The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Good Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen. I hope you have had a good meeting. And this is the time where we have our open mic taking stock session, where we invite the participants to come up and tell us what they liked, what they didn't like, what we should keep and what we should improve as well for next year.
We will be having an open call for this. So, if we don't have enough time to finish the Open Mic session here, you can still put in written remarks which will be published our website and at the first open consultations as well, we will have a summary of it and those who were not able to send can also have their say.
With me here, I will just ask everybody to introduce themselves or I can do it as well. On the far left we have Mr. Yoici Iida, who was the co‑chair of the 2023 MAG, who helped organize this meeting. He was the Host Country co‑chair and he is the Assistant Vice Minister in MIC ministry.
And then we have Mr. Vint Cerf, who is the chair of the Leadership Panel.
Myself, Chengetai Masango, I am head of the IGF Secretariat.
And to my right, we have the Chair of the IGF 2024 MAG, who will also be listening very carefully, because she will be leading the organization of next year's meeting on the substantive part.
And then on my extreme right, we have Paul Mitchell, our outgoing chair for the 2023 meeting.
Oh, Carol Roach.
Let me first give a chance for people here on the podium, if they want to say anything. But the main part of this meeting is that we are in listening mode. We will take good and copious notes. And we will keep this in mind for next year. But, please, Vint.
>> VINT CERF: It's Vint. You all know, I can't resist an open microphone, so here we are. I want to say two or three things.
First of all, I want to thank Yoichi Iida's hosting of the Kyoto meeting, his country's contribution to all of our work this week. I am sure all of you are just as exhausted as I am. This has been an intense week, from my point of view, a very productive one. I hope you will be able to say the same thing.
We look forward, of course, to the meeting coming up in Riyadh next year. And I would like to officially as the Leadership Panel Chair, thank Paul Mitchell for his two years of extraordinary leadership of the MAG and to applaud Carol's arrival as the incoming MAG chair.
I am very eager to hear what you have to say about this meeting. And I brought a notebook. I will be taking notes. And hoping that you will help us make these meetings even more effective. So, thank you. Back to you. Chengetai Masango.
>> CAROL ROACH: Hello. I just wanted to say that we want to keep improving the MAG and the IGF. We want you to tell us what the issues are. That's the only way we can work things out in order to improve. Let us know where you want to be. Because that's about transformation.
We also want to be relevant and stay relevant. So you need to tell us what you want. And we are willing to change and to adapt so that we can only be better. Thank you.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: And I would personally look forward to any of the feedback that you might have for this year's adventures. I think we had quite an extravagant, in a good way, turnout. And I very much look forward from my perspective to hear from you, what you have to say. And I want to thank you all in advance for bringing great participants in this IGF this year. I apologize for my voice, being unable to talk that loud today.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Okay. Thank you very much.
In front, you do see two microphones. So, if I would invite the audience to please come and we will take turns with the mics, back and forth, if you have anything to say, and we are here to listen.
We may not give you answers straightaway, but I think it's important that we do listen and take into account what you say.
Yes, and two minutes, please. Not more than two minutes.
>> Thanks, Chengetai. This is wonderful. It's tough to tell your love of what the scope so improve, and for five years I have been in love with IGF. This is one of the fantastic forums. I love the way you all have shaped it up. And I love everything that you do here.
Now, here is a bit of constructive criticism/ideas. Last year we heard 2.7 billion people are not connected to Internet. This year it is 2.6 billion. That means in 25 years we are going to give Internet to everyone, which I guess is a failure of conscious for the greed. We need to stop it. And I think if I can get access to Internet in a cafe at the airport, free advertising, why can't we give Internet to the 2.6 billion people on those models?
And then, lastly, at the end, we are not a special organization. Let's talk about jobs. I think that's the final tangible outcome of this. And let's not mistake IGF as a narrative platform for detect. We should give ample scope for ground level (?) and one call‑out to this is a UN body, if 2.6 billion people are not connected to Internet.
We have a high‑level panel for AI, but not a high‑level panel for 2.6 billion people in mixed priorities. I think the summit for the future should be the summit for the jobs.
And I think all that I have said over the last five years, I have seen positive action and support. So nowhere it means criticism is just saying that we have better priorities to focus on and just thinking of AI when 2.6 billion people do not have access to Internet. If we give them the opportunity, the $105 trillion of the global economy will be $200 trillion. That is what we should aim for. Thank you so much.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much. And also could you please also say your name and your stakeholder group, if you can, Markus, please.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Markus Kummer speaking, my capacity as Senior Advisor to Diplo Foundation and the Geneva Platform. Kindly allowed me to show a slide and that's a project I'm involved with Diplo. It's IGF knowledge for our digital future. Over the years, the IGF has accumulated a tremendous amount of knowledge and that you will remember back in 2011 in Nairobi, Vint, you said then we should do data mining. Quite excited to be involved in this project of using artificial intelligence to map the vast amount of knowledge that we have cumulated over the years. And then with artificial intelligence we see here knowledge graph that shows a different intersections between the speakers, between the various sessions, where this knowledge ‑‑ the various content was, actually, mentioned. So, with all this, we hope that we make it easier to navigate through this vast amount of knowledge and it has, I think, a great potential for the future. And obviously, we will be very interested if all the people, organizations would like to join in in that project. More details are available on the Diplo website. And we look forward to working with anyone who is interested. Thank you very much for your attention.
>> VINT CERF: A question for you, Markus. Is this publicly accessible on the website?
>> MARKUS KUMMER: It is publicly accessible now, yes, thank you.
>> VINT CERF: Thank you.
>> JJ: Thank you. Hello. My pseudonym is JJ, and apologies for wearing sunglasses, but it is important to avoid facial recognition in certain social environments. I am a researcher focused on disaster resilient Internet infrastructure and my life's mission is to help bring about an involved Internet that removes barriers and ensures equitable progress for all. I'm here at the IGF for the first time and I will ‑‑ and while I find this forum to be an important step towards consensus and collaboration for the evolved Internet, we want to see this evolution will never come to pass as long as we maintain hush tones about marginalized civilian populations that are actively oppressed by a lack of Internet access. Especially those who have had their voice removed from the global stage as a result of weaponized shutdowns and senseless wars. As a proud (?) I come here to ensure that my people's voice was present in this community. The welcome I received was warm and I value the conversations and collaborations that have been born from this presence.
However, now I see my people struggle in another community and I would be remiss and hypocritical to let this opportunity to speak on their behalf pass me by. The Internet is instantaneous and I hope an involved IGF will be able to discuss movements of the Internet in the same fashion. So, with that in mind, I would like to express my outrage that the Palestinian people have been purposely removed from the Internet this last week and the depth of their civilian reality now hidden from the world due to the actions of a few radicals.
I hope and encourage the IGF to make actionable forums for these to be in realtime at these events. To say we are sorry for the pain is not enough. It wasn't enough for Tigre. I would like to read a short poem. You are sorry makes me want to scream. Like my body is being filled is being fried in an oil filled pan. Your guilt is like a rash, something ugly, itching under my skin, suffocating me with lifeless words. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you.
And now I think we have a remote hub from Benin. If not, we will just go to the next speaker. And then we will come back to see if we can get them online. Please.
>> ANDRISE BASS: Thank you for that wonderful summit. And I would like to say that's my fifth one. And also I am one of the hub for the Dominican Republic. While I am here, my hub is University of Ecarta Dominican Balahuna.
I would like to say in the name of inclusivity, I would like to see more Latin Americans to be participate in IGF in the Caribbean, and also I would like to see more people with disability, because if we want to make everything inclusive, we are talking about Internet for all, it is a must have, because we cannot say we want one Internet, one people and that's the way we don't have the people who are supposed to make the decision and we don't see them. And thank you for your time. I come from institute of public policy diplomacy research and we are in New York and also we encourage the Internet by teaching young people, mentor them how they can use Internet to be useful and I'm grateful I bring a lot of my student to be with me. Thank you.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much.
Next, please, on my left.
>> VALERIJS KAVES: Thank you very much. My name is Valerijs Kaves. I'm currently a master's degree student here at the KCGI in Kyoto. Express my gratitude. It's my first IGF Forum that I ever visited. I am really amazed how many people came all over the world to express their opinion about such an important topic, especially in the age where the AI is becoming so predominant.
The only one thing that I would like to give you as maybe a little bit of a fresh opinion is I would really, honestly, like to see more actual programmers, more tech people. I mean, I know that it is sometimes maybe will be beneficial even for the politicians who we have a lot joining members of the parliament from the Europe. We have a lot of parliamentarians for the United States and other countries. I want to see more programmers, more people who write the stuff, develop the stuff so they can share their knowledge about the technology and maybe this is going to be a great addition for the further IGF forums. Thank you very much for your attention and have a great day. Thank you.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you.
>> WOUT DENATRIS: Good afternoon. My name is Wout Denatris, speaking in a personal capacity and as coordinator of the Dynamic Coalition IS3C standards, security and safety.
I want to thank Mr. Iida and all the people who made this great IGF venue, I really love it. Thank you.
The first thing is worrying points. I have not been in a single session that had more than 25 people in it. And the limit down below was three. So, do we have ‑‑ what is the cause? Too many sessions, people doing other things. But something to investigate.
I think the focus of this IGF was great. But I was in a session on AI and I heard solutions and they are now somewhere everybody flew home and is nowhere. Why not brought all the sessions together and try to come up with some sort of, don't have a declaration, but I don't have a better word because these solutions are in this building and insufficiently shared.
And I come to Dynamic Coalitions. And I won't speak of my own but in general we have produced reports. Where are they? They are not recognized by the IGF. They are not on the IGF website. On the DC websites, they will be there. But nobody knows these reports exist and they bring tangible outputs to this IGF.
So, why, not why, but how can we improve this and what sort of criteria should the DCs meet? And that will provide new focus for tangible outcomes.
Finally, on the GDC. We have been discussing that for a long time. And what I would like to stress again and I take this opportunity to do that here, if we want to take on more responsibility as IGF and that, perhaps, happens only in 2025, but we have to start preparing ourselves. We need resources. We need to have a plan. We need to have focus and need to play with it in 2024 so that we at least have the experience how to deal with this complex topic that we will be taking on as IGF community. And my DC has already indicated that we are willing to take on information. Sorry. Information, responsibility for that. Thank you very much.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much.
We have Deborah Allen online.
>> DEBORAH ALLEN: Thank you very much. Thank you for taking my hand. First of all, I want to say is this conference has been phenomenal in my perspective. My ‑‑ the stakeholders I represent are civil society. I am based in the Hague. I come from New York City. My background is in clothing design for two decades in the '80s and '90s and now I work as a peace builder here in the Hague, promoting digital fluency and trustworthy sorts online. So, that's who I am.
When I have come to conferences to me it's about the energy and being here now online, but still feeling like I am there on site is a testament to how great this conference has been, I would submit.
I think having Vint Cerf in the room next to the NextGen innovators, I don't know what's going on behind the scenes there, but that was next level for me being able to interact with Vint Cerf and to see you are on the platform, yes, hello. To just be able to look into your eyes, even if I am here on screen, looking into your eyes and talk about the difference between looking at the way we measure things from inside out in the digital realm, compared to outside in in the development realm. And to have your brain. I watched your eyes go ‑‑ I see the difference. And that connection, I have never met you in person. But here we are. I want to honour that. And I want to honour the fact that this conference had these young people in a way that I have longed for, because the experts in the room oftentimes now are the young people in the digital realm. And the multigen, which do a lot of GenZ, Gen X, boomer et cetera but it's multigen and this conference represented multigen, this new way of looking at it.
The other thing I want to say is the passion of the people on the mics. I just heard the Dutch voice since I'm living here in the Netherlands saying let's be more practical and figure out how we can convene all these sources together. So, I really appreciated that.
The young man on the mic speaking up for what's fair and just. I can feel it. I can feel it sitting here at my desk. All the way from there. So, I just want to honour the fact that this online/offline, no line world that we are living in, as a designer, this is one of the best times to be working in the world together, because the gatekeepers have changed.
So, the last thing that I want to say, but I want us all to hear together is let's redesign this. Let's redesign funding models. Let's redesign the way we ‑‑ whatever it is, let's flip it. The time is now. And I am just so happy to be together here with all of you and to be able to even say these things to you.
So, Vint, I hope you work with the young people as much as you can and want to, and I know that they are hungry for working together with those who know. So, I appreciate meeting you here. Thank you.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much.
>> VINT CERF: Thank you so much, Deborah. It's Vint. I just wanted to tell everybody that my way of getting younger is to express my age in hexadecimals, so I'm 50 now.
>> UMAR KHAN: Hello. This is Umar from Pakistan, a community leader, digital rights activist, a young lawyer by profession. Everything went very well, I think. UN, the organizers and the Japan people need a lot of appreciation for their work. They are wonderful.
Just putting a bit of disappointment with regard to the people of with disabilities, actually, we have seen number of people with disabilities and if I tell you that one of the decision on the inclusion of the people with disabilities, there were eight speakers, but, unfortunately, there were only four people sitting in the room. This is a lot of disappointment because the people with disabilities should not be the only who own their self. I think we all need to own them. We all need to be with them.
So, I think IGF will be really working seriously for the next time to have a good number of speakers, also and participants in IGF.
With that, last disappointment for those who are belongs to the underdeveloping countries or developing countries, with the visa process issue. When I went to the Islamabad in Japan, Islamabad, they told us how can a global event such a global event invitation be such in a simple email.
A lot of my parents from Pakistan were not granted visa because of the invitation letter. I think the invitation email or the letter should be in such a proper way or should be modified, amended in a way of the embassies of the concerned countries, in the concerned countries should be directed about this programme, even when I went, the visa officer was not aware of this programme.
So, I think IGF should really take this serious, I hope everyone has enjoyed. I have learned a lot of things. See you all in the next IGF and shalom. Thanks, everyone.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you.
Let us try the remote hub in Benin, again.
>> OMOR FARUQUE: Good afternoon. My name is Omor Faruque, and I'm one of the nominees for prejudice student 2023. I am the founder and president of project (?) which is upcoming AI project focused on mental health, and I was the youngest and only child panelist of every Global Digital Compact ‑‑ and provide statements on every thematic deep dives.
So I am here to share some thoughts on the IGF 2023 and to make some suggestions for next year. With the focus on children and young people. First, I commend the organizers of the IGF for putting on such successful event. It's been an inspiring to hear from so many stakeholders about the challenges and opportunities of the digital age.
One of the things that has struck me most at the IGF is the importance of putting children and young people at the centre of digital policy and governance. Children and young people are the digital users and we need to ensure they have a safe and supportive online environment in which to learn, grow and thrive. Thank you so much.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much.
>> KARLA VELASCO: Hi. My name is Karla Velasco, and I speak on behalf of the Association of for Progressive Communications. We would like to express our sincere recognition and gratitude for the government of Japan for their dedicated and excellent execution of this Internet Governance Forum.
The venue was excellent, the rooms were spacious and the impeccable logistics made the event enjoyable and effective. That said we would like to share some feedback on the overall execution of the IGF.
Firstly, while preparing for our participation and upon arrival, we found the IGF online schedule difficult to read and difficult to navigate. The way the agenda is designed is not user friendly and this affects in terms of accessibility. As areas of opportunity we kindly ask for future iterations for links to be integrated in all formats of the schedule and for the links to properly work in the most efficient and fast, possible way.
Additionally, as the IGF began, we noticed with concern that access to some domains for the ones connecting via wi‑fi through the official network provided for the IGF were and are still blocked such as the URL of the international website and the URL of our APCs IGF that we want campaign, about the value of the IGF that we launched at this edition of the IGF.
This raises questions about which domains are blocked and on what basis. Access to content has been limited in a process that is oriented to ensure a free, secure and open Internet.
That terms of workshops and main sessions, we weren't able to participate meaningfully in some of them as they clashed with each other. We believe this had an impact on participation and in the possibility to use the input from workshops in the conversations that main sessions aim to appropriate.
We also noticed that some sessions are not necessarily contributing to the pending analyses of issues. We are concerned about the predominance of techno solutionist approaches in sessions related to the persistent digital exclusion in the Global South, for example,.
Additionally, in terms of representation, we are also concerned that several sessions, for example, digital being youth, women or gender diverse online and the workshop on coalition, gender disability and digital serve determination, failed to represent the diversity of voices that were speaking. From these sessions, people of color, gender diverse people, youth and people with disabilities that spoke were most of mostly participating online. In the sessions some of them shared the difficulties that they didn't allow them to be site. The main two reasons were related to visa applications and travel support.
This brings us to an important issue that we think must be raised out loud. Before the event took place and while doing travel preparations, we received many reports especially from members of our community in African countries of Japanese embassies extending repeated multiple requests for extensive documentation related to financial employment proof., for instance, in Uganda where the Association for Progressive Communications team worked to support the visa application of its members and partners, the Japanese embassy refused to provide any reasons for the denial of visas for at least 10 persons applying to attend to the IGF. And in some cases applicants to prove the legitimacy of the documentations submitted in order to persist their visa.
Therefore, we kindly ask for the next ‑‑ for the next iterations to ensure that decisions on Host Countries for future editions of annual IGFs take into consideration the commitment of the government to provide a clear and accessible process through which all intended participants can access this vital space. To ensure that host governments instruct their missions and embassies as early as possible on the need to facilitate visa processes for people from the Global South, in particular from Africa.
To ensure that those governments put in place measures that is specific visa related barriers.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: I have to cut you off because you're almost double your time. You can send it to the IGF Secretariat and we will look into it. I wasn't aware of the first two. I will look into that as well. But thank you very much for your intervention. Next, please.
>> AMRITA CHOUDHURY: I'm Amrita Choudhury, wearing my hat as chair of IGFA. Thank you for organizing a great event. I think most of the things went with time. Everything was seamless, yes, we have hitches, but I think overall if you look at it, it was great.
The reason why I'm here is to today IGF is doing much more. We have the dynamic coalitions, policy networks, we are seeing more people coming into IGF that needs more resources and IGF is also at a critical stage with, you know ‑‑ so I think just like people are coming here, contributing, getting from the IGF, I think it is important that people go out and also speak to people on how ‑‑ you know, to bring in more resources to the IGF, we from IGF SA try to support the national regional IGFs but I think if the word goes and people also start thinking on how the communities outside this room also can contribute because just as we get from the IGF, if we want more, we also need to contribute.
So, this is an urge that everyone thinks about. You know how resourceful can be the Leadership Panel is definitely thinking but they cannot do it in silos, they would have to be more hands on it. Thank you.
>> BIOU BARBOSA: Good afternoon. My name is Biou Barbosa from the civil society. On behalf of the coalition rights on network alliance of more than 50 civil society organizations, many of them here in Kyoto, we would with like to thank the Japanese people for their kind welcome.
We welcome the return of Brazil's leading role in the international sphere where the government has taken up fundamental issues like the fight against social inequalities and environmental protection.
But much needs to be done at home. Brazil faces profound ‑‑ precarious access to the Internet with billions of AIs being spent in the wrong way to supposedly connect people. At the same time despite having a pioneering law guaranteeing the rights of Internet uses, the massive ‑‑ Brazil keeps facing wrong waves of information and hate speech online with an impact on our electoral process, on the public health and on the rights of women, children, black and LGBT people.
Due to strong pressure from platforms and the far right parties, we still haven't managed to pass a legislation that democratically regulates digital platforms so we need to do better at home. That's why we look forward to the possible of the CGI, the Brazilian steering committee to host a multistakeholder meeting next year in our country where can together set goals and concrete commitments for the Internet we want. Thank you very much.
>> FARZANEY BADII: Hi. My name is Farzaneh Badii from Digital Medusa. I have a nostalgic moment at this time. In 2018 I also made this comment that artificial intelligence is a very important topic. However, we are discussing internet governance here. And as long as artificial intelligence has implications for Internet governance, this is the right venue to talk about it.
So, we should, in our future sessions about artificial intelligence have the internet governance aspect to it as well.
Another comment is about technical community participation at different workshops. Unfortunately, we have not integrated the technical community in our workshops, they bring great expertise. They are the reasons that we, actually, have access to the Internets and our online presence is run by them. But we do not integrate them in our policy discussions, which we need to pay attention to.
Also, I want to debunk the narrative that we are swimming in bad content and disinformation and this narrative might actually result rush to solutions that might hamper our access to the Internet. So, we need to be very careful with when we argue such things especially on high‑level panels.
And let's make these meetings about Internet governance. Internet and connectivity still matters. Let's not take the Internet for granted. Thank you.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much.
Let us try the Benin hub again. Maybe third time is the charm.
>> BENIN HUB: Hello. I represent civil society. So, this is an NGO that I am here representing. And we try to talk about the ethics. So, we have organized second hub. In other words, second workshop on this subject. And we are very interested in what is happening on an international level in terms of Internet and the ethics.
So, we want to understand where we can maybe get more training on this subject in Benin so that we can go farther in our understanding of the Internet. Because what is quite clear is today the situation, well, we can't ignore the Internet anymore in our country. It's there.
And whether one is connected or not, the Internet is nonetheless part of our lives. And we know that in our country, the women play a much more important role than men on an economic point of view. So, it is of the utmost importance for them to use the Internet so that they can better organize and continue their economic development.
I would also like to thank those of you who have organized this forum, because we have many people here who have never heard of the IGF, and they come to hear about what is happening for the first time. So, we really want to thank you whole heartedly for what you have done, thank all of you who have communicated, thank you all for everything that you have said.
Now, we have another concern, nonetheless. Now, it's true, when one look at a meeting like today, we can see, yes, there are lots of experts and there's lots of organizations that have taken part. But what we would like is, well, our recommendation, rather, is that we could maybe talk a little bit more about the policies that we can then, in turn, help more people to benefit the Internet with. Thank you.
>> BACHHYAR MAMMADD: my name is Bachhyar Mammadd. I'm Deputy Head of Administration of the Minister of Digital Development and tasks of Azerbaijan.
It's really a great pleasure to great all IGF participants. IGF has a unique feature and in World Summit on Information Society, decided together representative of different stakeholders in one unique possibility such as Internet Governance Forum which allows to the people of different background, different activities to be together and solve issues related with Internet development.
And I am thankful to all who put a lot of contribution for making it. We were host of the IGF 11 years ago, in 2012, and we know that how it is difficult, but we see everywhere improving our capacity of the IGF.
I am going to say a few words of what we did so far in our application of the development of the technologies and innovation and digital transformation is a priority in agenda of the government of Azerbaijan. And according to the current situation, which asks what is the strong economy, before we could say that it's population, natural resources. But now we have to say that technology and innovations are more important for the development of each countries. And strong digital economic can help to achieve inclusive and sustainable growth. Competitiveness and increase resilience. And government of Azerbaijan committed to transform its economy to depend on natural resources to an information based economy. Now 2.6 billion people still offline and not connected to the Internet. Azerbaijan is doing different programmes and by the end of 2024, we plan to achieve 100% home broadband Internet coverage with a minimum speed of 25 megabytes per second. And we are working with private sector to create privately public to speed up the process and we plan to provide incentiveness for private sector, operate state owned infrastructure and various activities has been conducted for implementation of this.
And one of the also new treatments of Azerbaijan establishing smart cities and smart villages in newly liberated areas where people are turning back after certain years and 30 years being internal displaced people and we give some kind of experience.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much.
>> BACHHYAR MAMMADD: And I wish in future such kind of experience will be shared and best practice for IGF stakeholders will be shared with all of us. And I wish to all you, all the best in future IGF events.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you. Thank you.
>> YIN XUNQUIAN: I am a student. I learned a lot through these days of meeting, so that I am very careful for this meeting. I hope that in the future the meeting can be heard in their countries of origin. In addition, I kindly introduce regulation or suggestion to regulated the highly popular digital currency around the world, which has to some extended the world.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes.
>> JAMES GREGOR OSAELO: Good afternoon, members of the panel and to each and every one of us. I am James Gregor Osaelo for the bridging leaders for sustainable development of the Republic of the Philippines. And first, I would like to congratulate the government of Japan and the UN DESA and men and women behind IGF for the successful conduct of the IGF 2023. I would like to share three points that might help and some of my suggestions.
First, I suggest if we can find opportunities, the policies ‑‑ I suggest that if we can urge members of the government, the creation of the Internet governance council in various local governments among Member States to spearhead programmes and projects and policies to address the myriad of challenges that we face today in relation to the Internet digitalization and innovation.
Number two, I urge the government around the world to pass laws and legislations to provide incentives to private sector and companies who will invest in rural areas in underserved communities to increase connectivity to the Internet.
And number three, if we can find solutions or if you can find ways to urge the government and the private sector to support startups initiatives and communities through access to funding, membership ‑‑ mentorship, rather, and access to markets to help support economic growth in developing countries. Thank you so much.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you. Please.
>> SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Thank you. Sebastien Bachollet, member of ECOSOC France and co‑organizer of IFG in France and president of the European association of Internet users. Thank you to the speaker of Benin for having spoken a language other than English, because I think if this place is not a place where many languages are spoken. Well, I think that we must remember that the tools that are put at our disposal should be used.
Now, people have already thanked the Japanese government before me and I would also like to do so. I would also like to thank the many people who have taken part in this conference. I would like to thank Japan. It's true that a multistakeholder conference of this ilk is organized not only by the government, but also by representatives of civil society, the private sector and, perhaps, I should mention two other things before closing.
It's true that too many meetings kill meetings and I think, perhaps, there were subjects that were discussed in parliament sessions that should have been put together and would have allowed us to have more participants during these sessions. And indeed to have been more interactive and useful in their nature.
Second point, we have talked a lot about artificial intelligence. Perhaps, it would be time to talk about our collective intelligence that we have brought together here. Thank you.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much. Please.
>> WIZSOU GUIZLORNE: I will speak in Spanish, please.
I am Wizsou Guizlorne. I am from Brazil. I am a non‑trans binary person. I would like to put forward a criticism for ‑‑ there wasn't enough representation for vulnerable peoples. There are different types of people with different bodies. These are the bodies that are the most impacted by technologies. This goes beyond borders.
We need to enable these ‑‑ allow these people to be part of this environment. When I go, when I register for an event, they don't have any type of accommodation for non‑binary or trans people. And my body is not respected. This is the very first time that Brazil has a non‑binary delegation with trans people. I want to ‑‑ we need to be part of this, because there are numerous risks in our lives. We need to be sitting at the table to foster human rights with different types of bodies. Otherwise, we are not able to speak about human rights because it would be sheer, utter, hypocrisy. We need to hone in on these marginalized peoples. We need to include them into the mainstream. We are diverse bodies. We need to be ‑‑ we have to be able to understand Internet governance. And we need to take part in all of these discussions. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: I will have to close the queues now. So, these are the last people. Please, the queue is closed. Okay, please.
>> IZAAN KHAN: thank you. My name is Izaan Khan. I'm here with my fellow colleague Natalie Terova, and we are currently fellows of the European dialogue on Internet governance's youth programme, YouthDIG. I want to take this opportunity to call out the absolutely incredible work that the Internet Society's Youth Standing Group has done with the version of the Internet atlas for this year, which is called Aruis Youth, which is basically where are the youth going. And recognizing the work the youth has done on the Internet governance space.
I want to take this opportunity along with Natalie to present the YouthDIG messages for this year very briefly. We covered four topics, I will cover two and she will cover two quickly as well. The first one is that we want to create a brighter future with artificial intelligence having safety and prosperity for all. We wanted states to assume leadership roles in promoting collaboration in artificial intelligence research and development and invest and support AI alignment and develop research equally. Governmental bodies should insure that high‑risk AI victims supplemented by human involvement in order to prevent failure paragraph we wanted to improve the clarity of a lot of pieces of legislation including the AI act and we want to call for the teaching of AI and it's potential usages, limitations and ethical implications of its use and we want governmental body and civil society to advocate for AI to be regarded as a common good, not something solely within the remit of certain organizations alone.
Secondly, we want no back doors in the future of internet governance. We want to move towards cooperative and evidence‑based internet governance. We want to call on the international community to hold governments to account for all of their commitments contained in the various declarations, for example, the declaration for the future of the Internet. We want all multistakeholder involved to conduct impact assessments to avoid Internet fragmentation. Call on state to systematically engage with the technical community. We want a framework for online acceptable activism and both we are the youth we want to make sure that all past and future youth messages are addressed by the respective stakeholders and that the youth are systematically involved throughout decision making processes.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you. Carry on, but the queue is closed, so you are not going to get on.
>> NATALIE TEROVA: Additionally, we aim to build a conscientious digital ecosystem. We prioritize enhancing the digital skills of children through caregiver and educator education to empower them while mitigating online risks. We urge collaboration amongst stakeholders to include marginalized voices in decision making, fostering and inclusive digital landscape.
For rural regions, we appealed for increased Internet infrastructure investment to reduce fragmentation and to create work opportunities. Finally, we promoted cohesive standards for interoperability to prevent vendor lock‑in and excessive market concentration. These efforts aim to create a world that is inclusive, digitally empowered and respectful of individual rights. We hope that these messages from youth can be implemented and acted upon. Thank you very much.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much.
>> PETER MICEK: Thank you. I am Peter Micek from Access Now, and I am joined by Valeria Betancourt of Association of Progressive Communications.
We are speaking on behalf of a growing chorus of civil society organizations to express our alarm regarding the decision that the government of Saudi Arabia will be the host of the next annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum.
We call on you to reverse this decision and urgently review the decision‑making process. Saudi Arabia has led an unprecedented and relentless campaign against freedom of expression, online and off. Activists are being tortured, detained, disappeared and killed. A 54‑year‑old retired teacher was sentenced to death for a few Tweets. A 34‑year‑old mother of two children and Ph.D. student was sentenced to 34 years in prison and an additional 34‑year travel ban.
Two Saudi Wikipedia volunteers remain unjustly imprisoned in connection with their work advancing access to information. There is no civic space in the country, no independent civil society organizations.
As we commemorate the five‑year anniversary of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, still no justice. Riyadh is not a safe space for most marginalized groups, women, human rights defenders, LGBTQ groups and we are equally concerned about transnational regression outside of Saudi borders. We have heard the importance throughout this conference of centering the experience of women and all their diversity and to apply a gender lens to all areas of our work.
Saudi Arabia is one of the most dangerous places on earth for women to participate in these conversations.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: I may have to stop you a little bit there.
>> PETER MICEK: I have time remaining. As general council, my organization cannot ethically permit my staff to travel to this country.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: We do have a code of conduct and the way we should encourage discourse.
>> PETER MICEK: Thanks. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: So, I will ask you to add here. I am aware there are concerns and that's very important, yes. But just the way that the concerns are expressed is also important.
>> PETER MICEK: Thank you. I am expressing facts. And I am happy to take this conversation, you know, if you want to investigate these facts further offline.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Okay.
>> PETER MICEK: I will hand off to my partner.
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: Yeah. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: Because of the reasons that my colleague Peter has exposed, we feel that the legitimacy of the multistakeholder approach and model is threatened by the situation, that the multistakeholder participation forms the cornerstone of the IGF ‑‑ and civil society participation plays a vital role in upholding the multistakeholder model. So a context that is not conducive for the participation effective and meaningful participation of civil society could undermine not only civil society ability to participate and contribute, but also put the IGF which is in a vital moment as well, in risk ‑‑ at risk. So the IGF keeps attic a key piece in the internet governance and digital cooperation ecosystem in a moment in which is vital to strengthen it.
So, we really want to emphasize the call to reverse and review the process through which the decision has been made. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> MAIKO KOBAYNGHI: This is Maiko Kobaynghi from project in chapter. Firstly, congratulations to the success of IGF 2023. I appreciate for the IGF Secretariat and Japanese government and the IGF Leadership Panel and members.
And as a person from tech community, personally, it has been a bit challenging in the past four or five years because the ‑‑ so, I have been trying to submit the workshop which is, actually, rated to the Internet infrastructure technology and that compared with emerging tech which is a quite popular, AI or ChatGPT. I think it's very difficult to think the ‑‑ sometimes a very tech and a bit difficult for understand other stakeholder before to understand the issues.
So, I wish, so there's still the issues to be discussed in Internet Governance Forum and I wish we can bring more the people from tech community and we can see more tech related issues in the Internet Governance Forum not only the buzz word emerging technology because especially the Internet critical resources and the Internet infrastructure is directly collaborated to the connectivity issues in the digital governance issues. Thank you so much.
(Applause)
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Then. And then our last speaker. We have to keep on time. Sorry.
>> One more second.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Others have sat down. So just because you stood up, you can sit there. Thank you. Please.
>> TORSTEN KRAUSE: My name is Torsten Krause from Germany civil society. This is or was my first on site IGF. For me it was a real incredible experience and, therefore, I would like to thank all the MAG members and, of course, the IGF Secretariat for your work for organizing, planning, managing, realizing this great event. Thanks to all of you. You are wonderful people.
As a political scientist and researcher, I really appreciate that so many sessions and workshops dealing with the child ‑‑ with the right of the child and expressing their needs and interests of young persons. I believe with no doubt that child rights‑based approach would be good approach to serve for a better world for all of us on and offline as well.
Last but not least, I want to thank my boss for trusting in me to act as a child rights manager. And to strive for all the goals of our Digital Opportunities Foundation internationally. Thank you so much also for encouraging me.
I would like to conclude with a wish to see you all next year at the IGF and hopefully in a world more peaceful than today with less conflicts and war. Thank you so much.
(Applause)
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much.
Okay. So, I would now like to see if there's anybody on the panel to ‑‑ if they want to say any closing remarks.
>> YOICHI IIDA: Thank you very much. Just briefly, I would like to extend our highest gratitude to the kind words expressed by speakers and also to everyone joining us on site here. And I really appreciate the kind words and words of gratitude given to us and the credit for my colleagues, not only in the ministry, but also from the private sectors and the other communities who have been working very hard to prepare all the facilities and the hospitalities presented here.
I also extend my personal thanks to UN team, Chengetai's team, and also Paul Mitchell and also the Dr. Vint Cerf sitting here. You may easily understand how I feel, how much excited I feel, you know, to see the father of Internet sitting next to me and discussing all together. Even my son was so excited to see his name card. So, it was really encouraging for us to discuss under his leadership how we could improve and how we could realize the Internet we want.
And this theme we need to continue over the next coming years. And we will definitely, our government is deep, strongly committed to protect and promote the multistakeholder approach in IGF and we believe we will work all together to discuss and to improve and strengthen IGF through the discussion on Global Digital Compact and also we look very much forward to working all together when we have WSIS+20 review in coming years.
So, thank you very much to everybody. And I am representing the Japanese government and Japanese community. And I really, I am really grateful for everybody, for everything you brought through the conference. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> VINT CERF: Very briefly, why is this man smiling? It's because it's almost the closing session and it's the end of a really, really, not just week, but months and months of planning. So, thank you very much for that.
Just a reminder, we did run out of time on the open mics. But we have not run out of time and space for your written inputs. Please send them in. The written inputs in some ways are even more valuable because we don't have to capture them by writing quickly while you are talking. Even though we are capturing this, recorded for reference.
I really look forward to another candid opportunity to see all of you next year. And in the meantime, please do take action in your national and regional IGF activities and provide that input to the Leadership Panel and to the MAG. It's really, really valuable during the course of the year, as we are planning for the sessions in the annual meeting. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much. That ends the Open Mic session. And I would like to end with giving a hand of applause for our outgoing chair, MAG chair, Mr. Paul Mitchell. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you.
>> VINT CERF: Thank you very much.