The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the virtual Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), from 2 to 17 November 2020. 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 to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> BRUNA MARTINS DOS SANTOS: Good morning, everyone. I think we are going to give it another one minute before we start. Just so you are aware.
(Pause).
>> Ms. Sorina, I think you can start. They are in another session. I will make you a host for now and then I will rejoin you.
>> SORINA TELEANU: We can start in a few seconds.
>> BRUNA MARTINS DOS SANTOS: Do you want me to start? Welcome, everyone. Welcome to the BPF session at the IGF 2020. My name is Bruna Martins dos Santos. I am a advocacy coordinator. And I would like to welcome you all again to this session. Happen to be one of the co‑coordinators and Moderators of the session today. And I will be sharing this task with Marwa Azelmat who should be joining us any moment now and to mention the names of the cofacilitators. Today's session is taking ‑‑ is a taking stock exercise over the past six years of BPF activities. And for these subsequent years we have looked in to topics such as access barriers in the gender digital divide in 2016 and identifying the needs of refugee women and indigenous women and women with disabilities back in 2017. So supplementary models of connectivity in 2018 and the opportunities and challenges that women face to gain necessary skills from the Digital Economy in 2019.
For this year ‑‑ and also in light of the discussions of the IGF strengthening we decided to conduct an assessment of Internet related policy spaces and processes through a feminist approach to determine whether and how to protect and foster participation of women in to gender diverse people, particularly young ones. The focused will be placed in Internet related policy processes that addresses issues related to violence, harm, pleasure and consent. And as I said the session today is a dialogue on this topic, on these four topics violence, harm, pleasure and consent and how we should work on improving that and making sure that these topics are being addressed at IGF and other Internet Governance related Forums and also being addressed in the correct and a nonrepressive manner.
We will start with the presentation of the BPF draft report delivered by Sorina. Sorina Teleanu is a BPF consultant for this year. And then we will go in two shorter panels from our panelists who will be Jennifer Chung, director of corporate knowledge at Dot.Asia and Anri van der Spuy, Reseach ICT Africa and Avri Doria, ICANN board. Hopefully we will be joined by Koliwe Majama from the APC but she might be having issues with the agenda today. I will hand the floor to Sorina and hopefully she will conduct a good presentation of our previous side report which is a great word from her. You have the floor.
>> SORINA TELEANU: Thank you. Hello, everyone and a special thanks to our panelists who have woken up quite early in the morning. Many, many thanks for that. I will try to go as fast as possible through our long, long, report. We will explain a bit how we got there and what were the main findings that were looking at IGF itself and focusing more on the recommendation that the BPF has put forward. And we can continue the discussion from there.
So let me try to share my screen. And you should be able to see it. All right. So the best practice Forum on gender, this year the thematic focus has been on four key issues and these were violence, harm, pleasure and consent. Sorry for the bad typing. From a gender diversity perspective. And the focus was on the IGF itself, trying to see whether and how these four thematic issues have been brought up at IGF over the past four years, basically when the new mandate of the IGF started and how the IGF has fostered the participation of women and this discussion focused on the four thematic issues.
What we did is we conducted quite an in‑depth analysis of sessions held at the IGF over the last four years. We were looking at session descriptions, reports where they were available. Not everyone apparently submits a report after an IGF session and session transcripts. We conducted a public survey. We received 30 contributions and those received were impactful. We conducted interviews with the IGF community and members of and the MAG Chair. And those who took the time to guide us to the experiences with IGF and gender inclusion. And then we looked at contributions submitted in to the usual IGF taking stock processes which happen at the end of one IGF cycle and before the start of another IGF cycle.
So based on all of that, our report is focused on two main issues. And the first one is again how gender issues have been featured at the IGF with the focus on violence, harm, pleasure and consent online from the gender diversity perspective. And what you can see I hope on this screen are the basic key findings on these issues. The first one is why IGF has featured discussion on gender‑based violence and harm. And we have seen that over the past four years. There hasn't been so much focus on issues related to pleasure, consent, self‑expression and alike and it seems there is a tendency to focus more on problems and negative issues. Promote Internet as a space for self‑expression and consent as a guiding principle. This is something that you will find in the report.
These are some of the numbers behind our research and some percentages. Just keep it quickly because otherwise I would spend too much time on it. And again some of the key findings also based on those numbers that you have seen. The percentage of IGF sessions that are focused exclusively on gender issues is sort of constantly low. So it is between 3% and 7% across the four years, but there is a positive and encouraging trend showing an increased number of sessions on other Internet topics. This has increased from 16% to 41 in 2019 which is quite good. And then percentage of sessions dedicated to the BPF, violence, harm, pleasure and consent or all consent has been relatively constant across the four years oscillating between 2 and 6%.
And one general observation across all the years that we have looked again scanning to session transcripts and reports, gender issues tend to be discussed in access and inclusion. This is a quick overview at some of the topics that have been featuring in discussions. I just move next. And here obviously you see that there have been more discussions related to violence and harm. And these are a few examples of topics that have been discussed.
And the second broad issue that we looked at was the inclusion of women and gender diverse people both in the IGF itself at large and also in discussions related to the four thematic issues. And some of the key findings IGF discussions on violence, harm, pleasure and consent do exceptionally well. I guess it is expected in terms of gender diversity amongst speakers, Moderators and participants. IGF data. And the overall general feeling among the people we have been talking about is that there has been good progress over the years to foster better gender diversity but there is always room for improvement. There is no mechanism in place to measure inclusion of gender nonbinary people. And we need some more disaggregated data to look at these things as well.
Now moving in to the recommendation section, I will try to go as fast as possible through them. We also have a few categories of recommendations here. The first broad topic is around gender mainstreaming at the IGF. And quickly we would like to suggest to the IGF to continue encouraging the integration of gender related issues within discussions on other Internet and digital policy issues building on policy trends. A suggestion for the MAG to maybe consider including a question in the IGF workshop proposal forms inviting session organizers to indicate how they plan to approach or whether they plan to approach the proposed topics from which the diversity perspective. And looking a bit at the gender report cards would be a bit unused over the past few years to maybe assess them a bit and see if they could be made mandatory for all session organizers, but then really use them to conduct some sort of an analysis.
And while discussions dedicated only to gender issues should still happen it is important to ensure that these discussions are not only attracted to communities they are referring to. Go a bit beyond the usual circles and suspects. Then reaffirmation of the fact that inclusion in gender in the debate is a two‑way responsibility. It has to be encouraged from the top, from the MAG, IGF Secretariat. The community should be more proactive in requesting gender‑related discussions or gender mainstreaming, whenever it is felt that it is more needed. Should promote more discussions and linkages between the best practice Forums in order to foster or allow for more interdisciplinarity.
Our recommendations are the following, encourage more discussions on empowerment, self‑expression, pleasure and consent. As women and gender diverse experiences are not, should not be limited to harm or violence issues and recommendation which is sort of new to us, the IGF has the opportunity to become the main space that fosters discussions on how to empower and uplift women and gender diverse people in the digital space. And it should not miss this opportunity. Then making sure that discussions on the four issues do not happen again inside (inaudible), but they reach and include the wider IGF community and even beyond the IGF community.
On gender diversity, as I have said earlier, there is a need for more disaggregated data to fully assess the degree of gender diversity across the overall IGF. And the MAG could consider legal ‑‑ some sort of a mechanism to measure inclusion and participation of gender, nonbinary people. And we do acknowledge this is not an easy task. It would be quite difficult to figure this out and this is why we suggest the inclusion of gender diverse people in a conversation on whether a mechanism could be built. Then the gender diversity principle should apply, of course, across all sessions including those focused on gender issues. And avoiding eco chambers once again is an important thing.
And then another thing which is sort of dear to us the participation of women and gender diversity in sessions and other IGF activities should not be tokenized. Just having women on the panel should not be the end call. It is about empowering these people to participate and contribute to the discussion. Not only in one session but going beyond that and see how they can contribute to IGF work. And related to this is the recommendation to go beyond capacity building, towards developed confidence building for those who work on gender issues at IGF and maybe beyond as well.
Another important recommendation is to work more closely with other organizations that are active and actively engaged in gender related issues and creating more linkages with the communities at the local and regional level. Another specific recommendation is to use the famous or not famous list of resources, to have more gender diversity in sessions. And then when discussing approaches for fostering more gender diversity at the IGF, we should seek input from the targeted communities and not try to solve programs without involving the specific communities.
Then it should not only be about the workshops and sessions that happen at the annual IGF meeting but also look at IGF as practice Forums in general, Dynamic Coalitions, various MAG Working Groups or community Working Groups and would benefit from having some sort of agenda assessment in terms of how they are thinking and tracing gender participation and topics of gender in their work. On the capacity development building side there is also the issue of trying to allocate more funds to encourage the participation of less represented gender communities. And we are finding is always a challenging issue but we could not miss this recommendation.
And another recommendation is to encourage innovative session formats within the annual IGF meeting as a way to foster some sort of cross‑pollination and break the silos in which we have again the same people having the same conversations. And related to the MAG because we also looked at this and also based on some of the discussions we had during the interviews we have two main recommendations. One is for the UN itself. When appointing MAG members the Secretary‑General should look at whether candidates that do have expertise on issues, having women on the MAG does not necessarily mean that expertise on gender issues are present. When the wall for nominations for the MAG is open it might be useful if we make it somehow more clear about gender diversity. And that might encourage gender diversity people to get in to the process.
And the final thing I am going to cover is our recommendation for some further work that the IGF could take up. And this is also because of the facts that the best practice Forum didn't have enough resources and capacity to go beyond just looking at the IGF. And that's basically, first of all, mapping policy processes and spaces that discuss the four issues in the digital space from which gender diversity perspective. Then mapping policy processes and spaces that discuss violence, harm, pleasure and consent and then trying to bring this community somehow together in the framework of IGF by inviting them to contribute to IGF discussions and activities focused on these issues. And that's basically it.
Our report was published a couple of weeks ago. It is online. It is still open for public comment until the end of the IGF. So that's not so much. We only have a few days left, but if you would like to add to our recommendations and add more suggestions, please send us an e‑mail by next Tuesday and many thanks.
>> BRUNA MARTINS DOS SANTOS: Thank you very much for the presentation of our draft report. And maybe just highlighting some of the recommendations and bridging them with one of the comments in the chat. There was a comment about how we should make IGF more friendly for gender diverse people. And this was definitely some of the recommendations and things that we have been hearing at the BPF space for years now on how even the registration form isn't welcoming enough for the gender diverse communities. These are ways to kick off this. Although the name is the BPF gender and access. We welcome and we could ‑‑ from broader discussions on these topics and moving just for beyond ‑‑ we have been trying to move beyond the female axis and framing this as women and so on. So we could definitely profit from this community inside the BPF. I'm going to hand the floor to Marwa, is one of the other BPF cofacilitators and my fellow co‑Moderator for today's session. Marwa, you have the floor if you are here.
>> MARWA AZELMAT: Yeah. Thanks, Bruna. And hey, everyone. This is Marwa. And I'm also working at the Association for Progressive Communications as a policy advocate coordinator. Today I'm very happy to see this culminating. It has been so many months of work. And I would like to thank Sorina for leading this process. So it is really great to see that coming out finally.
And just to begin with the thematic around violence, harm pleasure and consent, it has been hard to find that sort of position for this thematic within the realm of Internet Governance and digital rights space because it is a thematic that's leaning towards feminist practices but also needs to be more consolidated from a policy ‑‑ from a policy perspective. But also within the Internet related spaces.
And because we know that if we ‑‑ if you are to build safe spaces for women without undermining their agency because that protection approach can have a chilling effect on freedom of expression and women's ownership of their online experience, but also when it comes to translating feminist work around consent and pleasure in to policy recommendations, it is very hard to just have these policy centered perspective that would really be ‑‑ that would really speak to different stakeholders.
And so for today's panel we have Anri with us. And unfortunately Koliwe couldn't join. So the good news is that we will be speaking with you, Anri, for the whole panel. But we also open the floor for interventions from the panelists and participants.
And so basically my question to you Anri, is that do you think this thematic has developed in the context of the Internet governance and digital rights space? The floor is yours.
>> ANRI VAN DER SPUY: Thanks, Marwa. And also just thank you to everyone who has worked so hard on this initiative. As someone in the past who was been involved more intricately and knows how hard it is and it is very joyful but it can be very hard to put a best practice Forum together. Congratulations on this work. I enjoyed reading your report. You have started a lot of new conversations and steered it in a new direction. There is a lot of potential in there.
And, you know, with that then I think it is maybe useful to pause and look back a little bit at where we are coming from because I think that might help us understand to some extent where we are going to given that there is a lot of recommendations in there that we can build upon. And maybe I think Avri will be able to jump in on this, but so I say this with a caveat, that I joined the IGF in 2015 and immediately roped in to helping the best practice Forum on gender which is like baptism by fire because it was a very interesting year in that we discussed the topic of online abuse and gender‑based violence, which then also became sort of the best practice Forum became, sort of subject or the object of a group of trolls affiliated to the gamer gate travesty in the U.S. It was not an easy time for a lot of participants. And also ‑‑ it became a very good case study of how much we still need to do in this space in terms of enabling people to talk about online abuse and gender‑based violence. I know from my own purposes it really highlighted to me how people don't understand yet properly that online abuse is a real form of abuse. And I think that's sort of ‑‑ it is actually ‑‑ it is ‑‑ it is a common theme in my work and research. Because I think understanding online risks better and seeing it as a real risk is something that a lot of policymakers still don't get.
I say this with the idea of looking back, as I hope that Anriette and Avri help on this. Jac Kee who was leading this group for the first two or three years I remember her saying to me it took a long time for the IGF to put gender on the agenda and to get a best practice Forum. It started in the second year of the best practice Forum and it took a lot of convincing to get to that point. Take that look back. And to realize that it is also going to become a continuous struggle. It is really interesting when you read this report, we are getting this in to a more nuanced understanding of what we mean by gender and unpack issues around positive and negative rights of freedoms to. And then also the need to go beyond just binary notions of gender which I think is great in this report. And it is great that we are looking at these things.
So I just wanted to give that sort of brief background because I think it is important to know where we are coming from before just sort of analyzing and trying to understand where we are now.
I think broadly speaking Marwa, you asked about to what extent the themes of pleasure and harm and violence are now common across Internet Governance spaces. In my experience I think it has become more common, but I still think ‑‑ I'm not at all surprised at how uncommon it is in the space. You mentioned about the fact that you see in sort of some ‑‑ we still have a very sort of siloed approach to dealing with these issues. And just one recent example is Chenai and a couple of us were involved in making a submission in Africa to go around violence. It took some convincing to get parliamentarians or policy makers to realize and to believe us when we tried to convince them that the online dimension of domestic violence is something real. And the problem there is so little data out there, which is great that the best practice Forum has tried to unpack some of the data that's out there.
We need that sort of data in order to better address these problems. Without that data we really are sort of trying to address things while being blind. I think the point that you make in the report about the emphasis being on more negative constructions of rights, so sort of freedom from being abused, et cetera, that's very true. I think we see very little focus on the more empowering aspects of freedom, but again given sort of the experiences that I have had outside of the digital space I still think there is a need to talk about the risks and the harms, et cetera. Because I think it is easy for us because we are in this world, we sort of deal with it a lot to think it is very common and people realize that there is such a thing as online abuse. But as soon as you step outside of our little bubble it is not very common. And people don't yet understand. There is a lot to this sort of the need to encourage more sort of multi‑disciplinary conversations which I know that the UN Secretary‑General has highlighted as a priority for the IGF. And I think that's very true. We need to get outside of the bubble to talk more in gender spaces about digital dimensions and the best practice Forum. And similar sort of policy spaces need to probably do more to invite more gender experts and people working in complimentary fields.
So that's just sort of a point in terms of trying to pick up on some of the recommendations and findings that Sorina has highlighted. Some of you might know that Research ICT Africa as commissioned to do analysis of data around participation in IGF since IGF was created. And among other things we looked at gender or male, female participation. There is a lot of interesting findings that we come up with. I will try and share my screen. And while I try to do that I will explain. What we did is we tried to ‑‑ we looked at the annual participation data that we have for annual IGFs. And basically we sort of tried to assess various dimensions of it. One of it was gender. And as Sorina mentioned a big problem is that most of our data that we have only see gender in the binary male, female.
Since 2017 we have had the category other which very few people have responded to. So I mean I think that the other dimension is around 2%. I think, you know, that's a very easy fix and you can better define what we mean by other. I don't think that anyone enjoys being defined as an other. But broadly speaking participation from women, females have improved since 2006. It used to be around 30% and it is now around 42%. So that's broadly speaking a positive thing. And in terms of sort of stakeholder groups there is always sort of an allegation that Civil Society are way more active, and especially women from Civil Society to some extent that's true. Because most of the stakeholder groups we have more men participating than women except for Civil Society. And then we also sort of ‑‑ we looked at and I think this is kind of interesting and also worrying, we tried to look at the Intersessional activities at the IGF and tried to analyze to what extent there is actually active participation in these activities. And meanwhile findings are very much provisional. They tend to show that there is kind of decreasing participation and less active participation.
That most of the participation on the mailing lists seem to come from IGF staff and that a few of the same people keep on sending messages. And just I say that because I think it is interesting and it is important to note that we need to probably do more to ensure that when we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion that we are doing enough to make sure that that isn't just a tokenistic notion. And I think Sorina also mentioned that in the recommendation. It is quite a hard thing to do. I think that's part of the problem, going beyond tokenistic sort of tick box approaches is a difficult thing to do. But that's partly why the best practice Forum has a good job ahead of it, to think of how we can talk about these things. And I think in to some extent it can be quite influential in other policy spaces in trying to set a trend and showing how do we better ensure that we don't have tick boxes to measuring things like participation that goes to male female and other. How do we ensure that people are actively participating. I saw in the chat that someone was mentioning that it is different to know how to participate. How do we make sure that people know what the end is. And I think that's sometimes ‑‑ that's sometimes difficult. Especially when we talk about more difficult or sort of controversial topics that might invite discomfort and Anriette is saying on the chat. A conversation around diversity, equity and inclusion, we all need to become comfortable with being uncomfortable, but I think that's enough from me for now. Thank you.
>> MARWA AZELMAT: Thank you. Thank you very much for this comprehensive intervention and for sharing the findings of your organization. And I really echo, yeah, your concerns about moving beyond this sort of eco and moving this bubble at the IGF where everyone is at their comfort zone basically. And it is good to challenge the way it has always been challenged. And I guess one of these ways is to move beyond this tendency to just frame this thematic from, that negative perspective. We would need also to be more focused on the pleasure part, the consent part and the women's agency part. But also the agency of people of diverse gender and sexualities. Because I still think it is ‑‑ it is often overlooked within these spaces where we more see how the Internet related spaces are harmful for people, are violent and are abusive whereas I guess we have a lot of potential to enlist when it comes to giving people that agency to just embrace themselves and their identity online.
And so I guess we still have a bit of time if some of the panelists would like to also jump in or if the participants have any questions for Anri. I'm seeing some comments. No.
I'm just seeing some ‑‑ reading some comments about the discomfort that talking about sex, pleasure, consent, and yeah, I mean and gender. Not as in the gender divide but from the feminist perspective that creates that discomfort within these policy spaces. And I know that it is ‑‑ that it is very ‑‑ yeah, this is very hard to tailor these sort of, yeah, interventions for different audiences. Perhaps if ‑‑ yeah. Avri.
>> AVRI DORIA: Yeah. Thank you. I'm a panelist. I'm Avri Doria. A panelist later but just so there would be no responses, or so there wouldn't be no response to, one of the things I'm wondering is I have not been actively involved with the IGF for the last couple of years, was not involved at all in the BPF. So I'm coming from reading and observing, but I'm wondering how comfortable it was working on the BPF within the current IGF? Is the IGF a safe space for these conversations? Has it been? I know from my first years of involvement in the IGF when before Jac sort of broke it open with one of the other presentations in the first years, it wasn't unmentionable. Now it is mentionable. One can talk about the broad umbrella of gender issues. But how safe did it feel? How welcome did the conversation feel to those of you in the BPF at this point? Thanks.
>> MARWA AZELMAT: It has opened the floor for conversation and I guess that's a good starting point. And that's why we are trying to here to dig in to that issue. Chenai, you had a question?
>> Yes. Thank you so much for Sorina and Anri for being in this conversation and following up on the question that Avri has raised, in addition I think ‑‑ sorry. The host is starting my video. So I think in addition for me is in addition to Avri's question is also in your ‑‑ both your reflections, Anri and Sorina, and whoever else participated in the actual review of this work, would the IGF be a space where we can actually talk about women that's having agency, women and gender diverse people having agency and the need to have policies that respond to that. And the discomfort about sex, is the UN space more kind of like we have to be conservative. And we are trying to protect. Therefore we are not going to engage in this issue. I'm sort of like juxtaposing the two points but that's something that's quite important to reflect on. Is the IGF the space for this conversation or should we go to the UNWOMEN's group, for example?
>> MARWA AZELMAT: Thank you for that very poignant question.
>> ANRI VAN DER SPUY: I am glad that Avri brought up Jac and the fact that it was really uncomfortable and that's maybe six, seven years ago. It is not that long. I mean I know it is a long time in the history of the Internet. But it is not that long. So I kind of ‑‑ and to Chenai's point as well, I don't think ‑‑ the fact that something is uncomfortable should mean that we shouldn't speak about it. I like the fact that you have framed it as such. Around what's happening in today, around ‑‑ whatever you want to call it, colonialism, we really need to be interrogating things around agency and especially so for women and people who are typically left out of the equation.
And I think this is definitely the space to do so. I think if anything ‑‑ as I said in my earlier intervention is I think we might have been a little bit amiss in not doing more to reach out to other fora to bring it there more. And I know in the early years, in the best practice Forum we worked closely with the women. And maybe there is a need to do it again. They need to work more with the IGF. So I think yeah, I think there is definitely a need for more sort of cross fertilization between spaces and the need to deal with discomfort and to talk about it. And again like really like the framing of agency, although that would require us to also talk about power and where the power lies and why certain people feel excluded.
When we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion that's something that we often neglect is talking about what are the barriers to having more people in a more diverse space. And I think one of the comments was around the difficulty of knowing how to participate. That's a barrier that should be quite easy to address, but it does require a lot of hard work. Thank you.
>> MARWA AZELMAT: Thank you for that and I guess it also goes back to the language question and how we can tailor it for different audiences and stakeholders. Anriette, you have the floor.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks. Thanks, Sorina, for a great report. You know, I think the answer to that question that we discussed and yes, I think the IGF is the right place. But I think that we need to think where in the IGF and in what way. I think ‑‑ and in what ‑‑ the part of ‑‑ not what way, I think applies not just to this work but I think to IGF work in general. And you need to ‑‑ I think especially for a best practice Forum, I think the narrower your focus, the more effective you can be in raising the issue. I think the reason that the best practice Forum on violence, on gender‑based violence worked well and they had various reasons. The one is that it was a very narrow focus. The second is it was being discussed broadly. And in fact, APC and partners who were part of this best practice Forum had done a lot of research around the world. So you had a kind of bottom‑up approach because APC had these voices of sex workers in the Philippines, for example. They had the voices of feminist groups in Latin America talking about their experience of online gender‑based violence.
There was a lot of evidence and voice that would inform that process and come in to some kind of policy recommendations on a common problem. The problem was gaining recognition. So you even had in the IGF context other stakeholders. You had Government. You had business. Technical community interested, willing to contribute. And I also think you had to some extent the freedom of expression advocates who had been opposed to considering any kind of recognition of the need to control or regulate or prevent harmful speech. That also kind of come to the table. So the circumstances came together. I think with other topics that can be quite hard, but I think you need to think who you ‑‑ what you are talking about.
Let's take pleasure and consent, the whole issue of erotic and content on the Internet, a lot of people are interested in. Think of the businesses that are making money out of it. How do we get that topic to be discussed at the IGF in a way that brings the porn hub to the table? And there can be more debate how do we actually look at sex, sexual experience, sexual expression, sex business on the Internet. Sex work on the Internet. And in a way that's more inclusive. And I think to me is what's really challenging. And I think that while there is a coherence to the feminist analysis being applied to a best practice Forum, I think it inevitably excludes a lot of participation. Because there are just so many people to kind of just run amuck when they see the words feminist analysis. And I mean I might find that annoying but that doesn't ‑‑ I think in the IGF context if you want to have a results in the form of a best practice Forum, you have to find a way of making your framing somewhat broader. And maybe for me and I have been learning a lot since I have been MAG Chair about the differences between Dynamic Coalitions and best practice Forums. You can be more creative in a Dynamic Coalition. A Dynamic Coalition on the feminist principles on the Internet. In a best practice Forum if you go in with a feminist framing you are going to struggle to get all the kind of, you know, the multi‑stakeholder buy‑in that you kind of have to have in an IGF context.
So for me if it is not that whether it is the IGF or not. I think the IGF is the right space but I think we have to be tactical, realistic. But what type of strategy and approach works best in what type of IGF platform. And in that sense I think Dynamic Coalitions might be a lot better for pursuing the feminist approach. And you can still bring that to bear to a best practice Forum. But yeah. I mean I will stop at that. So the answer is yes, but we have got to be careful and realistic and tackle about the limitations of a multi‑stakeholder ‑‑ (no audio)
>> MARWA AZELMAT: Thanks, Anriette. I guess we lost you at the last point or just me. In all cases I really echo your points about yeah, I mean creating that sort of third wave of the BPF within the IGF itself. Because the IGF holds a lot of potential to pave the way for such conversations. And I guess I would hand it over to Bruna for the second panel. So yeah. Thanks, everyone. Bruna, over to you.
>> BRUNA MARTINS DOS SANTOS: Thank you very much for this excellent discussion. I was very happy with what I was listening to. Maybe inverting a little bit of discussion or changing kind of our direction on this, I would start by echoing a comment from Anri, that when she said that it is interesting and important for us, that we need to do more when we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion and that we do this in a way that it is not tokenistic. And this past point of discussion in which we were talking about this discomfort and also how to ensure that we can move towards the moment of cross‑pollination and so forth.
So the discussion right now is more focused on the IGF and policy spaces. The idea is to discuss with Avri and Anri and whoever wants to join, the policy issues. My question to you would if what some of the recommendations provided by the BPF are applicable to the Internet Governance Forum or other policy spaces around Internet Governance? So I think I'm going to hand the floor to Avri first and then Jennifer.
>> AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thank you. And let me repeat what others have said about Sorina's report. It was very good reading. And actually learned a lot from it. Because these ‑‑ the violence, harm, pleasure and consent aren't subjects that have given a whole lot of thought to before reading it, always looked at gender issue in terms of inclusion and in terms of access. Because those are such big problems and remains such big problems. But ‑‑ and then perhaps except for the consent issue, which has sort of very much entered a legal realm where it is actually being spoken of.
So very grateful for that. I do sort of wish there had been greater data samples for the ‑‑ for the data because they are small sample sets. And trying to think about that as a first issue is sort of how does this work get done. And it is a very broad umbrella we are looking at here. You know, going all the way from sex to the legal issues of consent and such. So how do we then zero in actually getting things done, getting things in to policy, getting considerations in to policy.
Now one of the things that occurs to me is that while those of us in the bubble that are even willing to talk about it, even willing to sometimes say the words don't sort of realize or don't work that much with those who don't even understand that there are such concepts. That there are such issues. And they are looking at their very narrow areas of policy. And when they are looking at them and then you basically ‑‑ but how does this fit within a feminist sort of principles. How does this deal with the issues of gender. You hit a blank wall. You hit a place where the conversational frameworks are so separate, that they do not know how to even apply the concepts. And that is not to judge anybody's ability to apply the concepts, but I think that there is a certain amount of translation needed where people who are concerned, who are doing theoretic work, who are steeped within the theme of violence and harm or of pleasure or of consent, can sort of dig in to the other issues and say, this is the place. These are the sentences. These are the words. These are the concepts that apply specifically in the view that you are looking at. That means having a fair number of people with a fair, broad set of understanding so that you can go to the various DCs.
I was thinking back to the DC that I'm coordinating on schools and Internet Governance. And as I was reading this report I said gee, we never talked about that and I'm even someone who should know what I'm talking about. Someone who should maintain awareness on it. And yet looking at the schools on Internet Governance and even thinking through the curricula that we have started to talk about, that issue did not figure in. And so why ‑‑ even when you have people who are aware of the topic not connecting it to the other policy issues. Let alone people to whom the whole issue was, you know, was forbidden. And perhaps still is.
You know, Anri was referring to five, six years. The first time that Jac brought up as a concept was the first five years that I spent as the Secretariat. Where she brought up sexuality in a regular main session and the Secretariat had a crisis. Can we include this? Can we list it in the transcript? And have all sorts of Delegations that was like how could you talk about such things. We have come a long way. We can talk about it now but still connecting it to the policy themes. How does the IGF go further on it? Inclusion. I think the idea of including questions is good. Including questions that ask people not specifically perhaps what are you doing for diversity, what are you doing for gender, but questions that are more considerations. You have considered this in the planning of. Have you considered that in the planning. And sort of getting in to more detail that asks them to look at their considerations specifically.
So I think there is a lot of value in that. I think that the report cards are good. I think anything that anybody makes mandatory is a problem. But that may be my own particular fetish on things that are mandatory. But ‑‑ so I think there is a persistence that is necessary. I think there is a focus that is necessary. It takes people that understand both the gender issues and the other issues that are being spoken of and can translate. And it is important to use our own language. It is important to use our own framing. It is important within our own thematic work, within our own framework building. And yet it is also important to be able to translate that in a tactical sense to the language that other people are using when creating the policy so that they understand.
Very similar to things that Anri mentioned about, you know, I think it was Anri, about ‑‑ or maybe it was Chenai, please forgive me, that talking to the South Africans, talking about yes, there is domestic violence online. But basically having to basically do a transaction. So think that is the tactical part that really needs consideration. And it needs focusing on lots of things. It needs perhaps in the construct of a Dynamic Coalition focusing on looking at the work that others are doing and how can we import our knowledge, concerns, how can we import the feminists' analysis.
Perhaps even without using scarey words at first and explaining it and then say oh, by the way that was a feminist analysis as opposed to at the front door saying all yee who enter here prepare for a feminist analysis. And not to negate the agency or the drive to use our own terminologies in these discussions. Because the question goes to when you take it outside the IGF, it really involves understanding constraints that other people are talking within. It involves the understanding their language. It understands the way ‑‑ understanding the way they talk. The way they tactically because people accept new ideas kind of when they are slipped in. But they back off and get defensive at times when things come on in language they don't understand.
With pressures that they feel being put upon them. And that doesn't excuse that. But it does make it a tactical necessity to get around it. If you are going to actually, you know, achieve anything with policy processes. I think that sort of persistence and making tactical decisions and doing that sort of analysis that goes deeply in to how does my topic, how does consent, how does harm, how does pleasure map to the discussions of others are having and that's hard work that can be done in a place like the IGF.
That can be done in a place where talking about models is reasonable. Go to a lot of other places and start talking about models it is like no. We are here to talk about protocols. We are here to talk about this. We are here to talk about that. We are not here to talk about brand visions. We are not here to talk about models of social justice or feminist framework. So how do you then bring it down to that. And I think the IGF especially in the DCs and in sessions when in the IGF we notice main sessions being set. So is there someone that is on the panel that is capable of bringing up those issues. So working with the groups that are setting up panels to make sure not necessarily that there is a woman on each panel. Or perhaps if you have a panel of just women, that there is a man on each panel. But making sure that, you know, there is someone who is able to talk about the issues under discussion in that framing. To be able to bring those issues. To be able to ask those questions. Very often use a platonic style can help as opposed to telling people what's going on and what they should be thinking about. You are asking questions that led them to thoughts that are real ‑‑ thoughts that will actually affect the policies that are being made. I don't know how long I have been talking and waving my hands, but I think I will stop now. And then if there are questions, talking this early in the morning is tricky.
But basically, you know, maybe there will be questions later after Jen has talked or what have you. So thanks.
>> BRUNA MARTINS DOS SANTOS: Thank you very much, Avri. You have touched upon a lot of ‑‑ some of the recommendations and points of convergence between our recommendations as well. And it was specifically on the framing and how it is important for us and for everyone in the space to make sure that the framing is taken forward. And this sort of inclusion is just not something that's on the paper or just something that's relatively mentioned in IGF and ‑‑ at like IGF Forums or even schools or so on and so forth.
One of our recommendations for beyond the IGF was to positively foster this sort of linkages between those processes and inviting people to contribute to the IGF discussions but also help with activities focused on other thematic issues. And I'm going to pass this discussion to Jennifer right now because I know ‑‑ Jennifer works for Dot.Asia and also somebody who has been within APrIGF. So, Jennifer, maybe you can bring a little bit of your experience on whether how to include these topics in different Forums beyond the IGF or anything you would like to add to this discussion. The floor is yours.
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: Thank you, Bruna. I want to echo all the speakers and panelists before me. Reading the report from the BPF gender is enriching. There is a lot of really good points that are actionable. A lot of datasets that are analyzed and I actually echo what Avri said before me. It is a shame that the sample size is bit small, but then I think that one of the things that can be actionable. If we are looking at trends, looking at where we should be going, that's one of the things that we can start improving on. And I think the IGF and also the MAG as well have improved in the years since Jac opened the door to making this more a normal conversation. So I think having more data means probably looking at every part of the chain. I heard a lot from Anri earlier and it is really encouraging to see the statistics of participation, at least the categories who do not subscribe to, you know, traditional male, female, a place ‑‑ this is what I identify with.
So this actually is an improvement from previous years. But more than that, we should look at it in the scope of the entire arc of the process. So speaking a little about with my MAG member hat on right now from the beginning of the process of the year, we go to the community to ask them what they want to talk about and I think, of course, we do get a lot of input from various sectors, various regions, various people who represent different communities, stakeholders. But I think we need to go a little beyond that as well.
There is a feeling actually to years ago since Paris from the speech of the Under‑Secretary General, Secretary‑General of the UN we want to find the people that we want to bring in to the IGF space. We want to reach out to the marginalized communities. In the very beginning of the process we should not only open the door and say that everyone could come in and tell us what we want ‑‑ what you want to hear from the IGF. We need to go to these communities that tackle these issues, to these communities where we want to hear from and ask them specifically. So it is not just opening the door. We have to go to their door. Knock on their door and say we want to hear and please tell us what you want to talk about. Please tell us what is important to you in this context.
So that's No. 1. And then I guess moving a little bit more to when we are talking about consultations as well, to bring in more gender experts from, you know, gender experts, people who work in this field. I must admit I myself, I'm not a gender expert. I have a lot to learn both from the report and the panelists who spoke before me. But within the space where you create this work, we need to bring in that. And I think Anri also touched on the cross‑pollination issue with working a little bit more with UN agencies such as UNWOMEN or other organizations that do specifically tackle these issues. So bringing in the gender experts you want to hear from as well. To kind of level up the knowledge of people who are interested in this space as well.
And then another point in the process is you need representation. Now I know a lot of us have already talked about, you know, need to move beyond tokenism, but the image that we project is important. And the image we project starts not only with who we are asking to come and speak at the panels, who we are actually including in to the MAG, who we are asking to speak at high level sessions. And a lot of us have noticed that through the years this has improved a lot, but it also depends on the different buckets, the different themes that the IGF really holds.
Now in the inclusion theme, in the access theme, on the rights themes there is quite a robust representation of women, of people who are marginalized, people with disabilities, people who identify as nonbinary. In other areas that's not so much the case and I think myself coming from a background, I mean for Dot.Asia we sometimes are considered a technical community. Sometimes we are considered private sector. I see a lot fewer people, women, people who come from these communities in this space discussing technical items, discussing cybersecurity. Lots of times the panels or experts gathered around these tables are less diverse. And there could be good reasons, historic reasons about that. It also means that we don't have the responsibility to reach out to create at least the image that we project out to people, a welcome space that we participate in.
Moving on to the logistics part of the whole arc of work in IGF, I guess in the workshop proposal, like logistics and forms where we ask people, I think I saw in the chat earlier, if we ask workshop proposers if they plan on involving gender issues within the discussion, not that we are saying you have to talk about this is the only topic that you talk about, but in the context of framing different issues in the Internet Governance Forum in IG are you planning to talk about this with a different perspective as well. I think that's really important. That gets people thinking about what kind of policy questions they want to put in the proposal.
And then I think the post session report is also important. I know that people have said the gender report card is great. How do we improve it. And this year I'm responsible for organizing one of the main sessions. Working on the, you know, quick report I already see those questions there that ask, you know, did you talk about gender issues in your ‑‑ in your panel. And I think that's really important, too, because it is like not only are you asking was this talked about, there should be other dimensions you are looking at as well. So it could be that the main subject of any panel may not be particularly based on gender but the nuances of issues that are talked in between could be teased out that way.
And lastly, I don't want to take too much time, lastly is data. So from the APrIGF point of view we actually started working with BPF gender I think since 2016 or '17. I do recall when we were in Bangkok, which is 2017, we did have a joint session with BPF gender talking about this kind of introducing taking statistics, having a gender report card and that was really a successful session. It was a very interesting session. And since then in our post session reports we have also included that. We included questions worthy to be discussed. What is the gender balance on your panel. And these are the questions that every time a workshop comes in they are accepted, they are implemented at the actual Forum. The post report is actually very important because I guess a little bit of context in APrIGF, we do look at the post session reports. How the session was already conducted and that does have knock‑on effect of whether or not these same organizations or same proposers next year will have a successful workshop coming through.
And then finally, I think I want to move my intervention back to the BPF. I think that a lot of us already said, you know, we see a lot of the contact at the IGF when we talk about gender being based in to inclusion and access. And I think what is interesting is the name of the BPF is BPF on gender and access. And this was something that was implemented or suggested by the MAG either two or three years ago. My memory is a bit fuzzy now. And I think linking these two at the very top in the name of the BPF already kind of brings a direction this way. It brings the direction this way. And people who participate in this BPF coming in new were already ‑‑ have a preconceived, at least a notion this is what we are going to talk about. And we are going talk about gender and access.
So a suggestion maybe if we want to move it to somewhere different, if we want to move it beyond that, you have to start with the name. And another thing I want to pick up on, the last point I want to pick up on that Avri mentioned and Anriette mentioned is finding a balance and a tactical approach in being able to talk about what we want to talk about. It is important to have people you need at the table. And if you kind of gauge that at the beginning with a title or something like that it is not going to be possible.
And you need to also balance it because you don't want it to become an echo chamber, but you also don't want it to become a space where it is not comfortable for everyone to participate. And finding the commonalities is something that's really important, I think. I will stop here and see if any other one wants to jump.
>> BRUNA MARTINS DOS SANTOS: Thank you very much. Thanks to all who have been contributing to this discussion on the chat. I guess now we have a space for anyone who wishes to ask for the floor or to add anything to the discussions. On the chat so far we have made a lot of comments on this need for the change in the BPF name and also some other points and our involvement in policy processes and how the BPF is committed to continue working on this. I'm going to open the floor again. And ‑‑ so if anyone wants to join please raise your hand or just open your microphone.
Okay. Seeing as say in ICANN, seeing none and hearing none I think ‑‑
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Can we just look at the recommendations? Because I think your team and Sorina have some very concrete practical recommendations in the report. And it might be interesting to get people's perspective on them. Maybe we can look at them again and reflect on how to work with them.
>> BRUNA MARTINS DOS SANTOS: I am sharing my screen now. I think you can see them properly. Let me know if I need to make it slightly larger or not. But the recommendations were divided in to four streams. And Sorina, if you want to jump in to this discussion and help, the four streams were gender mainstreaming, integration of discussion on violence, harm, gender and consent and gender diversity at the IGF and beyond the IGF.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks a lot. And maybe if we can jump to the one on data. Because I think the fact that Anri shared earlier that she has been doing this research that we managed to get some support from ISOC for and the research turned out to be very complicated because of the data. The IGF has limited capacity and the gathering of data. Because we are going to look at how to in the light of Anri's research which is about participation broadly, not just in terms of gender. We are going to come up with some recommendations to the Secretariat on data. And so I wonder Anri, seeing as you have looked at both this and your own experience of doing the research, what are the recommendations that we would like to see put in to practice let's say from January, post this IGF, January 2021 with regard to data? Data gathering and gender disaggregation of data.
>> Sorina, you want to jump in or any of my BPF cofacilitators?
>> ANRI VAN DER SPUY: Thank you. There is a couple of easy quick fixes that could be done. And one of those, those is how do we ask about participation, male, female or other and maybe expanding on that. I saw there was a suggestion that the gender report cards be made compulsory. I think I share Avri's concern about anything that's compulsory. In the session reports that the workshops have to do we might include more questions around participation. My concern and my experience and slightly ashamed to say this but I know how these workshop reports and afterwards you are I have to submit this workshop report and I kind of estimate how many people were in the room and how diverse you think it was. So I think we need to do something that's more sort of a realtime assessment and whether that means like you have a Rapporteur at the moment in each session. You might have to have someone report in each session on gender and diversity and equity and inclusion.
I think the more difficult things, and this is something I'm grappling with more broadly with the IGF participation study is that I think, you know, broadly this kind of comes to the notion or it speaks to the notion of multi‑stakeholder participation. And at the moment the metrics that we have in place are simply to tell us much about diversity, equity and inclusion. We need to sort of go back to the foundations and think about why we support the notion of multi‑stakeholder participation. And a lot of that has to do with the benefits of getting diverse views on issues and people from different stakeholder communities. And one stream of that is ensuring you have people from different cycles, communities and whether that's private sector and breaking down private sector in to sort of a bigger group, whether that's sort of big tick organizations or Mobile Network Operators. So there is clearly a broad need for more nuance in how we ask questions about participation.
And I think, you know ‑‑ and what we are doing around the study is trying to unpack how we can talk about exclusion and inclusion and active and passive participation. And that's a harder question that might take some time to address. But at least I think we are starting that conversation.
So I'm sorry, I don't think I have provided a lot of answers. I probably provided more questions. I like some of the suggestions that Sorina has made around gender report cards and how we include those things. Yeah.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I think those are very concrete. Sorina, what would you say are the concrete questions that you'd like us to implement in the short term?
>> SORINA TELEANU: IGF has made a few concrete recommendations, maybe not so big changes. And one of them is looking at the list of resource persons. And it is not extremely well used. And that could help session organizers have more gender diversity intersection. And those help assess how that goes. And one specific recommendation there was considering including tags that would allow experts who are women or gender diverse people to identify themselves if they want to. It won't be something compulsory. And then when the session organizer is saying hey, we have a difficulty bringing gender diversity on the panel, we would direct them to the list of resource persons.
Another recommendation was to maybe encourage session organizers themselves to invite speakers to identify themselves as if they want to and then put that information on the workshop page or whatever with the consent. And that would help with getting data later on how exactly the gender diversity was on the session beyond men and women. There are a few concrete and specific recommendations. Maybe we can put them in to practice as the new cycle starts. Thank you.
>> AVRI DORIA: If I can jump in? One of the recommendations that really sort of rang with me was the one of basically, you know, having women and gender diverse people in sessions is not the end goal. Participation is not tokenized. Nor should participation stop once the session ends. That point. And also the point in the subbullet about basically whether it is the IGF, or DC that's specifically focusing on this, or some other, you know, group of people working together, of supporting presenters and participants.
And that sort of goes to what I was talking about before, in terms of how to basically find ways to mesh things. To basically bring the gender issues and the ‑‑ and the policy issues together. How to start merging them so they are not separate. So that it is not just often a bubble of people. Or just a token participant on a panel. But that that communication, that steady state of participation is continuous. It is why also the recommendations about the Intersessional, especially when combined with Anriette's suggestion of doing something more intentional, will Intersessional activities so that mid year as opposed to just at the annual, if this, you know, set of issues, if the gender set of issues is brought in to bear and actual weaving in of the concerns of the issues of the content is done and that kind of context you start to get it more persistent, repeated more often, brought in different contexts and different ways, planting little seeds that grow up later, but basically that sort of effort. So I think those are important parts.
One thing that I don't see here and ‑‑ but that occurs to me, and it is perhaps because I'm spending too much of my life prioritizing things lately, given that this is such a broad area, not every issue is pertinent to every discussion at every point in time. So figuring out priorities, for particular, you know, main sessions, four particular DCs, four particular other organizations is sort of not bring all of it in at once, but what is the most pertinent issue that can make headway, that can start to build the awareness. So those are things that show up in these recommendations that I really recommend paying attention to as this effort moves on persistently. Thanks.
>> BRUNA MARTINS DOS SANTOS: Thank you very much. We are going to move to the close‑up of the session. And I'm going to hand the floor to Marwa in a few seconds, but just again this point of continuity and also ensuring that the IGF is not broken up in to parts or before the event or after the event was also a main concern for us this year.
And before handing the floor to Marwa we have two Q and A questions that I think at the close‑up or even as we can maybe try to approach, but the first one would be is an Ombudsman question on the table and why going with the feminist approach at IGF and would it be part of the solution that would change the Forum itself. So Marwa, you have the floor.
>> MARWA AZELMAT: Thanks, Bruna, and thanks, everyone, for this very thought‑provoking session. We all have some food for thought. And we all agree that we need to find these sort of commonalities, but to break the silos and find that third wave of keeping up the momentum within the BPF. Right now I will just hand it over to all the panelists for a closing remark. And if you want to pick up one of the questions that we have in the Q and A that Bruna just read, feel free to, yeah, to just include that in your remark. Thank you. Whoever would like to go first, just take the mic.
>> BRUNA MARTINS DOS SANTOS: IGF this year is also about the voluntary commitments. Do our panelists think that there would be any voluntary commitments that we should take on with regards to this topic or moving the BPF forward or anything like that?
>> ANRI VAN DER SPUY: I can jump in. I think I'm uncomfortable with silences clearly. I have learned so much in this session. I know that everyone has said thank, you but even for the study on participation of the IGF, I think I really liked and I wanted to pick up on one point that I can't remember who made it, but the fact that we need to consider the sort of saying about whenever you see a nail and you have a hammer you want to hit that nail. And consider where it is actually relevant. And be much more tactical about whether we talk about these things and how we talk about these things.
So really like those two kind of separate suggestions. And there were a few really interesting suggestions around having a mid year check‑in which I think is quite doable and sort of virtual IGF showed us how it can work really well. So just again thank you from my side. I have learned a lot from reading this report. And I think if anything it can get us going, thinking about in the best practice Forum conditions another year what the focus should be. I think my vote would be for something quite narrow. I think the best practice Forums that are narrow work well. And I like the suggestions of ‑‑ suggestion of thinking of a Dynamic Coalition to talk about more uncomfortable subjects potentially. So yeah. Just a couple of very unorganized thoughts from me. But thank you very much. It was a great session.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thanks. And if I can jump in I would endorse everything that Anri just said. Because it does make a lot of sense. One of the comments did ask about shouldn't a feminist principle, a feminist way of looking at things become a norm inside of IGF. And certainly that's to be hoped but that's not something that can be stated upfront. It is something that again will take growth. And yes, I'm very grateful for the BPF paper. It certainly made me think about what things I'm not paying attention to in other spaces and should perhaps start paying attention to. And I would recommend that others read it in your own spaces, what are the pieces that I can bring them in and when can you bring them up. And thanks so much.
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: I will jump with a few words. Endorsing and saying plus one to what Anri and Avri also said. I guess my final point really is to look at data. We really do need a comprehensive set of data. We want to take note where we are doing well and take note where we need to improve. And touching slightly I think on the question of an Ombudsman and it was answered in the Q and A. It is always a funding issue. Having a space where to come up without putting extra workload. I suggest that we take that forward to the community, to the next MAG. And the current MAG is done. But I think it is very important that we need to work towards. Tell.
>> MARWA AZELMAT: Thanks. Sorina, would you like to wrap up?
>> SORINA TELEANU: I was writing in chat a thank you note. At once we looked at IGF itself and it was the right time. Thank you, Anriette, Anri and Avri and Jennifer. Many thanks for that. There is still a bit of time to help with more suggestions and recommendations as we finalize our report. If anything else you would like to add, send us an e‑mail and we will be sure to include it in the consolidated report to be ready at the end of the IGF and many thanks.
>> MARWA AZELMAT: Thanks, Sorina. And thanks to all of our panelists and attendees. We are still open for inputs, comments, recommendations. Just keep them coming in. And I guess that's it. Right, Bruna?
>> BRUNA MARTINS DOS SANTOS: Just to add my thank you as well. And ask everyone to join the BPF if you haven't yet. This was a great session that I hope sets the rhythm for the next year. Thank you.
>> MARWA AZELMAT: Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> Bye.