributed denial of services attacks. It is about digital tasks disruption. I mentioned that we have healthcare staffs doing an operation online or conversation with a patient and we have cyber attacks. So we will have automatic disruption of the operation. And another kind of attacks is related to the overall supply chain. Another kind of cyber risk is related to authorization access to patient data. So some crimes, a kind of cyber crimes is to have access to patient data and they will demand a huge money because they have a different information of the healthcare sectors. So we speak about here of two kinds of threats. We find it’s about external threats. If we speak about the doors or authorization access to patients that data, or attacks related to supply chain. Another kind of cyber attacks is inside attacks is related to healthcare staff behavior, like phishing emails, they open different kinds of URLs without taking without any attention or verification. And they use simple and easy passwords that cybercrimes can find a way to open their emails and have all the data of the overall healthcare organization. Another important thing is the lack of security of healthcare clouds, because with digitalization, the data of different healthcare centers will be stored in the cloud. And if we don’t enable or we don’t do the healthcare cybersecurity tips and recommendations that I will share in further slides, we will lose all our data. Another important risk is the lack of configuration of the different softwares that we exploit in digital healthcare sectors. So here, nowadays, with digitalization, healthcare is about data. So we have to know how to secure this data to save all the healthcare sectors. So here, let’s start by understand step by step, what is the cybersecurity about? It’s about the confidentiality, availability, integrity of the information, we should take care of the information and it is about safety of both the hard and the soft to enable any resiliency of healthcare services and to overcome any problem of disruption. So it’s about redirection of cybersecurity for value creation to healthcare sector. So another important thing that we should understand is the use of telemedicine or e-health in a responsible way and it is about the use and the integration of any digitalization with responsibility. We should test any new technology and any with all the cybersecurity so recommendation before deploying and expose it to all the staff. We should also upgrade continuously regularly all our software and medical devices to support all advanced security tools because vendors always add new features so we should have the necessary infrastructure that supports these upgrades. And another important issue to not lose our data and to not open the door for a ransomware as a service we should always back up and do the necessary storage strategies in the way that we secure our data and we don’t enable others to theft it or to take it. and after that exchange with us and demand a huge amount of money to return our gift. Sorry, hold on. Can we ask you to wrap up? Okay, okay. I forget about the time, sorry. So let’s move to hospital. The importance of hospital IT infrastructure security is about modernization of the IT medical sector. Another important issue is about network segmentation. It is recommended to segment the network and to use virtual private networks and to enable smart spam filtering. Another important thing is to do continuous check of any new device is about adopting zero trust approach. And we should have visibility of all endpoints connected to the internet and used in healthcare sector, of course. We should have the leadership and the mindset shift toward the importance of cyber security and to adopt the necessary policies and decision making toward the cyber security strategy implementation in healthcare sector. And for staff, it’s important or patient or end user in general is important to adopt the strategy of multi-factor authentication and regular password updates. And it’s important to adopt accurate configuration of different softwares and firewall in continuous way. And another important thing. just to wrap up, is to use, to collaborate with operator and vendors of trusts and operator or ISPs that have shown mature security, cyber security solution, for example, who have provided or adopting DNSSEC implementation, which is a protocol of advanced protocol of cyber security. Another important thing is to benefit of artificial intelligence in healthcare. So it’s important to adopt the antiviruses that adopt or integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning because they enable autonomous and advanced monitoring or facing to any threats of cyber attacks. It helps also to improve the threat hunting and threat intelligence assessment. So another important thing we should…

Luca Belli: Hello, Huda. Online, we can’t hear you. Yeah, we cannot hear Huda anymore. But thanks to this very extensive presentation on cyber security tips, risks and tips, I think this is the best possible way to conclude our panel.

Dr. Houda Chihi: Okay. Could you hear me now? Yes.

Luca Belli: Yes, because I forget to… You demanded something to reactivate my micro and I missed it.

Audience: So I can continue with this?

Dr. Houda Chihi: Yes, yes, yes. No, no. I have just a few slides. Yeah, I think we really have to wrap up now. Okay. So just to wrap up, I… spoke about the importance of artificial intelligence integration in healthcare, but in a responsible way. It’s enabled advanced threats or attacks detection in a proactive way, but it should be implemented and integrated in a responsible way to overcome any problem of bias which is basic.

Luca Belli: All right, fantastic. So I think that we now it’s time to wrap up because we are we are almost being kicked out of this room. So we really have to conclude. And also as I have to go to another five minutes, I will have four minutes to go to the toilet between one session. So thank you very much. I would like to really to thank all the participants for their very insightful inputs and for their very good contribution for this session. I also want to remind those who are here with us that you have you can take your complimentary copy of this report that I edited with Dr. Senka Adzic and with the participation of many of the speakers of today on cybersecurity and community networks. The copies are here for you. If you want, you can download them from the website comconnectivity.org where you can find all the material that could be interesting for you and the Liberian regulator. So yes, we are fine with the workshop of today. Excellent discussion. Thank you very much to everyone and see you next year. Bye bye. Yeah. Okay? Thank thank you

Agreement Points

Importance of cybersecurity education and capacity building

Osama Manzar

Renata Santoyo

Talant Sultanov

Dr. Houda Chihi

Critical digital literacy is needed for users of community networks

Regulators provide guidelines and manuals on cybersecurity best practices

Storytelling and local trainers help deliver cybersecurity messages

Healthcare staff need cybersecurity skills training

Multiple speakers emphasized the need for cybersecurity education and capacity building, particularly for users of community networks and healthcare staff. They agreed on the importance of making cybersecurity concepts accessible through various means, including guidelines, storytelling, and local language approaches.

Community networks face unique cybersecurity challenges

Osama Manzar

Renata Santoyo

Leandro Navarro

Community networks connect underserved areas but face cybersecurity challenges

Regulatory approaches should be asymmetric to facilitate community networks

Decentralized digital identities can help secure community networks

Speakers agreed that community networks, while crucial for connecting underserved areas, face specific cybersecurity challenges. They discussed various approaches to address these challenges, including asymmetric regulation and innovative technical solutions like decentralized digital identities.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers highlighted the importance of regulatory and fiscal approaches to encourage cybersecurity improvements and support community networks. They emphasized the need for tailored policies that recognize the unique challenges faced by different types of network providers.

Renata Santoyo

Luca Belli

Brazil has implemented asymmetric regulation for community networks

Fiscal incentives can encourage cybersecurity investments

Unexpected Consensus

Importance of local context in cybersecurity approaches

Osama Manzar

Talant Sultanov

Dr. Houda Chihi

Critical digital literacy is needed for users of community networks

Rural-first and local language approaches are important for cybersecurity

Healthcare organizations need to modernize IT infrastructure security

Despite coming from different sectors (community networks, rural development, and healthcare), these speakers all emphasized the importance of considering local context and tailoring cybersecurity approaches accordingly. This unexpected consensus highlights the universal need for context-specific cybersecurity strategies across various domains.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement included the importance of cybersecurity education and capacity building, the need for tailored approaches to community networks, and the recognition of local context in cybersecurity strategies. Speakers from diverse backgrounds found common ground on these issues, suggesting a growing consensus on the importance of inclusive and context-specific cybersecurity approaches.

Consensus level

There was a moderate to high level of consensus among the speakers on key issues. This level of agreement implies a growing recognition of the importance of cybersecurity in various contexts, from community networks to healthcare. It also suggests that future policy and regulatory approaches may need to consider these shared perspectives, particularly in addressing the needs of underserved communities and sectors.

Different Viewpoints

Focus of cybersecurity efforts

Osama Manzar

Renata Santoyo

Dr. Houda Chihi

Critical digital literacy is needed for users of community networks

Regulators provide guidelines and manuals on cybersecurity best practices

Healthcare organizations need to modernize IT infrastructure security

Speakers emphasized different aspects of cybersecurity: Manzar focused on user education, Santoyo on regulatory guidelines, and Chihi on modernizing infrastructure.

Unexpected Differences

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement were in the approaches to cybersecurity education and the focus of cybersecurity efforts in community networks and healthcare.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among speakers was relatively low. Most speakers agreed on the importance of cybersecurity in community networks and healthcare, but had different emphases on how to address the challenges. This suggests a need for a multi-faceted approach to cybersecurity that incorporates user education, regulatory guidelines, and infrastructure modernization.

Partial Agreements

Both speakers agree on the importance of educating users about cybersecurity, but differ in their approaches. Santoyo advocates for regulatory guidelines, while Sultanov emphasizes storytelling and local trainers.

Renata Santoyo

Talant Sultanov

Regulators provide guidelines and manuals on cybersecurity best practices

Storytelling and local trainers help deliver cybersecurity messages

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers highlighted the importance of regulatory and fiscal approaches to encourage cybersecurity improvements and support community networks. They emphasized the need for tailored policies that recognize the unique challenges faced by different types of network providers.

Renata Santoyo

Luca Belli

Brazil has implemented asymmetric regulation for community networks

Fiscal incentives can encourage cybersecurity investments

Key Takeaways

Community networks face unique cybersecurity challenges due to limited resources and technical expertise

Regulatory approaches should be asymmetric to facilitate community networks while still ensuring basic security

Cybersecurity education and capacity building are critical, especially for rural and underserved communities

Digital health technologies bring benefits but also significant privacy and security risks that must be addressed

Collaboration between regulators, communities, and technology providers is important for improving cybersecurity

Resolutions and Action Items

Brazil’s regulator Anatel to make cybersecurity guidelines and manuals publicly available

Women in Digital Economy Fund to share case studies on best practices for community networks

Dynamic Coalition on Data-Driven Health Technologies to continue work on cybersecurity recommendations for digital health

Unresolved Issues

How to balance the need for cybersecurity with the resource constraints of community networks

Specific mechanisms for international knowledge sharing on community network cybersecurity

Funding models to support cybersecurity improvements in resource-limited settings

How to effectively implement AI-based cybersecurity in healthcare while addressing bias concerns

Suggested Compromises

Using asymmetric regulation to reduce compliance burden on community networks while maintaining basic security standards

Leveraging local storytellers and trainers to deliver cybersecurity education in culturally appropriate ways

Offering tax incentives to encourage cybersecurity investments by organizations and individuals

Internet is global, but users are local. Again, internet is global, but community networks are local. Not only local, it’s hyper-local. And not only hyper-local, but it is used by those who are otherwise unserved by the telcos.

speaker

Osama Manzar

reason

This comment insightfully frames community networks as a hyper-local solution to a global technology, highlighting their unique role in serving underserved populations.

impact

It set the tone for discussing community networks as grassroots initiatives tailored to local needs, leading to further exploration of their challenges and benefits.

The cyber safety, cyber security, and cyber data protection is not only a subject of top-down model, it is a subject of bottom-up social and behavioral norms based cyber capacity building, and somehow, that is not taken into consideration in most of the planning.

speaker

Osama Manzar

reason

This comment challenges the traditional top-down approach to cybersecurity, emphasizing the importance of local context and user behavior.

impact

It shifted the discussion towards the importance of education and capacity building at the local level, leading to examples of community-based cybersecurity initiatives.

We have a very asymmetric relationship with this comparing community networks to big providers or small providers because we are not treating them as an equal. And so it’s a possibility to develop more and more the community networks.

speaker

Renata Santoyo

reason

This comment highlights the regulatory challenges and opportunities in supporting community networks, recognizing their unique position compared to traditional providers.

impact

It led to a discussion of specific regulatory measures to support community networks, showing how policy can be adapted to encourage local initiatives.

We have seen that it’s possible to make it work, although complex, of course. And then, well, I mean, just that many things about the challenges, of course, we are not finished with this. We have just started one year ago.

speaker

Leandro Navarro

reason

This comment realistically assesses the progress and challenges in implementing decentralized digital identity for community networks, acknowledging both achievements and ongoing work.

impact

It prompted a more nuanced discussion of the technical and practical challenges in implementing advanced security measures in community networks.

So in Kyrgyzstan they decided to block TikTok. And because it’s such a popular application, people still want to access it and they’ve been downloading VPN to be able to. And, of course, they are not downloading the paid quality VPNs, they are downloading the free ones which come with all kinds of viruses and junk and they are actually becoming more exposed to dangers than before it was blocked.

speaker

Talant Sultanov

reason

This comment provides a concrete example of how well-intentioned security measures can have unintended consequences, exposing users to greater risks.

impact

It highlighted the complexity of cybersecurity policy decisions and their real-world impacts, leading to a discussion on the importance of considering user behavior in security planning.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by emphasizing the local and human aspects of cybersecurity in community networks. They shifted the conversation from purely technical solutions to a more holistic approach that considers regulatory frameworks, user education, and the unique challenges faced by community-driven initiatives. The discussion evolved to highlight the importance of bottom-up approaches, adaptive regulations, and the need to balance security measures with practical realities of user behavior and local contexts.

How can community networks implement cybersecurity measures with limited resources?

speaker

Luca Belli

explanation

Community networks often use cheap equipment and have limited funds, making it challenging to implement robust cybersecurity measures.

How can regulators facilitate the integration of cybersecurity practices in community networks?

speaker

Luca Belli

explanation

Regulators could potentially provide financial incentives or tax cuts to encourage the adoption of cybersecurity measures in community networks.

How can the experiences and knowledge from existing community network initiatives be shared with other countries?

speaker

Momodu Sombai

explanation

There is interest in learning from successful community network implementations to apply these lessons in other regions, particularly in Africa.

How can the cybersecurity skills gap in healthcare sectors be addressed?

speaker

Dr. Houda Chihi

explanation

There is a need to educate all end users, including patients and medical staff, on the importance of cybersecurity in healthcare.

How can artificial intelligence be responsibly integrated into healthcare cybersecurity?

speaker

Dr. Houda Chihi

explanation

AI can enable advanced threat detection, but it needs to be implemented carefully to avoid bias and other issues.

How can community networks ensure compliance with data protection laws?

speaker

Luca Belli

explanation

Many countries have data protection laws, and non-compliance can lead to legal issues for community networks.

How can the adoption of decentralized digital identity systems be encouraged in community networks?

speaker

Leandro Navarro

explanation

Decentralized identity systems could provide secure identification for community network members, but their adoption faces challenges.

Summary

This discussion focused on multilingual inclusion and universal acceptance in the digital space, exploring challenges and strategies for creating a more linguistically diverse internet. Participants highlighted the importance of enabling access to digital content and services in various languages, emphasizing that this is crucial for bridging the digital divide and empowering communities worldwide.

The conversation covered the evolution of technical standards, from ASCII to Unicode, which now supports over 150,000 characters across 168 scripts. Speakers discussed the implementation of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) and the ongoing challenges of Universal Acceptance (UA), which ensures all valid domain names and email addresses can be used across all internet-enabled systems.

Regional perspectives were shared, including efforts in the Caribbean to raise awareness about UA and the challenges faced in implementing multilingual solutions. The importance of integrating UA into educational curricula, government procurement processes, and development initiatives was stressed as a way to make it a natural part of the digital ecosystem.

Participants emphasized the need for collaboration among various stakeholders, including tech companies, policymakers, and affected communities, to drive progress in multilingual inclusion. The discussion also touched on the importance of creating local content in diverse languages to truly achieve a multilingual internet, as technical solutions alone are not sufficient.

The session concluded with calls for a holistic approach to multilingual inclusion, integrating it into broader digital inclusion efforts and treating it as a language justice issue. Speakers emphasized the potential for a multilingual internet to create a safer online environment for new users and the importance of engaging communities in the development and implementation of UA initiatives.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The importance of universal acceptance and multilingual inclusion for digital spaces

– Technical standards and protocols needed to support multilingual domain names and content

– Implementation strategies and challenges for multilingual digital services in different regions

– The need for multi-stakeholder collaboration to advance digital inclusion

– The importance of local content creation in diverse languages

The overall purpose of the discussion was to explore ways to promote linguistic diversity and universal acceptance in digital spaces, in order to make the internet more inclusive and accessible for users of all languages and scripts.

The tone of the discussion was generally informative and collaborative. Speakers shared insights from their regional experiences and expertise, while emphasizing the need for cooperation between different stakeholders. There was a sense of urgency about addressing these issues, but also optimism about the progress made so far and potential for further advancement through continued efforts.

Speakers

– Jasmine Ko: Moderator, Hong Kong IGF

– Krislin Goulbourne-Harry: Caribbean Digital Transformation Project

– Dana Cramer: PhD candidate at Toronto Metropolitan University, Center for International Governance Innovation Digital Policy Hub fellow

– Tijani Ben Jemaa: Director of Mediterranean Federation of Internet Association

– Fahd Batayneh: Director of Stakeholder Engagement for the Middle East of ICANN

– Edmon Chung: CEO of DotAsia Organization

– Duaa T. Albalawi: Co-moderator from KSA IGF

Additional speakers:

– Phyo Thiri Lwin: Online moderator from Myanmar Youth IGF

– Ram Mohan: Inventor of the universal acceptance concept (mentioned but did not speak)

Expanded Summary: Multilingual Inclusion and Universal Acceptance in Digital Spaces

Introduction

This discussion, moderated by Jasmine Ko from Hong Kong, with co-moderator Duaa T. Albalawi from KSA IGF, focused on the critical issue of multilingual inclusion and universal acceptance in digital spaces. The panel brought together experts from various regions to explore challenges and strategies for creating a more linguistically diverse internet, emphasising the importance of enabling access to digital content and services in multiple languages to bridge the digital divide and empower communities worldwide.

Technical Evolution and Current Landscape

The conversation began by tracing the evolution of technical standards, from ASCII to Unicode, which now supports over 150,000 characters across 168 scripts. Tijani Ben Jemaa, Director of Mediterranean Federation of Internet Association, highlighted this progression as a crucial enabler of multilingual content online. The implementation of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) was discussed as a significant step towards a more inclusive internet, allowing for non-ASCII domain names. Ben Jemaa also credited Ram Mohan as the inventor of the universal acceptance concept.

Fahd Batayneh, Director of Stakeholder Engagement for the Middle East of ICANN, introduced the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG), a collective effort involving major tech companies working towards universal acceptance implementation. He noted that despite the large Arabic-speaking population globally, “probably scientific decent good Arabic content is probably less than 1% of the content that is available online.” This stark disparity underscores the need for content creation in diverse languages, not just technical solutions for displaying different scripts.

Regional Perspectives and Challenges

The discussion highlighted varying regional priorities and approaches to implementing multilingual inclusion:

1. Caribbean: Krislin Goulbourne-Harry, UA Ambassador for the Caribbean Digital Transformation Project, explained that the region is still in the early stages, focusing on sensitisation and awareness of universal acceptance. She emphasised the need for multilingual interfaces to help users naturally switch between official and local languages like Creole and Patois, and stressed the importance of stakeholder engagement in the process.

2. North America: Dana Cramer, PhD candidate at Toronto Metropolitan University, stressed the importance of meaningful inclusion of Indigenous populations. She highlighted efforts to resurrect previous Indigenous languages, connecting universal acceptance to cultural preservation and reconciliation. Cramer also noted the significance of including accents in French language domain names for Canadian users.

3. Asia: Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia Organization, framed the issue as one of language justice, emphasising the need for both grassroots support and top-down recognition of the importance of multilingual internet access. He provided historical context about the implementation of DNS and its relation to the development of the web.

Implementation Strategies and Challenges

Speakers agreed on several key strategies for advancing universal acceptance:

1. Multi-stakeholder Collaboration: Edmon Chung emphasised that collaboration between technical experts, cybersecurity professionals, content creators, and service providers is essential for successful implementation.

2. Education and Awareness: Integrating universal acceptance and IDNs into networking and IT curricula was suggested as a way to make multilingual internet concepts native to the next generation of developers and engineers.

3. Policy Approaches: Dana Cramer advocated for promoting policy approaches to linguistic diversity on digital platforms, while Edmon Chung suggested integrating universal acceptance into government procurement processes.

4. Community Engagement: Speakers stressed the importance of engaging linguistic experts and affected communities to ensure accurate content representation and drive grassroots support for universal acceptance initiatives.

5. Roadmaps: Edmon Chung highlighted the need for organizations to develop roadmaps for implementing universal acceptance.

Challenges identified included increasing local content production in non-English languages, addressing infrastructure and device availability in developing regions, and balancing efficiency with language inclusivity in digital systems.

Universal Acceptance as a Social Movement

Edmon Chung framed universal acceptance as a social movement akin to language justice, stating, “I think as over the 20 years, what I have learned is that in order to get us over the hump, this needs to be thought of as really like a movement and I really believe that it’s kind of like a social movement.” This perspective elevated the discussion from purely technical considerations to broader social and political implications.

Inclusion of Sign Languages and New Technologies

Dana Cramer brought attention to the unique challenges of representing sign languages in digital spaces, expanding the conversation to consider accessibility for deaf communities. She provided examples of how American Sign Language differs from spoken language in its expression, highlighting the complexity of achieving true linguistic diversity online.

Edmon Chung emphasized the importance of “UA and IDN by design” in new technologies and platforms, ensuring that universal acceptance is built into emerging digital ecosystems from the ground up.

Conclusion and Future Directions

The discussion concluded with a call for a holistic approach to multilingual inclusion, integrating it into broader digital inclusion efforts and treating it as a language justice issue. Tijani Ben Jemaa emphasized that technical solutions alone are insufficient to address the current state of multilingual content on the internet. Fahd Batayneh highlighted the role of end users in promoting their own languages and content online.

Key takeaways included the critical nature of universal acceptance for digital inclusion (including new gTLDs), the need for local content production in native languages, and the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration. Suggested action items ranged from developing roadmaps for implementing universal acceptance in different organisations to promoting policies requiring universal acceptance readiness in government procurement processes.

As the internet continues to evolve, addressing unresolved issues such as increasing local content production and ensuring universal acceptance on emerging technologies will be crucial for achieving a truly multilingual and inclusive digital world.

Jasmine Ko: you you You You Good afternoon It’s not working number two number two everyone if you’re joining us, please tune to channel number two Thank you very much am I audible Okay, great great great, okay, so Ready? Okay. So hello everyone. Good afternoon Morning or evening from the other, you know part of the world So this is Jasmine Cole from Asia and I saw Hong Kong and welcome to our NLI session on inclusion our topic It’s about we talked about the universal multilingual inclusions and universal acceptance for our communities this is a NL is collaborative sessions and I Will be starting with a little bit introduction of the topic and then Introducing our wonderful speakers here. And then there will be a guided discussion and and then our floor will be open for the audience. So, to begin with the sessions, the universal access and digital inclusions, there will be an open statement by each speaker, and there will be brief insights on ensuring that digital platform accessibility across linguistic backgrounds, and also some initial perspective on multilingual inclusion in the digital space. To divide into different part of discussion, we will be talking about the current landscape, the national and regional practices on multilingualism. Second, we talk about the technical standards and the protocols on examining the role of technology standards and to enable multilingual content. And third, we also talk about the implementation strategies on the practical approaches on how to promote and implement the universal acceptance of diverse language. Lastly, we talk about multi-stakeholder collaboration for sure, and explore the role of these collaborative efforts between different stakeholders. And may I now please introduce our speaker one by one? And I would love to introduce first, Ms. Chrislene Galbon-Harry here. She’s a UA Ambassador, Universal Acceptance Ambassador, and she’s from the Caribbean Digital Transformation Project. And then we have Ms. Dana, Ms. Dana Kramer. It’s a PhD candidate at Toronto Metropolitan University, and also with the Center for International Governance, Innovation, Digital Policy Hub fellow, so based in Canada. And then we have Mr. Tajani, Tajani China, sorry. My bad. From the Mediterranean Federation of Internet Association that director. And then also on site with us is Mr. Fahd, Director of Stakeholder Engagement for the Middle East of ICANN. And finally, our online speaker, Mr. Edmon Chung, the CEO of DotAsia Organization. Welcome. Okay, so also on the slide, actually we have our online moderator, Ms. Pio Tuleng, from Myanmar Youth IGF. Thank you very much for engaging our online speaker and participant as well. So let me just give the floor to the speaker on your open statement on this very important topic. So I would love to have Tejani, Mr. Tejani starting first, please.

Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you, it was difficult to pronounce my name. No problem. Okay, thank you very much, Jasmine. As you know, the cultural and linguistic diversity as well as the access to information and knowledge for all people were among the 11 fundamental principles to build the information society as defined by the World Summit on Information Society 2003-2005. Having a part of the internet community struggling with their original languages not understood by machines and then possibility for them to access any content on the internet in their mother tongue was a real concern for the WSIS. That’s why the output of its first phase included two action lines related to this issue among a total of 11. Action line number 3, access to information and knowledge, and action line number 8, cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity, and local content. Today, there are more than five billion people connected to the Internet, and at least one billion new users are expected to come online. Most of the new users of the Internet live in countries where people speak and write languages other than English. There is a need to design inclusive language resources and frameworks that would enable individuals of all ages, all cultures, all languages, to fully participate in the digital space. Jasmin, that’s why we are addressing today this topic of multilingual inclusion and universal acceptance for all countries, isn’t it?

Jasmine Ko: Yeah. Thank you very much. I don’t want to keep pronouncing your name wrong, but thank you very much. Can I also pass it to Mr. Atmans on your open statement for this topic, please?

Edmon Chung: Certainly. Thank you, Jasmin. Hopefully, my voice is coming through fine. I’ll just keep speaking until you tell me that you can’t hear me. But I think building on what Tijani was saying, I think this is a fundamental issue. Yes, for those of you who know me, this is a topic that I care about very much for the last 25 years. But obviously, the work is not done yet. The way I really see it is that digital inclusion needs to be the driver for universal acceptance and what we call a multilingual Internet, which includes domain names and e-mail address. in the different languages. And in order to get us there or really get over the hump, I think it is very clear that we have learned that just the technical community or just the registries or just the hosting platforms is not enough. This is what collaboration, this is what multi-stakeholder collaboration means and this is what we need for a truly multilingual and meaningful access and also universal acceptance because only together we can actually do this. The other thing about togetherness is I believe this cannot be a standalone thing and that’s why it’s connected to digital inclusion, it’s connecting to the next billion of people that are coming online and also in terms of implementation because of the long tail nature of universal acceptance, it needs to have a roadmap. It’s not a switch it on tomorrow and then we’re done technically kind of issue here. It’s a long tail. You need to update your system one after the other and all the systems, different parts of the systems have different places where email addresses and domain names are used and therefore it’s a long tail thing. So I think as over the 20 years, what I have learned is that in order to get us over the hump, this needs to be thought of as really like a movement and I really believe that it’s kind of like a social movement. We need the groundswell of grassroots support but we also need those in quote unquote power to realize that they also need to take a step and therein lies what I start to call the language justice issue. In order for a multilingual internet to really be realized, we need to think of it as a language justice issue because. Every time we talk about it, those who are already online, actually many of them are already familiar with English. Without the push for language justice in a movement kind of way, we can’t get it over the hump. People need to understand that, yes, we’re gonna have to give up a little bit, maybe even give up a little bit efficiency for the longer tail, for the next billion to feel comfortable to come online. So I think a part of the learning over the last 20 years is that this is not just a technical thing. This is something we need to do together in collaboration and needs to be a movement that is about language justice.

Jasmine Ko: Thank you very much, Edmund, for your open statement. To Fahd, please.

Fahd Batayneh: Thanks, Jasmine, and thank you for having me on this session. So since Edmund spoke about domain names, I mean, I’ll try to divert a little bit from what Edmund just shared. So actually I worked for ICANN. ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The key thing that we work on at ICANN is really domain names. And of course, linguistic diversity is at the heart of today’s domain name landscape. Of course, when the World Summit on the Information Society 2005 outcome document was released, linguistic diversity on the internet was one of the key components there. And so within ICANN, we took upon our shoulders to at least, I mean, since we are not into content, we did work on ensuring linguistic diversity when it comes to domain names. And of course, there was a lot of work happening within the ICANN community and even within other organizations, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force on developing protocols and standards that could actually amend the domain name system so that it can understand… non-ASCII domain name. So the unfortunate reality about, well, okay, it’s not an unfortunate reality, but when computer systems were first developed in the 70s and in the 80s, they only understood ASCII. And when the domain name system was developed in the 80s, again, it only understood ASCII. Now, in terms to include non-ASCII characters, so anything other than the A to Z and zero to nine, things need to be amended. Standards, protocols need to be amended so that these systems can actually understand characters beyond ASCII. So yes, within ICANN and in close coordination and in close cooperation with the ICANN community and the wider internet community, IDNs are a reality today. You can actually register domain names in your native languages. But then of course, as we try to find the solution to something that was missing, we bumped into another issue, which is called universal acceptability or universal acceptance when it comes to domain names. So the problem that we faced is that we saw as an ICANN community is that not all software systems understand what is an Arabic domain name or what is a Chinese domain name. And this is where there’s a huge push at the moment within the ICANN ecosystem to make all systems understand what an Arabic domain name is or what a Chinese domain name is or what a Japanese domain name is. So what universal acceptance is trying to tackle is that all domain names and all email addresses must be acceptable in all systems or in the domain name system. Thank you.

Jasmine Ko: Thank you very much. Now to Kristalyn, please.

Krislin Goulbourne-Harry: Hello, everyone. Thank you for having me here. It’s a beautiful city. I’m all the way from the Caribbean, and it’s a pleasure to be here. Now, linguistic diversity in the digital realm is not just important to preserve our cultural heritage, but it’s also essential to empower communities to be able to freely express themselves fully in the digital realm. So, when digital platforms and technologies support multilingualism, it helps to bridge the communication gaps in academia, also fosters innovation, and enables economic growth. Now, in the Caribbean, by nature, we are a multilingual society, which means that, at some point, universal acceptance is critical for us. But where we are right now in the Caribbean, we haven’t actually reached the point where we are having the conversation seriously, which is why these type of forums are important for us. We do speak a lot of English, and we realize that English is the primary language of the internet as it relates to content. But if we look at the trends, we realize that this is actually going down. So, at some point, other languages, other characters, other scripts are becoming relevant, critical to be included and accepted in our software applications, which is why UA, universal acceptance, is such an important topic that is rising right now, especially within the Caribbean region. Thank you.

Dana Cramer: and that’s kind of where the problem is arising. My apologies. You know, it’s always tough to go last in these introductory remarks because everything that you plan to say has always been said. I really like the way, Edmond, that you had said language justice because I’m from Canada and we have it that reconciliation with our Indigenous communities is a very strong topic in my country as a form of development and decolonization efforts overall. And one element of universal acceptance in my country too is trying to resurrect previous Indigenous languages overall so that Indigenous populations can then grow with their linguistic capacity and reconnect with their past, their heritage, and understanding for the rest of Canadians and those who live in the colonial borders of Canada to be able to understand that there are multiple different words that we might have lost as describing our geography. We, however, as a country, can’t fully achieve that unless we have U.A., for example, in a Universal Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics or UCAS as the acronym for this. And it currently does not exist. It’s working through right now to try and have U.A. for Indigenous populations in Canada but not only in trying to get more people online and more languages represented online, it’s also imperative to be able to have U.A. so that we have the previous populations that have been disenfranchised and have nearly been wiped away for their cultural heritage. can resurrect that in a digital space because we are stronger when we’re all connected and all together, but we cannot achieve that unless we all have our capacity to speak online. Thank you.

Jasmine Ko: Thank you, Dana. So thank you all for your open statement. Now we’re moving to the guided discussion. The first part is about the current landscape. So I would love to turn to Fahd. From your experience at ICANN engaging with the Middle East region, what region, what are the unique challenges and successes that you have observed in implementing multilingual solution in the digital space to you?

Fahd Batayneh: Yeah, thanks Jasmine. So let me say this as a story and I usually like to share information really using stories. So ICANN was incorporated and established in 1998. Of course, right after ICANN’s establishment and the organization of the first public ICANN meetings, there was a lot of discussions within the community to expand the top level domain namespace. So back then we had, I mean, the world started with all the CCTLDs and a handful or two of maybe GTLDs. Now the discussion within the ICANN community was to expand top level domains. And this also included domain names or top level domains in local languages. Of course, it took the community a while to work on the policy part of things. And then of course, the technical side of things were mostly worked within the Internet Engineering Task Force. Now in 2011, the first number of applications, the first group of applications for IDN top level domains or internationalized domain names were submitted to ICANN from countries as part of a program called the IDN CCTLD Fast Track Program. 2012, we see the first four IDN TLDs delegated into the route. In fact, Saudi Arabia was one of the four countries that actually launched their IDN-CSTLD in Arabic. Now, there was a huge hype around IDNs, but then of course, when people started embracing it, we did bump into the situation where, while there was a lot of excitement before they were introduced, however, the excitement became much less. Of course, before the introduction of these top-level domains in local languages, registries actually did offer IDNs under ASCII top-level domains. So if you go, for example, to some of the TLDs, like .com or .net, you did have the option of actually registering a domain name in your native language. Of course, for some languages, that was okay, but for others, it wasn’t. One example could probably be Arabic language or even the Arabic script, because in Arabic, we actually write from right to left, whereas in English or in many of the Latin scripts, we actually write from left to right. So that was an issue. So if you want to type www, and then you switch your keyboard so that you can write something in Arabic, and then you have to switch back so that you can write the rest of the domain name, that was problematic. Now, as IDNs were launched, and as we saw that there wasn’t much adoption for IDN domain names, there were many issues that the community started looking into. Now, if you come to the Arab region, one of the things we lack is actually local content. So the unfortunate reality about the Arab region is that probably scientific decent good Arabic content is probably less than 1% of the content that is available online. Of course, if you look at the number of people who can speak the Arabic language, there are probably 800 million, 900 million. It’s a really large number. Content is not on the same percentage or on the same equivalence as the population. Now, if there’s no Arabic content, it’s because If I can consume content in English, then I can maybe type in a domain name in English. And then, of course, with the many universal acceptability issues. Fantastic. So we have two issues here with the mic. Of course, universal acceptability was another issue. I mean, even with these Arabic domain names, back in the early days, most of the web browsers, if not all, didn’t understand what an Arabic domain name is. Email systems didn’t understand what’s an Arabic ID. So if you try to create an Arabic ID, it just doesn’t go to the other end. And then, of course, even when Arabic email systems were built, exchange of email IDs happened within that system. So here, for example, in Saudi Arabia, they built the first Arabic ID and email system, Rasil, and actually there are people in the room who actually worked on that from Saudi. You could exchange emails within the system, but if you tried to send out emails to other systems, they will not understand what’s this ID. So as you can see, while IDNs empowered communities, they came with a couple of problems. And this is one of the universal acceptability of Arabic domain names or even internationalized domain names in general is one of the topics, is one of the key projects actually at ICANN. And there are people in the room, actually, here who can tell you a story of how they tried to tackle this concept of universal acceptance from a normal ASCII top-level domain name, leave alone from an internationalized domain name. Stop here, hand it back over to you.

Jasmine Ko: Thank you very much Socorron. And now across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean region. So this is a question for Krislin. How is the Caribbean region adjusting digital language inclusion through the Caribbean Digital Transformation Project? And what lessons can be shared with the other regions? To you, please.

Krislin Goulbourne-Harry: Okay, thank you. So when I, when I started, I mentioned that the Caribbean is a multilingual region, right? And we are currently going through a digital transformation period. And that involves a lot of stakeholder collaboration. We’re working with academia. And there’s a lot of public private partnership, as well as a regional and international partnerships as well. We do work alongside with ICANA and the UASG group, as well as with ISOC. Now, in terms of where we are, we have to understand that UA universal acceptance has never really been a major priority in the Caribbean, because there are at some point, because we are most of what we consume is, is already in the languages that we use. So it never really became a priority concern. So we have to understand that where we are in the Caribbean is mainly sensitization and where we are trying to bring the issue alive in the Caribbean and to start that debate. What we have been doing is having what we called UADs, which is partnering with the UASG to have the annual UADs within the different Caribbean islands. That has been going well and so which means that a lot of sensitization has been happening and in addition to that some countries are looking into starting adoption of universal acceptance because while we we sorry right so we our languages we have the the the regular languages for example English, French, Dutch, etc but we also have native local languages for example Creole and Patois and those type of content are not available on the web in in or where persons in the Caribbean can consume them and appreciate them culturally. So that is also something that we have to work on as it when it comes to multilinguism and also UAM acceptance in the Caribbean. We haven’t reached the point where we have started a full implementation project but what we have been doing is looking at other regions. We’re doing a lot of sharing and collaboration to see where other persons are what we can learn from them and to see what type of strategies we can implement within our own systems to get our content you already are in terms of linguistics and etc. We are we there are certain strategies that we can look into for example the implementation of multi-language interfaces that will be able to help us to naturally switch between languages including our local languages. Right. And that and also, we are looking into the adoption of international standards to ensure that our applications can compete on that level globally, and not just on where we are right now. We are also encouraging our developers to use domain names in native languages, for example, Patois or Creole. And there’s a lot of education and awareness going on. But one thing that we’re, we’re also trying to champion is policy. So, we need to ensure that some of the policies mandate that UAE is important, and so that we can start to push it and drive it in the direction that so that we can communicate and participate globally on the rest of the world.

Jasmine Ko: Thank you, Christine. Now to Dana. So, based on your research and work with the IGF Canada, what are some notable products in North America for ensuring the multilingual digital inclusion?

Dana Cramer: Thank you very much. So, as I mentioned earlier, UAE isn’t just about trying to get certain populations online, it’s also reconciliation with populations who are also losing their own linguistic identities, for instance, and trying to make sure that we have languages kept and captured so that they can grow. One area with that, however, is the importance of meaningful inclusion of those population groups. And so, when we’re looking at UAE’s own, and the bottom up processes that I can, working groups of course will form and there’s one right now that includes having UCAS to be involved in domains. But one element for it is that Indigenous Peoples might not actually fully realize that this is happening. And so that kind of becomes a bit of a top-down approach for them. And so where you have this, for example, initiative that can be reconciling without including those groups specifically, you’re not meaningfully bringing them to the table and ensuring that they will then have the knowledge, the capabilities to be able to start including these. And so one area that we have to look at, for example, in Canada is engagement, making sure that there’s recognition amongst Indigenous communities about what ICANN is, for instance. And I also coordinate a youth NRI, and we’ve been doing this quite a bit to try to bring a bit more promotional elements about UCAS, hopefully going to be online soon, with Indigenous groups so that when this happens, we can hit the ground running in that. Another kind of mention I want to have is that in Canada, we speak English and French. And in French, sometimes for population groups, you will include accents on certain letters, whereas others you don’t. In all honesty, when I’m quickly typing something in French, I don’t always wait for the accent to come up. You just want to quickly get through your email and send it off. And that’s really normal in Canada. And so we don’t always include accents on letters. And so when you have an accent on a letter like an E, for instance, to spell Quebec, one of our provinces, we need that interchangeability for accents to be recognized, as well as our single letters, because they’re used interchangeably by the population on the ground. And finally, I kind of want to expand this about multilingual inclusion with emerging technology, specifically artificial intelligence, and talk about a community that I don’t think always gets gets the recognition in these conversations, which is accessibility-seeking communities or the disability community, specifically those who are deaf, for instance. And so when deaf communities speak, sign language is prominently used, and there’s actually a lot of shortening of a sentence in order to get the language expressed. This isn’t always the case. Like, for example, if I were to sign in American Sign Language, which we use in Canada, I’ll say, my name is Dana for it. So I spell out each letter. However, for different types of words, like one that’s topical for this conference, for instance, of saying, I really need to use the toilet, you just do this, just a quick T. That goes around and that expresses an entire sentence. And so when we have emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, though, in artificial intelligence program for generative AI, there’s not always a recognition that certain communities, when those standards and protocols and technologies are built will actually need words and letters skipped out. So I wanted to include that multilingual is not always about the spoken word or the written word. It’s also about the signed word and what is included in the sentence to ensure it’s accessible for everyone using it.

Jasmine Ko: Thank you very much, Dana. So from the current landscape we’ve been sharing in the Middle East, Caribbean and North America, and moving on to more technical discussion on the role of technical standards and protocols. The question I have for Edmund, it’s from your perspective in Asia Pacific, and what do you see as the critical technical standards needed to ensure the true multilingual inclusions in the domain names and digital service?

Edmon Chung: Thank you. So that’s, that’s an interesting question. But I think I just wanted to build off what Fahd said earlier, in terms of the basic technology for both, say, internationalized domain names, domain names and email addresses in different languages, that is ready. That is ready. But one of the things that then that relates to what Dana was saying is that there are policies that need to be in place for what we call variants. So, very early on when we looked at we start looking at different languages, we realized that for example in English, your domain name, whether you capitalize or you know use a small letter, it actually is the same thing. But if you play with words you would figure out that you know you can capitalize different ones and actually come up with different different words with the same set of letters. So, think about it that way and you realize that sometimes these same strings that people users might get confused with needs to be registered together. So, whereas in the technology itself. There are two different strings are two different domains. that map them back together. And that’s what we call IDN variants or variant domains. And that addresses some of the issues that that Dana was talking about. So I think this is one of the things and to make it native and to make it fully acceptable, including into universal acceptance that is good, you know, that is one of the challenges I think, but coming back to what I said earlier, this is going to be a long tail situation. And that’s why one of the main push from from both the ICANN community and of course what what.Asia we are trying to push for is for different companies to come up with a roadmap. Again, you know, none of us can solve it on our own. can solve this issue, you know, immediately tomorrow. So drawing out a roadmap is going to be actually one of the most important things. And I think when you think about a roadmap, it comes back to what I, you know, I touched on the language justice issue, but when you think about real adoption, one of the really important things I think we need to also remember is as I think it was Dana that mentioned this as well, we need to bring those who are affected into the solution. The problem is, you know, those who are already online are probably a little bit more familiar with English and can deal with this, but it is those that are not already online or those that are very new online. And one of the things about multilingual internet is that if you don’t realize it, multilingual internet actually makes for a safer internet for most people. One of the things that I like to, you know, use as an example is like my dad who, you know, is getting online now and, you know, asking me about phishing and all these issues. The first thing, whether I or any cybersecurity expert will tell you is that you need to look at the email address that sends you the email and look at the domain name or the URL that you’re trying to click into. This is the number one thing that any cybersecurity expert will talk about in terms of cybersecurity for those who are just coming online. And with, you know, domain names and email addresses in the language that they know, then their trusted services can actually send information to them in their language with the domain names and email addresses in the languages that they can be familiar with because a string of English characters mean nothing to them. And so a slight difference is very easy to miss, but if it is presented in the local language. That is why a multilingual Internet actually makes for a safer Internet for more people, especially that is coming online. So I think these are some of the things that needs to be in place when we think about it. And finally, before I close off, I think we also need to try to get them early. In order for the next generation of people to really think that, you know, I always think that, you know, universal acceptance is successful when one generation starts to think about why was multilingual domain names not available in the first place? That’s the right question. If we get to that world, we’re done. We’re not there yet. So we want to get them early. We need to have IDNs, we need to have multilingual domain names and email addresses. When people first learn about networking, when they first learn about DNS in high school or in first year of university, when they first learn about networking, they need to know this. So these are some of the technical challenges. How do we get it into the curriculum? How do we get, you know, make people understand that cybersecurity, multilingual Internet makes for a safer Internet? And also, how do we implement the variants into the hosting platforms, into the different technology platforms with a roadmap in place? I think these are the technical challenges that we’re still in front of us. But I think, you know, there are standards and universal acceptance work that is being done. But we need people to realize the roadmap and push forward with it.

Jasmine Ko: Thank you very much, Edmon. And now to Tijani, also on about the technical question about, because you have very extensive experience in ICANN, IGF, and regional Internet associations. How have the technical standards and protocols for multilingual… support evolved so far?

Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you, Jasmine. Before I answer your question, let’s draw your attention on the fact that we are speaking about universal acceptance. And we are lucky to have here in this room, sitting in the second row here, the man who invented this concept, Ram Mohan. Thank you, Ram. Coming back to the question, as everyone knows, informatics started with the American standard code for information interchange, the ASCII. The ASCII is a standard that is encoding 128 characters only. And it is only for one script, one language. The ASCII was extended to 256 to cover the letters with accents that are used in the European languages. In 1988, a draft of the text character encoding system called Unicode. The Unicode is a text encoding standard created and maintained by the Unicode Consortium, designed to support the world’s systems that can be digitized. The version of the Unicode was the version 16.0. Defines 154,998 characters, 168 scripts. So please, notice from where we came and where we are today, came from 128 characters for one single language, one single script, to today, almost 155,000 characters for 168 scripts. Each script may cover more than one language, as you know. It doesn’t work? So you hear me now? Okay, thank you. So, and please also know that the Unicode is ultimately able to encode more than 1.1 million characters. As you see, the multilingual content was made possible thanks to the Unicode standard, even before the internet was open for the public use. And here I wanted to make a difference between the multilingual content and the multilingual email addresses and domain names. The content was possible before it was used by people, before the internet was made possible for us to use. The issue of multilingual inclusion in the internet space doesn’t then concern the content, but how to reach this content in other scripts than the ASCII. The domain name system, the DNS, was originally designed to accept only ASCII characters. By the years, the necessity to have other scripts and domain names was also increasing. understood by the DNS became insistent. The internationalized domain names, everyone spoke about before me, was created to solve this issue, not by changing the DNS infrastructure to accept any script, but by creating an interface that translates the ASCII, that translates the original script to ASCII code to be understood by the DNS. And then the ASCII to be understood for the user, it’s also translated. So this is the way that the other scripts were accepted by the DNS. In October 2009, I can approve the creation of the internationalized domain name, the IDN, and began to implement it in 2018 through the ccTLD IDN fast track that he spoke about. The universal acceptance now is technical necessity to ensure that all valid domain names and email addresses, regardless of their script, their language, or their character length, can be equally accepted, validated, stored, processed, and displayed correctly and consistently by all internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems. The universal acceptance is considered as a fundamental requirement for the continued expansion of the internet. Thank you.

Jasmine Ko: First time, thank you very much to Tijani for sharing your experience. We have been talking about the technical protocols and standards, and moving on, we’ll be talking about implementation strategies. At the same time, I would love to hear from you about the future of the internet. Thank you. to introduce my co-moderator on site to the stage to continue the facilitation, Ms. Duar, from KSA IGF Place, Duaa T. Albalawi, to you.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Thank you so much, Jasmine, and I’m sorry, everyone, I was running a little bit late in one of the parliamentary track sessions, but better late than never. I would like to pose my next question to Mr. Fahad. How is ICANN supporting the implementation of multilingual solutions in emerging digital markets from your experience?

Fahd Batayneh: Any better? All right. Thanks, Duar. Thanks for your question. So, as I explained earlier at ICANN, our contribution to the digital ecosystem and all this digital transformation wave is really through domain names, whether in ASCII or even in local languages. Internationalized domain names is a really big part of our work. Much of the work has been done, probably little, I mean, there is still to be done. I mean, we never close the door on anything. And of course, when I say we, it’s really the ICANN community. So, ICANN, the organization, just facilitates these processes, but it’s really within the community where all the work happens, the registries, the registrars, even the registrants through the different constituencies at ICANN, and even the Internet Engineering Task Force, where the technical side of things, the protocols, the standards are developed. Now, again, as I mentioned in my previous intervention, and some of my colleagues on this panel mentioned universal acceptance of these of these. I mean, universal acceptance remains a key challenge. In order for us to be able to use all domain names and all email systems and all systems, we really need to push this whole concept of universal acceptance. We need these systems to actually understand whether this is a real domain name or not. So when I write a domain name in Arabic, is it real or is it just some kind of a fake ID? Just to maybe give you a little bit of maybe an imagination of what do we mean by universal acceptance? Let’s say you’re trying to open a bank account and maybe it asks you for a username and a password. Now, for some banks, for example, they would ask you for an email ID. So you just enter your email ID as the username, and then you can enter your password. Now, if I try to enter an Arabic email ID, would the system of the bank accept that? If I try to enter a password in Arabic, would the bank system understand that? In many cases, you can expect that the system won’t understand that. And this is where universal acceptance kicks in. And this is actually just one scenario. But I felt that maybe giving you an example of what we are talking about here is worth it. There is work underway at ICANN within a steering group called the universal acceptance steering group, the UASG. We do have members here in the room on the UASG. And the UASG is really more of a collective work. So it’s not ICANN working on it alone, or it’s not the registries working alone. It’s everybody who has something on the internet that universal acceptance can have some kind of effect or maybe impact on. So you would find companies like Microsoft, like Google, like Meta, like the registries, Verisign, Identity Digital. to registrars to cows go daddy actually contributing to the work of the USG it’s a collective collective effort. It’s not something that you find the solution to on the spot. There is a lot of effort going on, and I mean much has been covered more is yet to be covered.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Brilliant. Thank you so much, Mr Fahad, being mindful of the time here I’m going to direct the rest of the questions to the panelists if we can leave them the responses to one minute or a minute and a half, just so we can have the opportunity to take some interventions from from the floor. So Miss Krislin I’d like to pose this next question to you on some strategies that the Caribbean region and specific has employed to implement multilingual digital services and what were the key success strategies.

Krislin Goulbourne-Harry: Okay, thank you for that question. So in the Caribbean, we haven’t really dived into adoption as yet. Right, we are still in the learning process when it comes to universal acceptance, and particularly we are also embracing the fact that we are multilingual, to the point where some Caribbean islands have started to try to become islands that speak multiple languages. So we are still in the baby stages. So we are learning from others who have done it before and we’re also following the trends that are out there. So, for example, when we do, or UAD is what we would ask persons to do is to check if their websites are UA ready. So there is, there’s a there are tools available for example on the USG website that you can use to test whether or not your website is UA ready. that certain systems, maybe their email address is not, their email system, sorry, is not accepting EAI emails. Then we will try to look at ways that we can partner with maybe ISOC or other bodies to help us to guide our developers into making our systems, preparing them and making them UA ready. But one of the challenges that we’re having is while the technology is out there and it’s available, we have issues with marginalized regions, for example, and infrastructure, infrastructural divides. That is something we’re also tackling as we’re preparing for the global market. So with that, we also have another challenge, which is device being available to persons so that they can actually utilize the systems that are available. So in the Caribbean right now, while we are in the phase of stakeholder engagement, but we are driving public awareness as well, and we’re trying to basically move into adoption, but we have not reached the point where it is critical on our agenda, and which is why we are increasing the conversations, right? And maybe at some point we will be taking it to the policy level where maybe public websites will be mandated to be UA ready in order to facilitate certain types of trade. For example, as we open up to the, sorry, I’m taking a little long, I may finish up. open up to the global market, we do attract a lot of tourism. Oftentimes, persons will be required to register on a hotel’s website using their e-mail addresses. Very often, persons who are coming to the Caribbean are not necessarily ASCII character users, which means that they may have to create an e-mail address that is written in ASCII characters in order to register or book a hotel room in the Caribbean. That is one challenge. It does create a barrier and we are realizing that now, so which is why the talk has been increasing and we are getting there. Thank you.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Brilliant. Thank you so much, Chris. Lynn and I think you touched on quite a lot of important points and a lot of challenges that emerging communities and countries are currently facing, which really takes me to my next question, Ms. Dana. From your research perspective, what innovative policy approaches have you observed that effectively promote linguistic diversity in digital spaces? Again, I’m just going to ask you to keep it to a minute and a half, that would be great.

Dana Cramer: Just for the sake of time, I think that a lot of policies have already been spoken about through the panel. But one that I will note on is policies that can, when we want to have policy innovation, we need to, in addition to talking about domains and websites and e-mail, we need to talk about platforms. For example, how many of you online and in person sent a slew of e-mails today versus how many WhatsApp messages did you send? And trying to make sure we have multiple languages in WhatsApp, in different communications platforms and applications. And as new emerging technologies come through, how that can be utilized. That’s especially important as well for next generation, for youth, who might not be as prominent e-mail users because, of course, technologies are developed with new users in mind, so this tends to gear to more younger people. And so when we start to think about policy approaches and also engagement, for example, in having these discussions about UA, IDNs, et cetera, how we can also extend this to emerging technologies in different capacities. Thank you.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Thank you so much, Dana. I’m just going to move on very quickly to Mr. Edmund, who’s online today. If you could share some insights on .ages experience and implementing IDNs and making them a natural part of our Internet ecosystem. Thank you.

Edmon Chung: Thank you. Thank you for the question. I guess, in terms of trying to make it a natural part of the system, it really goes back to the word integrated, as I started with. Both the technology and how we think about it needs to be integrated rather than isolated, so it feels like it’s part of the ecosystem already. Building on what Dana just said, people say people don’t use email addresses or domain names anymore, but I still see lots of domain names being sent around in WhatsApp messages. Part of UA by design or an integrated design is that linkification, for example, making sure that in WhatsApp messages, the different domain names get linkified properly on WhatsApp or Signal or any other chat message platform. That’s part of integration. That’s the kind of integration that I’m talking about. It needs to be integrated and not an add-on. It should feel like it’s just native to that platform itself. That’s how we make the multilingual Internet into not anymore a second-class citizen. That’s, I think, an important part. Integration goes into a few other things as well. Integrating into what I mentioned earlier, networking 101 curriculum, high school, university education, integrating it into government procurement processes. of policy, for example, if government procurement processes requires IT systems to be universal acceptance ready, to be multilingual embracing, then we will see that happen. So again, integrating it into digital inclusion, integrating it into development initiatives, even Asian Development Bank work, the Belt and Road Initiative from China, all these infrastructure development work, it should integrate the multilingual internet into it natively. I think that’s gonna make a difference.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Brilliant, thank you so much, Mr. Edmon.. And I believe you ended on a brilliant note for us to transition to our open floor discussion. So we did want to discuss or touch on multi-stakeholder collaboration today. So if you have any questions that you would link to the, bring to the floor on the role of collaborative efforts between stakeholders and advancing digital inclusion, do feel free to bring those to the table. So if we can just hand the gentleman in the back a microphone.

Audience: even when you go and knock on people’s doors they might tell you well this is what’s in it for me and this was actually the issue in the early days. So in the early days, when you go and tell people there’s this thing called universal acceptance, they are like, well, who cares? Because back then, it was mostly English dominated. If you look at statistics, for example, when the WSIS 2005 outcomes came out, I think more than 90% of the content on the internet was actually in English. And more than 90% of internet users were English speakers or English native speakers. Today, the numbers are completely different. So even in terms of looking at the internet, things have changed. When we talk about bringing in the next billion internet users, it’s mostly from Asia and Africa, and these are non-English native countries on speakers. So, I mean, to summarize, the problem of universal acceptance is a very long journey. It has already started. The community has done a really good job in pushing things forward, but there’s much, much more to be done, really. So, I mean, to summarize, the problem of universal acceptance is a very long journey. It has already started. The community has done a really good job pushing things forward, and there’s much, much more to be done, really. host email addresses in Unicode. And I want to add something also as well, that universal acceptance is not only for IDNs or AIs, but also for the new generative level domain names. At the same time, the number of domain name registration for CCLDs may be two or three times the number of registration for GTLDs, whatever they are, legacy or new. So the origin of universal acceptance should start from organization as CCLD. Thank you.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Thank you so much. Tech team, can you just give me a thumbs up if our online participants can hear us? All right, great. So Mr. Edmund, I just want to give the floor back to you. I know the team on site here cannot see you, but I can assure you that they can hear you. So over to you, Edmund.

Edmon Chung: Yeah, sorry, I missed probably many of the questions and I caught part of it. Thank you. So I agree very much. And that’s why I think the new generation of developers need to know this natively. IDN email addresses in different languages should be part of the basic network 101 and not an add-on. And same with platforms. And as you mentioned, it’s not just about the different languages. It’s also about new GTLDs and how the internet itself expands. So multilingual is one aspect of it, but our internet needs to learn that domain names and email protocols could upgrade. And that requires network engineers and software developers to be aware of this quite natively and be aware of it and kind of implement it by design. Again, UA and IDN by design.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Brilliant. Thank you so much for your comments, Edmund. I would just like to call on on our online moderator to see if we have any questions in the chat that you would like to pose.

Audience: There is no question on the chat, but there are some comment. From the June, in the beginning, she mentioned about the Caribbean citizens may speak other languages, but the accepted language is English. Wherever I go in the Caribbean, English is spoken to me, despite Spanish being the country language. And also French, Spanish is the official language, but English is spoken and accepted. I speak from the experience having traveled to most of the Caribbean islands most of my life. There’s another comment from the June Paris as well. A language we always learn in the Caribbean at school and university. I study French and Spanish as a school in the 60s. Yeah, that’s all we are now receiving. And yeah, let me pass the floor back to the on-site moderator.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Brilliant, thank you so much. I think there was quite a couple of comments on the Caribbean summit. Ms. Chrislin, I just wanna see if maybe you have any comments or feedback on those statements.

Krislin Goulbourne-Harry: Okay, so in the Caribbean, it is correct. We are multilingual. We do, I agree with the commenter that says that we study multiple languages from even secondary, primary school levels, because that is just the nature of the Caribbean. We are a multilingual nation, right? But just to finalize, when we think of our content, And we’re trying to include different languages and also include our native languages, our Creole and our Patois. We have to consider that we would have to engage linguistic experts to ensure that the content is actually correct and also relevant. But not only that, we would also have to engage the community because our dialect is not necessarily something that can be interpreted by a regular linguistic expert. And it also comes with a lot of cultural aspects as well, which we have to make sure that the content that is out there is not only correct, but it is also relevant and it is a correct representation of who we are as a Caribbean nation. Thank you.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Thank you so much for that, Krislin. Audience, we are nearing the end of our session. We have six minutes left. So I would really like to call on our panelists here today to maybe give us in a few, you know, let’s say 35 seconds, your closing statements, and then we can depart. Thank you.

Krislin Goulbourne-Harry: Yes, it is critical that we embrace and accept the fact that universal acceptance is relevant to our community, whether or not we are aware of it, it is becoming a critical issue. And in the Caribbean, we are not going to sit and wait for it to come knocking on our doors. We are preparing ourselves. We are engaging. We are promoting, building awareness, and we are partnering with the different bodies around the world. the different international bodies, including other Caribbean islands as well, to ensure that we are, or we will be able to compete in the digital realm by embracing multilingualism and also accepting and adopting implementing universal acceptance. Thank you.

Dana Cramer: My closing remark has to do with the importance of engaging communities and bringing communities along to universal acceptance initiatives to ensure that communities who are affected need to be part of the conversation and part of the implementation as well. So that we can truly have a bottom-up approach instead of top-down in any of the components along that timeline of implementation. Thank you.

Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you. Now that we have solved the technical problems, now that the machines can support all scripts, now that the DNS can accept all the scripts also through the solutions that we found for them. Now that all these scripts can be accepted by all devices and applications on the Internet, do we have multilingual Internet? I know that the short answer is no, but even the longer answer is no. By 2024, we have almost 50 percent of the Internet content in English. I think this is a failure. We didn’t manage to make the Internet multilingual. despite the whole and the considerable effort, technical effort that was made to make all these technical issues solved. So I think that the problem is in the use of the internet. You may have an internet that accepts all scripts. But if you don’t produce content in those scripts, you will not make the internet multilingual. So I think that the main thing that we have to do, we have to make our communities to do is to produce local content in local languages. Thank you.

Fahd Batayneh: Thank you. So I’d really like to echo what Dina said about engagement. And I’d also like to add to the fact that universal acceptance is really a collective effort. Everybody has a say in it. Everybody has to be involved in it. Governments can play a really key role in actually developing policies and promoting policies that ensure that systems actually are multilingual, so they understand what characters are beyond the traditional ASCII. I also think end users have a very big role here. So rather than continuing to communicate and consume content maybe in English, try to start promoting your own language, your own content, because that’s really the way to make the internet. That’s one of the ways, at least, to make the internet really multilingual. Thank you.

Edmon Chung: Yeah. Should I go ahead? Over to you, Edmund. Oh, all right. So I guess I’ll just highlight, I think, that I do believe that the multilingual internet and meaningful connectivity, which means localized content as well as services, comes hand in hand. Some people say we don’t use the DNS. We don’t use domain names in email anymore. Maybe we use less of them. But I think it is the foundation for a multilingual internet. And I’ll give you this little piece of information or history trivia. The DNS itself, the English DNS, was put in place in 1983. Six years later, that was when the web was born, 1989. So all the infrastructure, email and DNS for English, was ready when the web came and created a lot of content that is English-driven. As Tijan, you mentioned, even today, we’re still almost 60% of the web’s language is in English. I think the foundation technologies, like domain names and email addresses, needs to be internationalized for meaningful access, meaningful local services, local brands and local language content to be expressed and developed. To close, I guess, as I repeat just two things, to make you remember, to address the issue, I think we need collaboration and integration. Collaboration among different stakeholders, technical, cybersecurity, content and services, including, as Dana mentioned, those who are most affected by the issue in the development of the solution. And then integration, not only technology, UA and IDN by design, but also policy integration, education, development initiatives. The collaboration and integration is going to be critical for us to really build a multilingual Internet. And finally, we have to make it a movement. In order for it to be a movement, we need to get the grassroots involved, as Dana mentioned and as I mentioned, to get the users involved, to get those who are most affected involved and understanding that this is going to make a difference for them as well.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Thank you so much, Edmon, and thank you so much to our two panelists. If I can just urge everyone up for a round of applause to our panelists here today. Thank you so much for your very insightful contributions and thank you so much to our online attendees. And of course, one final thank you to my co-moderators who helped put this together. Thank you guys so much, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening. you

Agreement Points

Importance of universal acceptance for multilingual internet

Fahd Batayneh

Krislin Goulbourne-Harry

Dana Cramer

Edmon Chung

Tijani Ben Jemaa

Challenges in implementing IDNs in the Middle East due to lack of local content

Caribbean region focusing on sensitization and awareness of universal acceptance

Need for meaningful inclusion of Indigenous populations in North America

Importance of language justice for true multilingual internet adoption

Need for universal acceptance of all valid domain names and email addresses

All speakers emphasized the critical importance of universal acceptance for achieving a truly multilingual internet, recognizing it as essential for digital inclusion and cultural representation.

Need for multi-stakeholder collaboration

Dana Cramer

Edmon Chung

Fahd Batayneh

Importance of engaging affected communities in developing solutions

Need for collaboration between technical, cybersecurity, content and service providers

Collective effort needed from all stakeholders to implement universal acceptance

Speakers agreed on the necessity of collaboration among various stakeholders, including affected communities, technical experts, and policymakers, to effectively implement universal acceptance and multilingual internet solutions.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized the importance of involving affected communities, particularly marginalized groups, in the development and implementation of universal acceptance initiatives.

Dana Cramer

Edmon Chung

Need for meaningful inclusion of Indigenous populations in North America

Necessity of grassroots involvement to create a movement for multilingual internet

Both speakers stressed the importance of integrating multilingual support natively into internet systems and infrastructure, rather than treating it as an add-on feature.

Fahd Batayneh

Edmon Chung

Implementation of IDNs to allow non-ASCII domain names

Importance of integrating multilingual support natively into systems

Unexpected Consensus

Multilingual internet as a language justice issue

Edmon Chung

Dana Cramer

Importance of language justice for true multilingual internet adoption

Need for meaningful inclusion of Indigenous populations in North America

While the technical aspects of universal acceptance were expected to be the focus, there was an unexpected consensus on framing multilingual internet as a language justice issue, emphasizing the social and cultural implications beyond mere technical implementation.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The speakers generally agreed on the importance of universal acceptance, the need for multi-stakeholder collaboration, and the significance of integrating multilingual support natively into internet systems. There was also a shared emphasis on involving affected communities in the development and implementation of solutions.

Consensus level

High level of consensus among speakers, with agreement on core principles and approaches. This consensus suggests a strong foundation for advancing multilingual internet initiatives, but also highlights the complexity of implementation across different regions and contexts.

Different Viewpoints

Current state of multilingual inclusion in different regions

Fahd Batayneh

Krislin Goulbourne-Harry

Dana Cramer

Challenges in implementing IDNs in the Middle East due to lack of local content

Caribbean region focusing on sensitization and awareness of universal acceptance

Need for meaningful inclusion of Indigenous populations in North America

The speakers highlighted different challenges and priorities in their respective regions regarding multilingual inclusion, reflecting varying stages of progress and unique cultural contexts.

Unexpected Differences

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement centered around regional priorities and approaches to implementing multilingual inclusion, rather than fundamental disagreements about its importance.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among speakers was relatively low. Most differences stemmed from varying regional contexts and stages of implementation rather than conflicting views on the importance of multilingual inclusion. This suggests a general consensus on the goal of universal acceptance, with differences primarily in implementation strategies based on local needs and challenges.

Partial Agreements

Both speakers agree on the importance of implementing multilingual support in internet systems, but they differ in their focus. Edmon Chung emphasizes native integration across various platforms, while Fahd Batayneh focuses specifically on domain names.

Edmon Chung

Fahd Batayneh

Importance of integrating multilingual support natively into systems

Implementation of IDNs to allow non-ASCII domain names

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized the importance of involving affected communities, particularly marginalized groups, in the development and implementation of universal acceptance initiatives.

Dana Cramer

Edmon Chung

Need for meaningful inclusion of Indigenous populations in North America

Necessity of grassroots involvement to create a movement for multilingual internet

Both speakers stressed the importance of integrating multilingual support natively into internet systems and infrastructure, rather than treating it as an add-on feature.

Fahd Batayneh

Edmon Chung

Implementation of IDNs to allow non-ASCII domain names

Importance of integrating multilingual support natively into systems

Key Takeaways

Universal acceptance and multilingual inclusion are critical for digital inclusion of diverse language communities

Technical standards like Unicode and IDNs have enabled multilingual content, but universal acceptance remains a challenge

Implementing multilingual solutions requires collaboration between multiple stakeholders and integration into existing systems

Local content production in native languages is essential for true multilingual internet

Engaging affected communities and raising awareness are important steps in promoting universal acceptance

Resolutions and Action Items

Develop roadmaps for implementing universal acceptance in different organizations and platforms

Integrate universal acceptance and IDNs into networking and IT curricula

Engage linguistic experts and local communities to ensure accurate content representation

Promote policies requiring universal acceptance readiness in government procurement processes

Unresolved Issues

How to increase local content production in non-English languages

Addressing infrastructure and device availability challenges in developing regions

Balancing efficiency with language inclusivity in digital systems

Ensuring universal acceptance on emerging technologies and platforms

Suggested Compromises

Implementing IDN variants to allow interchangeability of accented and non-accented characters

Focusing on sensitization and awareness in regions where universal acceptance is not yet a critical priority

I think it is very clear that we have learned that just the technical community or just the registries or just the hosting platforms is not enough. This is what collaboration, this is what multi-stakeholder collaboration means and this is what we need for a truly multilingual and meaningful access and also universal acceptance because only together we can actually do this.

speaker

Edmon Chung

reason

This comment highlights the critical importance of collaboration across different stakeholders to achieve true multilingual internet access, moving beyond just technical solutions.

impact

It shifted the discussion towards emphasizing multi-stakeholder approaches and collaboration throughout the rest of the session.

One element of universal acceptance in my country too is trying to resurrect previous Indigenous languages overall so that Indigenous populations can then grow with their linguistic capacity and reconnect with their past, their heritage, and understanding for the rest of Canadians and those who live in the colonial borders of Canada to be able to understand that there are multiple different words that we might have lost as describing our geography.

speaker

Dana Cramer

reason

This comment introduced the important perspective of using universal acceptance to preserve and revitalize endangered indigenous languages, connecting the technical discussion to cultural preservation.

impact

It broadened the conversation to include considerations of cultural heritage and reconciliation, not just technical implementation.

The unfortunate reality about the Arab region is that probably scientific decent good Arabic content is probably less than 1% of the content that is available online. Of course, if you look at the number of people who can speak the Arabic language, there are probably 800 million, 900 million. It’s a really large number. Content is not on the same percentage or on the same equivalence as the population.

speaker

Fahd Batayneh

reason

This comment highlighted the stark disparity between Arabic speakers globally and available Arabic content online, illustrating a key challenge in achieving true multilingual internet.

impact

It focused attention on the need for content creation in diverse languages, not just technical solutions for displaying different scripts.

I think as over the 20 years, what I have learned is that in order to get us over the hump, this needs to be thought of as really like a movement and I really believe that it’s kind of like a social movement. We need the groundswell of grassroots support but we also need those in quote unquote power to realize that they also need to take a step and therein lies what I start to call the language justice issue.

speaker

Edmon Chung

reason

This comment reframes the issue of universal acceptance as a social justice movement, emphasizing the need for both grassroots and top-down support.

impact

It elevated the discussion from purely technical considerations to framing it as a broader social and political issue requiring widespread engagement.

When deaf communities speak, sign language is prominently used, and there’s actually a lot of shortening of a sentence in order to get the language expressed. This isn’t always the case. Like, for example, if I were to sign in American Sign Language, which we use in Canada, I’ll say, my name is Dana for it. So I spell out each letter. However, for different types of words, like one that’s topical for this conference, for instance, of saying, I really need to use the toilet, you just do this, just a quick T.

speaker

Dana Cramer

reason

This comment brought attention to sign languages and how they differ from spoken languages, introducing a new dimension to the discussion of linguistic diversity and universal acceptance.

impact

It expanded the conversation to consider accessibility for deaf communities and the challenges of representing sign languages in digital spaces.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by broadening its scope from purely technical considerations to encompass cultural preservation, social justice, content creation, and accessibility for diverse linguistic communities including sign language users. They emphasized the need for multi-stakeholder collaboration and framed universal acceptance as a movement requiring both grassroots and institutional support. The discussion evolved from focusing on implementation challenges to considering the broader societal implications and potential of truly multilingual internet access.

How can we implement multilingual interfaces to help naturally switch between languages, including local languages?

speaker

Krislin Goulbourne-Harry

explanation

This is important for enabling Caribbean users to access content in both official and local languages like Creole and Patois.

How can we ensure meaningful inclusion of Indigenous populations in the development of Universal Acceptance initiatives?

speaker

Dana Cramer

explanation

This is crucial for ensuring bottom-up processes and avoiding top-down approaches that may not fully address Indigenous needs.

How can we integrate Universal Acceptance and Internationalized Domain Names into basic networking and computer science curricula?

speaker

Edmon Chung

explanation

This is important for making multilingual internet concepts native to the next generation of developers and engineers.

How can we integrate multilingual internet considerations into broader development initiatives and infrastructure projects?

speaker

Edmon Chung

explanation

This is important for ensuring multilingual internet is considered in large-scale development efforts.

How can we address the challenge of producing more local content in local languages?

speaker

Tijani Ben Jemaa

explanation

This is critical for truly making the internet multilingual, beyond just solving technical issues.

How can governments develop and promote policies to ensure systems are multilingual and understand characters beyond ASCII?

speaker

Fahd Batayneh

explanation

This is important for driving adoption of Universal Acceptance at a policy level.

How can we create a social movement around language justice in the digital space?

speaker

Edmon Chung

explanation

This is important for building grassroots support and involving those most affected by language barriers online.

Summary

This discussion focused on addressing the challenges of digital sovereignty in developing and least developed countries, particularly in Africa. Participants explored the complexities of data localization, cross-border data flows, and the balance between national security and economic growth.

Key challenges identified included high infrastructure costs, unreliable electricity supply, limited technical expertise, and cybersecurity risks. The importance of data classification was emphasized, distinguishing between sensitive data that should be localized and less sensitive data that could be stored internationally. Participants stressed the need for harmonized policies and regulations at regional and continental levels to facilitate cross-border data flows while protecting national interests.

The discussion highlighted the potential economic benefits of local data centers, including job creation, skills development, and fostering local innovation. However, concerns were raised about the high costs and technical requirements for establishing and maintaining such facilities. The role of public-private partnerships and collaboration with global tech companies was seen as crucial for addressing these challenges.

Participants emphasized the need for capacity building, particularly in developing local technical expertise and training policymakers. The importance of institutional memory and continuity in policy implementation was also discussed. The potential of renewable energy sources, such as solar power, for powering data centers was noted as a solution to energy challenges.

The discussion concluded with calls for action, including signing relevant international conventions, implementing smart regulations that balance localization with cross-border data flows, and utilizing new assessment metrics for cybersecurity readiness. Overall, the session underscored the complex interplay between digital sovereignty, economic development, and international collaboration in the rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– Challenges of implementing data localization and digital sovereignty in developing countries, including infrastructure costs, lack of technical expertise, and energy/resource constraints

– Balancing digital sovereignty with cross-border data flows to enable economic growth and innovation

– Need for harmonized policies and regulations around data governance at regional and continental levels

– Importance of building local capacity and skills to manage data centers and digital infrastructure

– Classifying different types of data to determine appropriate levels of localization vs. cross-border sharing

The overall purpose of the discussion was to explore the challenges and potential solutions for implementing digital sovereignty and data localization policies in developing countries, particularly in Africa, while still enabling economic growth and innovation.

The tone of the discussion was largely collaborative and solution-oriented. Speakers shared challenges from their countries and regions, but focused on proposing practical approaches and policy recommendations. There was a sense of urgency around the need to build local capacity and infrastructure, balanced with pragmatism about the current reliance on global tech companies and cross-border data flows. The tone became more optimistic towards the end as speakers discussed emerging opportunities and called for coordinated action.

Speakers

– Jimson Olufuye: Chair of the advisory council of Africa ICT Alliance (AFICTA), Principal consultant at Contemporary Consulting Limited

– Ulandi Exner: Chairperson of AFICTA, IT consultant

– Kossi Amessinou: Director of Economic Activities in the Republic of Benin

– Melissa Sassi: Works in financial services and tech innovation

– Toshikazu Sakano: From Advanced Telecommunication Research Institute (ATR) in Japan, works on ICT for disaster countermeasures

– Martin Koyabe: Regional manager for Africa for the Global Forum for Cyber Expertise (GFCE)

– Mary Uduma: Coordinator of West African IGF

– Rachael Shitanda: Deputy chair of AFICTA, CEO of Pamba Tech

– Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi: Director General of National Information Technology Development Agency in Nigeria

Additional speakers:

– Berhard Fares: Student from Indonesia studying digital sovereignty at Tsinghua University

Digital Sovereignty in Developing Countries: Challenges and Opportunities

This discussion, organized by AFICTA (Africa ICT Alliance) in preparation for the Global IGF 2024 in Saudi Arabia, focused on addressing the challenges of digital sovereignty in developing and least developed countries, with a particular emphasis on Africa. Participants explored the complexities of data localization, cross-border data flows, and the delicate balance between national security and economic growth.

Key Challenges of Digital Sovereignty

Several significant challenges were identified in implementing digital sovereignty and data localization policies in developing countries:

1. Infrastructure and Resources:

– High infrastructure and capital costs for establishing local data centers (Ulandi Exner)

– Unreliable electricity supply and water resources for data center operations (Ulandi Exner)

– Limited local technical expertise to manage and maintain data centers (Ulandi Exner)

2. Data Management and Security:

– Lack of understanding about where data is actually stored and who has access (Ulandi Exner)

– Cybersecurity risks and the need for robust data protection measures (Ulandi Exner)

– Recent issues with Nigerian banks’ core banking applications highlighting the importance of digital sovereignty (Mary Uduma)

3. Policy and Regulation:

– Legal and regulatory challenges with cross-border data sharing (Mary Uduma)

– Need for harmonized policies and regulations at regional and continental levels (Martin Koyabe)

Balancing Digital Sovereignty and Economic Growth

A central theme of the discussion was the need to balance digital sovereignty with the benefits of cross-border data flows:

1. Data Classification:

– Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi emphasized the importance of data classification to determine what information should be localized and what can be stored internationally.

– Jimson Olufuye advocated for smart regulation that distinguishes between classified government data and commercial data.

2. Economic Opportunities:

– Melissa Sassi highlighted that cross-border data flows enable innovation and economic opportunities.

– Dr. Toshikazu Sakano stressed the importance of local data centers for economic growth and job creation, noting the layered structure of internet and business.

3. Government Needs:

– Kossi Amessinou pointed out the government’s need for data to collect taxes and provide services effectively.

Proposed Solutions and Recommendations

Participants offered various solutions and recommendations to address the challenges of digital sovereignty:

1. Capacity Building and Skills Development:

– Multiple speakers emphasized the need for developing local technical expertise and building capacity across various stakeholders.

– Dr. Toshikazu Sakano highlighted the opportunity for data centers to help grow local engineering talent.

2. Policy Harmonization:

– Martin Koyabe and Mary Uduma stressed the importance of harmonized regional and continental data policies to facilitate cross-border data flows while protecting national interests.

3. Infrastructure Development:

– Jimson Olufuye shared a practical example of using solar power to run data centers continuously for ten years in Nigeria, addressing energy challenges in developing countries.

– Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi mentioned working with hyperscalers to establish local zones or data centers in Nigeria.

4. Incentives for Innovation:

– Melissa Sassi suggested the need for incentives to encourage local tech innovation while engaging in global markets.

Importance of Multi-stakeholder Engagement

Several speakers emphasized the critical role of multi-stakeholder cooperation in addressing digital sovereignty challenges:

1. Mary Uduma highlighted the need for collaboration between government, private sector, and civil society in developing data governance frameworks.

2. Martin Koyabe stressed the importance of involving all stakeholders in policy development and implementation.

3. Jimson Olufuye emphasized the role of organizations like AFICTA in facilitating dialogue and cooperation among different sectors.

Thought-Provoking Insights

Several comments sparked deeper reflection on the complexities of digital sovereignty:

1. Ulandi Exner questioned whether we truly know where our data is stored, challenging fundamental assumptions about data control.

2. Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi expanded the concept of digital sovereignty beyond data, including operations, infrastructure, and talent sovereignty.

3. A student participant raised the need for a clear, globally accepted definition of digital sovereignty.

Conclusion and Future Directions

The discussion concluded with calls for action, including implementing smart regulations that balance localization with cross-border data flows, and utilizing new assessment metrics for cybersecurity readiness, such as the tcmm.africa tool mentioned by Jimson Olufuye. The session underscored the complex interplay between digital sovereignty, economic development, and international collaboration in the rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Key areas for further exploration include:

1. Developing strategies to retain skilled professionals in developing countries

2. Leveraging renewable energy sources for local data centers

3. Implementing effective cross-border data flow agreements to address cybersecurity concerns

4. Creating globally accepted definitions and measurement tools for digital sovereignty

These questions reflect the ongoing challenges and opportunities in achieving digital sovereignty in developing countries, emphasizing the need for continued dialogue and collaborative solutions.

Jimson Olufuye: Apologies for the late start of this workshop. Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim. Greetings and welcome to Afikta workshop on addressing the challenges of digital sovereignty in developing and least developed countries. Under the sub-theme, improving digital governance for the internet we want. Under the over-hacking theme, building a multi-stakeholder digital future. My name is Jimson Olufuye. I will be the online moderator for this session. And I happen to be the chair of the advisory council of Africa City Alliance, Afikta. Briefly about Afikta. Afikta is a consigned private sector led alliance of high city associations, companies and professional individuals in Africa. It was founded in 2012 with six country membership but now in more than 40 countries in Africa. Our vision is to fulfill the promise of the digital age for everyone in Africa. And to do that we collaborate with the African Union, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the African governments, especially the government of the Arab Republic of Egypt, and the federal government of Nigeria to the Federal Ministry of Communication and Information and Digital Economy, Innovation and Digital Economy. And with this agency, the Nigerian Communication Commission and the National Information Technology Development Agency. And we have the privilege to have with us the DG of the National Information Technology Development Agency. You are most welcome. And this is done in the spirit of multi-stakeholder. engagement, which is the bedrock of Internet governance, as outlined in the Tunis Agenda of the World Summit on Information Society, 2005, which I can say is an outcome of WSIS. For my day job, I’m the principal consultant at Contemporary Consulting Limited based in Abuja. We help organizations achieve their digitalization and cybersecurity goals. I would like to thank the host, our host, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for hosting the Global IGF 2024. As someone who witnessed firsthand Saudi Arabia delegation’s opposition to multi-stakeholder engagement during the concluding stage of the CSTD Working Group in 2018, I’m really personally thrilled that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is indeed hosting all of us and welcoming all stakeholders, that is the government, private sector, civil society, the academic and technical communities, to Riyadh. So I say salaam alaikum. Thank you for hosting us. Shukran. My co-onsite moderator speaker is Dr. Martins Koyabi, the regional manager for Africa for the Global Forum for Cyber Expertise, and online moderator is Ms. Rachel Jitanda, the deputy chair of AFICTA. Our rapporteurs are Ms. Tanye Kemabunta, Coyote Uyemi, and Shegum Omolosho. In this important session, which is entitled Addressing the Challenges of Digital Sovereignty in Developing and Least Developed Countries, we’re going to I have three rounds, a round of 25 minutes each for this each section and in the first round I’ll be asking our speakers the first policy question and just before your answers please you quickly introduce yourself and your designation and affiliation and then you go to the subject matter. When it’s three minutes I’ll give a thumbs up and you begin to be able to conclude. Well the issue of digital sovereignty is a very very crucial one, very very important and it’s much more important because why Africa constitutes about 17% of global population. Our presence with regard to data center and digital space about 1% and so we need to address the issue of meeting up even with our own industries, localizing our data and ensuring that we participate in over 4.3 trillion digital economy of the world. So without much ado I would like to throw in the first policy question, first and foremost let me just mention that yes we also have this other speaker with us, Ms. Ulandi Esna that’s the chair of AFICTA, she’s online. Chair, are you online? Please say hello if you are online.

Ulandi Exner: Good morning or good afternoon, Dr. Jemson. Can you hear me? Excellent. I’ve also just switched my video on.

Jimson Olufuye: Yeah, we can hear you loud and clear. Please, if you are speaking, please turn on your video. And we also have Mr. Kosi Amesino, the Director of Economic Activities in the Republic of Benin. Dr. Kosi, you’re most welcome. Say hello. We also have with us Dr. Melissa Sassi. Dr. Melissa Sassi, are you online? And we also have Jane Covene. Is Jane around? Jane? Okay, maybe she will join us soon. And we also have with us my friend, Dr. Toshikazu Sakano, Director of ATR in Japan. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you very much. And we also have with us Dr. Martins Koyabe, who I mentioned earlier. Dr. Koyabe. And Mrs. Mary Uduma. Where is she? She’s here. Yes, please. Mrs. Mary Uduma, coordinator of West African IGF. Please. And again, we have our DG there. She’s our special guest of honor. All right, so I’ve recognized Mr. Kerem Abuta on the line. Mr. Kerem Abuta, can you say hello if you are there? Or any of the secretarial people for the rapporteuring? Secretariat, can you say hello, if you can hear me? Okay, I can see them online, but I believe they can hear me. All right, so straight to the point, the first policy question. And our chair will be taking the first response to this. In the light of most developing and least developed countries lacking the capacity of hosting their huge data generated locally, and considering the importance of digital sovereignty to the development and security of an economy, please, I would like the key challenges encountered by stakeholders in developing and least developed countries in the implementation of local servers and the adoption of data localization policy using South African experience or case study, and also answer the second one, that what practical solution can you propose to address the challenges faced, say, in your country? Ms. Ulanda, the chair of AFICTA, you have the floor, please.

Ulandi Exner: Thank you so much, Dr. Jemson, and also just by way of introduction, as you’d already mentioned, I’m the chairperson of AFICTA. I’m not going to provide the background on AFICTA because, Dr. Jemson, you’ve done so already. Also, just in terms of my day job, the one that pays the bills, because, you know, we do a lot out of passion. I’m an IT consultant. I serve on various governance structures and boards within the public sector, so I also hope to be bringing some of my experiences and the challenges that I experience in terms of the questions that I’ve posed. in the context of, well, in the South African context. So, just in terms of some of the key challenges that I have, and Doc, I’ve also got my time going here so that I don’t go over time, and I respect the time for other members as well. Some of the key challenges that we specifically also find in South Africa, and I’m sure it is very relevant throughout Africa, is the high infrastructure and capital costs. It isn’t easy to build data centers. We have some amazing and incredible data centers in South Africa, but it requires huge amounts of investment. And obviously, as a country, you need to be attractive to investors so that they can, local investment or foreign investment, provide the capital for those infrastructure costs. We also are battling terribly in South Africa with electricity challenges. We’ve had some reprieve in the last several months in terms of electricity. So, electricity is a lot better, but with that specific challenge, that means we need backup power. Backup power is expensive because it’s the cost of diesel and fuel to maintain that power. So, and we’re also battling, at the moment in South Africa, we’re experiencing water shortages. We haven’t had, in Johannesburg, for example, we haven’t had our summer rainfall and our dams are running very low on water. So, there’s water restrictions and you also need water for cooling. So, it’s really the cost around the capital. There’s also something which we battle with in our context is the limited technical expertise. We don’t have the required expertise to run huge data centers, to manage the data centers, to secure the data centers. So, that is some of the challenges that we’re experiencing. We do have good regulatory and legal frameworks. in terms of data sovereignty within our country. So as far as information is concerned, we have what is, which is very similar to the GDPR in the European Union. We have what is called PAPIR, which is the Protection of Personal Information Act. And basically, if our data or personal data has to reside in other country other than South Africa, it has to comply with privacy standards, which is either equal to our own or better. So that is pretty much how we’ve addressed some of the regulatory and legal frameworks. Some of the other challenges include the cybersecurity risks and data protection. We also have limited access to global technology providers. So those are just some of the instances of some of the challenges that we experience in terms of the digital sovereignty in South Africa. Doctor, you’ve also indicated, see, I’ve got about 20 seconds left, just how we would deal with some of those challenges at a very high level. Very quickly, we would need hybrid and multi-cloud approaches just to ensure data residency. We need a stronger data sovereignty framework. And we also need local data centers and co-location in terms of data sovereignty. Chair, I will pause now to give the floor back to you. And I’m happy to take further questions at the next round. Thank you, Chair.

Jimson Olufuye: Thank you very much, our distinguished Chair. That was quite a lot packed in three and a half minutes. Thank you very much. Doctor Kosi, Benin, move up. total to write in the global Cybersecurity index. Oh, maybe you don’t have any other challenges anymore. Do you see our challenges like South Africa?

Kossi AMESSINOU: Thank you, we have more challenge the data center is also a challenge for us We know our country have many cultural Experience to check how many video we have today in Benin two days for voodoo days, for example Every year you have two day for voodoo days. We need to bring all the video Put it available for everyone and let people know our culture very well For that we need data center for this time you have just one data center We need to have another one another big data center, but we need data center We take a solar technology for example to let us Use energy very well because energy also is a challenge for us. We need energy because before use Internet if we don’t have energy we can’t have internet but Energy before water after and we can talk about internet In the third time now what our challenge Data produce it Get it available for everyone. They secure also the accessible Accessible to enter to that data. We have public information also for everyone All our public service public service today is online More of them is online. It’s only the data center People need to access on them. We have one ID for each people in Benin now to access to all your public information you need. You have your ID, we call FID, we do it with a project called WURI. We have WURI project here in the booth here in Riyadh. You can go to our booth and see their action, what we do for our population. Every person in Benin have today one ID, using their all information online. You can ask anything to government, you can ask private people, you can ask civil society, you can ask everything you need to. Maybe with tax, you need to pay your tax, you need to provide also your ID. That is information I want to share this time. Wow, that’s quite impressive. You mean everyone in Benin has ID, national ID?

Jimson Olufuye: That’s quite impressive. Okay, good. Let’s move to Dr. Melissa Sassi. Thank you, Dr. Melissa, because I know you have to wake up very early in the U.S. to join us. You’ve always provided excellent advisory, best practice, using the U.S. experience to enlighten us more on the approach, the regulation in terms of what citizens need to do. Please, what is your view about this? Data sovereignty, a view of how the U.S. is taking data sovereignty very seriously. Thank you, Dr. Sassi.

Melissa Sassi: Exactly, exactly. So I spend a lot of my time working with highly regulated industries. So, you know, financial services is really my focus right now. And, you know, if you think about the kind of data that is collected, you know, no one wants their, you know, sensitive data, you know, in the hands of nefarious characters. Right. So I think, you know, from my perspective, and I put some slides together, but I won’t share my screen just in light. of time, you know, I kind of look at things from a few different perspectives. I look at it in terms of security, you know, privacy, residency, and, you know, kind of the ownership structure, if you will, of the data center. And I kind of also think about it from the perspective of, you know, what’s the impact of, you know, having a, you know, local data center. And in my mind, it’s kind of bigger than just looking at it from a sovereignty perspective. It’s also kind of thinking about what impact on economic growth those data centers, you know, would have in local communities. You know, what it might bring in terms of infrastructure, you know, development, social benefits, you know, support, you know, of local authorities, if you will, you know, in the form of, let’s say, you know, tax revenues for that sales use income, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, those are, I think, some of the some of the pros. You know, I think it gives, you know, local communities or local government, you know, local, you know, people, companies, what have you, you know, increased autonomy, you know, control over their digital ecosystem. And that, you know, kind of ensures, you know, a reduced reliance on, you know, external entities. Naturally, assuming you’ve got the right technical infrastructure set up, you’ve got the right skills, you know, folks who are managing that data center, you have an enhanced, you know, security. And as I mentioned, skills, you know, leads to jobs, blah, blah, blah. But lots of challenges. And I’ve heard some folks, you know, already share some of those, you know, in many cases, many of our communities across the continent or, you know, any other developing countries, there’s inadequate access to reliable internet, communication technologies, even electricity. And it, you know, kind of requires a dependence on, you know, foreign tech. And, you know, in many cases, reliance on, you know, international tech companies. And again, that kind of connects into skills, it could connect into you know, budget access to funding, you know, as one of our colleagues mentioned, running a data center is not, you know, it’s expensive and it takes a lot to stand up a data center, to run that data center. You know, lots of innovation I think is happening, you know, and people I think are looking at the role of, you know, green hydrogen or all of the many innovations that, you know, are possible to bring down the cost of running a data center. But it also kind of, I think, could bring, you know, kind of an overemphasis on, you know, localization and, you know, I’m big on partnership, you know, so what role does, you know, having such stringent, you know, policies, you know, in place, how does that impact collaboration? You know, does it bring more innovation or does it stifle innovation? I think the vote is probably still out on, you know, many of those things, but I think, you know, truth be told, we have, you know, big skills gaps across, you know, many of our countries, including, you know, the developed world. I, you know, I’m not sure where I personally stand, to be honest, I think, when I think about my data, you know, I’d like it to, you know, I’d like to understand where it’s going, whether it’s, you know, be, you know, everything is, you know, being handled appropriately, whether it’s in, you know, in use, in flight, whether it’s being stored. And I think that that same, you know, safety and security needs to be applied, you know, elsewhere. I look forward to seeing, you know, kind of how the world is going to continue to evolve. And I also look forward to seeing more, you know, locally grown countries, especially, or companies, especially, you know, you know, tech ventures. We often think about, you know, innovation coming from the Valley. I think tomorrow is where we see, and even today and yesterday, innovation coming from the village. So, thank you, and let’s go build those villages.

Jimson Olufuye: That’s great. Thank you for that encouragement, that focusing on the… digital sovereignty empowers local businesses and local interests. You also mentioned the issue of collaboration and partnership. And I know Dr. Martin is very vast in the area of collaboration, really capacity development, as has been mentioned. Has GFCE been progressing concerning, you know, handling these challenges? Dr. Martin?

Martin Koyabe: First of all, thank you so much. As introduced earlier, my name is Dr. Martin, and I am involved with GFCE within Africa. Let me shed some light, as my previous colleagues have already shed light on the challenges, but more importantly be guided by the current statistics that we have. When you look at Africa today, we have roughly about just below 100 data centers that are probably of Tier 3, Tier 4 and above. When you look again within Africa, we are not using or optimizing what we call renewable energy in terms of really making sure that we conserve on energy, as alluded by our chair in South Africa and also with Benin, as an example of where energy, we don’t use renewables. I know we have a lot of solar, but on record, I know that there are few countries that do have renewable energy, that are using renewable energy for data center running and so forth. So again, when you look at Africa in terms of its capacity building, which is where we sit, we’ve seen there is a comment that has come out on the skill sets of individuals who can run data centers. So we find the capacity to be able to have skilled engineers to be able to work within data centers is a little bit limited within the continent. Not because we don’t have people, it’s just because we don’t have… the favorable conditions, maybe whether it is incentives that we give to these individuals for them to remain in that particular market. But where I see specific challenges that we’ve seen within the continent is things like, for example, the barriers to international trade. We are seeing that when you have data localization, the rules might be tighter, and therefore what happens is that multinational companies might find it a little bit of a problem to trade within those particular countries. And this is a challenge, which requires also integration so that we can be able to work across borders. In fact, we were in a session this morning talking about borderless Africa, especially when it comes to data. And of course, we can’t be able to have cross-border data transfers because of the trust levels that we have. Infrastructure is not built with our neighbors to the level that we want to trust them in that sense. There’s also the restriction around fragmentation of the market. And here, we are looking at two areas. So there’s one where we look at the isolation in terms of the global market, that is restriction of policies within the least developed countries and developing countries participating in the global digital economy. We are also seeing there is an increased operational cost, meaning that localization requires or rather leads to sometimes inefficiencies, which we don’t use in our own countries. And that sometimes can lead to operational cost. And then the last thing that I really wanted to point out as a barrier that we are seeing is the issue around the impact on the small businesses and startups. I think it has been mentioned here. Let’s look at the statistics. In Africa today, nearly most of the economies of Africa, 75% of their GDP depends on small to medium enterprises. So if that sector is impacted by any of what we are saying here, whether it’s data localization fragmentation of markets, then we are already impacting economically in those particular economies. And I can see two areas. One is the issue around startups will struggle to meet the localization requirements, for example, because it’s very restrictive or very high to afford. Then we also have the issue around limited access to global platform, because by that time when you localize and you don’t provide a platform, then you’re limiting the marketing of this particular startup. So that’s an inhibiting factor. But there could be a light at the end of the tunnel. So what are we trying to do based on what we said? So the first thing we see here is there’s a need for harmonizing policy. We’ve just had a discussion around Africa having a continental data policy that can be adopted by many regions and countries. So there’s a need to harmonize. But even in harmonization, we are calling for what we call layered harmonization. For example, let’s make sure that the infrastructure in ECOWAS countries is up to standard, so that we can be able to build the data centers. Let’s make sure we have a strategy for data centers in terms of the green data centers, which we don’t have a framework in the continent. Let’s have also something that says we have the top-level domain names being used within the countries that we’re talking about. So therefore, the layered approach is so significant. And then the other one is the area around capacity building. And the GFCE, we’ve taken a deliberate and very purposeful approach to actually look at the bottom-up approach. So we are looking at the middle-tier management to train them so that they can have a south-to-south interaction, to bring the experts within the south-to-south collaboration to help converge the development and making sure that we have solutions. I’ll give an example. If there is an engineer in Benin who is well known in doing something, I’m not saying my colleague here, but somebody in Benin. and this person, he or she, has the expertise that we require, then this person can be very useful, one, within the ECOWAS region, or we can take that person to the southern area to be able to help other countries. So the south to south interaction in terms of experience is something that we want to do. The two other points that I want to say, just before I put on the mic, is the PPP. We have to exploit the public-private partnership because the PPPs bring what we call the expertise, the investment, and more importantly, they will be able to solve the problem of this inhibiting of data moving from one country to another and also making sure that countries are able to have proper ecosystem for startups. And then lastly, encourage innovation so that we don’t stifle it. Thank you.

Jimson Olufuye: Fantastic public-private partnership, layered regulation, regulatory framework. We’d be interested in hearing how is it in Japan in terms of data center management, data sovereignty, localization. How is the regime like in terms of business data, citizen data? Are they primarily in Japan or they are outside Japan? Dr. Sakano, please, kindly intervene. Thank you very much, my friend.

Toshikazu Sakano: My name is Toshikazu Sakano from ATR. ATR is Advanced Telecommunication Research Institute based in Kyoto, Japan. And I’m now working for research and development of the ICT for disaster countermeasure. But in the past, I used to work for NTT, the biggest telecom company in Japan. And let me introduce about the data handling. I experienced in NTT, about 2000, 2000 to 2005, NTT Communication, NTT Communication is one of group companies of NTT, and I used to work for that company. In that company, the company has many data centers worldwide, and our company’s data was stored in a data center in Japan, but also in the west coast of the United States, and this data center was interconnected using a submarine optical fiber cable with over 10 gigabit per second, or something like that. So once company created the data, the data is stored in the data center in Japan, but at the same time, the data is transferred to a thousand kilometer away in the west coast data center for security and many other ways. Why we could do that is the west coast data center in the United States was owned and operated by NTT. So the distance and the country, we don’t care. Who is operating, or who owns the data center is a very important issue. And actually, another story, actually 2011, Japan got a big earthquake, and maybe over 20,000 people were dead because of that big earthquake. And at that time, over one million people died. 1.5 million telephone lines are disrupted all the way because of tsunami, big wave. And people in that disaster-afflicted areas, they could not use telephone, but also they could not access to the internet anymore. Under that situation, people were struggling to make their living and looking for missing people and that kind of thing they are doing. So after that big earthquake, I created the new idea of quickly restore the local communication. That we call MDRU, Movable and Deployable Resource Unit, for quick restoration of telephone services. And after that, we moved to not only telephone, but also internet-like services, quick restoration, called LUX, Locally Accessible Cloud System. That kind of system we proposed to ITU-TE and many things I have done. So in the course of proposing and research and development of ICT for disaster recovery, the standalone, very small local cloud system is very useful in very isolated areas. So the data there are localized? Yeah, data is localized. That is one solution. So here is big data center and localized standalone system. So you need to collaborate between big data center and local systems to solve the problem related to… Thank you very much. This is one thing. Thank you.

Jimson Olufuye: Very good. So there’s need to collaborate. There’s need to collaborate. And as a Nigerian, I can see that even in a regulatory framework in Nigeria. Perhaps, Madam Mary, I’m sure the DG, who is the authority in this area, they are the one that gave back to data governance regime in Nigeria and ensuring that data is protected with a lot of regulation and so on and so forth. So, you will intervene later in terms of rounding off, so to speak. But, Ma’am, what is your view? How has Nigeria fared concerning data sovereignty?

Mary Uduma: Thank you. I want to start by telling a story. What happened to us in September. September this year, September, October. In Nigeria, we experienced collapse of and it was a bombing of the financial sector data. So, at a point, you couldn’t access your account because there was issue of security. So, for security reasons, we were not able to access. And I think one was even hacked. One of the banks. I won’t mention the name. I think one of them was hacked. Even the DG was startled and was really concerned about what was happening at that time. And even up to now, there are still banks that are still experiencing some difficulties, right? In localization of data, their system, their data services. We don’t know. I don’t know whether they are hosting all their data locally. or there are some that are not hosted locally. Then NIRA, Nigeria Internet Registration Association, the managers of .ng, in September, October, their machine just stopped working. And some of our websites went down. The website of Nigeria Internet Registration Association, the Nigeria Internet Governance Forum, Ndukwe Kalo Foundation, we are all being hosted by the NIRA data center. So we couldn’t access our network. We couldn’t access our website. So that’s a question for me. Does it work to have it totally nationally located, or do we do plan B as they did for redundancy? That’s one. We have tried in Nigeria, but we are supposed to solve that problem. I also want to look at the demand side. When we don’t have enough data generated within the community or within the nation, we cannot attract the big investors to bring in the big data center. So I don’t know what the volume, the big data you have, that will attract the big data service providers so that we have data center that will accommodate all of us. So as a factor, I think we should look at the demand side of data in our countries in Africa. What happens to that demand side? And again, statistics, let’s do research. Let’s do a lot of research in this, and then we can sell it. We can sell this research, saying to the entity. Yes, asking them that we have enough data generated in our countries, please come and invest, you will see it, and they will come, investing in our countries. Again, there should be international policy by the government to say that our data should remain our data, should remain localized, but there must be a lot of redundancy within all collaboration, as we have listened to, and capacity building, as Martin has said, both for the engineers and the policy makers. We need to build the capacity of the policy makers, and we need to build the capacity of the legislators as well. Thank you.

Jimson Olufuye: Excellent. Excellent. Thank you so much. We need to have real redundancy, very, very important. And we are happy that Dr. Sakano is here, Japan, we invest in the regional data center that will be located in Nigeria, so we have the DG here, so investors are welcome. So this brings us to the end of round one. It’s not working. It’s not working? Okay. Okay, this is working, all right. So this brings us to the end of round one, and I’m going to hand over to my online moderator, the deputy chair of AFICTA, Richard Chitanda, to take the second policy question. Ms. Rachel?

Rachael Shitanda: Hello, everyone. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. James. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Jameson, for the warm welcome and also for a very good moderated first session. My name is Rachel Chitanda. I’m the deputy chair for AFICTA, currently based in Nairobi, Kenya. I am a… In my daytime job, I’m a CEO for a company called Pamba Tech. So I’m excited to be here today and also to moderate this session. And so we’ll dive in right to our next question. To our panelists, how can the DLDC’s balance objective of digital sovereignty with the benefits of cross-border data flows for the economic growth and innovation as we are addressing the challenges of digital sovereignty and data localization? I think we have already mentioned a bit of this in the session about localization of data and how cross-border data can affect economic growth. But I want for us to dive a bit deeper into the conversation and discuss that. I will start with our first speaker, our chair, Madam Yolande Ekster.

Ulandi Exner: Thank you so much, moderator, as well as my deputy chair, Olufiksa. While I was listening to some of our members, I have some comments and recommendations in terms of how we can address, how we can balance the objectives of digital sovereignty with the benefits of cross-border data flow. But while I was listening to some of the comments mentioned and some of the discussion points, something that really does concern me and is something that we really have to perhaps get a handle on is, do we actually know where our data is located? So yes, we are talking about infrastructure. We’ve got data centers internationally or locally. But do we, can we hang on hard, say that we know where our data is stored? As soon as we submit our data, whether it’s it’s being for government submissions or even personal. Do we as individuals know that our data is being stored locally or it’s being stored internationally? So that’s just one of the concerns that I have in terms of whether we really know where our data resides and who has access to our data? Who is responsible for that data? Who has ownership of that data? Who’s the custodian of the data? So that’s just something that’s been rattling my mind. I mean, it has been rattling my mind for quite some time, but it’s just brought it to the fore again now. So, and that is why it is very important that we do have an understanding of where our data resides. And I think legislation is very, very important. We do need to understand that legislation needs to support us in the sense that if we’re saying that the data can only reside locally, we also have to have a regulator that has some teeth, that is able to enforce regulation. So, we might have in instances a regulator that doesn’t really have much force and perhaps just slaps the organization with a small fine. So it is really important that we do have an understanding of where our data resides. So, be that as it may, perhaps it is important that, or it may be a need that we have data residing in different continents or in different countries. So what is then very important is that we have to perhaps look at select localization. So we’re very specific in terms of what data is stored locally. So if sensitive data and personal data stored locally, and less sensitive and less personal data is stored, perhaps across our borders. So perhaps also to encourage some of the challenges or to address some of the. challenges around digital sovereignty and data localization effectively. We need to incentivize innovation. We need to offer incentives for tech startups and businesses to innovate locally while we’re still engaging in global markets. We also need to, coming back to ensuring that we have an understanding of where our data resides, we need to have cross-border cross-border data flow agreements. Because again, we might find ourselves in a situation where there’s been some cyber breach and we need to be able to bring those, as Dr. Sassi says, nefarious people to book. And we need to be able to have cross-border agreements to ensure that if there are any cyber activities or cyber criminal activities that are taking place, we can address them accordingly. Other than that, Chair, Moderator, I think I’ll leave it at that stage. Thank you for the question.

Rachael Shitanda: Thank you so much, Madam Chair, for that insightful feedback and contribution to the conversation. I’ll go back to Dr. Martin. You mentioned a bit about a need for collaboration in terms of policymaking and also how can we put this in terms of helping, for example, we can see the GDRC and how they’ve been able to manage to improve localization of information and also collaboration around policies on data in Europe and Asia as well, have similar policies framework among some member countries. How can Africa do in order to enable the collaboration and also how can this also help us in terms of economic development and also sovereignty as well. To you, Dr. Martin.

Martin Koyabe: Okay, thank you very much. Let me try and put this into perspective because I know we’ve got other speakers who will talk after me. First of all, within the continent we do have what we call the data policy framework that has been established at the AU level. This is a document that actually helps to guide around how we govern data. There are two dichotomies here. One is when we talk about data governance we are not really referring as controlling data but ideally we are saying how do we govern data within a jurisdiction and there has to be a concerted effort in terms of harmonizing whether it’s policy or regulation especially at regional level. We know various countries have their own national policies, they have their own national legislations but the idea here would be at the regional level and the regional economic communities have a very very strong opportunity and we know ECOWAS are doing a good job, SADC are doing a good job and others to make sure that they can have that regional harmony. We are also seeing continental agreements being able to be fostered. For example the Africa continental free trade area. These agreements do bring together African countries to be able to trade among themselves so we expect data to move from boundary to boundary. Therefore when you look at the requirements of these agreements they would only say that data will move from one boundary to another but they don’t do the prescriptive composition of how that can be achieved. So it is the how that needs to be understood so that it’s more flexible, more agile and it does not stifle innovation. So that’s one thing that we really need to see. The other point is to make sure that we do not necessarily we need to understand the data sets. There’s a possibility that within each country we can understand what’s the actual data that needs to be shared, and what’s the data that should not be shared. So therefore, Chair, I would urge that under this understanding, we should not just talk about data per se, but we should be more descriptive, and say, is this the data that needs to be shared? Because to be honest, there’s some specific data that just needs to be shared. But there’s some data that we agree that should not be shared. And therefore, this frugal, the conservative way of how we look at data could be an enabler to move us to the next stage, rather than blanketing data as it is. Then the last point that I really want to put across is that we really need to emphasize on skills. And when I’m talking about skills here, we are talking about sustainable skills. Because what we have today is people get trained, they go back to their institutions. Because the institutions don’t pay them well, they leave. So we don’t have anything to do with loyalty that is built in. We don’t have anything that does with incentivizing these individuals to be able to be there. One of the areas that we could intervene is that we should concentrate in investing in the middle tier management within the government. Because these are the individuals who actually do the work. I’m not saying that our top level managers are not doing the work. But we’ve got more talking than doing the work. So let’s concentrate on investing in that. And then let’s also give them the incentive to do that. The other point here that I would like us to put up is the institutional memory. When we talk about policymakers, when we talk about leaders, parliamentarians and others, they come and go. What happens to those institutions? How do those institutions… ensure that the next government and the next government will come in and they will be able to propagate the same institutional memory that we have. Many countries in the world that are doing well in this space always insist on specific institutional memory to be carried forward into the next generation. So we have this cycle of politicians or cycle of political cycle that really brings us back to square A. What we want to do is when there’s a political change keep the policies that are good as alluded by our moderator about policy and then continue those policies so that we don’t have policies dying because the government has left. Thank you Chair.

Rachael Shitanda: Thank you so much for that intervention Dr. Martin. I would also like to ask Dr. Toshikazu to also contribute a bit and add on what Martin has said in terms of data, cross-border data and security in regards to what you also contributed first that is maybe how secure can the data be and how as a recovery mechanism can country use the opportunity for cross-border data sharing in disaster management and also continuity of also economic growth as we focus on the policy question.

Toshikazu Sakano: Okay, thank you very much and let me talk a bit about this cross-border data flowing from the point of view of digital surveillance. The key word is layer. and layer structure and layer management and layer operation. What I mean is, the user internet has a structure of layer. Physical layer and IP layer and application layer, something like that. And business structure is almost the same as this layer structure. So physical layer, most telecom company are responsible for mainly for physical layer. IP layer, ISP is responsible for that. And application layer, many big service companies, SNS and Google and many companies are responsible for providing the application layer services. So this layer structure is very important. And we should be strictly keep this structure. And looking at the physical layer, data center, you can see the physical layer, IP layer, application layer, you can see the same thing. So once data center is structured and operated, in the physical layer, then for the data center, engineers need to operate the computers and the storage and once the computer is broken, they need to replace something like that. So that is the chance to grow the engineer if you have the data center in your country. So look at the semiconductor industry. So what is the semiconductor industry? The biggest company for production is TSMC, based in Taiwan. They are focusing on and you can say physical layer of semiconductor for the country. They don’t design the semiconductors, but they focus on the production. The same thing happens in the IT sector. So if you have data center in your country and start operating it, then the engineers start growing. And cross-border data will be increasing, and that will contribute to the country’s economy. This is the kind of viewpoint. Okay, thank you very much.

Rachael Shitanda: Thank you so much, Dr. Toshikazu. I’ll go to Melissa. On this question of cross-border data sharing, and in terms of your experience in policy making, what do you think is your contribution in terms of how cross-border data can foster economic and also innovation, as we also address the digital sovereignty and localization? Dr. Melissa.

Melissa Sassi: Yeah, so I’ve spent just the last 10 years working on tech innovation. Before that, financial services, I did a couple of stints on Wall Street. And about a year ago, I kind of looked at the number of companies that I’ve worked with around the world. And I realized that I had an opportunity to work with 250 companies, 250 founders, probably more, because some of the companies had multiple co-founders, across 80 countries. They had kind of went on to raise half a billion dollars in investment capital. And those companies now are worth a collective total of. $2.7 billion. And as I looked at that, I said, wow, you know, these, these, you know, innovation can come from anywhere. But, you know, I think that there is a, you know, strong connection between having, you know, a strong, you know, tech, having strong technical, you know, infrastructure locally. And, you know, it, as I mentioned before, I think, you know, brings jobs and also brings, you know, this concept in my mind that, you know, technology is kind of an equalizer, if you will. And, you know, I think it enables, you know, local people, again, from any village anywhere to think about what is it that I can solve? What is it that I can do in my, you know, local community to bringing innovation, whether that’s, you know, for that data center, or, you know, any other, any other, you know, kind of product service, whatever, that, you know, might be relevant. And I was looking at something, I’m just gonna, you know, you can’t see my screen, but I’m gonna flip it over. I was looking at something around, you know, the size of data centers, you know, in terms of, you know, power consumption. And, you know, 10 years ago, you know, a 30 megawatt data center was, you know, considered large. You know, today, you know, data centers, you know, are, you know, let’s say normal, a normal data center, nobody’s, you know, kind of blinking an eye at, you know, 200 megawatts, and, you know, and much bigger, you know, as we think about, you know, the compute power that is, you know, required for, you know, AI workloads, you know, that impacts, you know, energy consumption, it impacts, you know, local communities. So I think, again, that also brings innovation, if you wake up, you know, today, and you your village is not electrified, you don’t have access to, to the internet, you know, what role could, you know, building data centers in, you know, whatever country it is, again, across the continent or anywhere else, you know, what role could that play to enable, you know, local, local people anywhere to think about. a role bigger from a workforce development perspective than in the local community. That said, I think whether these predictions are right or wrong, that’s to be determined. But I was reading a study also recently saying that in the future, it’s expected that the hyperscalers, that would be your Microsoft’s, AWS’s, you know, Google, others, should take about 60 to 65% of, you know, let’s say cloud, you know, having hosted in the cloud, whereas, you know, hosted, let’s say privately, or maybe not necessarily, you know, with one of the hyperscalers at like 35 to 40%. You know, who knows what’s what’s going to happen with that. But I also was kind of thinking about another thing. And I was looking at a kind of new list, you know, and I think came out probably the end of last year. And there’s always, you know, a lot of innovation that’s happening again, everywhere. And it lists kind of a really interesting innovations that’s happening around the world, some in local communities, and some from, you know, innovators, wherever they may come from, and what they’re, you know, what they’re working on, what they’re doing. So you know, what I was able to kind of look at in terms of trends was, you know, a cooling technology, you know, how can you, you know, provide, you know, solutions that, you know, enable, you know, different tech solutions that bring more, you know, sustainable, you know, data center, you know, running a more sustainable data center. I also saw some, you know, really interesting things around, you know, efficiency, again, you know, kind of cooling, eliminating water, thinking about chemical usage, and, you know, the impact that that has on, you know, on the climate, which in many cases, you know, impacts, you know, developing nations at a, you know, more, you know, at a larger rate. And I also looked at, you know, some of the innovation that’s happening in terms of you know, compute capabilities and how can, you know, these data centers really think about performance density and availability? You know, how can, you know, innovation impact, you know, bring about, let’s say, zero impact, you know, on the environment? I mentioned earlier, you know, green hydrogen, you know, how can local communities think about planning and building, you know, energy efficient, you know, solutions that are, you know, trusted, you know, secure and, you know, having the right level of, you know, data center, you know, or security, privacy, blah, blah, blah. You know, we’ll see how, how things, you know, continue to, you know, transpire. But as I mentioned, I am always very excited about the innovation that can come from a village versus always hearing about what’s happening, you know, in the valley.

Rachael Shitanda: So thank you. Thank you so much for the contribution. It’s always nice to hear from you, Melissa. Very knowledgeable and resourceful. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I think I’ll give a chance to Mrs. Mary Uduma to just tell us a bit about how as a civil society champion, champion of the people and the society, what is your take on data localization and how that can impact the society? How can it impact human beings in terms of their rights, their socio-economic aspects? On to you, Mary. Okay. Thank you. Just to know that we are short of time.

Mary Uduma: Data is universal. Data is everywhere. I don’t know whether we can hold back data. there’s good data without borders. But when we talk about cross-border data, cross-border data flow, there are legal issues that will be involved, there’s the economic issues which Melissa had enumerated, I don’t want to go into. There are the regulatory issues, data governance, data protection, and you know, some countries, you may have developed your own data protection and it becomes now very difficult to relate with the other people that, the other countries that your data will flow. So they don’t have data protection law and it becomes a difficult thing for us in the civil society. We want to flow from Nigeria to South Africa without restriction. When we get there, our data, we’ll be able to get our data and work on that or use it. But where we don’t have the same level of development in terms of regulatory issues, we have problem. There’s security issues also. For us, we want to be secured when we move from one country to the other and when we are looking at our data. Our data should be protected, it should be secured, whether it’s flowing into another country or it’s within our country. So the cross-border data flow is very, very critical for us and we also want to look at, you know, policies or cooperation where we could have the multi-stakeholder cooperation or multi-stakeholder groups coming together to say, this is my issue when it comes to data flow. The academia will say this is our issue and all that and we sit on a round table and find solution to just as we are doing now. Thank you.

Rachael Shitanda: Thank you, Mrs. Mary Oduma. I’ll go to Dr. Kosi. What is your take on this policy question on how this can affect the socio-economic, the innovation, and also governance of the same? Maybe you can give us your piece of wisdom on that.

Kossi AMESSINOU: Thank you, Moderator. Data is very important for government, because when we don’t have data, we don’t have also money. We need data to know who is there to pay tasks, for example. That is very important for government. We have to know security of data is very important. We can’t share any kind of data. It’s not possible. For some sharing, we need convention between two countries or our country and some big companies. That is very important also to know. But whatever, we have some specific big countries who have their own data center. They are putting there their information like bank, finance, and all of specific big countries have their own data. But we’re supposed to have backup on national data centers also, and let government and their system protect the data, because if we have any problem on data in any country, government is firstly affected. People are not possible to attain their money. That is a problem for government first, before we are talking about civil society and so on. That is very important. We need to have for that, we need to be identified online. to let security people do their job very clearly and simply. That is very important for us too. Thank you.

Jimson Olufuye: Thank you so much, Dr. Kosi. I think, Dr. Jimson, I think I have exhausted all the speakers. Thank you. I think we can go to our next session. Yes, yes. Thank you so much, Deputy Chair, Ms. Rachel Chitanda, for doing justice to that round. Time is already well spent. We just have barely 15 minutes. Time runs so fast. I want to give opportunity to our special guest of honor this occasion. That’s the Director General of National Information Technology Development Agency. He has done a lot. I know it. I don’t want to say anything because he is the authority to speak. That is my brother, you know.

Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi: Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Jimson. And I’m super excited to be here with you this afternoon. And I’m really honored to contribute to this conversation. In Nigeria, for the past six months, we’ve been working with the ecosystem on this issue of digital sovereignty. For us, when you talk about digital sovereignty, it’s beyond data sovereignty. You need to look at the operations sovereignty, the infrastructure sovereignty, even the talent sovereignty. Like Madam Mary shared the challenges we are experiencing with our banking sector, which has a result of just a regulation for them to upgrade this co-banking application. The co-banking application is developed in another country which they upgraded using it and still they are grappling to even go back to the previous standard where they are. Even yesterday I tried to use my bank. A lot of features were no more there. So for me this is part of sovereignty also. As a nation we should be able to control our digital future. So we’ve been working with all the data center providers, the ecosystem, the hyperscalers and so on, on how to achieve that sovereignty. And also I hear a lot of data sovereignty, localization, residency and so on. So we need to create clarity about it. What is sovereignty? Sovereignty is not the same thing with residency. It’s not the same thing with localization. So when you talk about sovereignty, it’s about having, applying laws of country where the data is stored. So you can have your data anywhere. It will respect the laws of that country as well as it can respect your laws. So that cannot in any way affect cross-border data flow. So you can agree even with the hyperscalers to have your data staying anywhere, but that data must comply with your country’s laws and regulation. While residency has nothing to do with even laws and regulations, but mostly they look at it where you can store your data for tax incentives and other things. But the big question is localization, which talks about storing and processing data in a country where it is created. So for me the question or the answer to this… this challenge is we need to come up with data classification because there are sensitive data that cannot go beyond borders. And even today we are talking about even creating cloud infrastructure for military services and other things. Because today we are using the same cloud infrastructure for military, for intelligence, for civilian, which is not good for any country. In case of any war or something, if your military infrastructure is attacked, it will affect the civilian. So countries need to create that cloud sovereignty. So we are working hard within Nigeria. We had an issue of working with one of hyperscalers to help us develop cloud-first strategy. But you know, most of the time business people, they will help you, but they are there for profit. Whatever they do, they will try to benefit from it. And we have a local content regulation that talks about data localization in Nigeria, which is in clash with the cloud-first policy So now we are working with all the local data center providers, the hyperscalers, how can we get them to come and have a zone or data centers in Nigeria. On 10th of December, Huawei launched its local zone in Nigeria. So we are working with others. We are engaging them to see how they can come to build data center or even to use a local data centers to have zones in Nigeria. So most of them, they are asking of data challenges in Africa or we are not. ready but they don’t have a clear answers to what they want us to do for them to come to African countries. So but we are engaging them we know most of them they look at the energy source, they look at the land availability, they look at the talents which we all have this. So and the only way to achieve that is through that negotiation and dialogue which we believe very soon we’ll have them coming to Africa, coming to Nigeria so that we can build on data because if you look at today our internet traffic more than 85% of transatlantic traffic is on content and most of this content we access our own hyperscalers and they are created locally. You hardly see a Nigerian watching movies or music from other part of the world but they we all watch them on YouTube and so on. So why can’t we localize them and you spoke about it is beyond just national security but the economic impact of it that’s the most important and when you talk about AI today you cannot trend your foundational model over public cloud. We need to have that compute power in our countries we even need to have age compute power across the country so that we can upload our data and trend the algorithm. So thank you very much it’s quite interesting I will take some of the feedback to shape the work we are doing on attracting the hyperscalers to Nigeria and Africa.

Audience: Thank you. Excellent thank you very much DG. Well I’m going to throw this open to the audience just one question or one comment. Can you do it in one minute? Hello, good afternoon everyone. My name is Berhard Fares. I’m from Indonesia and currently I’m studying in Tsinghua University for my master degree and my research is all about digital sovereignty. So I’ve been researching this for several years so I’m really interested with the topic. So basically I already add LinkedIn to all of you guys. Please accept me on LinkedIn. And we can talk more about it later. But the thing is, regarding to my thesis as well, basically we have to have a clear understanding about what digital sovereignty is. Because like I see every single people, every single country have its own perspective of what digital sovereignty is and it’s quite hard to to be in the same frequency because like there is so many things to measure, right? So I hope that we can conclude with this through this event and through my research as well later on I can get feedback from you and I can get your source so I can build my measurement tools and the global definition of digital sovereignty. That’s it. Thank you.

Jimson Olufuye: That’s wonderful. Berhard assured that we are more than ready to support your research because we believe in research a lot. Well, we’re coming gradually to the conclusion of this session and it has been quite illuminating and there has been a number of points shared so we’re looking at takeaways and a call to action. Well, digital sovereignty I think DG got it right. Because when you talk about digital you’re talking about ICTs, you’re talking about different segments of the information communication technology and we need to classify. from that, classified data. I had a bid, I’m a businessman, and I was to tender for a project, a cloud project, and if I were to use a local data center, I would never have won that project. But because it was a kind of commercial or academic data, so it’s not top secret data, so I could use cloud in the US, which a company have a data center, and with that, I got very competitive pricing, and with that, we won the bid. So there is a provision, the law in Nigeria, that say, okay, for government data, you must, if you are to host it overseas, you must get approval. But basically, at default, it must be hosted in Nigeria, which is a good one, that segmented the classified public data from commercial data. So that is smart regulation, which I really want to encourage other countries to emulate. With that, we can still do our business, we can transition gradually, to building a more robust local data center. So with regard to takeaways, we have discussed extensively, and we identified that, yes, we need to build capacity locally, we need to build an economy, we need to have an economic rollout with data sovereignty, and that we should not forget about cross-border data flow, with regard to cross-border trade, which is indefensible to prosperity, even though digital sovereignty is imperative. Mention the AU digital data policy framework, so we need to work with that, okay? And then, also, we look at… The cost, the cost of having this locally is high. So I just illustrated with the business, so we have to look for, classify the data. And then also electricity is a major challenge that has been identified, but I’m happy to say here that we deploy for a client, 10 years ago, we deployed a data center for a client 10 years ago, and it’s been running using just solar. We deploy solar and everything running 24 sevens for 10 years, even with some cooling system, even though it might not be like tier four, tier three, but at least it serves their need. So we have the capability locally to really, you know, deploy the experiences there to really make this happen. Then we got to call to action. I think we talk about security, therefore countries that are yet to sign the Malabo Convention should do so. And then the WTO, ITA2 agreements, we need to look at that and be signatory to that. Many are signatory to Budapest Convention. Those are yet to be, they should be connected to that. And then we have the issue of data abuse, breaches all over the place, and that’s give back to lack of confidence in a way. But we have new metrics. There is a new metrics that will help us to even do assessment. It’s available on tcmm.africa, tcmm.africa. You can check it out. It will help the organization or businesses or even government to check the assessment level, to assess themselves, identify the gaps. And all this we are discussing measure to the sustainable development goal. We must not forget, we want to have no hunger, we want to achieve prosperity, and we want to ensure that the Global Data Compact that was signed in September. 2024 in the U.S. at the UNGA is realized by 2030. So on this note I want to thank all our speakers and the moderator, our chair, Ms. Sulandi Esna, thank you so much for taking the time for your insightful speech. Dr. Kosi, thank you. Appreciate you. Dr. Melissa Sessi, thank you again. When we call, you always respond. And Dr. Toshiki Sakano, thank you very much for those perspectives. Dr. Martins, as always, thank you. And the Amazon, Ms. Mary Uduma, thank you always on the point. And of course, very importantly, I want to thank our DG, Kashiwe Nwa Abdullahi, for that pungent contribution. And to the students, thank you. And everybody, thank you. Oh, I can see the Grand Master of Internet Governance there. Thank you very much for supporting the upcoming Masters. So on this note, I want to say thank you to all the participants online. Thank you again, Deputy Chair Richard Sitanda. This brings to the conclusion of this session. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Agreement Points

Need for local data centers and infrastructure

Ulandi Exner

Toshikazu Sakano

Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi

High infrastructure and capital costs for local data centers

Importance of having local data centers for economic growth and job creation

Need for data classification to determine what can be stored locally vs. internationally

Speakers agreed on the importance of developing local data center infrastructure, while acknowledging the challenges and costs associated with it.

Importance of capacity building and skills development

Ulandi Exner

Martin Koyabe

Mary Uduma

Limited local technical expertise to run data centers

Need for sustainable skills development and retention of trained personnel

Importance of building capacity of policymakers and legislators

Multiple speakers emphasized the need for developing local technical expertise and building capacity across various stakeholders.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers highlighted the need for harmonized policies and agreements to facilitate cross-border data flows while addressing legal and regulatory challenges.

Martin Koyabe

Mary Uduma

Need for cross-border data agreements and harmonized policies

Legal and regulatory challenges with cross-border data sharing

Both speakers emphasized the economic importance of data flows, either for innovation and business opportunities or for government functions.

Melissa Sassi

Kossi AMESSINOU

Cross-border data flows enable innovation and economic opportunities

Government need for data to collect taxes and provide services

Unexpected Consensus

Balancing data sovereignty with practical considerations

Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi

Jimson Olufuye

Need for data classification to determine what can be stored locally vs. internationally

Need for smart regulation that segments classified government data from commercial data

Both speakers, representing different stakeholder groups, agreed on the need for a nuanced approach to data sovereignty that considers practical business needs while protecting sensitive data.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement included the need for local data infrastructure, capacity building, harmonized policies for cross-border data flows, and a balanced approach to data sovereignty.

Consensus level

Moderate consensus was observed among speakers on key issues. This suggests a shared understanding of the challenges and potential solutions related to digital sovereignty in developing countries, which could facilitate more coordinated efforts in addressing these issues.

Different Viewpoints

Approach to data localization

Ulandi Exner

Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi

High infrastructure and capital costs for local data centers

Need for data classification to determine what can be stored locally vs. internationally

While Ulandi Exner emphasizes the challenges of building local data centers due to high costs, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi suggests a more nuanced approach through data classification to determine what needs to be stored locally.

Unexpected Differences

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around the approach to data localization, the balance between cross-border data flows and local data storage, and the prioritization of economic benefits versus data sovereignty.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among the speakers is moderate. While there are differing perspectives on how to approach digital sovereignty and data localization, there is a general consensus on the importance of balancing economic growth, innovation, and data protection. These differences in approach highlight the complexity of the issue and the need for nuanced, context-specific solutions that take into account the varying needs and capabilities of different countries.

Partial Agreements

Both speakers agree on the need for cross-border data agreements, but they differ in their focus. Martin Koyabe emphasizes regional and continental harmonization, while Mary Uduma highlights the challenges arising from different levels of data protection laws between countries.

Martin Koyabe

Mary Uduma

Need for cross-border data agreements and harmonized policies

Legal and regulatory challenges with cross-border data sharing

Both speakers agree on the importance of economic growth and innovation, but they differ in their approaches. Melissa Sassi emphasizes the benefits of cross-border data flows, while Toshikazu Sakano focuses on the importance of local data centers for job creation and skill development.

Melissa Sassi

Toshikazu Sakano

Cross-border data flows enable innovation and economic opportunities

Importance of having local data centers for economic growth and job creation

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers highlighted the need for harmonized policies and agreements to facilitate cross-border data flows while addressing legal and regulatory challenges.

Martin Koyabe

Mary Uduma

Need for cross-border data agreements and harmonized policies

Legal and regulatory challenges with cross-border data sharing

Both speakers emphasized the economic importance of data flows, either for innovation and business opportunities or for government functions.

Melissa Sassi

Kossi AMESSINOU

Cross-border data flows enable innovation and economic opportunities

Government need for data to collect taxes and provide services

Key Takeaways

Resolutions and Action Items

Unresolved Issues

Suggested Compromises

Do we actually know where our data is located? So yes, we are talking about infrastructure. We’ve got data centers internationally or locally. But do we, can we hang on hard, say that we know where our data is stored?

speaker

Ulandi Exner

reason

This comment challenges the fundamental assumptions of the discussion by questioning whether we truly have control over or knowledge of our data’s location, even when discussing data sovereignty.

impact

It shifted the conversation to consider the practical challenges of implementing data sovereignty policies and the need for greater transparency in data storage practices.

When you talk about digital sovereignty, it’s beyond data sovereignty. You need to look at the operations sovereignty, the infrastructure sovereignty, even the talent sovereignty.

speaker

Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi

reason

This comment expands the concept of digital sovereignty beyond just data, introducing a more comprehensive view that includes multiple aspects of digital infrastructure and capabilities.

impact

It broadened the scope of the discussion, encouraging participants to consider sovereignty in terms of operations, infrastructure, and human capital, not just data storage.

We need to come up with data classification because there are sensitive data that cannot go beyond borders. And even today we are talking about even creating cloud infrastructure for military services and other things.

speaker

Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi

reason

This comment introduces the crucial concept of data classification as a solution to balancing data sovereignty with the need for cross-border data flows.

impact

It led to a more nuanced discussion about how different types of data might require different levels of sovereignty protection, moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach.

We deploy solar and everything running 24 sevens for 10 years, even with some cooling system, even though it might not be like tier four, tier three, but at least it serves their need.

speaker

Jimson Olufuye

reason

This comment provides a practical, real-world example of how renewable energy can be used to address the energy challenges of data centers in developing countries.

impact

It shifted the discussion towards more practical, implementable solutions to the challenges of digital sovereignty, particularly in addressing energy concerns.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by expanding the concept of digital sovereignty beyond just data location, introducing the need for nuanced approaches through data classification, highlighting practical challenges in implementation, and offering real-world solutions to infrastructure challenges. The discussion evolved from theoretical concepts to more practical considerations and potential solutions, while also broadening the scope of what digital sovereignty entails.

How can we create a clear, globally accepted definition and measurement tools for digital sovereignty?

speaker

Berhard Fares

explanation

Different countries and individuals have varying perspectives on digital sovereignty, making it difficult to align on a common understanding and approach.

What specific requirements do hyperscalers need to establish data centers in African countries?

speaker

Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi

explanation

Understanding these requirements could help attract more investment in local data infrastructure and improve digital sovereignty.

How can countries develop separate cloud infrastructure for military and civilian use to enhance security?

speaker

Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi

explanation

This separation could prevent civilian infrastructure from being affected in case of attacks on military systems.

What incentives can be offered to encourage tech startups and businesses to innovate locally while still engaging in global markets?

speaker

Ulandi Exner

explanation

This could help balance digital sovereignty with the benefits of cross-border data flows.

How can countries implement effective cross-border data flow agreements to address cybersecurity concerns?

speaker

Ulandi Exner

explanation

Such agreements could help combat cyber criminal activities across borders while maintaining data sovereignty.

How can we ensure institutional memory in government agencies to maintain consistent policies on digital sovereignty across political cycles?

speaker

Martin Koyabe

explanation

This could prevent policies from being abandoned due to changes in government and ensure long-term progress.

What strategies can be employed to develop and retain skilled professionals for managing local data centers in developing countries?

speaker

Martin Koyabe

explanation

Addressing the skills gap is crucial for implementing and maintaining digital sovereignty initiatives.

How can developing countries leverage renewable energy sources like solar to address the energy challenges associated with local data centers?

speaker

Jimson Olufuye

explanation

Sustainable energy solutions could help overcome one of the major obstacles to establishing local data infrastructure.

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.

Summary

This discussion focused on the importance of multilingualism on the internet and the challenges of implementing universal acceptance (UA) of internationalized domain names (IDNs) and email addresses. Government representatives from India, Egypt, and the UK presented case studies on their efforts to promote multilingualism online. Key themes included the technical readiness but slow uptake of IDNs, the need for greater awareness and confidence among users, and the critical role of universal acceptance in enabling a truly multilingual internet experience.

Speakers highlighted that while technical solutions for IDNs exist, challenges remain in widespread implementation and user adoption. The discussion emphasized that universal acceptance is essential for digital inclusion, as it allows people to navigate the internet in their native languages. Participants noted that governments can play a crucial role by leading by example, incorporating UA readiness into procurement processes, and promoting awareness.

The conversation expanded to include the importance of accessibility for people with disabilities and the need to consider sign languages in multilingual internet discussions. Experts stressed that the issue has evolved from a purely technical problem to a social policy challenge requiring collaboration across sectors. The discussion highlighted the roles of various stakeholders, including governments, big tech companies, universities, and DNS participants, in advancing universal acceptance.

Participants agreed that framing the issue in terms of digital inclusion could help broaden understanding and support. The discussion concluded with calls for continued collaboration, capacity building, and integration of internationalization concepts into educational curricula to equip future professionals with necessary skills for implementing a truly multilingual internet.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The importance of multilingualism and internationalized domain names (IDNs) for digital inclusion and reaching the next billion internet users

– Technical challenges around universal acceptance of IDNs and internationalized email addresses

– The need for governments to promote and implement multilingual internet services

– The role of various stakeholders (governments, tech companies, universities, etc.) in advancing universal acceptance

– Moving beyond technical solutions to address policy, awareness, and implementation challenges

Overall purpose/goal:

The discussion aimed to highlight government efforts to promote multilingualism on the internet, share case studies, and explore ways to advance universal acceptance of internationalized domain names and email addresses to create a more inclusive internet.

Tone:

The tone was collaborative and solution-oriented throughout. Participants shared challenges but focused on opportunities and ways different stakeholders could work together to make progress. There was a sense of urgency about the importance of the issue, balanced with recognition of the complexity and need for sustained effort from multiple parties.

Speakers

– Owen Fletcher: Moderator

– Jaisha Wray: Associate Administrator, Office of International Affairs at NTIA

– Pradeep Kumar Verma: Scientist D, Government of India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT

– Nigel Hickson: Senior Advisor on Internet Governance and the Domain Name System, UK Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology

– Manal Ismail: Chief Expert for Internet Policies, National Telecom Regulatory Authority, Egypt

Additional speakers:

– Teresa: Representative from ICANN

– Keith Drazek: Representative from Verisign

– Sabina: From the dynamic coalition of accessibility and disability, Mexico

– Sadhvi Saran: Representative from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

– Ram Mohan: Chief Strategy Officer at Identity Digital

– Anil Kumar-Jain: Chair of USG in ICANN

– Jen Chung: Representative from DotAsia organization

– Sarmad: Role not specified, likely associated with ICANN

Multilingualism and Universal Acceptance on the Internet: A Comprehensive Discussion

This report summarizes a discussion on the importance of multilingualism on the internet and the challenges of implementing universal acceptance (UA) of internationalized domain names (IDNs) and email addresses. Government representatives from India, Egypt, and the UK presented case studies on their efforts to promote multilingualism online, while other stakeholders contributed insights on technical, policy, and social aspects of the issue.

Key Themes and Agreements

1. Importance of Multilingualism for Digital Inclusion

Speakers strongly agreed on the critical role of multilingualism in achieving digital inclusion and enabling meaningful internet access for diverse populations. Jaisha Wray, Associate Administrator at NTIA, emphasized that multilingualism is essential for digital inclusion and meaningful connectivity. Ram Mohan, Chief Strategy Officer at Identity Digital, argued that language is a fundamental requirement for internet access and digital services. Manal Ismail, from Egypt’s National Telecom Regulatory Authority, highlighted that a multilingual internet provides a gateway for the next billion users.

2. Technical Progress and Implementation Challenges

While technical solutions for IDNs exist, challenges remain in widespread implementation and user adoption. IDNs are functionally operational at the DNS level, but there is a need to focus on the application layer for full UA implementation. Ram Mohan emphasized that the focus should shift from technical issues to social policy and implementation aspects of UA.

3. Government Initiatives and Role

Multiple speakers highlighted government-led initiatives to promote multilingualism and universal acceptance in their respective countries. Governments can play a crucial role by leading by example, incorporating UA readiness into procurement processes, and promoting awareness.

4. Multi-stakeholder Collaboration

Participants emphasized the importance of involving multiple stakeholders in UA implementation, including governments, big tech companies, universities, and DNS participants such as registries and registrars. Jaisha Wray highlighted the necessity of multi-stakeholder collaboration for policy development.

5. Education and Capacity Building

Speakers agreed on the importance of integrating UA concepts into education and professional development. There was a call for better integration of internationalization concepts in university curricula and the inclusion of UA readiness requirements in tenders and contracts.

Case Studies

1. India: Pradeep Kumar Verma from India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT discussed the launch of the Bhasanet portal to promote multilingual internet. He also mentioned the MGMD project, which aims to create multilingual domain names for government websites.

2. Egypt: Manal Ismail shared Egypt’s experiences with IDN ccTLD and their work on UA deployment in government projects. She highlighted the challenges faced with right-to-left scripts like Arabic and the importance of UA for digital inclusion.

3. United Kingdom: Nigel Hickson from the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology discussed the country’s recognition of the importance of providing government services in multiple languages. He also mentioned the UK’s experiences with IDNs in Wales.

Thought-Provoking Insights

1. Ram Mohan suggested reframing UA and IDN discussions in terms of digital inclusion to increase understanding and adoption. He also called for toolkits to help policymakers implement language services.

2. Nigel Hickson emphasized the role of governments in ensuring equitable access to public services across languages.

3. Sarmad identified a gap in university education regarding internationalization in software development and called for capacity development in this area.

4. Sabina from Mexico highlighted the importance of including sign language and considerations for people with disabilities in the multilingual internet discussion.

5. Sadhvi from the ITU shared information about their work on multilingualization of IDNs.

6. Anil Kumar-Jain emphasized the role of big tech companies, universities, and DNS participants in implementing UA.

Conclusion

The discussion highlighted the complex interplay of technical, policy, and social factors in achieving a truly multilingual internet. While progress has been made in technical solutions, the focus is shifting towards implementation, policy development, and user adoption. Multi-stakeholder collaboration, government leadership, and integration of UA concepts into education emerged as key strategies for advancing universal acceptance and creating a more inclusive digital world.

As the internet continues to evolve, addressing these challenges will be crucial for ensuring that the next billion users can access and navigate the digital landscape in their own languages, thereby fostering greater digital inclusion and equitable access to information and services worldwide.

Owen Fletcher: from Jayshia Ray, our Associate Administrator within my office, the Office of International Affairs at NTIA. Thank you. We’ve co-organized this Open Forum with our colleagues from the governments of Egypt, India, and the United Kingdom. I will be moderating and introducing our speakers. We are going to start with opening remarks from Jayshia ray, our Associate Administrator within my office, the Office of International Affairs at NTIA. Thank you.

Jaisha Wray: Thank you for that introduction, Owen, and thank you all for joining us either in person or as a part of our online audience. Also thank you to our host, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and to the IGF Secretariat for supporting today’s event. Everyone online deserves access to a digital sphere that is diverse, inclusive, and that serves their needs. In order to create this digital sphere and enable meaningful connectivity, we must acknowledge the fundamental role that language plays on the internet. We also know that additional work to improve multilingualism on the internet is critically needed. There are over 7,000 languages and dialects used globally, but only about 10 of those languages have any substantial online presence. The multi-stakeholder community has developed technical solutions to enable a more multilingual internet. One goal of our discussion today is to highlight that governments can do more to advance the implementation of those solutions. Now a number of challenges must be addressed in order to reach our goal of a truly multilingual internet. An important place to start is ensuring that everyone can navigate the internet in their own language. But to do this, we need domain names in all languages, and we need those domain names to work in the same way that English domain names do now. This means software applications must treat all top-level domains equally, regardless of the script they are in, and this is really the basis of the term universal acceptance. The multi-stakeholder internet community must work together to build policy that encourages the universal acceptance of all domain names and email addresses, namely those that are not based in the Latin alphabet character set. In addition to the issue of universal acceptance, we need a better understanding of the market dynamics impacting the uptake of internationalized domain names, or IDNs. As we continue to pursue progress towards a multilingual internet, we must consider where the technical solutions are succeeding and where more work is needed. Finally, local language content, the delivery of which is enabled by IDNs and universal acceptance, is also a key element of the multilingual internet and requires its own policy interventions. During today’s Open Forum, government representatives from India, Egypt, and the United Kingdom will present on their activities to promote multilingualism on the internet, including through efforts to promote universal acceptance, the uptake of internationalized domain names, and local content development. During last year’s IGF in Kyoto, NTIA held a workshop on digital inclusion and multilingualism on the internet. We recognized the important role of domain names in promoting linguistic diversity online, the connection between meaningful connectivity and multilingualism, and that universal acceptance is really a foundational requirement for a multilingual internet. This year, by focusing on the role that governments can play in the pursuit of internet multilingualism, our intent is that this Open Forum continues to build momentum and raise awareness of this critical issue. We aim to highlight the lessons learned so far and look ahead to next steps. We’d also like to recognize the significant and ongoing work of industry, relevant technical and international organizations, and the TLD operator community in advancing IDNs and universal acceptance. I’ll also note that many of the folks working on these issues are with us here today. We are very pleased that you are here and actively contributing to the discussions, and we’d really encourage you to engage in the discussion following the presentations because we are interested in your reflections on government efforts to raise awareness and accelerate adoption. Through the efforts of all of us and all stakeholders, improved multilingualism on the internet will provide a gateway to the next billion of internet users. With that, I will turn it back to Owen Fletcher, our moderator today, who will introduce our case study presenters. Thank you. Owen Fletcher Thank you, Jaysha. I’m hitting the next slide button. We will have three case studies presented. Our first one is from Mr. Pradeep Kumar Verma, Scientist D from the Government of India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT. Pradeep, please go ahead. Pradeep Kumar Verma Thank you, Owen.

Pradeep Kumar Verma: I think I’m audible. So I will be presenting two case studies from India. So one is on the Bhasanet portal, and one is Mera Gaon and Mera Dharohar, known as MGMD. So first of all, I will say about India’s linguistic and cultural heritage and strength So India has a 22 scheduled official languages that covers 15 IDNs, CCTLD, which is under 11 scripts. And the thing is, all the domain names in IDNs have been started for all these 22 official languages. So first of all, I would like to say that under these 22 scheduled languages, they follow one-to-many and many-to-many relations. That means one script may cover eight languages, even one language may cover two scripts. So that is the diversity and the strength of the Indian languages. So just I will take a tour on the Global Universal Acceptance Day. So in 2023, India took a lead in official launching of Global UADA on March 28. After that, on regional UADA during 2024, India has launched Bhasanet portal. So this portal basically promotes the multilingual internet and enhances the UA acceptability in India. So this initiative basically equips the developers and the other technical communities with the necessary tools and the processes, documents, and how this would go with the universal acceptance. So these are some highlights of the Bhasanet portal. So this portal covers all 22 languages. This portal itself covers all 22 domain names. And so the content part of this portal covers all 22 scheduled languages. So basically, this portal covers the SOPs for the technical communities, for the startups, frequently asked questions, the UA code samples that is basically in the Java, Python, and other languages. And we also provide the ticketing system for the support if anyone wants to come and develop their portal in their native language for their IDN. So he can just raise a ticket and one-to-one he can communicate with the linguistic expert and the expert who is working in the IDN field. So this is a snapshot of the portal. Next I will come to the Mera Gaon Meri Dharohar, MGMD. So it’s My Village and My Heritage. So under this project and with the collaboration of the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, we have provided 0.6 million villages with their digital identities. So each village has their digital identity, their domain name in .in as well as .bharat. So this is covered under the zone mgmt.in and mgmt.bharat and their respective languages. So this is the important parameters. So each domain name will have under .in and .bharat. So this is an interactive village, culture, village, tourism, all the things will be displayed under this portal. So this covers significantly the inclusivity from the diverse society of India. So this also bridge the linguistic barrier. So this is an example of the IDN domains we have formed basically for the government website. So what the government services are there in the displayed in the government website. So one can browse with their Hindi IDN domain names.

Owen Fletcher: Thank you. Thank you very much. Now I’m disconnecting. No. OK, thank you, Pradeep. Our next case study will be presented by Ms. Manal Ismail from the government of Egypt’s National Telecom Regulatory Authority, where she is the chief expert for internet policies. Please go ahead, Manal. Thank you. Sorry, Manal, please hold. We can’t hear you. We’re trying to fix it. Manal, try saying something maybe. I still don’t hear Manal, no. Sorry, everyone could hear Nigel, right? No? OK. We can’t hear Nigel. Nigel is muted now. Oh, Nigel’s muted now. Nigel, can you try saying something for me? No? No, OK. Working on it, sorry. Nigel and Manal, could you try speaking again? Still no. No. OK. Thank you for your patience. Our tech support is still working on it. Please try again, Manal and Nigel. Not hearing Manal. Nigel, can you try, too, just in case? Also no. So I think we’re going. Can I make a few remarks? So while we wait for tech support to, thanks, everyone. So tech support will keep trying to resolve this. Manal and Nigel, we will come back to you. We’re going out of order just because we don’t want everyone waiting too long. So we can start with some other people. Can you hear me? No? Try saying something again? Hello? OK, Nigel, could you mute for me? Owen, can you hear me? Yes, and now with one of you muted and one of you not, I think we’re on track. Thank you for everyone’s patience. We’ll go back to our normal program. And Manal, I think we’re ready for you. Thank you. Great.

Manal Ismail: Thank you very much, Owen. I was just saying that I regret not being able to join you in person. But thanks for the opportunity to speak. And thanks to Saudi Arabia for hosting this year’s IGF and availing remote participation. So with one third of the world population still being offline, we need to think about the reasons and how to make sure that technology is really serving humanity in that respect. One important reason for this is language being an access barrier to those who can only communicate in their mother tongue. And with digital inclusion being a top priority, a truly multilingual internet becomes a necessity to have the next billion internet users connect meaningfully to the internet. To enable multilingual access to the internet, we have to work on all its components equally. So namely, the multilingual local content, internationalized domain names, email address internationalization, and universal acceptance, as Jaisha already mentioned in her opening remarks as well. So universal acceptance is the missing piece of the puzzle needed to complement ongoing efforts on IDN delegations and creation of multilingual online content. It’s needed to ensure a smooth, seamless, end-to-end multilingual experience on the internet that allows users around the world to navigate the internet entirely in their local languages. Universal acceptance aims at making all valid domain names and email addresses work seamlessly in all internet applications, devices, and systems, irrespective of their script, language, or length. And by work here, we mean that internet applications and systems must accept, validate, store, process, and display all domain names in a predictable and consistent manner. We have now more than 1,200 new GTLDs, around 100 of which are IDNs. And we have around 60 IDN country code top-level domains. We have mailboxes now that are no longer just an ASCII. And we have another round of new GTLDs on its way. This makes universal acceptance a fundamental requirement for unleashing the full potential of IDNs and internationalized email addresses and providing a truly multilingual and digitally inclusive internet. I would like to start by providing quick highlights from the recently published URID IDN world. report 2024, which provides insights into the status and trends of the global market of IDNs. An estimated 85% of ccTLDs and an estimated 41% of gTLDs currently support IDN registrations. Yet, while a significant number of ccTLDs, 85%, offer IDN registrations, the actual number of IDN registrations remains relatively low at 1.2% of the global domain name market, highlighting the limited penetration of IDNs. Additionally, they are also concentrated among only a handful of ccTLDs. Moreover, despite the apparent availability of IDN registrations and how they seem to be supported, well supported, the actual uptake of IDNs has been remarkably slow over the years. In fact, per the URED report, only three ccTLDs witnessed notable growth in their IDN registrations over the past year, while the majority of ccTLDs experienced minimal or no growth at all, with 19 ccTLDs reporting contraction in their total IDN registrations. Moving to our case in Egypt, and from our experience with Egypt’s IDN ccTLD, it really aligns with the findings of the URED report. So, Egypt IDN ccTLD.Masr was among the first batch of IDN delegations in 2010, along with Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Russia. And upon launch, we reached around 40 or 50% of the .eg registrations in just a few weeks. Yet, over the years, we suffered very low renewal rates, resulting in significant reduction in the number of registered domain names under the IDN ccTLD, and we currently stand at 1 tenth the number we started with in 2010. The main reason for this very low renewal rate under Egypt IDN ccTLD was identified to be the malfunctioning of internationalized email addresses, which is attributed to the lack of wide deployment of universal acceptance. So, even if users successfully register an IDN, they may encounter issues when attempting to use that domain name in email addresses, some web browsers, or other online services, leading to frustration and confusion of end users. It’s also related to compatibility issues with many existing software application systems, which were designed with the assumption that domain names would only contain ASCII characters, and sometimes even with the assumption of certain lengths. Consequently, users may opt for ASCII domain names to avoid potential compatibility issues, even if an IDN would better represent their language or culture identity. Regarding the wide deployment of universal acceptance, there are, of course, challenges, and this includes the need to aware and convince both the supply and the demand sides at the same time. There is no appealing product to attract demand, and there is no pressing demand to trigger supply. So, it’s a really unique situation. Also, universal acceptance needs to be very widely deployed before it starts to bear its fruits. And another reason could be that users with no language barrier finds that everything is working fine, and those who are offline because of language barrier, they are taking it for granted and they are not aware there is a solution to this problem. Another thing could be that the business model itself may not be pressing or that appealing today, but of course the counter argument to this is that the deployment is straightforward, it’s future-proof, it provides a market edge, and is expected to trigger demand and open up a new market. And finally, it’s a multi-stakeholder issue, so it has technical, strategic, commercial, and cultural dimensions, and hence it needs the buy-in of all the relevant stakeholders. Focusing more on why governments should care on working on universal acceptance, readiness, and internet multilingualism, this of course serves the government’s efforts and objectives on digital transformation, as well as digital and social inclusion, preserving culture, and advancing digital identity, ensuring government online services are reaching citizens nationwide, stimulating growth of local IDNs market and online multilingual content by increasing competition and fostering innovation, providing more customer choice, availing internationalized email addresses which have been hindering the uptake of IDNs for some time now, and driving the use of local IDN domains and email addresses as opposed to ASCII ones hosted off borders. It also serves government efforts in increasing internet penetration and bridging the digital divide, promoting digital literacy and facilitating meaningful access to the internet, and last but not least, acquiring future proof systems and applications. So in Egypt, we’ve been trying to promote awareness on universal acceptance and work on its deployment. We have started with the government as key stakeholder and main driver for government digital transformation projects. We are trying to align with the governmental projects and initiatives, reaching out to software companies to get them involved, setting pilots for proof of concept, and also working with academia on graduation projects, conducting hackathons on universal acceptance, and holding hands-on and technical training also on deployment of internationalized email addresses. We’re also trying to reach out to survey, identify, and prioritize platforms and tools that are most commonly used in order to assess their UA readiness, and accordingly organize engagement activities with the relevant stakeholders. Beyond that, it’s great to see multilingualism, universality, and meaningful access to the internet on global agendas, including the UN SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals, ITU, UNESCO, and most recently, the Pact of the Future and Global Digital Contact. So we look forward to working with everyone on availing a truly multilingual internet experience as we owe it to those who need it. Apologies if I exceeded the 10 minutes, and I’ll leave it at this and pass the floor back to you, Owen, and look forward to the rest of our discussion. Thank you.

Owen Fletcher: Thank you, Manal. I think we’ve had two very interesting presentations so far with lots of ideas that we can dig into in the discussion session. Before that, let’s have our third case study coming from Nigel Hickson of the United Kingdom, where he is Senior Advisor on Internet Governance and the Domain Name System for the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology. Nigel, go ahead. Yes, yes, and good afternoon. Thank you. Thank you, Owen. Can you hear me? I

Nigel Hickson: suppose I ought to ask that, given the earlier problems. It’s all good. Well, it’s an absolute delight to take part in this session. I would like Manal to apologise for not being there. I very much wanted to be in Riyadh, but unfortunately not on this occasion. I’ve been a great advocate and fan, if you like, of the UNIGF, and I’m delighted it’s in Saudi Arabia. It’s such an important year for the UNIGF, and I hope everyone is having a great time. I’m sure you are. I’ve managed to listen to a number of sessions, and there seems to be a lot of enthusiasm. enthusiasm in the hallways, so to speak, and thank you also to the US NTIA for putting on this session. I think it’s incredibly timely. And as Manal said, this is an issue that is, if you like, rising up the international agenda and has become, if you like, more prominent as it should be than perhaps it was a few years ago. And perhaps in our discussions to follow this session, we can reflect on what more can be done to promote the importance of multilingualism on the internet and the problems of universal acceptance. So I’m going to be fairly short in my presentation on behalf of the UK government. The UK has always, if you like, recognised the importance of multilingualism. We have a very diverse multilingual population in the UK and in terms of citizens and residents applying for government services, we recognise the importance of providing not only government services in very many languages so people can understand what they’re applying for and what they’re entitled for in terms of public benefits and schooling and hospitalisation and lots of other things connected with the health service, but also that they can use their own scripts. And so it is very important, and I believe it’s important for all countries. And therefore, you know, in addition to the technical work that we have to do to ensure that we can use international domain names and scripts in non-Latin characters, we also have to ensure that our citizens and residents and other people know that they can use different languages and different scripts in their communication with government. I’ll come on to that in a second, but I think that is an area where we really do need to concentrate. In the UK, it’s been a very much of an incremental approach in terms of ensuring that for government services there is universal acceptance, that people can use their own characters and they can use international domain names. This has been a, if you like, responsibility of our UK Cabinet Office who are responsible, who have a large team responsible for gov.uk. Gov.uk in the UK is the single portal that people go to to access government services. And by and large, efforts are made to ensure that all the communications on gov.uk can accept IDNs without having to, if you like, convert the email addresses and the content back to the underlying ASCII equivalent scripts, which is the way that it’s still done in some areas, but that obviously is not the ideal way forward. But that leads me on to the second point, because as well as the, if you like, the technical approaches that are being taken and have been taken in many areas already to ensure this acceptability issue, we also have to ensure that people understand that they can do this. And I was struck by Manal’s example, that the use of the CCTLD, the IDN CCTLD, the usage has gone down to 10% of what it was when it launched or in the early days. And to an extent, I think this comes down to lack of confidence. When I was doing a bit of research for this presentation this morning and talking to some people responsible for our own services in the UK, they said that many users would not know how to use an IDN, if you like. Although, if you like, an IDN in various Indian scripts or other scripts might be a much better way for them to communicate because it would be easier for them. They would not necessarily have the confidence or the knowledge to do that and therefore, you know, tend to go back to the Latin script alternative, perhaps using a mixture of their own scripts and Latin scripts. So, I think we do have a lot to do in this area to ensure that users understand the availability of the systems to other scripts. I have an example from Wales, which is a part of the UK, which is a fairly large region in the UK. And it has its own .wales, which is a Latin-based generic top-level domain. But in the use of that domain, we only have 15 examples of where advantage has been taken of the ability to use Welsh diacritics. So, you know, we do have a problem in promoting this ability of people to or promoting the ability of people to use IDNs. So, I see, you know, and I hope we can go further on this in discussion. I see three critical challenges, if you like, for us. The first is, is the lack of confidence that people necessarily have perhaps to use international domain names and we need to do more to promote them that they can be used. We know there are problems, of course, with universal acceptance, but it is a bit of a chicken and egg situation in that if public authorities and if other institutions feel that there is no real use of these international domain names and they’re not seeing a problem, then they might not be taking the steps to ensure that they can be used on their systems. Secondly, the criticality of universal acceptance ahead of the next round for generic top-level domains. I mean, Manal and I and others and Santosh are involved in much of the ICANN work. ICANN has done some incredible work on multilingualism on the internet through the Universal Acceptance Steering Group and the UA Day that has been institutionalised. But going into the next round of generic top-level domains where we’re going to hopefully have more and more applications for IDNs, we must indeed do all we can to ensure that there is this further work so that they are accepted. And we must be honest with our applicants for generic top-level domains that there are still issues with universal acceptance. So, and the third point which I think I’ve covered to a large extent is that governments can do a lot more. We’re not suggesting we all should go out and regulate or pass laws or make regulation or, you know, sort of bang, you know, it’s not a case of discipline, it’s not necessarily a case of passing legislation. But what it is, it’s a case of working with the private sector, it’s a case of working with local authorities, it’s a case of working with educational institutions so people can understand what they can do already. Because if we’re going to really have multilingualism on the internet, people need to be confident to use their own languages and not to, if you like, have to use the English language as a substitution. Far too often we read case studies where people that have come to the UK and understandably are still, you know, trying to understand the English work on things are too worried to go online and instead get their relations and friends to apply for government services for them and that’s something we want to stop. I’ve talked for too long but this is really important work that we’re discussing here. Thank you. Okay, Nigel and all of our speakers, thank you. Nobody spoke for too long. I think that was all very useful and I’m hitting the slide button to officially enter the discussion phase. So during our brief delay earlier, I already spoke to a couple of people who I know have comments and there are a lot of stakeholders in the room, physically, hopefully also on Zoom, who are very actively engaged on this issue. So I’m going to invite Teresa or anyone else from ICANN who might like to speak first as we were talking about it earlier, I’ll bring in the microphone. Thank you.

Speaker 1: Thanks so much. Wow. It’s a privilege to be here and also to hear the speakers and thank you very much for organizing this event. The power to be able to engage on the Internet in your own language or script is incredibly important and something I think we often don’t appreciate. We like to speak in our own language, we like to read in our own language, we like to communicate in our own language and we should be able to do that on the Internet as well. And we should have a choice of the extensions to the right of the dot or to the left of the dot and how that works. So with that sort of bridging of internationalized domain names and universal acceptance, from our perspective and from ICANN’s limited mandate and mission, we play our part in trying to ensure a truly inclusive Internet on all levels. And to achieve this digital inclusivity, it takes more than just getting the people online and the speakers in their case studies observed this. It requires addressing some of the unique barriers such as the geographical or linguistical diversity. And so with that, the internationalized domain names and the technical aspect and the coding aspect of that can play a role in breaking down the barriers. You can fully unlock the IDN part, but unless you can actually communicate on that, hence the universal acceptance, that has to be a priority. And while we don’t have a mission in that, we certainly play a role in trying to help with that, around that. And with that, it means to ensure that all valid domain names and email addresses, regardless of script, can work seamlessly across the Internet on any device. And that’s WhatsApp, whatever it might be that you’re using that day of the week. There’s been a lot of work around this. My colleagues, Sarmad, Pitanan, and Seda, are online. They’re the versed experts on this. So if anybody has a question beyond my bandwidth or knowledge, please, let’s bring them in. But progress has been made, but we have a lot of gaps. So for instance, if we look at any of the testing right now, it shows that only about 11% of the top 1,000 global websites can accept internationalized email addresses, and just 22.2 of email servers can support them. That’s not a lot, not given the world population and the numbers of languages and scripts and dimensions to the right or to the left of the dot. And so these challenges highlight the urgent need for universal acceptance to become a technical and operational reality that platform providers, that other providers, whether it’s tech organizations, content management systems, email tools, web hosting tools, can enable this. But it’s not just a technical requirement. It’s essential, really, for the expansion and to provide a gateway for the next billion Internet users to navigate the Internet in a meaningful way. IDNs are already being used in diverse sectors, including government services. We’ve been hearing some presentations here, health, tourism, business. As open source software and big tech applications begin to embrace local languages. But we still have a lot to do. In the context of ICANN, we’re also looking at this as we look to open the next round. We anticipate or we would hope that we get interest for people to have their identity, whether it’s a visible identity or a source that they go to through an application, to have that ability to be in the language or the script or in the extension to the right or the left of the dot in the way they want. So in partnership with others, we have a lot of work to do. And some of it is just showing how somebody can code something. And other things are, you know, creating awareness at university levels and various other programs that are there. But the partnerships are important. And thank you for taking the initiative on the awareness here.

Owen Fletcher: Keith from Verisign also, I think, has a comment ready. Thank you very much, Owen. Can you hear me? Okay. So, hi. I’m Keith from Verisign.

Speaker 2: Just wanted to give a little bit of Verisign’s history and experience with IDNs. Verisign first launched IDNs at the second level, and .com would have remained ASCII back in the year 2000. I can say that my current boss, Patrick Kane, who is now a senior vice president in the company, started out as an IDN project manager or product manager. So Verisign has a long history of engagement with IDNs. During the 2012 round of new GTLDs, Verisign applied for 12 versions of .com and .net, nine in .com and three in .net. The transliteration would be, for example, in Cyrillic, K-O-M, the characters for com, the way that it sounds in a number of different scripts. And so Verisign’s very much committed to supporting and promoting IDNs. And in fact, about two-and-a-half weeks ago, we had an event that commits Verisign to continuing the development and uptake of multilingual characters, IDNs, within the ICANN process. So we’re committed to helping promote the multilingualism and the uptake of IDNs on the Internet. I do want to just… Is that better? Okay. So, sorry about that. I hope you got some of that. I won’t repeat myself. But I think it’s important to underscore what’s been said by a few others in that the registration and the resolution of IDNs works, right? It’s functionally operational. The challenge right now in… So at the DNS level, IDNs are functional. The challenge is at the level of the… Further up the stack, if you will, where the application layer, we have a real challenge where the application, such as email services or browsers or other services that rely on the DNS, is where the conflict exists. And I think that’s where we have quite a bit more work to do in terms of the universal acceptance aspect. And a member of my team has been a member of the universal acceptance steering group. We continue to see value in that initiative. So more work to be done. There’s more policy work and implementation work going on in ICANN right now around the topic of IDN variants, for example. But functionally, they work at the DNS level. It’s a question of making sure that they’re operational at the application layer. So thank you.

Owen Fletcher: Thank you. Now, I see hands up. Thank you. So we’re going to have a good discussion. I wanted to go to a chat question that I think we had in Zoom first, and I’ll open it up. Okay. We have a question for Manal that came in online. And the question is, would you be able to elaborate more about the challenges that are specific for right-to-left languages like Arabic and Farsi?

Manal Ismail: Thank you, Batool, for the question. And as Teresa mentioned, and also others, there are even more challenges with the right-to-left scripts than the usual left-to-right scripts. I’m not a technical expert, but I have one of my colleagues in the room. So if you don’t mind, we can pass this question to Abdelmonem. He’s currently in person in the room and maybe in a better position to answer this technical question. Yeah, please. Yeah, thank you.

Owen Fletcher: Thank you, Manal.

Audience: This is Abdelmonem Ghalila for The Record. I am working for the Telecom Regulator of Egypt to maintain and operate the IDN-CST LED of Egypt, which is IDN-1, which is an Arabic one. Actually, there are a lot of issues related to the Arabic language, especially the first one is related to the context. When you write a domain name inside your browser, there is a protocol, which is English, HTTP or HTTPS, then slash slash dot semicolon is the Arabic name. If you copy that and add it inside the world, it will be reflected. So how could you read it? You could read it from the left side or the right side. And this is one of the issues. This is one of the display issues. Yeah, assume that you have an email address that has a domain name in Arabic and the mailbox name itself in English. How could the application, how could you as a human read this email address from right or from left? If you read it from right, you will see that the domain name at this moment is the actual mailbox name and the left side is the domain name. If you read it from left to right, you will have the first part to be the mailbox and the second part is the domain name. This is one of the issues. The time you are trying to write the dot. inside your keyboard which you have the context of the keyboard in right to left it will differ from the other one when you press the dot which is left to right context at your keyboard. This is not limited for the issues for Arabic script. Another one which affects the security is related to the homograph attacks. There are some letters inside Arabic script that could be several different code points for the same shape of the letter. So if me for example use one of the domain names that have one of the letters which with one of this you know code letter and ignore the others could be some kind of homograph attack. Maybe someone will go and register the other domain name maybe in Urdu language. So it is one of the security issues that’s related to some of the issues or some of the issues or related to a right to left script. This is another one I would like to highlight here that universal acceptance is not limited for domain names and email addresses that are inside the mailbox that are inside the mail application or inside the browser. There are a large segment of the population who couldn’t even write their own local language. For example assume that for Arabic language I couldn’t write Arabic language and I couldn’t I don’t know English as well. How could I go online? There is another opportunity to handle this. There are a plenity of application iOS application and Android application that they could use open the mic and I say that I wanna go google.com I wanna go something in Arabic dot something in Arabic but the issues will be here that there are different accents for different people. So universal acceptance plays a critical role here in order to make such application you already as well in order to handle the largest segment of people who couldn’t write their own local language or even English. Thank you. Comment over here. Hello everyone my name is Sabina I’m from Mexico and I’m from the dynamic coalition of accessibility and disability. I think that one of the big challenges of the multilingual internet it’s how to include people with disabilities. I think about the sign language that it’s recognized as a language for the deaf community but I don’t see that it’s even mentioned in any of this of this forums or so I think we should be thinking how to include people with all kind of disabilities in these discussions and how to include other languages like the sign languages on the discussion. Thank you.

Owen Fletcher: Yes so while we’re at it I’m also going to invite questions for our our speaker first I think we’re good for our next commenter go ahead. Hello I’m Sadhvi from

Audience: the International Telecommunication Union or the ITU. Thank you for this very important discussion. Multilingualization of IDNs is something that the ITU has been looking at for several years as well as a fundamental driver of universal connectivity as we’ve heard but also for building digital skills and literacy around the world. We received a mandate from our 193 member states now now 194 through our plenipotentiary conference several years ago and that continues to be renewed at the last one in 2022 to focus on this topic particularly looking at it from the lens of technical solutions but also capacity development. It’s something that we also look at under the WSIS framework under Action Line C8 I believe on cultural and linguistic diversity and local content and through that work closely with other UN system entities as well including UNESCO but also outside the system with with ICANN and I thank Teresa for her for her great remarks earlier today. I wanted to highlight that we have what we call a council working group on international internet related public policy issues. It’s a bit of a mouthful but CWG Internet for short and actually Mr. Nigel Hickson who who spoke to us earlier today is a vice chair of that group as well. We’ve released or opened up a public consultation in October which is going to be running until the 11th of January on the topic of the role of public policy on the multilingualization of the internet. I warmly welcome all of you to take a look at our website and encourage you know organizations and stakeholders that you know who might be interested to contribute to that conversation and also present their contributions to the member states of the CWG Internet at our meeting. It’s a hybrid meeting in February. Thank you. Ram can you raise your hand so Andrew. Thank you. I’m Ram Mohan. I’m the chief strategy officer at Identity Digital and I worked in this area for a little while so I wanted to focus my energy on governments and some of the things that that governments ought to be thinking about. Governments want to provide services to their populations. That’s fundamentally one of the things they want to do and they want to and they’re moving to provide these services you know online to to make a lot of their services accessible online. Now connectivity and even meaningful connectivity requires language to become a core component of design and planning. Often when governments plan services and plan rollout of services you find that the the language component is sometimes in the design phase but often you’ll find that when they it’s only when it comes to the rollout that they recognize that language is now what excludes their populations from having agency online right. So I think that the important thing here in addition to universal acceptance and having internationalized domain names we need to understand that accessibility in your own language to services and the ability to navigate the internet in your own language is really a crucial table stakes kind of a basic requirement. The internet has become a significant utility in the world. When you when you have people in the global south but anywhere in the world when when people have money in addition to food and other essentials they absolutely subscribe to having internet access right. But what use internet access if you cannot have that access convert to meaningfulness in your own language right. So the language accessibility is really where I think we need to have the next stage of development. The the problems that the panel and all of you have been talking about on universal acceptance and internationalized domain names they are no longer technical problems. The technical problems are long solved they are long done. The real problems have to do with policymakers not just having the will or the intent but actually getting a toolkit that allows them to say I do have an intent to deploy language and deploy language services but how do I go about doing that right. So I think the creation of toolkits the creation of methods that allow for the tool providers and the service providers as well as governments who want to make those services accessible we need something that pulls all of these folks together right. Because you have silos you have you know the Unicode consortium knows how to take any language and or any script and make it accessible online. But how does somebody in the United States how does a Cherokee know how to take the Cherokee language and get that converted to Unicode right. And that you need to have that communication in Cherokee to that local population right. And that’s the kind of thing that governments ought to be starting to think about. Thank you.

Owen Fletcher: Thank you. So as the conversation goes on we’re getting more and more interesting aspects of this complicated situation. Jan I see your hand up I’ll go to you in a second. I wanted to ask Pradeep and Manal or Nigel if you’d like to comment to about content generation for domain or for you know websites using the IDNs that you’ve spoken about. So it sounds like provision of government services is a common theme. But in addition or the other types of content available on the existing IDNs that you’ve spoken about.

Pradeep Kumar Verma: Thank you. I’d like to highlight that in India we have 22 official languages, but there are many other dialects and many accents spoken throughout India, maybe in the numbers of 500. And if you ask about the content generation, most of the information today in the social media is absorbed by their content in their native language. So government services and websites, already the content in their local language has been already being generated. And we have already developed some tools, even in the Digital India Bhasini program, where we are providing support in the AI-based model, so that even local people can generate their content, even they use the open AI, and there are many tools developed within this program, so that it can even convert text to speech, speech to text, and other methods, they are more comfortable. Thank you.

Owen Fletcher: Manohar and Nigel, did you have anything? It’s optional. Yes, if I may, just very briefly to just to emphasize, I think the importance of what

Nigel Hickson: Ram was saying about, you know, that this has moved on from just being a sort of technical issue to a social policy issue, and, you know, as I put in the chat, I think we just need to do more as governments to ensure that citizens in our countries that are challenged with the native language can access public services on an equitable basis to those that use the native language. I mean, we have to ensure equality, what comes back to me, you know, having been around this game for, you know, too long, to an extent, was when we first had online services at all, was the requirements that we put in place, which are still there, although they are being eroded to an extent where people accessing or wanting public services shouldn’t have to. It shouldn’t be assumed that everyone has a smartphone. It shouldn’t be assumed that everyone has a form of internet access. We have to ensure that, you know, our marginalized communities can still have the benefit of being able to apply for grants or benefits or whatever the application is on an equitable basis. So I think we need to do more to ensure that people can know that they can use their own scripts and their own dialects. Thank you. Let’s go to Manal and then I see another hand up online.

Manal Ismail: Thank you, Owen, and just to agree with what has been said so far and also to echo what has been indicated from the floor that also accessibility issues need to be taken into consideration. Definitely, if we’re saying no one should be left behind, then we really should mean no one should be left behind. I fully agree that governments can do more. I have already went through a long list of strategic objectives. But in addition to that, governments could also work with other stakeholders on conducting awareness activities, organizing workshops, hackathons, trainings, train-the-trainer activities, setting proof-of-concept pilots, assist in stock-taking efforts, provide incentives to vendors and favor systems, applications and platforms that are UA-ready in tenders or purchase orders, add a requirement for UA readiness where applicable in relevant licenses or contracts, and add a requirement for creating local presence or web pages or platforms or portals in local languages under the relevant ID and CCTLD for national projects, initiatives and events, and of course, lead by example in that respect. And I would even add promoting the topic in relevant curricula and graduation projects. I leave it at this. Thank you. And one last thing is that it is indeed a win-win for all stakeholders. So for governments, we have already went through the strategic objectives. For business, it’s a market edge and market growth and addresses customer satisfaction. For the end user, it’s definitely enhanced user experience and a seamless end-to-end multilingual experience. And globally, as was also mentioned through the ITU, it caters for the needs of the next billion, bridging the digital divide, allows us to be more inclusive, addresses an aspect of human rights and contributes to achieving the global agendas we’ve already mentioned earlier. I leave it at this.

Owen Fletcher: Thank you, Owen. Back to you. Thank you. I’d like to go to Anil Kumar-Jain, if I’m saying your name correctly from the Zoom. Then I actually would like to go back to Jen, like I said, and then on to Sarmad. Thanks. I’m not hearing anything, though. And the Zoom disappeared from the screen. Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

Audience: Anil Kumar-Jain, for the record. I am chair of USG in ICANN. I’m patiently listening to the panelists and the contributors after the panel discussion. Thank you very much. I think it is a wonderful discussion. Now, the awareness about universal acceptance is catching up, and not within ICANN, but in United Nations, ITU, and other organizations. Now, the discussion which was being discussed is that the role of the government in implementing the universal acceptance. First of all, I would like to thank Teresa and Ram, affirming that the technical issues in implementing UA is already completed. So now the universal acceptance as a problem is implementable. It is available. It is workable. Now, in addition to the government, what USG has recognized is that there are roles of other. Second one next to government is the big techs, big techs like social media platforms, Google, Meta, and big techs like Apple, who are able to reach to a majority of the population. So if they are able to do that, I think acceptance of universal acceptance becomes a reality. And I am happy that Google, Meta, they have implementation of universal acceptance in their strategic plan. The third is the universities. They are the young population. They are training the young population. In USG, we have defined a UA academic curricula, which is of two grades. One is the basic one, and second is the advanced one. Universities can start introduction of UA in their existing IT program and then subsequently develop this as a module and maybe as a course in future. This will help the future generation to adopt the UA and understand the importance of UA. The fourth aspect, which is the DNS participant. Who are the DNS participants? As has been explained by Manal, that 85% of the CCTLDs and 41% of GTLDs are UA ready. It means that the registries have adopted UA and made the system available. But what about the registrars and the sub-registrars? What about the ISPs who are providing the connectivity? I think they also are required to be UA ready, and they have to make their system UA ready. It is important that all the players are required to be there. I understand that the awareness about UA is well-coordinated and conducted by the UA day program, which we are running for the last two years. At the same time, what Nigel has said is the lack of confidence. I think it is important. Thank you, Nigel, for bringing up this issue. We have to remove the fear that in case we are using a local language domain, either in browser or in email, we are able to reach to the right side. That is important. Good that a lot of information has come to us. And I can assure the audience that UASG will take all appropriate steps to ensure that UA should be able to reach to maximum population and next 1 billion internet users should come from non-English speaking population. Thank you.

Owen Fletcher: From the room, thanks.

Audience: Thanks so and this is Jen Chung from DotAsia organization. I look around the room both in person and online I see many faces that have been engaged deeply in this universal acceptance and internationalized domain names issues for many, many years. I think Ram has spoken earlier, he really undersold himself, he says he’s been in this for a little bit, no he’s been in this for almost since the very, very beginning. For DotAsia of course we absolutely support all the efforts to achieve universal acceptance, achieve EAI, achieve more uptake of internationalized domain names. I think really when you’re talking about the technical part of it, Ram has also stressed earlier it has been solved but the real problem right now is getting these toolkits, getting these tools that the UASG which Anil has very, very kindly, very in depth told us what they were trying to do and what materials they’re providing for everyone to use to the people who can use them, to the different companies, service providers, ISPs. As a registry operator we also have to do more as well. I know that Keith has mentioned the many, many things that VeriSign has done and also supported throughout the years. I think Edmund and Pat were on the same IDN group almost 25 years ago now. Maybe I’m aging them. I’m not really sure. But really when you’re talking to people who don’t really understand what universal acceptance or IDN is, you have to couch it in words that they already do understand. It is under the umbrella of digital inclusion and I think if you say the words digital inclusion everybody understands. Big corporations, governments, they all have different budgets, different teams looking at digital inclusion and a multilingual internet is an essential foundation for digital inclusion. The next billion coming online do not have English as their native language, may not even have it as their second, third or even fourth language. So really that’s the foundation of that. And without universal acceptance, I guess people who don’t speak English as a first language will forever remain second class citizens. It’s not as bleak as I just mentioned here. There is so much work that has been done already and so much work that I did come in a little late to this session. But it is really encouraging to see the governments of the U.S., U.K., Egypt and India already showing all the good work and the case studies both of successes and things that we can learn from that we can build upon. And I think the key message here also is it requires so many different stakeholders, cross sectoral and especially with government as a key driver. I’m going to stress for my last point is I think Manal put it really brilliantly, requiring that as part of the government procurement services, the tendering, leading by example, that is the biggest thing that the governments can do to lead this and then of course private sector industry will absolutely be like right on the heels of providing that service and providing all those benefits that we can all see. So that’s just my two cents on that.

Owen Fletcher: Thank you, Jen. Great comments. So on the screen, I’m only seeing Anil’s hand up, but I assume Sarmad’s hand is still up. We have about eight or nine minutes left. Let’s go to Sarmad. Still there. Right. If you would like to speak, Sarmad, please go ahead and unmute. I’m sorry, Owen. Sarmad is saying in the chat that he’s unable to unmute. All right. Well, let’s go to any other questions or comments for now. All right. Looking around the room. Ram, go ahead. I’ll bring you this mic. It’s working well. Thank you, Owen. I hope you can hear me with this microphone. Okay. Great. This is Ram again. I wanted to just briefly amplify and echo what Jen was just saying a few minutes ago. The future forward and the future opportunity for a multilingual Internet is to start speaking about this, to have governments, to have industry, to have civil society, academia, start speaking about this problem no longer as a problem, but as an opportunity for greater digital inclusion. Language is at the base of digital inclusion, and you have to have language as a core component of digital inclusion. We ought to start thinking about universal acceptance, internationalized domain names, these terms that in many ways actually do not translate well into many other languages. Try saying universal acceptance in Arabic. Try saying universal acceptance in Chinese. It doesn’t translate well. I think we really also ought to start thinking about transforming the semantics of what we’re talking about and starting to change this into a semantics based on digital inclusion that has language as a core component. Thanks. Thank you. All right. Sarmad, if you’re able to unmute at this point, please go ahead. Otherwise, do we have any other hands up in Zoom or comments from the room? Hello.

Audience: This is Sarmad. Can you hear me? Yes, we hear you. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you very much. I actually wanted to follow up. Anil actually raised good points. One of the key, I guess, challenges which need to be addressed is also capacity development. Internationalization for, I guess, in software development, which is sort of a key component on which internationalized domain names and internationalized email addresses are based, is still not something which is taught in universities. And so students or professionals which are coming out of the universities, for example, this is still not a very comfortable skill. So as Anil also shared, one of the things we are working on is actually developing or integrating curriculum which integrates internationalization, internationalized domain names, and internationalized email concepts into the curriculum so that once when the professionals, young professionals which come out, they are aware of not only these concepts, but they are also equipped with the skills to make sure that these are implemented in the technology.

Owen Fletcher: Thank you. Thank you. So I haven’t seen anybody else raise their hand on Zoom or in the room. If anyone has a final one-minute comment, now is your chance. Otherwise, I’m going to conclude for us by, first of all, thanking our presenters of case studies again, which provided the foundation, I think, for a very interesting discussion. I think it’s clear that everyone here recognizes the importance of making the Internet more multilingual and the value that will bring and the relevance of this issue to digital inclusion, among other important priorities. It’s also clear, I think, that there is not a silver bullet single solution, and therefore I’m glad to see the active participation from this group because it’s obvious that a lot of stakeholders will need to continue to work together to help advance us toward the end goals here. So thank you, everybody, for coming. I’m hoping that this leads to further discussions. We’ll see you next time. Wait, wait, wait. Huh? Oh, sure. Pradeep, Nigel, Manal, before closing, did you want to say anything in conclusion as well? Thank you, Owen.

Manal Ismail: Just to thank you, thank the host, and as mentioned earlier, we need to work collaboratively to achieve this as we owe it to everyone who needs it.

Owen Fletcher: Thank you. Just to echo that and thank you, Owen, for organizing this, but also for the great discussion we’ve had on the chat and what people in the room have brought to this. I think I’ve made several notes, and I think we’ve all got work to do. Thank you. That’s the real end. Thank you, everyone.

Agreement Points

Importance of multilingualism for digital inclusion

Jaisha Wray

Ram Mohan

Manal Ismail

Nigel Hickson

Multilingualism is essential for digital inclusion and meaningful connectivity

Language is a fundamental requirement for internet access and digital services

Multilingual internet provides a gateway for the next billion users

Governments should ensure equitable access to online services in different languages

All speakers emphasized the critical role of multilingualism in achieving digital inclusion and enabling meaningful internet access for diverse populations.

Need for government initiatives to promote multilingualism

Manal Ismail

Nigel Hickson

Pradeep Kumar Verma

Egypt working on universal acceptance deployment in government projects

UK recognizing importance of providing government services in multiple languages

India launched Bhasanet portal to promote multilingual internet

Multiple speakers highlighted government-led initiatives to promote multilingualism and universal acceptance in their respective countries.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers argue that the technical foundations for IDNs and UA are in place, and the focus should now shift to implementation at the application layer and addressing social policy issues.

Ram Mohan

Speaker 2

Shift focus from technical issues to social policy and implementation

Need to focus on application layer for full UA implementation

These speakers emphasize the importance of involving multiple stakeholders, including governments, big tech companies, and DNS participants, in implementing universal acceptance.

Manal Ismail

Audience

Governments can include UA readiness requirements in tenders and contracts

Big tech companies play a crucial role in implementing UA

DNS participants like registries and registrars need to be UA ready

Unexpected Consensus

Integration of UA in education

Audience

Manal Ismail

Need for better integration of internationalization concepts in university curricula

Governments can include UA readiness requirements in tenders and contracts

While most discussions focused on technical and policy aspects, there was an unexpected consensus on the importance of integrating UA concepts into education and professional development, suggesting a long-term approach to addressing the challenge.

Overall Assessment

Summary

There was strong agreement on the importance of multilingualism for digital inclusion, the need for government initiatives to promote UA, and the shift from technical solutions to implementation and policy challenges. Speakers also agreed on the importance of involving multiple stakeholders in UA implementation.

Consensus level

High level of consensus on core issues, with speakers from different countries and organizations sharing similar viewpoints. This suggests a unified understanding of the challenges and potential solutions for promoting multilingualism on the internet, which could facilitate coordinated efforts to address these issues globally.

Different Viewpoints

Focus of efforts for universal acceptance implementation

Ram Mohan

Speaker 2

Shift focus from technical issues to social policy and implementation

Need to focus on application layer for full UA implementation

While Ram Mohan argues for shifting focus to social policy and implementation, Speaker 2 emphasizes the need to focus on the application layer for full UA implementation.

Unexpected Differences

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around the focus of efforts for implementing universal acceptance and the specific roles of different stakeholders in promoting multilingualism.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among the speakers is relatively low. Most speakers agree on the importance of multilingualism and universal acceptance, with minor differences in their proposed approaches or areas of focus. These differences do not significantly impede the overall goal of promoting a multilingual internet, but rather offer diverse perspectives on how to achieve it.

Partial Agreements

Both speakers agree on the importance of government involvement in promoting multilingualism, but they propose different approaches. Manal Ismail suggests including UA readiness requirements in tenders and contracts, while Nigel Hickson focuses on providing government services in multiple languages.

Manal Ismail

Nigel Hickson

Governments can include UA readiness requirements in tenders and contracts

UK recognizing importance of providing government services in multiple languages

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers argue that the technical foundations for IDNs and UA are in place, and the focus should now shift to implementation at the application layer and addressing social policy issues.

Ram Mohan

Speaker 2

Shift focus from technical issues to social policy and implementation

Need to focus on application layer for full UA implementation

These speakers emphasize the importance of involving multiple stakeholders, including governments, big tech companies, and DNS participants, in implementing universal acceptance.

Manal Ismail

Audience

Governments can include UA readiness requirements in tenders and contracts

Big tech companies play a crucial role in implementing UA

DNS participants like registries and registrars need to be UA ready

Key Takeaways

Multilingualism on the internet is crucial for digital inclusion and meaningful connectivity

Universal Acceptance (UA) of internationalized domain names and email addresses remains a significant challenge

Governments play a key role in promoting multilingualism and UA through policies and initiatives

Multi-stakeholder collaboration is necessary to advance UA and internationalized domain names (IDNs)

Technical solutions for IDNs exist, but implementation at the application layer is still lacking

Framing UA and IDNs as part of broader digital inclusion efforts may help increase adoption

Resolutions and Action Items

Governments to consider including UA readiness requirements in tenders and contracts

Universities to introduce UA concepts in IT curricula

Stakeholders to continue awareness-raising activities like UA Day

UASG to take steps to ensure UA reaches maximum population and next 1 billion internet users

Unresolved Issues

How to increase user confidence in using IDNs and local scripts

Addressing specific challenges for right-to-left scripts like Arabic

Improving uptake of IDNs, which remains low despite technical availability

Integrating accessibility considerations for people with disabilities into multilingual internet efforts

Suggested Compromises

Shifting focus from technical issues to social policy and implementation aspects of UA

Reframing UA and IDN discussions in terms of digital inclusion to increase understanding and adoption

We have now more than 1,200 new GTLDs, around 100 of which are IDNs. And we have around 60 IDN country code top-level domains. We have mailboxes now that are no longer just an ASCII. And we have another round of new GTLDs on its way. This makes universal acceptance a fundamental requirement for unleashing the full potential of IDNs and internationalized email addresses and providing a truly multilingual and digitally inclusive internet.

speaker

Manal Ismail

reason

This comment provides important context on the current state of internationalized domain names (IDNs) and highlights why universal acceptance is crucial for digital inclusion.

impact

It set the stage for much of the subsequent discussion by emphasizing the urgency and importance of universal acceptance for a multilingual internet.

The problems that the panel and all of you have been talking about on universal acceptance and internationalized domain names they are no longer technical problems. The technical problems are long solved they are long done. The real problems have to do with policymakers not just having the will or the intent but actually getting a toolkit that allows them to say I do have an intent to deploy language and deploy language services but how do I go about doing that right.

speaker

Ram Mohan

reason

This comment shifts the focus from technical challenges to policy and implementation challenges, highlighting a key barrier to progress.

impact

It redirected the conversation towards practical steps for implementation and the need for toolkits and guidance for policymakers.

Language is at the base of digital inclusion, and you have to have language as a core component of digital inclusion. We ought to start thinking about universal acceptance, internationalized domain names, these terms that in many ways actually do not translate well into many other languages.

speaker

Ram Mohan

reason

This comment reframes the discussion of universal acceptance and IDNs in terms of digital inclusion, making it more accessible and relevant to a broader audience.

impact

It encouraged participants to think about how to communicate these concepts more effectively across languages and cultures.

I think we just need to do more as governments to ensure that citizens in our countries that are challenged with the native language can access public services on an equitable basis to those that use the native language.

speaker

Nigel Hickson

reason

This comment highlights the role of governments in ensuring equitable access to public services across languages.

impact

It sparked discussion about specific actions governments can take to promote linguistic inclusivity in public services.

Internationalization for, I guess, in software development, which is sort of a key component on which internationalized domain names and internationalized email addresses are based, is still not something which is taught in universities.

speaker

Sarmad

reason

This comment identifies a gap in education and training that is hindering progress on universal acceptance and IDNs.

impact

It led to discussion about the need for curriculum development and capacity building in the field of internationalization.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by shifting focus from technical challenges to policy, implementation, and education barriers. They emphasized the importance of framing the issue in terms of digital inclusion, highlighted the crucial role of governments, and identified specific areas for action such as developing toolkits for policymakers and integrating internationalization into university curricula. The discussion evolved from a technical conversation about IDNs and universal acceptance to a broader dialogue about digital inclusion, policy implementation, and capacity building.

How can sign languages be included in discussions about multilingual internet?

speaker

Sabina from Mexico

explanation

Including sign languages is important for ensuring accessibility for the deaf community in multilingual internet efforts

How can governments create toolkits to help deploy language services online?

speaker

Ram Mohan

explanation

Toolkits would help policymakers and service providers implement language accessibility in online government services

How can fear and lack of confidence in using local language domains be addressed?

speaker

Nigel Hickson and Anil Kumar-Jain

explanation

Overcoming this barrier is crucial for increasing adoption of internationalized domain names

How can internationalization and IDN concepts be better integrated into university curricula?

speaker

Sarmad

explanation

This would help equip new professionals with skills to implement multilingual technologies

How can the semantics around universal acceptance and IDNs be reframed in terms of digital inclusion?

speaker

Ram Mohan

explanation

Changing the language used could help communicate the importance of these issues more effectively across languages and cultures

Summary

This panel discussion focused on cyber diplomacy in the African context, exploring its importance, challenges, and opportunities. The panelists, including government officials, experts, and parliamentarians, emphasized the growing significance of cybersecurity for Africa’s digital economy and national security. They highlighted that cybercrime costs Africa approximately 10% of its GDP, underscoring the urgent need for robust cybersecurity measures.

Key themes emerged around the need for capacity building, international collaboration, and the development of appropriate legislation and policies. The Namibian Minister shared her country’s progress in implementing cybersecurity strategies and legislation, while other panelists stressed the importance of regional cooperation and participation in global cyber diplomacy forums. The discussion also touched on the challenges of limited resources and the need for African countries to balance national security concerns with international collaboration.

Panelists agreed that Africa needs to strengthen its cyber ecosystem, including education and training programs, to reduce dependency on foreign technology providers. They also emphasized the importance of trust-building among nations and the need for multi-stakeholder engagement in cyber diplomacy efforts. The role of parliamentarians in crafting appropriate legislation was highlighted, as was the need for alignment between national, regional, and global cybersecurity initiatives.

The discussion concluded with recommendations for fostering international collaboration, building capacity across various sectors, developing norms and standards, and improving public-private partnerships in cybersecurity. Overall, the panel underscored the critical importance of cyber diplomacy for Africa’s digital future and its role in the global cyber landscape.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The importance of cyber diplomacy for Africa’s digital economy and security

– Challenges faced by African countries in participating in global cyber diplomacy efforts

– The need for capacity building, legislation, and infrastructure to support cyber security

– The role of collaboration between countries and different stakeholders (government, private sector, civil society)

– Balancing national security concerns with international cooperation on cyber issues

The overall purpose of the discussion was to explore the concept of cyber diplomacy in the African context, highlighting its importance for the continent’s digital development and security while identifying challenges and opportunities for African countries to engage more effectively in global cyber diplomacy efforts.

Speakers

– Mactar Seck, Moderator

– Emma Theofelus, Minister of Information, Communication and Technology of Namibia

– Tereza Horejsova, Senior Outreach Manager at the Global Forum for Cyber Security Expert

– Katherine Getao, Cyber Diplomacy expert at the Diplo Foundation

– Beyza Unal, Head of Science and Technology Unit, UNIDIR

– Susan Ndalama, Member of Parliament of Malawi, member of the African Parliamentarian Network

Cyber Diplomacy in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities

This panel discussion explored cyber diplomacy in the African context, highlighting its importance for the continent’s digital development and security while identifying challenges and opportunities for African countries to engage more effectively in global cyber diplomacy efforts. Cyber diplomacy was broadly defined as the intersection of cybersecurity, international relations, and how governments handle diplomatic topics related to cyberspace.

The Importance of Cyber Diplomacy for Africa

The discussion underscored the critical importance of cyber diplomacy for Africa’s digital future and its role in the global cyber landscape. Panelists emphasized the significant economic impact of cybercrime and the urgent need to address cybersecurity issues on the continent.

Challenges Faced by African Countries

Key challenges faced by African countries in participating in global cyber diplomacy efforts include:

1. Low participation in international cyber negotiations

2. Need for funding and prioritization of cybersecurity amid competing interests

3. Limited resources and infrastructure

4. Dependency on foreign technology providers

Emma Theofelus, Minister of Information, Communication and Technology of Namibia, provided insights into Namibia’s efforts to establish cybersecurity foundations. She described their development of a national cyber security strategy, efforts to pass appropriate legislation, and recent experiences with cyber attacks. Theofelus highlighted the difficulties in keeping pace with rapidly evolving cyber threats, developing local expertise, and acquiring necessary equipment and software, all while facing funding constraints and competing national priorities.

Opportunities and Recommendations

Despite the challenges, the panelists identified opportunities for Africa in cyber diplomacy:

1. Exploiting emerging technologies and innovation

2. Strengthening regional cooperation and local capabilities

3. Developing norms and standards for cybersecurity

Recommendations for enhancing cyber diplomacy in Africa included:

1. Implementing comprehensive national cybersecurity strategies

2. Fostering international collaboration to increase African participation in global discussions

3. Investing in capacity building for all relevant actors

4. Building trust at national, regional, and continental levels

5. Improving public-private partnerships

6. Developing and implementing cyber-related legislation and regulatory frameworks

Capacity Building and Resource Allocation

A recurring theme was the need for capacity building and strategic resource allocation. Katherine Getao, Cyber Diplomacy expert at the Diplo Foundation, suggested leveraging foreign service academies for training diplomats in cyber issues. She also proposed using teleconferencing tools to overcome resource constraints and emphasized the importance of online training and courses for capacity building.

Tereza Horejsova, Senior Outreach Manager from the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise (GFCE), highlighted the GFCE’s initiatives in Africa, including regional hubs to connect various stakeholders and efforts to train cyber professionals.

Emma Theofelus stressed the need for a conversation between the Global North and Global South regarding financing of cybersecurity interventions.

Role of Different Stakeholders

The panelists emphasized the importance of multi-stakeholder engagement, including parliamentarians, technical agencies, diplomats, the private sector, and youth. Katherine Getao highlighted the potential of Africa’s youth population in driving cybersecurity innovation.

Balancing National Security and International Collaboration

The discussion touched on the delicate balance between protecting national interests and fostering international cooperation. Katherine Getao emphasized the importance of trust-building in international collaboration and suggested that African countries need a strategic approach to technology.

Additional Considerations

1. Beyza Unal, Head of Science and Technology Unit at UNDIR, mentioned the Women in Cyber project, highlighting the importance of gender inclusivity in cybersecurity.

2. The importance of identifying critical infrastructure in national cybersecurity strategies was noted.

3. An audience member suggested converting existing diplomats to cyber diplomacy experts as a potential solution to capacity challenges.

The discussion concluded with recognition of the complex challenges facing African countries in cyber diplomacy, but also with optimism about the continent’s potential to play a larger role in shaping global cyber norms and policies. Continued dialogue, capacity building, and strategic collaboration were emphasized as key to enhancing Africa’s position in the global cyber landscape.

Mactar Seck: Why cybersecurity is a key challenge in the continent? Because when we look at the negative impact in term of economic, cyber crime cost to 10% of the Africa GDP. Today, we are going to discuss cyber diplomacy in the Africa context. Why the subject is very important for the continent is for three reasons. The first, we have seen a lot of progress on digital economy in the African continent. We estimated by 2025, the digital economy will generate approximately $180 billion. But we are facing also several challenges. One of the key challenges now, deep in this digital economy, it is a cyber security, cyber crime. Why? As of today, cyber crime could cost around 10% of the Africa GDP. And we need to overcome this challenge. And we have several orientations for that. First, we need to build the capacity. We need to put in place the key regulatory framework. We need also to collaborate, because cyber security is not in one country. It is at the continental level, at the regional level, and at the world level. And through this, there is a new concept, an evolutive concept. It is called cyber diplomacy. That addresses the intersection between cyber security and international relations. And why today, we are going to discuss this concept. what key achievement and what is an opportunity for Africa to be part in this world discussion, global discussion on cyber diplomacy. As you know, it is a new concept. Today, I have the honor to moderate this panel with Excellency Honorable Minister Emma Theoforis, the Minister of Information, Communication and Technology of Namibia. And also, I’m going to have also Mrs. Teresa, Senior Outreach Manager from the Global Forum for Cyber Security Expert. Also of our Honorable Susan, Member of Parliament of Malawi, also member of the African Parliamentarian Network. I’m going to have also Mrs. Beaza, Head of Science and Technology Unit at UNDIR. As well, Katherine Getao, Cyber Diplomacy at the Diplo Foundation. We have five distinguished representative and panelists who represent all across Africa. And they are only female. I think it’s not gender balance, but gender disparity. Now, let me start by, I told at the beginning, it is an evolving concept on cyber diplomacy. We can have several understanding. Before we start our discussion, I would like to ask each of our panelists to give us in one minute, an understanding on cyber diplomacy. I’m going to start by the Honorable Minister.

Emma Theofelus: Okay, all right. Thank you so much, Mactar, and a very good afternoon to everybody here live from IGF in Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, and all our listeners and viewers online and participants. Very happy to be discussing this very important aspect of cyber diplomacy in Africa, looking at multi-stakeholder engagement. And in my small definition, I think cyber diplomacy touches on the ability of either states or multi-stakeholder actors, whether it’s intergovernmental organizations, to freely talk about the challenges that come with cybersecurity matters and the ability to converge to try to handle them. I’m talking about skills development. I’m talking about investment of financing. I’m talking about the ability to actually share cooperation between countries when one country is unable to handle cyber incidences. And I think it requires some level of deliberation, some level of discussion, some level of cooperation between institutions and countries to be able to have some cyber diplomacy in order to handle the challenges that come with cyber security. Thank you.

Tereza Horejsova: Thank you very much also, Mactar, for organizing the session. Very important topic, of course. So cyber diplomacy basically is how governments handle new topics that have emerged on the diplomatic agenda in the recent years and how they defend their interests in cyberspace in this respect. And I would like to stress the link to capacity building that Madam Minister has already brought up. Thank you.

Mactar Seck: Thank you very much. I think from my side, a lot has been said. I would say cyber diplomacy is like coordination between governments, whereby we want to make sure that our people are safe on issues of cybersecurity, and also making sure that we can promote friendly relations, especially on the cyberspace. Thank you very much.

Katherine Getao: It’s a pleasure to be here. So I believe cyber diplomacy is the field that will enable us to not only mitigate the risks that you mentioned in cyber security and cyber crime, but also to exploit the huge emerging opportunities for developing countries. We’ve seen that developing countries have really taken up this technology in social areas, like social media, as well as in technical and innovation areas. It forms a framework for collaboration between states, between single state and the private sector, who innovate, own, and manage the technology, and civil society, who are the advocates for emerging issues. And it gives us the areas where we focus, such as emerging technology, the norms and the culture that we adopt as a globe, the confidence building measures that prevent and manage areas of conflict, the development of international law that keeps us all in check, and also enables us to collaborate on very important issues, which you also mentioned, such as capacity building. So I’d say cyber diplomacy is a very broad field that gives us a framework to work on all these areas and create a peaceful, safe and productive cyberspace.

Mactar Seck: Thank you very much. Let me go now to Mrs. Beza.

Beyza Unal: Thank you very much. I completely agree with the other speakers. Coming from the UN side, cyber diplomacy really entails the diplomatic tools and strategies to address issues that relate to the cyberspace in general. And it could entail negotiation of treaties, norms, rules, setting up norms, rules and principles or certain standards. And the whole idea is really to understand what type of guardrails necessary in order for states to work together and to be able to mitigate the risks that emerge in cyberspace. It could also focus on many issues. You mentioned about cybersecurity and cybercrime. It could also include governance of the internet, international cooperation related matters, confidence building matters, capacity building matters, managing threats, as I mentioned. So the topic is really, really broad. Also, cyber diplomacy takes place between states, but multi-stakeholder community also has an important role within the discussion. And also, I would say that The topic itself includes not only the state-to-state relations and how to regulate state-to-state relations, including prevention of state-sponsored cyber attacks, for instance, and so on, but also it could also focus on frameworks to combat non-state actors. The UN Cybercrime Treaty, for instance, is a good example of that. Thanks.

Mactar Seck: All definitions are related to collaboration, capacity building, we have something in common, negotiation, norms, standards, and infrastructure. Now, I’m going to stay with Beyza, because the one issue on cyber diplomacy is the low participation of African countries in international negotiations. We can have examples of the United Nations group of government experts dealing with this issue. Since 2004, we have only eight countries selected in this discussion, in this group, very low compared to the challenge of the continent. Beyza, as you are head of this technology division at UNIDIR, and you work a long time with the UN, can you give us the global picture of the cyber diplomacy at the international level, as well as the participation on Africa please?

Beyza Unal: Yes, sure. So I can focus on the international peace and security elements, the pillar that we focus on in the UN system, which covers the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (INIDIR) mandate. Firstly, perhaps I could just mention a little bit of the evolution of how discussions have evolved within the UN context on cybersecurity issues. Believe it or not, the first resolution actually on cybersecurity was in 1998. So it’s been a very long time. And from 1998 onwards, we had seen a steady involvement of states. So initially, the discussion started in only a number of states being interested in the topic. And now what we’re seeing an inclusive space for all countries to be able to raise their voice on the topic. So from 1998 onwards, we had six group of governmental experts’ meetings. Basically, it means that the number of states that involved on those meetings were limited around 25 states or so. And we also had two open-ended working group (OEWG) meetings which were open to all countries. It was an inclusive intergovernmental multilateral discussion. As I said, each meeting, each intersessional or each multilateral meeting added up to the previous work that’s been done in this space. For instance, in 2015, states agreed to set up 11 voluntary and non-binding norms of responsible state behavior and this is quite important because the framework provides the guardrails of what is acceptable in cyberspace and what is not acceptable. And from 2015 to today if you look at it now the discussions is about norms is about how to implement those norms and whether there are more norms that are necessary. Whether some of the norms should be binding in nature or not. So there’s this great evolution that we’re seeing from states and the last OEWG meeting. The current OEWG started in 2021 and it’s going to be until 2025. It had many achievements so far and I think some of those achievements really relate to the African countries. First of all, I think we should recognize that this OEWG and the previous work that’s been done focus fundamentally on the capacity building element and it’s actually in one of the annual progress reports that was adopted by consensus. It’s acknowledged and recognized that capacity building is part of confidence building measure. So if you want to actually address state to state relations and build confidence, we need to also build capacities. And the draft program itself has a capacity building sub-theme as well that the chair has put together. And one of the elements as an achievement that’s a concrete achievement from this work is that it’s set up a points of contact directly. That’s basically states assigning diplomatic and technical experts. They gave us the name of those experts and we created a directory of that in order to facilitate communication between states in case of a cyber incident, in case they would like to share information with each other but that they don’t know who their counterparts are. Around 111 states have signed up to the POC directory. There are many African states also a part of that POC directory and we would like to increase these numbers so we’re reaching out to developing countries specifically for them to nominate names for us. But the POC directory, the points of contact directory was established in 2023-2024 so it’s only in one year we were able to get 111 states sign up to it so that’s really a good achievement. You also asked me how to increase the participation of African countries in these meetings. It has been always a challenge. One of the things that the chair has been doing is that in the OEWG meetings we are putting the meetings in hybrid format where teleconference setup is established and that really is all about connectivity and inclusivity even if you’re not in the room you would be able to hear what’s happening in the room. It’s not the same as being in the room I completely would agree on that. So as part of the work for instance in UNODA we are reaching to countries that has the capacity and that has the funds to be able to provide us those funds so that we could fly in countries from developed states to developing countries and so on. Ireland, for instance, has been really at the forefront on providing those funds in order to ensure better participation from developing countries in these meetings. There is also, outside of the UN actually, there’s also a women in cyber group that several countries are funding, ensuring that women delegates from developing countries would be able to come into these sessions and speak at these sessions. Thanks to actually that women in cyber initiative, we were able to get 50-50% participation, speaking roles in the OEWG discussions. So it is not perfect, but we’re putting all the efforts in place to ensure that developing countries and their voices are being heard. And also we’re doing everything to develop that a stronger diplomatic presence of those countries are there. Thank you.

Mactar Seck: Thank you very much for this global picture. I’m sure the minister hear you and we’ll see how we can increase the African participation in this negotiation. Now I’m going to give the floor to my dear friend, Honorable Minister Emma. She’s one of the key ministers of ICT in the continent. We are very proud of the work you are doing at national and continental level. We work together since some years. We have seen a lot of progress made by Namibia and also your contribution on the Africa digital agenda. Now, my question is, at the national level, if there is any initiative on cyber diplomacy or you plan to have this initiative in the future?

Emma Theofelus: Thank you so much, Mactar. And thank you to Beyza for giving us a rundown of how the role of multilateralism is very important in trying to achieve cyber diplomacy. And I can almost liken it to corporations that exist in the physical world, the corporations of Interpol in relation to our police agencies across our country, so even corporations of military trainings for various countries that might have advanced technology versus others. And I think that’s very similar to what we’re trying to achieve with the hope of multilateralism as a lever towards cyber diplomacy. So coming back to your question, Mactar, I think in Namibia, we have tried very hard to start with the right foundations because cyber security matters are moving so fast and so quickly that sometimes countries, and especially developing countries, cannot catch up very quickly in terms of ensuring the right legislation is in place, ensuring that it has the right experts in country to deal with possible incidences, having the right equipment and software sometimes because of the lack of funding and the competing interests in country. So in Namibia, we have done one or two things. One, we have tried to put down the right foundations of legislation. We’ve come up with a cyber security strategy that will run until 2025 to coincide with the working group’s timeline until 2025. And now we’re busy revisiting the current strategy to look at the next five years until 2030. And it’s very important for us because our strategies come with an implementation plan. and a costed implementation plan, so there is a commitment from government to put the necessary funding in place to implement the strategy. Secondly, we are busy with our cybercrime bill. It’s currently still with cabinet before it’s tabled in the National Assembly in our parliament, with the hopes that at least by next year we can start with a cybercrime law that is able to govern all cyber matters in the country. And thirdly, that I’d like to mention here, we have successfully implemented a Namibian computer security incidents response team. And this is very important to us because we just experienced a cyber attack two or three days ago. In fact, I was on my way to Riyadh when the cyber attack happened on our telecommunications company and our Ministry of Health. But thankfully because of a NAMSRT that we have established and that we costed and funded towards the tune of 20 million Namibian dollars, they were able to spring into action and now the situation is under control. But a lot of this money went not only to capacity, it went to a lot of equipment, which many a times costs a lot of money and software. And unfortunately for a country like Namibia now, where we’re in a state of emergency, where we’re experiencing our worst drought in 100 years, there’s so many competing interests and many countries are unable to prioritize 20 million of their currency money towards a possible cyberattack they could experience in the near future. And it’s so uncertain, you never know when it’s going to hit as opposed to a state of emergency situation happening at that moment, which many countries are experiencing. So this discussion around… Truly, cyber diplomacy and a multilateralism approach to prioritizing funding around cybersecurity matters is important. And it’s an honest discussion we need to have between developing and developed countries. Because it’s no secret that many of the attacks are coming from cyber hacking organizations in the Global North attacking Global South countries. So how do we ensure that we help developing countries put the necessary safeguards in place with funding that they do not always have to ensure that their critical infrastructure is protected? I’m talking about telecommunications, I’m talking about water infrastructure, electricity grid infrastructure, which could literally cripple developing countries. So these are some of the activities we are doing in our country, but we know too well that we are still not at the level we want to be at. Because if the attacks become frequent, which they will become frequent, in 2023 Namibia experienced 2.7 million cyber attacks. And thankfully, we’re able to contain the majority of them, and they did not do too much damage on our institutions and our economy. But we are seeing that the cyber attacks are becoming more sophisticated. The hackers are becoming smarter in the way they target our critical infrastructure. And we just do not always have the necessary funding to wield them off. So thank you for that question, and I hope I’ve painted the picture.

Mactar Seck: Thank you very much. This is a very comprehensive response. I think you are fully right. We need this discussion between the Global South and the Global North about this attack. You are right also on several policies put in place in the country to fight the cyber crime. Now, let me go back to Katherine. You have a long experience in Nairobi, in Kenya, as a representative in a cyber diplomacy group. For you, what are the key challenges and opportunities for African countries in this cyber diplomacy discussion?

Katherine Getao: Well, thank you very much for that question, Moktar, and I’ve been listening to my fellow panelists with interest. Now, I took part in three United Nations Group of Governmental Experts, the 2015, the 2017, and the COVID one that spread all the way from 2019 to 2021 because of the challenges. And I would say that the developing countries, even though there were a few countries represented, there were about three countries per group, although over the whole period there were around eight countries. But their contribution was very significant. First of all, I’d say in 2015, we were sort of disinterested parties because we had the big boys and big girls in the room and they had very clear interests. But Africa came in often as a moderating because we were just looking at the issues. The second thing I would say is that the OEWG was actually born from the 2017 group, even though there was no consensus in that group. There are 11 countries that met and said that we need to allow the whole world to participate in this dialogue because there is no country in the world now that does not have cyber activities in its economy, in society, in government, and therefore all countries should have a chance to participate in global policymaking. And this is even more true for Africa because we know that we have a very young population. 65% of our population is young and they are very digital. They have grown up with this technology. They use it all the time. If I think of Kenya, we use this technology from morning to evening and especially the young. From something as simple as paying for a bus ticket to health issues, our health system is now being managed on mobile to our money. So every part is affected. And when we either receive cyberattacks from inside or outside the country, or when we lose opportunity, for example, we’ve never been able to spread our technology in the whole world, the way you have Visa and MasterCard and the others. There are certain realities in the global field, which means that African technology is not spreading worldwide as it should. So we lose opportunities. So that effort of the developing countries, Senegal, Egypt, Kenya, to say no, not just a few countries, but the whole world was very important. And in the 2021 group, we saw how we could participate. Even it’s the last thing I’ll say, even as I’m participating in this meeting now, using teleconferencing, which means there didn’t have to be a huge investment. So the collaboration and the working together that we need to make cyber diplomacy and cybersecurity a reality on our continent. it does not have to be overly expensive. We can meet and form relationships using this technology in a more cost effective way. So I think there are huge, huge opportunities for Africa and that’s where I like to focus, even as I appreciate the importance of mitigating and defeating the risks created by cyber insecurity and cyber crime.

Mactar Seck: Thank you. Thank you very much. I think we know very well now the challenge, understand very well the challenge faced by African country to be part of this global negotiation and you provide also some takeaway for reflection. Honorable Susan, we learn from the Honorable Minister, we learn from the Honorable Minister, from Catherine and from Biaza, the global picture at the national level, at international level, as well as the challenge and opportunity. As a member of parliament of Malawi and also a member of the African parliamentary network, what role you have seen for the parliamentary in this discussion?

Susan Ndalama: Thank you very much, Doctor. As parliamentarians, we have a very crucial role that we play, especially in coming up with policies, regulations, legislations, as well as on the issues of governance. As members of parliament, most of the times we are left out on these issues and mostly maybe the executive would take up these issues and then maybe have negotiations with other nations, leaving us out as members of parliament. But when we want to come up with the legislation, we want to know what are the… issues that have been agreed upon, what have nations agreed upon, so that when you are coming up with the legislation, it should be in line with those negotiations. So as members of parliament, we belong to different committees. And I believe that if we are able to use these committees as, for instance, the international relations committee, the ICT committee, together with the defense committee, and maybe the trade committee, we should be able to come up with proper legislation, which will be able to, for different countries, to make sure that we are able also to learn from other countries. For instance, what is Namibia doing on issues of, on cyber security? What is Zambia or maybe the neighboring countries doing? So that when we are coming up with that legislation, it should be in line with what our neighbors are also having. We may come up with a legislation, for instance, in Malawi on cyber security. But then when we go to Namibia, we check their legislation. It’s totally, it’s talking differently about what we have in Malawi. For instance, we are talking about cyber security. Most of the issues are happening, not internally, but maybe outside Malawi. In that case, we would want Namibia to help us when those issues happen. How can we be able to come out to work with Namibia? We should be able to come up with a legislation, which will be, can be maybe from both sides, it will be something that will work from both sides. If something happens in Namibia, we should be able to collaborate. We talk to Namibia and say, this has happened and we have noted, this is coming from your country. Help us so that we can be able to. maybe to keep these issues of cyber security. So for me, I would believe that it’s not something that can be done by one stakeholder, but we need to work together with the executive, with CSOs and other non-government organizations to make sure that we collaborate and come up with the best for Africa. If we work in isolation, if we work, maybe the executive works on its own and then the legislators works on their own, then we will not be able to achieve what we want to achieve. So from my side, I would believe that we have the ball in our hands. We are the people that come up with the legislation. We have to be concerted. We have to be together in coming up with the best for Africa. We believe that as members of parliament, you have mentioned about APNIC. We are not only talking about one country in Africa, we are in all countries in Africa. And with that, we believe that we are representing the whole continent of Africa. So we should be able to work together and make sure that every member of parliament, as we have come here, we have learned something. We have discussed this issue. We go out there, share with our colleagues what can be done, what should be done, what can we as legislators take home and then work together as Africa. Otherwise, I think from my side, that’s what I can say. But we are very ready to come up with the best legislation. Namibia has mentioned here that they have come up with the best legislation on the same. So we should be ready to do that. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for that.

Mactar Seck: I think you can start the discussion now. No, you highlight very important thing. Collaboration is a key now in this cyber diplomacy space. Now I’m going to Tereza. As a Global Forum for Cyber Security Expert, you have a lot of initiatives in cyber diplomacy across the world. And also you work with several organizations like the UN Economic Commission for Africa. Can you highlight some key initiatives and their impact in the continent and also what you plan to do with UNECA on this initiative for next year to support better African countries?

Tereza Horejsova: Thank you very much for the question. In your intro, Mactar, you have mentioned a very scary number in terms of how much percentage cybercrime costs Africa, 10% of GDP. That is not a nice number. At the same time, we can observe that many digital projects that are being implemented in Africa, cyber security is still not as much at the focus as it should be. So there seems to be a little bit of a disconnect. And if there is something that we as the GFCE, the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise, can do in this respect, we will happily do it. Then how? We are a global organization, now over 200 members and partners from various stakeholder groups. We have governments, we have civil society, we have academia, technical community, private sector. Because as you have also mentioned, dear colleague, involvement of various stakeholders in covering this issue, it’s key. It’s not just a question for governments. Now, to zoom in a little bit more, what we felt in the last year is that it’s not us in the headquarters in the Hague who should be telling what countries need in terms of their cyber capacity building, so we are trying to decentralize much more and have a bit more demand driven to cyber capacity building which practically speaking happened through the creation of GFCE hubs, regional hubs and in the context of this session, I of course need to highlight the hub, the regional hub that we have for Africa whose director is Moctar Yedaly and also Martin Koyabe who are here at the IGF and who are working for the hub. What we are actually trying to do a little bit more on the regional level is to help connect the dots a little bit more, help to see if we can practically contribute to better matchmaking, less duplication of efforts because the hub can be those eyes and ears on the continent, can also pass the message you know further to the global community, to implementers and also to donors because very important work that we are trying to do at the GFCE also at the regional level is to work more with the donors so that they align their efforts because something that we’ve been hearing from not only Africa but many other continents is that the donor efforts are not coordinated, they are often ad hoc, they are not complementing each other as efficiently as they could. So that’s a little bit on the context but the bottom line is everything we do comes down to cyber capacity building and cyber capacity building is connected to another issue which is very simple, very practical but also the hardest one and that’s the question of financial resources because much more is needed. One concrete action that we are trying to do in this respect is throughout our efforts of the so-called Global Conference on Cyber Capacity Building GC3B which took its first edition place in Ghana, Accra last year and we will have the next one in Geneva in May. The outcome document of the conference has been the so-called Accra call, where we also try to really encourage global community to do some concrete action, which also, by the way, includes the question of unlocking more resources and also understanding that cyber security is really linked to digital resilience and development of countries in question. So other concrete, you know, points that I would really like to mention, especially as you have organized this question, is the MOU, the Memorandum of Understanding that we have signed with UNECA and we are really looking forward to working much more closely and complementing the efforts. I’m also very happy when Beyza mentioned the Women in Cyber project. Indeed, it’s one of those projects where we really believe that immersion does the magic, that we have helped facilitate on behalf of the funding governments participation of so many women from various regions, including Africa, to really get involved in the session of the Open Ended Working Group. So I will maybe stop here and happy to elaborate more in the discussion.

Mactar Seck: Thank you so much for highlighting all these key initiatives in the continent and we’re looking forward to our fruitful collaboration for next year. We already started the establishment of the Cyber Security Center in Togo also. We have to look at how we can include the cyber diplomacy component. Now let me open the floor for first round of observation or questions. Don’t hesitate, we have the experts here. You can ask any question, you will find the answer. I want to take the floor now for the first round of questions. Check online if you have a question.

Audience: Good afternoon, everybody. It’s all the points has been raised so far. So actually, I’m very happy with all the point that’s been raised so far. Well, I have one very good question. And the question goes like this. Since many African countries are highly dependent on foreign technology providers and their cyber security policies. This means that we are being shaped or influenced by SNF actors, including technology companies and foreign governments. What is Africa really doing to liberate himself from this autonomy in shaping its cyber diplomacy strategies and policies? Because I really want us to differentiate between collaboration and dependency. Thank you.

Mactar Seck: Another question. It is a new subject. You have to ask us questions to understand better.

Audience: My name is Francis from Kenya, the Communications Authority of Kenya, which is a regulator. Very interesting discussion from all the panelists. My question is about the need to balance between the need because cyber security issues are now matters of national.

Mactar Seck: Thank you. Let me go back to the panelist, and after I will come back to you. Any other questions here? All right, Honorable Minister, I give you the floor to answer to the second question. And the first one, I think anyone can provide input.

Emma Theofelus: Thank you very much, Mactar. Thank you very much for the question on the balance between national security and collaboration. I think I can liken it in terms of existing security cooperation between various countries. When it comes to, for example, cooperation of countries around Interpol and military exercises of one country being conducted in another country. Of course, one would hope that you don’t compromise your ability to deal with any. so-called enemy, should there be an attack on your national security infrastructure. But I think there is much more value in countries then sharing best practices and learning from one another, especially when there are no hostilities. And I think we can replicate the same around cyber security matters. Perhaps look at ways in which countries can try to strengthen their cyber security systems by allowing a so-called more advanced country to test their systems and possibly look at other ways in which to strengthen them. I think that’s the best way to do it, to do it when there is no time of crisis, when actually you have the ability to handle the situation, to do proper crisis management, when there is no real threat, but you do the necessary exercises to continuously test. It would be a tragedy for a country like Namibia to believe it has the best cyber security systems and then one day there comes a real threat and we don’t. I think I would rather know that we don’t have the best systems because we actually tested upon the best, who also believe they have the best security systems and we can test them. But I also wanted to add that in addition to cooperation with countries, it goes beyond national security matters. It also goes with legal matters. Imagine a hacker who has done significant damage in a country by hacking critical infrastructure, siphoning amounts of money or putting the country’s national security at risk and this person is apprehended in Malawi. It would be best to have a legal instrument between Namibia and Malawi in terms of prosecution. Either this person is prosecuted in Malawi and then served their sentence in Malawi or there is some level of cooperation between our two countries for this cyber criminal to be able to come to Namibia and face the Namibia’s prosecution courts and prisons. So I think those are some types of the cooperation that go beyond just infrastructure and go really around cooperation between our two countries. That if there is a cyber criminal in Malawi, Namibia must be able to claim that criminal so that they can face and face the law in Namibia. So I think those are ways we can cooperate without necessarily having the question of putting our national security at risk.

Mactar Seck: Thank you. For the first question, I think anyone can provide input. Let me start with Beyza for the first question.

Beyza Unal: For the first question, I think the importance in here is focusing on a multifaceted approach for self-sufficiency because the question was about how to decrease dependency to other actors and states. So I think one way of looking at it is really strengthening regional cooperation and also empowering local capabilities. So it would be important to create a cyber ecosystem at the national level, for instance, developing a robust cybersecurity infrastructure at the national level, but also regional and sub-regional levels with countries that are trustworthy, that the country itself trusts, I think should be able to easily cooperate with each other. Another important element of that self-sufficiency and linked to that, creating that cyber ecosystem is really setting up the the training and the education that is necessary for cyber professionals and training the new next generation of cyber professionals. And I think there are there are non-state actors, I mean, NGOs, I should say, not non-state actors, there are NGOs, there are academic organizations that could help with that capacity building to provide that training. So it doesn’t have to be coming directly from another government or country or representative. It could come from the multistakeholder community, which is, which is the good part of that discussion today, that like the role of the multistakeholder community. But it’s really all starts with how a state prioritizes its cyber related matters. So, you know, we could talk about critical infrastructure, there is no definition of a critical infrastructure, every country has different infrastructure for them to be named as critical. We, for instance, go to Singapore for cybersecurity fellowship that we hold there for for developing countries. One of the first things that Singapore says is that the water infrastructure is considered crucial and critical for Singapore. For some countries, it may not be right. So it’s important at the national level. While setting up those national policies to identify, what are the priorities and what are the priorities that need to be protected? What are the infrastructures that are considered critical? And in those infrastructures, what are the networks that need to be protected? Not all of the networks need to be protected under one critical infrastructure setting as well. So we need to also kind of triage, which elements of that needs to be protected. be protected as well. And then I think under that, you need to also establish layers of protection around data protection laws, for instance. And lastly, I would also say, for international cooperation purposes, you know, you can be self-sufficient, but also still relying on other countries, because in a globalized world, it’s impossible to be completely independent from others. And I think it’s not healthy as well. So as a country, it’s important to establish clear boundaries in which areas to share information, for instance, for international cooperation purposes. And if you could be able to do that as a state, then it becomes also easy to rely on countries in the areas that you would like to rely on and be self-sufficient in other areas.

Mactar Seck: Thank you. Thank you. Katherine, you want to add something?

Katherine Getao: Yes, please. So on the first question, yes, it is a concern that when you are totally dependent on the developed world for your technology, obviously, you have to follow the norms and the standards created by those technology providers. So I’d say there are three areas which I believe Africa still has a chance to assert itself, not only as a consumer of technology, but also somebody who drives technology. First is that cyber diplomacy, participating in the development of international policy, which will also affect and control these globalized companies. So part of the reason why Africa should really be involved in cyber diplomacy and international policy, cyber policymaking processes, is to make sure that the emerging policy is coherent with the needs and the priorities of Africa. Secondly, I think there is continental technology that’s coming up. And this is really a chance for Africa to put its money where its mouth is, and even have a preference for African technology, technology that is appropriate for our culture that has been locally developed, that will create jobs for young people in Africa. And this includes, I think several countries have tried to promote open source approaches to technology development. It hasn’t been very successful, but I don’t think we should give up. We should be moving towards an area where we are more in control of the technology that we consume. And lastly, I think Africa has a huge advantage in having the largest youthful population, people who are ready and available to have their capacity built and to become major players, not only in Africa, but globally in supporting systems, in providing cybersecurity, in innovating systems, and in creating the future, even in the adoption of new technologies. So if we have a strategic approach to technology, and not just a passive consumer-based approach, I believe we will address your issues. The only issue I would add on the second question is the issue of trust. It is impossible for countries to work together if they don’t trust each other. And so among our cyber diplomacy efforts, there must be trust building efforts to make sure that countries can trust each other when they need to work together on solving issues which are sensitive to their national security. Thank you.

Tereza Horejsova: If a country anywhere is dependent just on one donor, be it private sector actor or one government, it’s a vulnerable position to be in. And that’s why, again, you know, back to the point I made at the beginning of this session, investing resources in cyber capacity building is our global responsibility. It is not a smart approach, you know, if donors kind of count on others to step in because that can cause messy situations and kind of safer for everybody is if more actors are involved in providing resources and if they communicate with each other to provide the resources based on how the recipient countries define their needs because they know what they need. They don’t need to be taught what they need. Thank you.

Audience: I was not allowed to speak previously. Thank you for the chance and for the floor. So very exciting to hear the success story of the Namibia, the Honorable Minister Adepictus, the very initiative they are really doing on cyber diplomacy arena. They successfully really implemented different strategies even to combat, you know, and then safeguard the national, I’ll say 2.7 million attacks were really successfully contained because they really implemented the cyber diplomacy strategy for the national level. We know that cyber diplomacy is not about cyber security issues, it’s all about international cyber governance, cyber security collaboration, and it’s also digital rights and freedom, and it’s also an issue of economic and technological negotiation. Our Honorable Minister, I think your experience will be really a lesson for the rest of the African countries. So we have a shortage of human resource and human capital, a skilled human capital in this emerging field. How did you manage to bring this skilled manpower so that you incorporated all this essential cyber diplomacy components on board so that your national sovereignty is protected? So that would be really a good lesson for the rest of the African countries. Thank you, Mactar.

Mactar Seck: Thank you.

Audiece: Okay, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Sorin Assefa. I think my question is directed to Katherine. Having an experience as a government representative to be in this negotiation table, and as you know that I think only South Africa, Kenya, Mauritius, or Egypt, they are quite active in this diplomatic or UN norm-setting process. What do you think we should have as an innovative solution, converting our ambassadors or existing diplomat to cyber diplomacy, and most importantly, bridging the gap from New York to Geneva and all the way to the home of the African Union? What kind of capacity building strategy we should drive to ensure that with our limited resource, we are catching up with the rest of the world? Thank you.

Mactar Seck: Thank you, Sorin.

Audience: My name is Isad from Chad. I am Pan-African U.S. ambassador for Internet Governance at Pan-African U.S. I’ve been training at Pan-African U.S. for Internet Governance Fellowship, which has been initiated by my esteemed founder. So my question is mainly focused on capacity building, as my founder mentioned it. So what role can international partnership play in strengthening African cybersecurity infrastructure? And how should African nations approach such partnership diplomatically? Thank you.

Tereza Horejsova: Thank you very much. I’ll also try to be brief, because I know we will soon have to end. What the GFCE can offer, it depends also on how many members and partners from the continent we have. So there are, of course, many African countries that are already members of the GFCE, and there are many African organizations that are partners to the GFCE, not many. If we also get more on board, we can try to bring more voices of the African priorities in cyber capacity building to the global audience and encourage international cooperation that you have mentioned in your question. I would suggest that talk to Martin, who has joined us, because he can tell you really so much from the Africa hub point of view, how we can kind of leverage the needs of the continent further. So I hope it’s helpful for these things. And I have to mention, partnership and membership in the GFCE, it’s for free, yes. It’s not like a paid partnership.

Mactar Seck: But we do encourage to have more on board to kind of help us push the mission. OK, Katherine, please.

Katherine Getao: So how can we leverage on the existing meetings? Firstly, I think there are people who are making efforts. GFCE, who have just told us what they do, have done a lot of training, especially at the regional level. DiploFoundation, also supported by GIZ, have also been training the regional bodies and also the AU to make sure that diplomats, because in many cases for African countries, you can’t afford to send a fresh person. So it is usually the in-country diplomat who is already in the UN mission of that country who participates in that process. And if they are not well versed in cyber issues, of course, they will be handicapped. Many of them are also quite overloaded with work in many committees at the UN. So continued capacity building and support of the diplomats who are already at the missions could be an important strategy. And this doesn’t always have to be done face to face, which is expensive. It can also be done through online trainings and courses, which they can follow. We’ve also been trying to influence the foreign service academies, which they have in various countries, and get them to take up these kinds of capacity building activities, whether they’re drawing on the resources which have already been done by GFCE or DiploFoundation, or whether they are supported to develop bespoke courses which are relevant. So the foreign service academies are already there in country, so it will be a matter of building their capacity to also support their diplomats who are coming into the service in the area of cyber diplomacy. The third thing I’ll mention is there usually has to be a lot of collaboration between the technical agencies, such as the CERTs and the cyber security agencies, some of the ICT agencies in country, both in the public sector and private, and also the diplomats who are going to represent the country in these processes. So supporting in-country exercises and in-country trainings that bring all these agencies together so that you familiarize them, you build trust between them, means that you will have higher quality representatives participating in these global processes, because they can also consult. If they know their colleagues at home in the technical sphere or in the diplomatic sphere, depending on who is representing the country, they are quickly able to get the kind of backstop support that they need as they participate in global processes. So those are just a few of the suggestions that I can make that would help us quickly get up to speed. and to participate more effectively and even more aggressively in international processes. Thank you very much.

Susan Ndalama: As parliamentarians, we want to be capacitated with information on how best we can handle these issues. You have rightly said this is a new thing that has just come up and as parliamentarians, we have to be aligned to what our role should be especially when we are coming up with legislation. So we need more capacity building sessions to make sure that we are in line, we are aligned to this and as well as we should be able to have the skills on how we can be part of this cyber diplomacy. Thank you.

Mactar Seck: Thank you. I’ll give the floor now to the Honorable Minister to answer the question and your final remark before we conclude.

Emma Theofelus: Thank you so much Mactar and thank you to the question by Dr. Dereje Yohannes. Thank you. You asked how Namibia has in the meantime been able to defend off some of the cyber attacks especially the ones we experienced last year and of course the one we are now able to handle that just came up with our largest telecommunication company. Well the first one was to ensure we have the right legislation in place. I indicated that we have the cyber security strategy which outlines everybody’s role from public sector actors to private sector actors to civil society and where that money will be coming from and at this point in time it’s mostly coming from treasury. but we’re hoping that we find other alternative ways to get the necessary funding to put the systems in place to support our efforts. Secondly, we have at our National University of Science and Technology, we have a department for Informatics and Computing and there is a four-year degree course on cyber security that has definitely increased the capacity in-country of cyber security graduates and cyber security experts in the country to be able to, one, be able to be deployed in the various institutions, whether in the public sector or private sector, but to have this in-country capacity. But I must also add that we are not yet satisfied because the cyber security space is constantly changing. We need more and more experts, even with the ones we are graduating, we need more. But we also need those that are able to handle the ever-changing landscape, which means we need more that will be working and others that will be continuously studying to ensure that they are constantly capacitated to handle these incidences. So we have mitigated the best we could now, but there is definitely more to be done and it’s a continuous process. Like I said, it’s, you know, investment intensive. It requires one actively prioritizing that we’re going to put X amount of million Namibian dollars to ensure that the necessary skill set in the country exists and to ensure that we’re able to mitigate any cyber incidences. And finally, I’d like to thank UNECA and all partners for convening this very important discussion. But I want to emphasize truly that when it comes to multilateralism and the Global North and Global South conversation about the financing of cyber security interventions, we must look at the various contributing factors as to why developing countries are unable to prioritise cyber security, where they are unable to put the necessary financing in place, where they are unable to put courses in their national universities with experts, and this comes down to the ability of those countries to service some of their international financing loans, which attract higher interest more than any other countries on the planet, and the ability for these countries to prioritise because many times they are repaying loans as opposed to investing in areas that matter to protect their critical infrastructure.

Mactar Seck: Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Honourable Minister, and we are at the end of this session. Now, for takeaway, we agreed during the discussion that cyber diplomacy, the key objective is to enhance global security at the national level, regional and the world level. It is one key objective of this cyber diplomacy. Also, to promote safeguard in the cyber space, it is something very important we discuss, as well as to safeguard human rights, because we have the direct link between cybersecurity and human rights. And for that, following the several discussions, we can have some key recommendations. First, for that, we need to put in place the right strategy, like what Namibia is doing now. Also, we have to foster international collaboration to increase participation in Africa in the global discussion on the cyber diplomacy. Second recommendation, capacity building is a key, and we need to build the capacity of all actors, starting by the policy making, the parliamentarian, law judicial corps, all people involved in this digital space should be, their capacity should be built. Another point, it is we have to build trust, because when we talk about international collaboration without trust, it will not work. We need to build trust at the national level first, at the sub-regional and the continental level. And also, we need to improve the collaboration between private and partnership forces, private and public sector, we need to collaborate together to put in place the right infrastructure, because we need also to develop the norm and the standard, which is very important in terms of cybersecurity. It is some key takeaways from this meeting. This session, I would like to thank all the panelists for their very good insights. I learned a lot from them today. And thank you once again for the members of the panel, and the round of applause of them. Thank you also, participants, for your active participation.

Agreement Points

Importance of cyber diplomacy

Mactar Seck

Emma Theofelus

Tereza Horejsova

Katherine Getao

Beyza Unal

Cyber diplomacy addresses intersection of cybersecurity and international relations

Involves ability of states and stakeholders to discuss cybersecurity challenges

Focuses on how governments handle new diplomatic topics related to cyberspace

Provides framework for collaboration between states, private sector, and civil society

Entails diplomatic tools to address cyberspace issues like treaties and norms

All speakers agreed on the importance of cyber diplomacy as a means to address cybersecurity challenges through international cooperation and dialogue.

Need for capacity building

Emma Theofelus

Tereza Horejsova

Susan Ndalama

Need for funding and prioritization of cybersecurity amid competing interests

Need for capacity building and training of cyber professionals

Invest in capacity building for all relevant actors

Multiple speakers emphasized the importance of capacity building and training in cybersecurity to enhance cyber diplomacy efforts.

Multi-stakeholder engagement

Emma Theofelus

Katherine Getao

Susan Ndalama

Importance of multi-stakeholder engagement including private sector

Provides framework for collaboration between states, private sector, and civil society

Parliamentarians play crucial role in policies and legislation

Several speakers highlighted the importance of involving various stakeholders, including the private sector, civil society, and parliamentarians, in cyber diplomacy efforts.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized the need for strategic approaches and international collaboration to enhance Africa’s participation in global cyber diplomacy discussions.

Mactar Seck

Emma Theofelus

Put in place right strategy, like what Namibia is doing now. Also, we have to foster international collaboration to increase participation in Africa in the global discussion on the cyber diplomacy.

Improve public-private partnerships

Both speakers stressed the importance of building trust and strengthening cooperation at various levels to enhance cyber diplomacy efforts.

Katherine Getao

Beyza Unal

Build trust at national, regional and continental levels

Importance of strengthening regional cooperation and local capabilities

Unexpected Consensus

Role of youth in cyber initiatives

Katherine Getao

Need to involve youth population in cyber initiatives

While not explicitly mentioned by other speakers, Katherine Getao’s emphasis on involving the young population in cyber initiatives was an unexpected point that could have significant implications for the future of cyber diplomacy in Africa.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The speakers generally agreed on the importance of cyber diplomacy, the need for capacity building, multi-stakeholder engagement, and international collaboration. There was also consensus on the challenges faced by African countries in participating in global cyber diplomacy discussions and the need for strategic approaches to address these challenges.

Consensus level

High level of consensus among speakers, with agreement on key issues and challenges. This consensus suggests a shared understanding of the importance of cyber diplomacy for Africa and the need for concerted efforts to enhance African participation in global cyber diplomacy discussions. The implications of this consensus include potential for coordinated action among African countries to strengthen their cyber diplomacy capabilities and increase their influence in international cybersecurity negotiations.

Different Viewpoints

Approach to reducing dependency on foreign technology

Beyza Unal

Katherine Getao

Importance of strengthening regional cooperation and local capabilities

Opportunity for Africa to exploit emerging technologies and innovation

While both speakers emphasize the importance of local capabilities, Beyza Unal focuses on regional cooperation, while Katherine Getao emphasizes exploiting emerging technologies and innovation.

Unexpected Differences

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement were subtle and primarily focused on different emphases rather than outright contradictions. Speakers generally agreed on the importance of cyber diplomacy, capacity building, and regional cooperation, but had slightly different approaches or focus areas.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among the speakers was low. This suggests a general consensus on the importance of cyber diplomacy for Africa and the need for increased participation and capacity building. The slight differences in emphasis may actually be complementary, potentially leading to a more comprehensive approach to cyber diplomacy in Africa.

Partial Agreements

Both speakers agree on the need for investment in cybersecurity, but Emma Theofelus emphasizes the challenge of securing funding amid competing national priorities, while Tereza Horejsova focuses on the specific need for capacity building and training.

Emma Theofelus

Tereza Horejsova

Need for funding and prioritization of cybersecurity amid competing interests

Need for capacity building and training of cyber professionals

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized the need for strategic approaches and international collaboration to enhance Africa’s participation in global cyber diplomacy discussions.

Mactar Seck

Emma Theofelus

Put in place right strategy, like what Namibia is doing now. Also, we have to foster international collaboration to increase participation in Africa in the global discussion on the cyber diplomacy.

Improve public-private partnerships

Both speakers stressed the importance of building trust and strengthening cooperation at various levels to enhance cyber diplomacy efforts.

Katherine Getao

Beyza Unal

Build trust at national, regional and continental levels

Importance of strengthening regional cooperation and local capabilities

Key Takeaways

Cyber diplomacy is crucial for enhancing global cybersecurity at national, regional and international levels

Africa faces challenges in cyber diplomacy including low participation in international negotiations and lack of resources

Capacity building is essential for improving Africa’s cyber diplomacy capabilities

Multi-stakeholder collaboration and trust-building are key for effective cyber diplomacy

Africa has opportunities to assert itself in shaping cyber policies and technologies

Resolutions and Action Items

Put in place comprehensive national cybersecurity strategies

Increase African participation in global cyber diplomacy discussions

Invest in capacity building for policymakers, parliamentarians, and technical experts

Develop public-private partnerships to strengthen cybersecurity infrastructure

Create and implement cyber-related legislation and regulatory frameworks

Unresolved Issues

How to secure adequate funding for cybersecurity initiatives in African countries with competing priorities

How to reduce dependency on foreign technology providers while building local capabilities

How to effectively bridge the gap between technical experts and diplomats in cyber negotiations

How to increase the number of skilled cyber professionals in African countries

Suggested Compromises

Balancing national security concerns with international collaboration on cybersecurity

Leveraging existing diplomatic missions for cyber diplomacy while building specialized cyber expertise

Utilizing both in-person and online training to build capacity cost-effectively

Combining local technology development with strategic international partnerships

Why cyber security is a key challenge in the continent? Because when we look at the negative impact in term of economic, cyber crime cost to 10% of the Africa GDP.

speaker

Mactar Seck

reason

This comment sets the stage for the entire discussion by highlighting the massive economic impact of cybercrime in Africa, emphasizing the urgency of addressing cybersecurity issues.

impact

It framed the subsequent discussion around the economic implications of cybersecurity and the need for Africa to take action.

Cyber diplomacy basically is how do governments handle new topics that have emerged on the diplomatic agenda in the recent years and how they kind of defend their interest in cyberspace in this respect.

speaker

Tereza Horejsova

reason

This concise definition of cyber diplomacy helps ground the discussion in concrete terms and highlights the governmental aspect.

impact

It shifted the conversation towards discussing specific governmental actions and international cooperation in cybersecurity.

In Namibia, we have tried very hard to start with the right foundations because cyber security matters are moving so fast and so quickly that sometimes countries, and especially developing countries, cannot catch up very quickly in terms of ensuring the right legislation is in place, ensuring that it has the right experts in country to deal with possible incidences, having the right equipment and software sometimes because of the lack of funding and the competing interests in country.

speaker

Emma Theofelus

reason

This comment provides a real-world example of the challenges faced by African countries in implementing cybersecurity measures, highlighting the complexity of the issue.

impact

It deepened the discussion by introducing practical challenges and the need for comprehensive strategies, leading to more detailed exploration of capacity building and resource allocation.

Even as I’m participating in this meeting now, using teleconferencing, which means there didn’t have to be a huge investment. So the collaboration and the working together that we need to make cyber diplomacy and cybersecurity a reality on our continent does not have to be overly expensive.

speaker

Katherine Getao

reason

This comment introduces an innovative perspective on how technology itself can be leveraged to overcome resource constraints in cyber diplomacy.

impact

It shifted the conversation towards more practical, cost-effective solutions for increasing African participation in global cyber diplomacy discussions.

Since many African countries are highly dependent on foreign technology providers and their cyber security policies. This means that we are being shaped or influenced by SNF actors, including technology companies and foreign governments. What is Africa really doing to liberate himself from this autonomy in shaping its cyber diplomacy strategies and policies?

speaker

Audience member

reason

This question challenges the panel to address the issue of technological dependency and its impact on Africa’s cyber diplomacy autonomy.

impact

It led to a deeper discussion about self-sufficiency, regional cooperation, and the need for Africa to develop its own technological capabilities and policies.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by progressively deepening the analysis of cyber diplomacy in Africa. They moved the conversation from defining the problem and its economic impact to exploring practical challenges, innovative solutions, and the need for African autonomy in cybersecurity. The discussion evolved from theoretical concepts to real-world applications, emphasizing the importance of capacity building, resource allocation, and regional cooperation. The comments also highlighted the tension between the need for international collaboration and the desire for African countries to develop their own capabilities and policies in the cyber realm.

How can African countries decrease dependency on foreign technology providers and shape their own cyber diplomacy strategies?

speaker

Audience member (Dr. Yohannes)

explanation

This is important to ensure African countries have autonomy in shaping their cyber policies and are not overly influenced by external actors.

How can countries balance national security concerns with the need for international collaboration on cybersecurity?

speaker

Audience member (Francis from Kenya)

explanation

This balance is crucial for effective cyber diplomacy while protecting national interests.

What innovative solutions can be implemented to convert existing diplomats to cyber diplomacy and bridge the gap between different international forums?

speaker

Audience member (Sorin Assefa)

explanation

This is important for increasing African representation and effectiveness in international cyber diplomacy negotiations.

What role can international partnerships play in strengthening African cybersecurity infrastructure?

speaker

Audience member (Isad from Chad)

explanation

International partnerships could be key to addressing resource and expertise gaps in African cybersecurity.

How can African countries approach international partnerships diplomatically in the context of cybersecurity?

speaker

Audience member (Isad from Chad)

explanation

This is important for ensuring mutually beneficial and respectful partnerships in cybersecurity.

How can African countries find alternative ways to fund cybersecurity efforts beyond relying on national treasuries?

speaker

Emma Theofelus

explanation

This is crucial for sustaining and expanding cybersecurity initiatives in resource-constrained environments.

How can the impact of international financing loans and debt repayment on African countries’ ability to invest in cybersecurity be addressed?

speaker

Emma Theofelus

explanation

This is important for understanding and addressing systemic barriers to cybersecurity investment in African countries.

Summary

This discussion focused on the future of digital governance and the challenges facing the Global South in the digital age. Experts from various fields shared insights on topics including linguistic diversity, business social networks, digital sovereignty, and the role of youth in shaping digital policies.

The Global Digital Compact (GDC) was a central theme, with speakers discussing its potential to address digital divides and promote inclusive development. However, concerns were raised about the influence of large tech companies and the need for more effective international collaboration. The importance of bridging language barriers and preserving linguistic diversity online was emphasized as crucial for global digital inclusion.

Speakers highlighted the need for affordable and universal connectivity, especially in underserved regions. The role of energy infrastructure in enabling digital access was discussed, with examples of nuclear power projects supporting connectivity in remote areas. The challenges of digital colonialism were addressed, with calls for empowering local digital ecosystems and promoting data sovereignty.

Legal and regulatory issues surrounding big tech companies were explored, including recent antitrust cases and the difficulties in holding global platforms accountable across jurisdictions. The importance of considering cultural and social norms when implementing digital policies was stressed.

Youth representation in digital governance was emphasized as critical, with speakers advocating for meaningful engagement of young people in decision-making processes. The discussion concluded with reflections on the need for a balanced approach to digital governance, combining multi-stakeholder engagement with appropriate government oversight to create a fair and inclusive digital future.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The challenges of implementing the Global Digital Compact, including resistance from big tech companies and differing technological capabilities between countries

– The need to bridge digital divides and avoid digital neocolonialism, especially for the Global South

– The role of youth voices and multistakeholder engagement in digital governance

– Legal and regulatory challenges in holding big tech companies accountable across different jurisdictions

– Russia’s experiences developing domestic IT solutions and digital sovereignty in response to sanctions

Overall purpose:

The discussion aimed to examine the implications of the Global Digital Compact and explore ways to create a more equitable digital future, especially for developing countries, while considering perspectives from different stakeholders including youth, industry, and government.

Tone:

The tone was generally serious and analytical, with speakers providing expert perspectives on complex policy issues. There were moments of optimism about potential solutions, but also notes of skepticism about the challenges ahead. The youth perspective brought a more hopeful and forward-looking tone to the latter part of the discussion.

Speakers

– Vasily Zudin: Moderator, representative of the Center for Global IT Cooperation

– Olga Makarova: Director of the Department of Commercial Resource Management at MTS

– Semyon Tenyaev: Russian IT entrepreneur, investor, head of the BBC group of companies, founder of TenChat social network

– Milos Jovanovic: Representative of Open Link Group

– Roberto Zambrana: MAG member, experienced in multi-stakeholder engagements

– Pavel Zakharov: Member of the Internet Technological Association, experienced in combating disinformation and fact-checking

– Alim: Co-moderator for second part of discussion

– Bogdan Chernyshov: Head of the Rosatom Youth Council

– Alexandra Kozina: Lawyer in dispute resolution and mediation practice at Art Deluxe

– Saba Tiku Beyene: Member of IGF Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Group, youth representative

– Vadim Glushenko: Director of the Center for Global IT Cooperation

Additional speakers:

– AUDIENCE: Unidentified audience member who spoke

The discussion focused on the future of digital governance and the challenges facing the Global South in the digital age. Experts from various fields shared insights on topics including linguistic diversity, business social networks, digital sovereignty, and the role of youth in shaping digital policies.

Global Digital Compact and Digital Divides

The Global Digital Compact (GDC) emerged as a central theme, with speakers discussing its potential to address digital divides and promote inclusive development. Milos Jovanovic highlighted the GDC’s capacity to foster economic growth in developing countries. However, concerns were raised about the influence of large tech companies and the need for more effective international collaboration. Vadim Glushenko pointed out that GDC implementation faces resistance from tech giants and inequality between countries.

Saba Tiku Beyene emphasised the need to balance a multistakeholder approach with government participation in the GDC. This view contrasted somewhat with Glushenko’s emphasis on the challenges posed by tech giants’ resistance, suggesting that government involvement may face significant obstacles.

Linguistic Diversity and Digital Inclusion

The importance of bridging language barriers and preserving linguistic diversity online was emphasised as crucial for global digital inclusion. Olga Makarova provided an in-depth presentation on language barriers on the internet, highlighting how they hinder access to knowledge. She discussed the potential of machine translation technologies to address this aspect of the digital divide, while also noting the challenges in preserving linguistic diversity and cultural nuances in digital spaces.

Digital Sovereignty and Fragmentation

The challenges of digital colonialism were addressed, with calls for empowering local digital ecosystems and promoting data sovereignty. Olga Makarova expressed concerns about internet fragmentation risks due to geopolitical tensions and payment restrictions. Semyon Tenyaev presented on the TenChat social network, advocating for decentralized social networks to protect national data sovereignty while enabling global connectivity.

Structure and Operations of Big Tech Companies

Alexandra Kozina provided a detailed presentation on the structure and operations of big tech companies globally. She discussed recent antitrust cases and fines against major tech companies, particularly focusing on Google’s practices. Kozina emphasised that tech giants need to consider cultural differences and local laws when operating globally, highlighting the complexities of regulating these companies across different jurisdictions.

Combating Disinformation

Pavel Zakharov briefly touched on the topic of disinformation, arguing that current approaches to fighting it are often ineffective and risk censorship. He advocated for a focus on education and cooperation rather than restrictions, stating, “The best way to make your armor against disinformation is to know more.” Zakharov also mentioned the importance of fact-checking in combating misinformation.

Youth Engagement and Multistakeholder Approach

Youth representation in digital governance was emphasised as critical. Ms. Sabatikou stressed the importance of integrating youth voices, stating, “Young people are not just stakeholders in digital governance, but rather we are the agents of change.” She advocated for meaningful engagement of young people in decision-making processes related to digital policies.

Center for Global IT Cooperation Initiatives

Vadim Glushenko presented on the activities and initiatives of the Center for Global IT Cooperation. He discussed the organization’s efforts to promote international dialogue on digital governance issues and its work on various projects related to the Global Digital Compact.

Rosatom’s Digital Projects

Bogdan Chernyshov provided an overview of Rosatom’s various projects, highlighting the company’s involvement in digital initiatives beyond its core nuclear energy business. This presentation offered insights into how traditional industries are adapting to and contributing to the digital landscape.

Unresolved Issues and Future Challenges

The discussion highlighted several unresolved issues, including:

1. Effectively implementing the Global Digital Compact given resistance from tech giants and inequality between countries

2. Balancing multistakeholder approach with increased government participation in digital governance

3. Addressing payment restrictions that risk internet fragmentation

4. Effectively regulating big tech companies across different jurisdictions

5. Combating disinformation while preserving freedom of expression

The discussion concluded by emphasizing the need for a balanced approach to digital governance, combining multi-stakeholder engagement with appropriate government oversight. Speakers stressed the importance of international cooperation, youth involvement, and innovative solutions to address linguistic barriers and promote digital sovereignty. The complexity of the issues discussed underscores the need for continued dialogue and collaboration to create a fair, inclusive, and sustainable digital future for all.

Vasily Zudin: Yeah, I think that I check speakers, speakers online. I didn’t speak to anybody on the phone. Dear colleagues, do you hear me? Is it okay? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Dear colleagues, members of the IGF community, it’s a pleasure for me to be here, to be with us. It’s a pleasure to be part of this company. Once again, the fourth time in my career. I would also like to thank the hosting country of Saudi Arabia for organizing the forum at such a magnificent venue. My name is Vasili Zudin. I represent the Center for Global IT Cooperation, a Moscow-based organization which aims to foster valuable ICT connections across continent for a brighter and more just digital future for all of us. We annually contribute to the activities of the IGF and also operate as an NRI actor, hosting Russia IGF and its youth version since 2021. Voice of expert community, representative of the government sector, private business and youth, therefore of great significance to us. It is our aim after all to build bridges of IT cooperation and to promote new approaches to internet governance. Today we have a list of highly experienced experts with us on the panel who hopefully share their versions of the digital technological world after the global digital compact and the future of ICT sector development in the global south. GDS is an ambiguous document that at the same time caused a wave of discussions and disputes. A great many still disagree with numerous points of the Compact, with the function that was granted to big tech companies, and the fact that the Compact is in fact a soft law document not affecting the real states of affairs. However, today we are not here to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the GDC. We have gathered to understand where our digital world is moving next and what problems we have yet to solve. I believe it is paramount to seek ways how we can bridge growing digital divides and avoid the new era of digital neocolonialism, where few control the resources and limited opportunities for the rest. Through engaging in meaningful discussion and most importantly technologies and right action we can strike a balance between private interests, government policies, and interests of users. With that focal point in mind, I would like to pass my word to our first speaker, Olga Makarova, Director of the Department of Commercial Resource Management at MTS. Olga is an active member of the IGF community who even proposed several years ago her own unique mathematical formula to calculate the level of internet fragmentation. Today she wants to offer us the solution for the language barriers on the web at the same time preserving linguistic diversity. Olga, the stage is yours and the mic is yours too.

Olga Makarova: Thank you. Just a moment. Hello. Let’s start with a quick introduction. My name is Olga Makarova. I am the Director of the Department of Commercial Resource Management at MTS. Hello. Let’s start with a quick introduction. Does anyone know how many languages there are in the world? According to the Ethnologue, there are about 7168 living languages. That’s awesome. Linguistic diversity provides the key to other cultures and makes the world a more vibrant place. However, linguistic diversity also has a downside. We can hardly find a person who speaks all languages. So we often have to use the dominant language to communicate. But people whose native language is not the dominant language in their community are often reluctant to speak publicly, for fear of being misunderstood. In the world of linguistic diversity, language barriers are inevitable. Today the dominant language in the world is English. Here are languages of the most famous authors. 67% of the works are written in English. The top 101 books were written by writers from Kenya and Nigeria. But the most famous books were written in English. In 1998, the Zimbabwe International Book Fair, Ali Mazri, launched the project 100 Best African Books of the 20th Century. The project aimed to compile a list of the 100 best books by African writers to draw the world’s attention to their works. The list was published in February 2002. And only five books from this list were translated into Russian language. All these books were English. Does anyone know how many Russian books have been translated into languages understandable to people living in Africa? All my attempts to find such figures have failed. So, English has been and remains the dominant language, including on the Internet. People with limited English proficiency face additional barriers to accessing it. knowledge. Another important area where language barriers need to be removed healthcare. Healthcare providers and their patients often speak different languages. Language barriers are a common problem in healthcare settings around the world. Misunderstanding or failure to communicate are the main cause of incorrect diagnosis and dramatic consequences of incorrect treatment. On the slide you can see some figures by country but what about qualified interpreters to communicate in such cases? This is not an option. The lack of legal framework qualified interpreters especially for rare languages and financial constraints do not allow this to be used. Machine translation where users write or speak sentences and they are instantly translated seems like a viable way to break down language barrier. The slide shows some statistics on machine translation accuracy by language groups. As you can see the accuracy of machine translation is significantly higher for European language groups. We still lack the data to proper translation in African groups. Some data from Goldman Sachs and Stanford University estimate that by 2025 investments in AI will reach 200 billion dollars. Stanford University’s artificial intelligence index report notes that the most significant AI machine learning systems released in 2022 the most common class of systems were language-based. Some historical facts. In early 2000s some IT companies used the meaning text model and explanatory combinatorial dictionary to create their own machine translation systems. The goal of such systems was a universal semantic hierarchy. which was a huge tree of concepts built from the general to the specific. Google Translate was launched in 2006. At first, it worked very poorly and generated memes rather than translation. But it was created with little or no input from linguists. Google Translate has used and continues to use a different approach, statistical. Complex language models were discarded and forgotten. Huge amounts of data became the basis. The price was scalability. In 2009, people from the Google team published a paper called The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data. The title of the article echoes the title of the article The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Nature of Sciences, written by physicist Eugene Wigner in 1960. The author knows that sciences involve people rather than elementary particles. They have proven more resilient to elegant mathematics. In the paper, they explain why in complex theory we will never succeed in processing language. They demonstrate that simple models and large amounts of data are much more effective than complex models with insufficient data. They would advise to follow the data and choose a representation that can use unsupervised learning or unlabeled data. In 2019, Canadian computer scientist Richard Sutton published a paper called A Bitter Lesson. He writes, we have to learn the bitter lessons that building in how the thing does not work in the long run. He concludes that only two methods can make scaling successful, searching, search and learning. To follow these guidelines, we need the single, open and unfragmented Internet capable of handling massive volumes of cross-border data flows. But the Internet always been and remains a set of structurally fragmented but interconnected autonomous systems. Only the Internet protocols and the ability of different stakeholders’ networks to interconnect make the Internet a single, open, and unfragmented public online environment. So our networks need to be able to connect and interconnect, but no one connects or interconnects without paying. Therefore, we need to be able to pay for services we need. But today we see a new type of stakeholders. These are banks. Banks have their own compliance procedures for assessing the legality and appropriateness of payment, which do not take into account the threats and consequences of Internet fragmentation. Many banks block many payments for communication, interconnection, and Internet services from Russia and some other areas without any explanation from their side. The risks of Internet fragmentation are not taken into account. But if one party fails to pay for services, this will result in the termination of agreements, termination of all services, and breaking down all connections. The Russian language segment of the Internet and other segments of the Internet connected to the global Internet through Russia may be separated. The result will be the technical level fragmentation. Banks don’t want to achieve anything in terms of Internet fragmentation. They just don’t think about it. It’s just not their business. Bank managers are confident that no one will blame them if the Internet fragments. But they are terrified that one wrong payment due to sanctions, or more precisely, due to the bank’s compliance manager’s understanding of sanction policy, will prove fatal to both their careers and their banking business. Alas, we are witnessing a perfect example of my slow inaction. Where I spend depends on where you sit. We don’t have a suitable solution today, the range of stakeholders turned out to be wider. You can see an example of the impact of such measures on the Internet. Today carriers and users from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and some other countries get the cheapest and fastest access to the European segment of the Internet only through Russia due to their geographical location. Their Internet business may also suffer. It would be advisable to provide for some certification procedures of carriers through the ITU, which would allow them to pay for telecommunication and Internet services without additional checks and assessment by banks. The geopolitical situation is changing dramatically. The problem with payment may affect different countries, not only Russia. Let’s try to work together. Let’s try to keep the Internet open and unpunctuated. Thank you.

Vasily Zudin: Olga, thank you very much for your highly informative input. I’m proud of the fact that we can share our own experience here on this stage. As you mentioned, Russia is actively developing its own linguistic segment of the Internet. We also have our own Cyrillic TLD. Speaking of all things Russian and Cyrillic, our next speaker is a newcomer to the IGS community, yet he has his own highly competitive digital product, which he looks forward to sharing with the world. Semyon Teneyev is a Russian IT entrepreneur, investor, head of the BBC group of companies and most importantly, founder of TenChat social network. Semyon, what makes your social network so different from other major players and how do you intend to promote it across the countries of global youth? The microphone is yours, please.

Semyon Teneyev: Yeah, thank you. Hello everyone, madame, monsieur, ladies and gentlemen. Okay, let’s discuss about future of business social network or maybe how I see, how can I see this goal so if we discuss about personal data, big data platform, social networks, it means that future all over the world will be not in one area, it will be many, many centers of information. Mostly it depends of structure of data, cause the main reason of all system is that the data is a new gold in all systems. What I mean, mostly countries use free source or absolutely free programs and don’t pay any money, but we need to understand that if you don’t pay nothing, you pay by information and all information cost money. So it’s in new age, on new century, I can, I want to repeat one more time, the data become the new gold. So what’s the main, What are the main global challenges we have now in this area? Firstly, as my colleague said before, it’s ensuring country sovereignty. Also, protection of personal data, development of own technology, and access to global B2B market and global human market. So, in our business social network, which become the biggest one on Russian market and some markets on Soviet Union countries’ border, we think that business social network can be much useful than original social network like Facebook and other one, because the main goal, which can connect people from many countries, it’s job, it’s trading, it’s deals, because everyone need to pay salary, to make money for their family. So, one of the way to structure such kind of application is global investments. So, we develop our application as super app with mostly effective way to make deals across the country. We include B2B marketplace. trading platform, tenders platform with government contracts, job vacancy, investment platform, and so it’s our new view how to make global social business network. Otherwise, we make the unique offer to other country. We go in by absolutely new way how to take new markets by TenChart. We give it by license to countries. So all over the world, we make the first decentralized global social network which each country have its own part in that territory. So it make a big opportunities because the personal data will stay on the country, investments stay in the country, people find the best job in their country. So it’s make every country more standard without a global leader. So it’s one of the little piece of our system. Thank you.

Vasily Zudin: Semyon, thank you very much for your informative input. May I ask you one more question? What features do you believe TenChart and Russian tech in general may offer to the developing world? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Semyon Teneyev: One of the features we connect to the social network, to business social network, tender platform. What it means? We know that the most countries have a big part of government economy inside. For example, it means tenders, some kind of deals with government, and sometimes nobody knows about this and don’t have information. And we’re trying to connect people, business, and government in one app. Not only people and business. We connect all three sides. I repeat one more, business, people, and government in one application.

Vasily Zudin: Thank you very much. Thank you, Semyon, for your really interesting reports. It’s fantastic. Dear Milos, it is pleasant to see you in Riyadh, especially among our speakers, and you are also a major contributor to IJS processes. Open Link Group is quite active in Europe, Asia, and Africa. What is your view concerning the global digital combat, and most importantly, how may Global South, in your view, benefit from it?

Milos Jovanovic: So thank you very much, Vasily, for this introduction. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s truly an honor to be here in Riyadh among such distinguished experts and leaders. I would like to extend my gratitude to our hosts and organizers for facilitating this vital dialogue on the future of the digital world. No? How it works? Yeah, it’s okay? Okay. For the future of the digital world, when discussing the Global Digital Compact, I see it not just as a framework, but as a vision for shaping a more inclusive and equitable digital future. The Compact holds the promise of addressing some of the most pressing challenges we face today, particularly for the Global South. For many developing countries, like Serbia, where I came from, the Compact could become a catalyst for change, bridging the digital divide, reducing inequality and fostering economic growth. To achieve this, three key priorities stand out. First, we must ensure affordable and universal connectivity. There is a big problem, and we discuss always this topic. Speaking about Africa, for example, when we attended IGF in Addis Ababa, one of the key topics was connectivity of Africa, because we know that Africa is not a well-connected continent, speaking about some countries which don’t have universal access to internet, and that’s the big problem. So access to internet is no longer a luxury. It is a fundamental driver of education, healthcare and economic opportunity. And when we speak about healthcare, I personally participated in some projects in Balkans and Serbia, speaking about digitalization of healthcare industry, and it’s very important if you have opportunity to have a really good connection, I mean, speaking about digital technologies, with your doctor, speaking about electronic health records, about everything what modern healthcare industry could offer to you. So second, the compact should encourage investments in local digital ecosystems. And this is really important, speaking about fragmentation and digital fragmentation processes. We must empower entrepreneurs. nurture talent, and enable the creation of technologies that are tailored to the needs of local communities. And this is also important, speaking about current geopolitical moments, when we see different technological zones, and I always mention this, when you visit China, for example, you are not allowed to use Western services like American services, Microsoft, and all others. For example, when you are in the United States, in Western Europe, and generally Europe, we have huge discussion about Huawei equipments, Chinese equipments, and all other aspects of, they would say, non-secure hardware. And for example, as I know, because I spend a lot of time in Russia, they have really strict laws speaking about data, and about data of Russian citizens. They force Russian government, force that all data of Russian citizens should be stored in the territory of Russian Federation. This is really important, and I support this. So third, we must foster international collaboration to ensure that knowledge and technology flow freely, supporting growth rather than dependency. And when I was in Moscow a few weeks ago, actually a few days ago, we discussed how China and Russia made systems to test each other’s technology. So when we speak about technology transfer, it’s very important that other side, and the side which will receive technology, have opportunity to test and to make some test speaking about data, and who will control data. So this is really important. However, we can’t ignore the realities of digital colonialism. Much of the global South still finds itself in position where technology primarily serves the interests of tax giants rather than local populations. International organizations, governments, and private sectors must address this imbalance. This can be achieved by promoting open standards, and we discussed about it, supporting data sovereignty, developing localized infrastructure, and creating fairer regulatory frameworks. Let me be clear at the end, this is not a simple task. It requires a unified global effort to hold powerful actors accountable, while simultaneously empowering developing economies to shape their own digital futures. But generally, I remain optimistic, and we discussed about what we have to do in the upcoming years. With initiatives like the Global Digital Compact, we have a unique opportunity to redefine the rules of engagement in the digital space. In closing, let me emphasize this, the Compact will succeed if inclusivity, cooperation, and accountability remain at its core. Together, we have the chance to create a digital world where no one is left behind. Thank you very much.

Vasily Zudin: Thank you, Milos. Can I ask one more question for you? Do you accept that the international organizations have yet to do a lot of work to combat digital colonialism and keep tech giants at bay? Can we say like that?

Milos Jovanovic: Speaking about tech giants, when we speak about big companies everywhere in the West, in the East, in China, in Russia, it’s always about controlling the data. So I think this is a discussion. Who controls everything? Technology giants or, for example, legal frameworks, speaking about some national assemblies and so on and so on. I always make a conclusion that people who know technology have an advantage compared to people who know just legal aspects because they develop technologies. And speaking about big companies, I think international organizations are not in a position to control the data. to control them, actually, frankly speaking. So it’s up to local governments, and I will say to countries to control. So I will say in Riyadh as much as we do.

Vasily Zudin: It’s a pleasure to have you with us. To say that you are an active member of IJF community for many years is to say nothing. You were a MAC member and also had a lot of experience when it came to multi-stakeholder engagements. What does, in your opinion, the adoption of the Global Digital Compact mean for the international community?

AUDIENCE: Thank you very much, Vasily. And I want to say hello to my distinguished panelists as well. Well, I would like to move a little bit the answer maybe from what our colleagues said before, and I totally support regarding all the good things and opportunities, perhaps, that there’s the Global Digital Compact and some other processes as well, like the one that we had in NETMundial plus 10 recently. And if we read both of them, then we will identify several aspects that are very common, and I think everyone will be subscribing. And that’s why I think that’s the nice part of this process. But the other part, talking about Global South, is related with the current situation that we have. And I think that’s also something that we need to reflect on. We know that near three… or around three billion of population is not currently connected, but we need to remember that most of this population is in the global south. That’s the main problem, and it’s due to different barriers. Olga was mentioning the one with languages, for instance, but we also have barriers in gender, in many cultures, in many regions. Women are not usually used to work with computers, and worse, to have access to internet. We also have cultural barriers. We have regional barriers regarding the people that can access to these services in the rural areas, and the ones that live in urban areas, and of course, can enjoy all the good things that internet has. So for these people, for these regions, for this near three billion of the population in the world, actually the problems like fragmentations, like cyber crime, like all the other problems, or even the new emerging issues like artificial intelligence, are not in the discussion. I mean, they are thinking in just how we can connect to internet, and that’s why that matter is still an issue, and it’s going to be still an issue in the future, if as a community, as a global community, don’t think about the ways of reaching all these places, all these regions in the world. We know that despite the different efforts that the internet service providers, the telecommunications providers, have done during these last years, still it’s very difficult for them to actually reach these kind of communities, because of the difficult of return of the investment. That’s, of course, the reason, the major reason. So we need to contribute as well. It’s another important factor. First share approach, which is a recent topic that is emerging in different forums. Of course, I don’t support this approach about having in general or requiring in general to the digital content developers to actually pay any kind of fee or whatever, but at the same time, it’s important to realize that some of these big players, not all of the players, not all of the digital players, but some of these big players are actually able to, and actually they are doing many things. They are actually contributing with investment, contributing with deployment of infrastructure, but not, I will say, not in a most controlled way. I mean, yes, it’s their money, of course, but I think that there’s a room for coordinating with the governments specifically, just in this kind of processes, just in this kind of investment that are required in different countries, especially in the global south. So that’s something that we also need to think about and discuss. So this take us to another, and I’m just talking about, as I said before, not the fantastic stuff of the GDC, but the challenges, and one of those in the global south is how effective our regional and sub-regional, not multi-stakeholders, I will say, multilateral organizations can be. I mean, how effective they can be in order first to agree on common grounds, to agree in common regulations, to actually tackle all these challenges that we are facing in the near future, like the ones that I mentioned before regarding connectivity. I don’t know, but I always mentioned this as an example. The tradition that the Europeans have regarding this collaboration, very effective collaboration with common regulations, is something that in global south, especially in Latin America, that’s where I come from, we need to take as a good example. Actually, we are very caring in our region, in LAC, but at the same time, the problem is that each of the governments has their own agenda for this matter. So I think it’s important to agree in certain elements. One of those is connectivity. Maybe the others will be, of course, emerging. So being effective in this original area to provide this kind of inputs on those for the governments to actually act, to actually do, in a way. Because at the end, as you know, the governments are the ones that can be signing an agreement like the GDC, but they have to move from the agreement, from the shared principles, to the action. And those actions come in policies, and we are still so much delayed in issuing this kind of policies, so we can actually get this expected universal connection that we all want. So I will say that.

Vasily Zudin: Thank you very much, Roberto. And one more question, please. Is there a risk of minimising the role of the technical community in the digital maker paradigm? What do you think about this fact? Is there a risk of minimising the role of the technical community in the digital maker paradigm?

AUDIENCE: Well, I don’t think so, because of the nature of the ecosystem. There are key… communities with a very specific role. I would like to mention some of them like Internet Engineering Task Force or IEEE that will still be leading the technical area about the standards, about the technologies, about the proposals and there are newcomers as well and more than newcomers, new actors I will say regarding the technical arena. We’ve heard a lot of innovations, a lot of proposals, technical proposals from different, I’m not going to mention any but you may think which of them I am talking about and I think we can imagine that there might be very nice examples of new policies or new protocols etc but the processes themselves must be very transparent. If there are just a lot of key players working in these protocols and they come up with fantastic ideas but if those didn’t come back from a bottom-up process I think it could become an issue in the future. So because internet as it is now was actually a result of that kind of participative, inclusive and very transparent process all over these years.

Vasily Zudin: Thank you Roberta, thank you for your impressive speech and for your participating in our session. Our next speaker is Pavel Zakharov, a member of the Internet Technological Association. Pavel has a vast experience when it comes to combat disinformation and fact-checking and I must say that fact-checking is essential in the informational world we found ourselves in and it is a matter of national security, a matter of safety, often a question of human lives. And I would like to extend the floor to you, Mr. Zakharov.

Pavel Zakharov: Thank you for giving me the floor. As an active member of the Russian fact-checking community, I would like to share with you my opinion, my idea that can change our beliefs in fakes. But first of all, I want to say that it stayed on the official website of the Global Digital Compact, that its implementation requires a global effort. And one of the key commitments of GDI is building a digital space that is free, that is independent, that is open, fact-based. And it’s about disinformation, maybe. It’s maybe about combating disinformation. But nowadays, disinformation is portrayed in media as a main topic of concern to Internet users. It’s now seen as a weapon in a global informational war. But in my opinion, this escalation to the problem of military level looks unwise and maybe is completely dangerous. Because lies have always existed. And misinformation has always influenced people’s decisions, people’s behavior. Nothing new. The fight against disinformation today is becoming a convenient excuse for censorship, for reducing freedom of speech. And under the pretext of combating disinformation, digital platforms limit the promotion of materials which contain different points of views. Under this pretext, media released unwanted. And under this pretext, companies and organizations are being imposed sanctions. And the one thing is demand proof. The very principle of presumption of innocence is violated when it comes to coverting misinformation. One would think that such a stubborn struggle should lead to positive results. But let’s take a look at data. According to Ipsos study in 2024, at least a third of population of our planet believes fakes. And if we take a closer look, the situation is even worse in developing countries where up to 62% of population believes fakes. And those countries are active members of such famous international networks like IFCN, International Fact-Checking Network. So fact-checking doesn’t work. But it’s active. So it’s a good thing. And it’s a good thing to understand. Checking, checking, checking. It can be, to be processed this information. Even input, it’s used, it’s spread in certain platforms. So it’s possible to find all the fakes. This is pretty much easier to produce fakes than debunk. And the game changer here is AI. We need to change the approach. We need to abandon the principle of the limitation and punishment and start moving toward cooperation and resilience. The more restrictions are imposed to dissemination of information in the world, the less protected users will be against the disinformation. We need to communicate more. We need to interact more. We need to create informal communities. And that’s the key. As I said earlier, it’s time for us to move from confrontation to cooperation. And I want to remind you one thing. In the 1960s, Western countries and the Soviet Union moved from the open confrontation to the reducing level of aggression. That time, they resumed economic, scientific and cultural cooperation. And this period is now called the Tant, the relaxation of stagnant international relations. I’m sure that now is the best time for us to start to look at each other and to set the new rules of the game. It’s time for digital detente. And I think those who are really interested in creating open and secure digital space can agree to work together, regardless of differences in our views or benefits. That’s all we need now. Relax a bit. Thank you.

Vasily Zudin: Well, thank you very much for this useful information. And one more question. How to identify that this… information is fake, because sometimes it’s really difficult to see difference between fake and truth.

Pavel Zakharov: I think that there is no way to define every fake. Even me as an expert, I cannot see all the fakes. I’ve catched a lot of times I see fake and then after a few days I remember this and oh, that was fake. But one thing is important and it’s knowledge. If you know something, it’s really hard to change your opinion about the thing. So the best way to make your armor against disinformation is to know more. I think it’s that.

Vasily Zudin: Pavel, as you can see, we heard the opinions and elaborations of one generation and now I believe it’s time to hear the voices of youth representatives and I would like to thank our first row of presenters for their meaningful inputs and invite our second court team to join the discussions. Thank you. Thank you very much. Alim is co-moderator now of the second part of discussion.

Alim: Hello guys, hopefully you can hear me, the translation must also work. We have with us several esteemed speakers, yes, a moment. So we have with us several representatives of youth, who are also experts in IT sector and active IGF members. This is Bogdan Chernyshov, the head of the Rosatom Youth Council, Alexander Kozhin, representative of the lawyer representing Art Deluxe. And also we have with us an active IGF member from Ethiopia, who is a MAG member, Sabatikou. I saw her somewhere, she had to take a call, she’ll come back to us in several minutes, I hope. So our first speaker today, our first expert in this second round of workshop is Bogdan Chernyshov, and he represents essentially Rosatom. Rosatom is a world-renowned state nuclear energy corporation, which develops energy as well as a digital infrastructure all across the world, allowing entire nations to benefit from cheap, clear, and effective energy, power their houses, factories, schools, universities, and digital facilities. Bogdan, please, the floor is yours. What do you think about global, yes, clicker, here’s the clicker, please go ahead.

Bogdan Chernyshov: Okay, great. Good afternoon, dear colleagues. It’s a great honor to be here with you at IGF forum. And today I’d like to introduce you our company and… So, as you can see on the slide, Rosatom is a big company, which consists of more than 460 companies, which are working in very different scientific fields. So we have more… than four different businesses. And right now, Rosatom consists of not only companies, research universities, which are located in the Russian Federation. We’re also working with our international partners, and right now we are developing more than 60 different international projects. And right now, the portfolio of foreign orders of Rosatom has reached more than $200 billion last year. But today, I’m here to present you not only our company, also I’m heading… Great. Also, I’m heading the community of young scientists of Rosatom, and our two main goals is to provide connection between government universities and our real factories and research universities to create projects, which are based on the theoretical field of governance, university science, and our tasks of real industry. And the second one is to provide a community in which scientists can connect with each other and create different scientific projects, which are based on the intersection of their scientific interests and scientific directions. As you can see on the slide, we consist of more than 90 young scientists who are leading the key projects in the spheres like nuclear energy, hydrogen energy, wind energy. Also, we are working on the creation of new materials by application of the approach of digital material science. By application, of course, common material science. There are work on the healthcare sphere in the nuclear medicine production by creation of isotopes for curing the cancer and other diseases. Of course, there are personalized medicine by application of technologies of 3D printing. And there are other technologies. As you can see, electronic photonics, we have experts in plasma, laser technologies. our scientists created 50 qubits quantum computer and they’re working of course is in artificial intelligence with digital twins and a lot of, a lot of. So I’d like to go back to the main goal, to the main goal of Rosatom and of course it’s generation of energy. Of course all of us know that we can provide digital infrastructure transfer to this new technologies without energy. So Rosatom has a great experience in that field and our first nuclear power plants has celebrated its 70th jubilee this year. So since that time we upgraded our skills and right now the progress of the building of nuclear power plants you can see on the map of Russia. So our experience which we have got for this year, we are implementing into international projects and right now we are working with countries like China, Egypt, Hungary and other countries. But we use nuclear energy not only for production of nuclear power plants and provides an opportunity to our partners to get green energy sources. Also we are building ships, especially nuclear icebreakers which are working on the same principles and they require, the type of reactors requires less energy. So we use it for transfer of cargoes via northern sea route and the amounts of cargoes which we are transferring you can see on the slide. So to 230 that amount will reach 150 million tons. But that experience which we got of building smaller reactors, we are using to produce and make next step in creation of nuclear power plants, especially small NPPs. And as you can see on the slide, we will build in the condition of severe cold temperature a new nuclear power plant, small one, and it will be located in the Republic of Sakhaikutya, so you can see that on geotech. Also here we can see the strategy of building these small nuclear power plants. The main fact about that strategy is that these facilities will be built in the areas to which access is very hard. And especially in these locations are located huge mineral deposits. But the main feature also about this region is that we should provide connection of electricity to provide a digital connection of the people in these areas. But as I said on the second slide, we consist of a big amount of companies, more than 400. And I’m a research scientist of Gilded MedJoint Stock Company. I would like to tell you about projects on which we are working. And there is, you can see, different materials for spheres like electronic, photonics, we produce superconductors, we produce different monocrystals. And our production also consists of rare earth metals and different alloys. And we produce it in very different forms like alloys, powders. We can create details with simple form, for example, of sputtering targets for creation of different coatings of our electronic components. Of course, there are production in the complex, which has complex geometry, which we can make by application of additive technologies. But unfortunately, right now, I have not many time as a session. So I’d like you to invite to the session, which will be held on the last day of IGF. And we will talk about real scientific projects, which has impact on the design of North region. So thank you for your attention. The community of young scientists and Rosatom in general are always looking forward to future cooperation and experience exchange. Thank you.

Alim: Well done. I think this was very interesting. interesting because we were trying to bring something new to IGF format in a sense that we obviously, we discussed digital technologies, internet, but I think that energy, when it comes to energy, generation of electricity, when it comes to infrastructure or Saturn and the project which it does not only in Russia, but across the world in countries of global south, they are paramount, especially when we talk about bridging digital device. And our next speaker is Alexandra Kozina, lawyer in dispute resolution and mediation practice at Art Deluxe, a famous lawyer firm, which has been suing Google for many years and defending the interests of ordinary users in the face of large transnational corporations. Alexandra, what do you think? We talked a lot today about the so-called tech giants. What real threats do players like Google, Meta and others pose to the global south? Is it hard to fight the Goliath?

Alexandra Kozina: Oh, yes, it’s really hard to fight the Goliath. And I would like to start my presentation to tell you more about the recent cases the big tech had. And that will be, I hope, very interesting. And… Let’s wait for several minutes. I see the tech guys are on it. So this is it. Yes. So before I start and before any technical problems will be solved, I would like to thank you for participating in this section. I would like to thank IGF for this amazing opportunity to share ideas with my co-panelists and with the Central for Global Cooperation. I hope you will enjoy my presentation and we’ll have some questions. Okay. Questions. Okay. So speaking about the big tech, my allegation today is that the big tech needs to change because recently the big tech violated some laws in different countries. And we need to take very crucial attention on this point. I will concentrate your attention on four parts of my speech. Firstly, I will tell you about how the big tech companies operate globally, how they structure their business in different jurisdictions. Secondly, I will tell you more about what… should the global tech company pay attention to when they’re doing business globally. And this is very interesting and very important because not only written laws the big tech need to take into account, but as well social rules and cultural traits. Thirdly, we will talk about the recent cases in antitrust law and in civil law. I will give you a brief overview of these cases and I hope you will find it interesting. And finally we will maybe brainstorm some ideas how we can deal with this problem in the future. So this is a brief information about me. I work in dispute resolution and arbitration and deal with the telecommunication media and technology problems. And this is my photo. That is how I look when I’m hungry. Very serious. But in general, I’m very cheerful. So come talk to me after the session. Yeah. Okay. So long story short, then the big tech structured business globally, it has around three models it can face. So the first model is when the head company decides to open a separate entity on the territory of other jurisdictions. For example, Google on the territory of Russia had previously their separate entity. And the point is the separate entity has separate assets and is in general independent of the decision of the head company. But that that presumption can be overcome by the doctrine of withdrawing of corporate will. And simply saying this doctrine says that if the subsidiary acted on the behalf of the parent company or with the active knowledge of the parent company, you can you, the parent company, for any misconduct a subsidiary company do on the territory of the jurisdiction, and vice versa. And that is actually the best model for the consumers of the big tech. We will revert shortly to that question. Yeah. Model B. So if the big tech company do not want to open any separate entity with separate assets, it can open a representative. The thing is, the representative is not a separate entity in the terms of law. It has no assets. And if you face a misconduct from the head company, you cannot sue the representative. And the best example on the territory of Russia is Apple and Facebook. A couple of years ago, they had separate representatives on the territory of Russia. And the representative exists only for the public function. So to communicate with tax officers, antitrust managers, and so on. And you cannot, of course, sue the representative. But we have some advantages in that point. If we want to have a dispute on the territory of Russia, we can sue the head company. But we can sue a representative as well as a core defendant. And we can notify the head company through the representative. Of course, it’s easier than to file a claim abroad. And the last model. And the last model is the worst model for the consumers, for the business companies who deal with the big tech. Because big tech can decide not to open any separate structure or representative at all. And the best examples is Amazon or Meta in Russia. in Russia. They have never had any separate entities or representatives, but they actually sold and sell some services and digital products on the territory of Russia. And the disadvantages of that approach is that consumer or business have high costs of proceedings abroad because he needs to go directly to the head. Businesses have unequal bargaining power with the big tech because they cannot talk to them via email or so on. And actually in that business structure, the customers actually have a lack of remedies. Moving on to the second part of my speech about what’s the… Yes, one second. Next slide, please. Yeah, so as I said earlier, the big tech can choose free business structures to conduct business abroad, but what should they take into account when doing business globally? First of all, they need to understand informal institution of each of the country. And by informal institutions, I mean socially shared rules, traditions, cultural traits. It’s not a secret that, for example, Arab region countries or US or European Union differ a lot. And global digital company need to take into account these differences. And secondly, but not from the point of characterization, the global company need to take into account formal institution. And by formal institution, I mean written and unwritten laws. And the next slide will show you the non- exhaustive list… Oh, sorry. Sorry, sorry. Yeah. And the next time we’ll show you… the non-exhaustive list of laws which regulate digital business, for example, in Russia and I think as well as in any other country. And these laws the Big Tech should take into account very crucially. And the recent cases concerning the Big Tech show that the Big Tech ignores these laws. And let’s talk about that more. So I would like to present you the recent Russian judgments against Google. And that information is very interesting because on the territory of Russian Federation, last four years, around 20 separate judgments were published. And the judgments state that Google violated its own policies, then it blocked Russian media channels. And the thing with the judgments was that several claimants submitted claims on recognition and enforcement of such judgments on the territory of different countries. And I only choose some of them, like Turkey, Hungary, Algeria, South Africa, but actually the number of countries were up to 20, I guess. And the interesting thing is that on the territory of South Africa, South African High Court seized all Google assets, all Google subsidiary assets on the territory of South Africa because of the judgment existed. And I want to talk about more of the sum of fines. Actually, according to this judgment, for non-compliance with the judgment, Google was forced to pay a sum of money called judiciary fine or a strand in the territory of Russia. And the amount of fines, as per information of last month, which were written on BBC, The Guardian and Forbes. was 20 decillion USD. Decillion is a surprising number because it contains 36 zeros after the actual amount. And the global internet created a variety of jokes about that sum. And I wanna share with you my favorite joke because it’s actually very funny. Yeah. And of course, this situation which presented on the joke is, I guess, cannot in the future, but what is not funny? I wanna tell you about recent, yeah, very funny joke. Next slide, please. I wanna tell you about recent antitrust cases and the amount of fines presented on the slide is not joke at all. Because last decade showed that alphabet companies or Google companies, in particular, violated several laws on the territory of European Union. And that resulted. The amount of fines in amount of $8 billion. So I added QR. So if you are interested in information of their cases, you can just scan it and read in short articles. But Google is not the only company which is under investigation of antitrust officers. Actually, every big tech company, and by big tech, I mean, American big tech, is under investigations in several countries. So Apple in European Union, Qualcomm, Meta, its subsidiary, Facebook, and it’s. subsidiary meta-platforms. And the list is not exhaustive. And by representing these cases, I am not trying to say that the Big Tech is evil and we should all ban them, but I wanted to set a discussion on how the Big Tech is performing globally. Because it is very important for the Big Tech, with so many valuable resources, with all this knowledge and technology, to understand cultural traits and differences, to understand laws differences, because laws differ from country to country. And the last example of how the Big Tech violates law is how the alphabet violates its own financial laws. As you can see on the slide, I presented you the screenshots of last quarterly financial statement of Alphabet, so it’s 2024. And each of the financial statements has the part called legal matters. In that part, the Big Tech or any other company which has shares globally transmitted need to disclose the significant legal information about the cases. And as you can see on the slide, Alphabet disclosed the information about antitrust cases, which I presented on a few slides back, but it did not disclose any information about Russian court judgments. And this is what we need to talk about more, because why Alphabet disclosed antitrust cases with the financing amount 8 billion dollars and did not say anything in particular about Russian judgments, the amount of fines of which is 20 decillion dollars. So it’s 10 with 36 zeros. It’s amazing. And moreover, about this case, Alphabet did not communicate with the state officials, with journalists, with investors, with claimants on the resolving of this issue. And I think that this ignorance on the opinion of Russian media companies, of Russian government, of the government of any other country who has not so much bargaining power to set rules on the internet is what we need to concentrate about on this forum and in the future, because we need to somehow shift the market position of the big tech. Not to ban them, but to make some rules for them. Because if we do not make some rules for them, they will do anything and everything, and we will not have any opportunity to somehow stop them in the future. So, thank you for your attention. I hope you enjoyed my presentation, and I hope you will have some questions afterwards.

Alim: Thank you so much, Alexandra. It was very interesting to hear about the experience of fighting with Google, Alphabet, and other big tech giants in order to keep them at bay, to keep them in check and control, obviously. It’s necessary when we talk about digital divides and the security of the global South, the avoidance in order to avoid the new forms of digital neocolonialism. We have to ensure and enforce law and order. And speaking of global South, Ms. Sabatiko, you are an active member of youth community, and since recently, rather recently, a member of the IGF Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Group. I suppose it’s a great honor for us to have you partaking in this discussion. Moreover, you already were a MAG member when the Global Digital Compact was being accepted. Should, in your opinion, digital governance remain a domain of multi-stakeholder engagement? or it is in the interest of the world to increase government participation perhaps and the implementation of hard law practices? Where is the place of youth in all of this as well?

Ms. Sabatiko: Thank you very much, I hope you can hear me. And thank you so much for the kind introduction and it’s an honor to be part of this important discussion. So my intervention will be very short. Indeed the digital governance is at a critical juncture and for years the multi-stakeholder approach has been at the heart as well as the backbone of internet governance ecosystem bringing together diverse perspectives of different stakeholder groups such as private, civil society, the government and as well as the technical community. And so this model has been very effective as it reflects the very true nature of the internet which is decentralized, which is collaborative and global. However, as digital technologies are increasing shaping every aspect of our lives governments are becoming more involved and if we talk about for example issues such as cyber security, platform accountability data sovereignty and digital inequalities or the digital divide the attention of government is indeed needed. And so regulation in many cases is very important to ensure that public safety, fairness and equity is there. Yet too much government control or risk is that excluding key voices as well as the innovation. And so this is where the global digital compact or the GDC can really play a transformative role. First it offers a chance to redefine the rule of the game for digital governance by balancing these dynamics. And a truly effective GDC, it must uphold the principle of multistakeholderism, where every decisions are informed by the involvement of all actors, not just governments. But it should also provide a framework where governments can take responsibility in areas that require regulations, such as curbing online harms or ensuring data rights. Now, so when you talk about use, where does the voice of the young people fit into all of this? And I think for this, use are not just stakeholders in digital governance, but rather we are the agents of change. And young people are the largest groups of internet users, but we are also innovators, we are creators, and leaders of shaping the digital future. But in most of the discussions, young people are underrepresented when it comes to, let’s say, policymaking. And so, for example, in many discussions about the platform accountability or global standards, use voices are missing, even though these issues are very important for us. So the GDC can really play a very important role in this by integrating the voice of young people. And that might mean creating youth leadership, creating mentorship programs, or mentoring emerging voices, ensuring that youth-driven solutions are there. And beyond that, young people need to be meaningfully engaged in decision-making processes, not just as participants, but also as contributors to many key discussions as well. So in my view. I think we need both, which is multi-stakeholder approach that values collaboration and inclusivity, as well as government participation in order to address these global challenges. So, striking this balance is very important. And the GDC can pave the way for a more inclusive, as well as equitable and sustainable digital future where every voice matters, especially of those young people. Thank you.

Alim: Thank you very much for this interesting point of view, and especially your opinion on the GDC and the points which you mentioned about the youth. I wholeheartedly agree. Representing the Center for Global IT Cooperation, we also do a lot of work in terms of youth empowerment. And it is absolutely important not only to speak about the youth, not only to give youth a certain platform and make their voices heard. It’s important to engage youth, to make them integrally part of the process. So, in my view, we should fight all forms of discrimination, including ageism. And when it comes to youth, the perfect position of youth empowerment is when there is no division between youth and non-youth, when youth has become integral part of all policy-making processes. And speaking of youth especially, our center has a myriad of initiatives which are aimed at youth support. One of them is a youth digital forum, Youth Russian Internet Governance Forum. And that’s why I would like to present our next speaker, who is a director of the Center for Global IT Cooperation, Vadim Glushenko, who will elaborate on the activities we undertake, not only within the IGF format, but also in the broader expert community in Russia and globally. Vadim, please, the floor is yours.

Vadim Glushenko: Thank you. Can you hear me? Yeah, wonderful. Thank you very much, Alim, and hi, everyone. I hope my intervention is last but not least. Well, first, I would like to reflect on the GDC. As probably everyone here, we were full of hopes and enthusiastic. But the hopes are still the hopes. The Center for Global IT Cooperation, as Alim mentioned, has played its role. We collected a number of views and visions from the Russian expert community, like 40 of them, and sent a holistic, common position to the Office of the Tech Envoy. And since that time, we have been waiting. Well, that is why we are especially sensitive about the outcome. The very idea of the Global Digital Compact has a set of rules that outline the contours of the future Internet governance system, and set the vector of development of AI algorithms, which are based on the principles of security, equality, and non-discrimination, that is in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, is quite good. And, of course, it deserves attention. And definitely, this new Global Digital Compact will open a new era for both Internet governance and for digital governance. Well, still, as it often happens, the initial expectations from the GDC have been shattered by the real interests of the global digital platforms, large transnational businesses. The private sector is not at all interested in being under the tight control of governments or human rights NGOs or international oversight institutions. And today, we’ve heard an exciting story from Alexander about the fight against Google or fight with Google that proves this presumption. This is the first reason why the implementation of the GDC will meet objective difficulties. And the second reason lies in the different technological potential of the countries. It is difficult in the world of capitalist economy to call for equality between rich and poor, developed and technologically immature. Therefore, under the guise of the GDC provisions, I think we will see that the IT giants will be pushing their interests in countries and regions where they don’t have actually their own digital alternatives and opportunities to compete on equal grounds with those giants. In this regards, the real force that can counter digital neocolonialism is neither the GDC, nor the Pact for the Future. Nor any soft law acts, but I would say that the joint initiatives of the international expert community, as well as time-tested and proven effective digital solutions such as those we have heard about today. As we can see, the Russian IT industry has appeared to be strong and stress-resilient enough to survive unprecedented Western sanctions. At the end of the day, isn’t it cool not to depend on the global digital platforms? Russian IT solutions are not non-politicized and could be customized for any client individually. And CJITC is becoming an important player in the IT export sphere. Apart from our activities on the NRI track, on the IGF track, the Center is striving to assist IT companies in Russia and abroad to find each other and to establish partnerships so that trustworthy and reliable digital solutions are applied in the countries of the Global South to strengthen their digital sovereignty. And believe me, after years of harsh sanctions, we’ve learned something about digital sovereignty. For this purpose, we not just study global, regional and national IT markets to identify the demand and seek for potential partners, but also we’ve launched a dedicated tool, a marketplace of digital solutions. And it is not only about software. It’s about IT education and IT consulting. This portal also contains a detailed guide on how to launch an IT business in Russia for foreign citizens. You can learn more actually at our booth in the IJF village just behind this workshop room. To conclude, I’d like to share one idea that is literally in the air. I’ve heard it a number of times recently and even in the course of discussions at the IJF, both formal and informal. All of us are aware of how important the ESG principles are for business. And nothing and no one can stop digital transformation of… And the crucial… …cybersecurity in the ESG principles, making it a separate domain. At the end of the day, ESGC sounds not bad. Well, with this, I would like to ask you to stay tuned and let’s create a fair digital future together. Thank you.

Alim: Dear experts, listeners. Well, maybe we have some questions from the audience. In case there are some questions, I would like to ask you to raise your hand to our team speakers. General questions? No questions? Neither have I seen any in the chat. So, in that case, and I think our time is… Raining up dear experts listeners and contributors to the discussion. I wholeheartedly Thank you for this fruitful round of conversations and presentations we had I hope that our debates will Continue after the session and the ideas that were discussed here today will grow to become something bigger the future of the internet is in it in Inextricably linked to the future of humanity today the global south suffers the most from injustices famine wars ecological predicaments and inequality of access We can only create a fair digital order when we include all Stakeholders in internet governance and ensure a world order based upon the UN Charter and respect for human rights Thank you for your thoughts Inputs and your fairness. See you soon Thank you

Agreement Points

Challenges in implementing the Global Digital Compact

Milos Jovanovic

Saba Tiku Beyene

Vadim Glushenko

GDC can address digital divide and foster economic growth in developing countries

GDC must balance multistakeholder approach with government participation

GDC implementation faces resistance from tech giants and inequality between countries

The speakers agree that while the Global Digital Compact has potential benefits, its implementation faces significant challenges due to resistance from tech companies and the need to balance various stakeholder interests.

Importance of youth engagement in digital governance

Saba Tiku Beyene

Alim

Importance of integrating youth voices in decision-making processes

Youth-focused initiatives like Russian Internet Governance Forum

Both speakers emphasize the need to involve young people in digital governance processes and decision-making.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers express concerns about internet fragmentation and advocate for solutions that protect national interests and data sovereignty.

Olga Makarova

Semyon Tenyaev

Internet fragmentation risks due to geopolitical tensions and payment restrictions

Need for decentralized social networks to protect national data sovereignty

Both speakers highlight the challenges posed by large tech companies and the need for regulation or alternative solutions.

Alexandra Kozina

Vadim Glushenko

Recent antitrust cases and fines against major tech companies

GDC implementation faces resistance from tech giants and inequality between countries

Unexpected Consensus

Importance of local technological solutions

Semyon Tenyaev

Vadim Glushenko

Bogdan Chernyshov

Need for decentralized social networks to protect national data sovereignty

Russian IT industry has developed resilient solutions amid sanctions

Nuclear energy infrastructure enables digital connectivity in remote areas

Despite coming from different sectors, these speakers all emphasize the importance of developing local technological solutions to address specific needs and challenges, which is an unexpected area of consensus.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement include the challenges in implementing the Global Digital Compact, the importance of youth engagement in digital governance, concerns about internet fragmentation and data sovereignty, and the need for local technological solutions.

Consensus level

There is a moderate level of consensus among the speakers on broad issues such as the challenges facing digital governance and the need for inclusive approaches. However, there are divergent views on specific solutions and approaches. This implies that while there is general agreement on the problems, finding universally accepted solutions remains a challenge in the field of internet governance.

Different Viewpoints

Approach to combating disinformation

Pavel Zakharov

Alexandra Kozina

Current approaches to fighting disinformation are ineffective and risk censorship

Recent antitrust cases and fines against major tech companies

Pavel Zakharov argues for a shift away from restrictions and punishments in combating disinformation, focusing instead on education and cooperation. In contrast, Alexandra Kozina highlights the need for stricter regulation and enforcement against tech companies, as evidenced by recent antitrust cases and fines.

Role of government in digital governance

Saba Tiku Beyene

Vadim Glushenko

GDC must balance multistakeholder approach with government participation

GDC implementation faces resistance from tech giants and inequality between countries

Saba Tiku Beyene advocates for a balance between multistakeholder approach and increased government participation in digital governance. Vadim Glushenko, however, emphasizes the challenges posed by tech giants’ resistance and inequality between countries, suggesting that government involvement may face significant obstacles.

Unexpected Differences

Approach to digital sovereignty

Semyon Tenyaev

Vadim Glushenko

Need for decentralized social networks to protect national data sovereignty

Russian IT industry has developed resilient solutions amid sanctions

While both speakers are from Russia, they present different approaches to digital sovereignty. Semyon Tenyaev advocates for a global, decentralized approach, while Vadim Glushenko emphasizes the development of national IT solutions in response to sanctions. This unexpected difference highlights the complexity of balancing national interests with global connectivity.

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around the approach to regulating tech companies, the role of government in digital governance, and strategies for achieving digital sovereignty and universal connectivity.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among speakers is moderate. While there are clear differences in approaches and priorities, there is also a shared recognition of the importance of addressing digital divides, ensuring data protection, and promoting inclusive digital governance. These disagreements reflect the complex and multifaceted nature of global digital challenges, highlighting the need for continued dialogue and collaboration to find effective solutions.

Partial Agreements

Both speakers agree on the importance of universal connectivity, but propose different solutions. Milos Jovanovic emphasizes affordable access, while Bogdan Chernyshov suggests using nuclear energy infrastructure to enable connectivity in remote areas.

Milos Jovanovic

Bogdan Chernyshov

Importance of affordable and universal connectivity

Nuclear energy infrastructure enables digital connectivity in remote areas

Both speakers agree on the need for localized approaches to digital services, but differ in their proposed solutions. Semyon Teneyev advocates for decentralized social networks, while Alexandra Kozina emphasizes the importance of tech giants adapting to local cultural and legal contexts.

Semyon Tenyaev

Alexandra Kozina

Need for decentralized social networks to protect national data sovereignty

Tech giants need to consider cultural differences and local laws when operating globally

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers express concerns about internet fragmentation and advocate for solutions that protect national interests and data sovereignty.

Olga Makarova

Semyon Tenyaev

Internet fragmentation risks due to geopolitical tensions and payment restrictions

Need for decentralized social networks to protect national data sovereignty

Both speakers highlight the challenges posed by large tech companies and the need for regulation or alternative solutions.

Alexandra Kozina

Vadim Glushenko

Recent antitrust cases and fines against major tech companies

GDC implementation faces resistance from tech giants and inequality between countries

Key Takeaways

The Global Digital Compact (GDC) has potential to address digital divides and foster economic growth in developing countries, but faces challenges in implementation.

Digital sovereignty and internet fragmentation are growing concerns, especially for countries facing sanctions or geopolitical tensions.

Regulation of big tech companies is needed, but must balance innovation with government oversight and consider cultural/legal differences across countries.

Bridging the digital divide requires addressing issues like language barriers, connectivity, and infrastructure development.

Current approaches to combating disinformation may be ineffective and risk censorship; education and cooperation are suggested as alternatives.

Youth engagement is crucial in digital governance and policy-making processes.

Resolutions and Action Items

Develop certification procedures through ITU to allow carriers to pay for telecommunication and internet services without additional bank checks

Integrate youth voices more meaningfully in digital governance decision-making processes

Launch a marketplace of digital solutions to connect IT companies and strengthen digital sovereignty in Global South countries

Unresolved Issues

How to effectively implement the Global Digital Compact given resistance from tech giants and inequality between countries

How to balance multistakeholder approach with increased government participation in digital governance

How to address payment restrictions that risk internet fragmentation

How to effectively regulate big tech companies across different jurisdictions

How to combat disinformation without resorting to censorship

Suggested Compromises

Balance multistakeholder approach in internet governance with increased government participation where regulation is needed

Develop decentralized social networks that protect national data sovereignty while enabling global connectivity

Focus on education and cooperation to combat disinformation rather than imposing restrictions

We need to contribute as well. It’s another important factor. First share approach, which is a recent topic that is emerging in different forums. Of course, I don’t support this approach about having in general or requiring in general to the digital content developers to actually pay any kind of fee or whatever, but at the same time, it’s important to realize that some of these big players, not all of the players, not all of the digital players, but some of these big players are actually able to, and actually they are doing many things. They are actually contributing with investment, contributing with deployment of infrastructure, but not, I will say, not in a most controlled way.

speaker

Roberto Zambrana

reason

This comment introduces a nuanced perspective on the role of big tech companies in infrastructure development, acknowledging their contributions while also highlighting the need for more coordinated efforts.

impact

It shifted the conversation from a purely critical view of big tech to a more balanced discussion of their potential role in addressing digital divides.

I think that there is no way to define every fake. Even me as an expert, I cannot see all the fakes. I’ve catched a lot of times I see fake and then after a few days I remember this and oh, that was fake. But one thing is important and it’s knowledge. If you know something, it’s really hard to change your opinion about the thing. So the best way to make your armor against disinformation is to know more.

speaker

Pavel Zakharov

reason

This comment provides a realistic and pragmatic approach to dealing with misinformation, emphasizing education and critical thinking over purely technological solutions.

impact

It challenged the notion that fact-checking alone can solve the problem of misinformation and steered the discussion towards the importance of digital literacy.

Use are not just stakeholders in digital governance, but rather we are the agents of change. And young people are the largest groups of internet users, but we are also innovators, we are creators, and leaders of shaping the digital future. But in most of the discussions, young people are underrepresented when it comes to, let’s say, policymaking.

speaker

Saba Tiku Beyene

reason

This comment highlights the crucial role of youth in shaping digital governance and the need for their meaningful inclusion in decision-making processes.

impact

It brought attention to the importance of intergenerational collaboration in digital governance and emphasized the need for more inclusive policymaking processes.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by introducing more nuanced perspectives on complex issues like the role of big tech, misinformation, and youth participation in digital governance. They moved the conversation beyond simplistic critiques or solutions, encouraging a more holistic and balanced approach to addressing challenges in the digital sphere. The discussion evolved from focusing solely on problems to exploring potential solutions and emphasizing the importance of diverse stakeholder involvement, particularly youth, in shaping the future of digital governance.

How can we bridge growing digital divides and avoid a new era of digital neocolonialism?

speaker

Vasily Zudin

explanation

This is a key challenge in ensuring equitable global digital development

How can we make fact-checking more effective in combating disinformation?

speaker

Pavel Zakharov

explanation

Current fact-checking efforts don’t seem to be working well enough to counter the spread of misinformation

How can we ensure affordable and universal connectivity, especially in Africa?

speaker

Milos Jovanovic

explanation

Lack of connectivity is a major barrier to digital inclusion in developing countries

How can we encourage investments in local digital ecosystems in developing countries?

speaker

Milos Jovanovic

explanation

This is important for nurturing local talent and creating technologies tailored to local needs

How can we foster international collaboration to ensure knowledge and technology flow freely while supporting growth rather than dependency?

speaker

Milos Jovanovic

explanation

This is crucial for balanced global digital development

How can we make regional and sub-regional multilateral organizations more effective in tackling digital challenges in the Global South?

speaker

Roberto Zambrana

explanation

These organizations could play a key role in addressing regional digital issues

How can we better integrate youth voices into digital governance and policymaking?

speaker

Saba Tiku Beyene

explanation

Young people are underrepresented in discussions about issues that greatly affect them

How can we strike a balance between multi-stakeholder engagement and increased government participation in digital governance?

speaker

Saba Tiku Beyene

explanation

This balance is crucial for addressing global digital challenges effectively

How can we prevent the Global Digital Compact from being co-opted by the interests of global digital platforms and large transnational businesses?

speaker

Vadim Glushenko

explanation

This is important to ensure the GDC serves its intended purpose of creating a fair digital order

How can countries with different technological potentials be brought to a more equal footing in the global digital economy?

speaker

Vadim Glushenko

explanation

This is crucial for avoiding digital neocolonialism and ensuring fair digital development