The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual 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.
***
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Okay. I think it's three minutes past the hour, and let's start just to respect time.
So good morning, afternoon, and evening, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the second Open Consultation day -- second Open Consultations for the IGF 2020. We had the first in January.
Before we start, I'd like to remind you of a few things to make our sessions easier.
The meeting is being recorded, transcribed and live streamed through the IGF YouTube channel, and also, with thanks to the Government of Poland, we are able to provide you with interpretation in English and French. You will find the interpretation button at the bottom of the Zoom window to the right-hand side.
Links to the agenda, transcription, and documents and prerecorded videos are available on the IGF front page, and also throughout the session please make sure that your microphone is muted at all times. If you want to make an intervention, please use the online request system. The link is available on the front page of the IGF website, and it will also be put periodically into the chat.
If for some reason you cannot log into the floor request system, please send a message to the host in the chat.
When it is your turn to take the floor, the chair will call your name and give you the floor. It is quite easy to see your place in the queue by looking at the queue list, and the link to the queue list is also available on the front page, and it's basically the same link as the queue request.
Please start your intervention by saying your name slowly, affiliation, and stakeholder group. This will help with the transcription and also with our interpreters. Please also try and keep your intervention short.
Once you have finished your intervention, please remember to mute your microphone again.
This session is really the first time we're trying to use all these new features, including the interpretation, et cetera, so please excuse us if there are any glitches. We'll try and iron them out, and it will make us ready for November. Thank you.
And with that, let me call upon our chair, Anriette Esterhuysen, to introduce the agenda and start the meeting.
Anriette, please.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Chengetai. And welcome to everyone who has joined us. And thank you to those who are staying up late and those who are getting up early. We really appreciate that there's such a large group of people with us.
And I want to give a special welcome to our friends from Poland, to Ms. Wanda Buk, who will address us on video, and her colleagues who will be with us in the room.
The bad news is that we won't be going to Katowice this year, but the good news is that we will be there next year. And thank you very much to Poland for bearing with us during this extraordinary time and for committing to supporting an IGF 2020 in various ways. Thank you for supporting the interpretation today, but also for hosting us next year. And I think added to this good news is that we have hosts lined up for 2022 and 2023. So thank you very much to the governments of Ethiopia and Japan for making yourselves available to support the IGF.
This time has really demonstrated for us the importance of the Internet. And it's also demonstrated the robustness and the resilience of the Internet, and I think to a large extent the relationships, the people, the institutions, the technicians, the Internet exchange points that are behind this resilience and robustness. It's invisible. And so I really do want to recognize everyone who is part of the Internet in some way or another for the work that you've done in making this transition to online work and remote work possible for us during this time.
And we cannot ignore the fact that this dependency on the Internet also really starkly demonstrates how serious the impact is of not being part of the Internet, of being a child who doesn't have access to the connectivity or the devices or the skills to continue your schooling online. And so for the Internet Governance Forum, the challenges that we have been dealing with for a long time of inclusion and of accountable and transparent governance is really put into very, very bright -- in fact, as one of our contributors said, it's thrown a spotlight on Internet governance, this dependency on the Internet, and other challenges that are governance related that have emerged is the challenge of information, of disinformation. How do we trust what we receive through the Internet? How does the public sector, how do public health authorities use the Internet effectively to communicate information to citizens at this time?
So for us, it really is, as an Internet governance community, a time when the work that we've done to prepare for inclusive, transparent, and responsive governance is being put into play. The challenge is even greater now, but I think what we can be reassured by and encouraged by is that we have done so much work to prepare for dealing with this new challenge.
So for us as an IGF community, to continue our work to deepen inclusive governance, to have more substantive participation, to deal with the challenges of everyone having effective, affordable, meaningful access to the Internet is really vital. And I think what will help us deal with this challenge is another key strength of the IGF, and that is partnership.
The IGF has only come where it has, it's arrived here through partnership. Partnership with a wide array of institutions and individuals from multiple sectors. And we have a very positive, exciting opportunity represented by the Roadmap on Digital Cooperation that was released by the Secretary-General last week, and this gives us an opportunity to build on the strengths of the IGF but also to identify and respond creatively to where its shortcomings are and that we are aware of.
So I'm really looking forward not just to this Open Consultation and MAG meeting but to this new incarnation of the IGF and taking on board the challenges of going virtual, but also taking on board the opportunities, of being part of a new process of building stronger and more inclusive digital cooperation.
And I'd like us now just to look at the agenda. I hope you've all had a chance to had a look at it, to know more or less what to expect. And I will ask Luis to just scroll down as I run through it.
And this morning we'll have a message from State Minister Wanda Buk from Poland. We'll have a welcome from UN DESA. And we'll then go on to a briefing on the state of preparations for IGF 2020.
The secretariat will update you on what we've done so far.
And then we'll look at the pandemic and the impact of the pandemic on the IGF and what it means to have a virtual IGF. And we'll have some initial discussion on that.
And we're going to have a coffee break, and you will broken out automatically into Zoom breakout rooms. Stay with us.
If you need to get a cup of tea or get a cup of coffee, please do. But we will be dividing you up randomly into groups with other people, other participants.
And that's a very important part of the IGF, is that the predictable networking and the unpredictable networking where you just run into someone in a corridor.
After that, we'll go into the session where we will be discussing the inputs that we've received from various partner institutions. And we trust you've all looked at these beforehand. They have been available for a few days now, but we will introduce that session with a short overview of the very valuable input that we received from various institutions.
And then we will go into Q&A on those contributions. If you haven't prepared any questions yet, please come up with some. And we'll have an open discussion. And after that, we'll close our first day of the Second Open Consultation and MAG meeting of IGF 2020.
So on that, if there are no questions on the agenda -- I don't see anyone in the speaking queue -- so I think we can consider our agenda adopted. And we can move on to the next item, which is a welcome message from Ms. Wanda Buk, Minister of State from Poland, who was -- or is the co-chair and will be the co-chair of the IGF in 2021.
[Video]
>>WANDA BUK: Dear IGF community. I'm pleased to be able to share with you important information related to this year's and next year's IGF.
I regret that we cannot meet in person. But the current situation related to the global pandemic has not only affected us and our plans, it has a huge impact on how we perceive the digital work today. And now more than ever Internet governance is the key to ensuring the words "sustainable development," "human rights," and "global security." IGF is an ideal space to conduct such a discussion and work out good and effective solutions.
The multistakeholder and inclusive spirit of Internet Governance Forum is now our most valuable asset. It is important not to overlook anyone in this dialogue.
We are counting on the fact that despite the enormous and expected advertises, we would be able to meet in Poland this year. Unfortunately, the situation has turned out to be extremely difficult and complicated. The recommendation of the Polish Minister of Health regarding the organization of mass events is not positive. The hotel and entertainment industries are in a huge crisis. We also do not know how international flights will work, enabling the IGF community to reach Katowice in November.
Bearing in mind, first of all, the safety of participants but also the comfort of conducting the meeting and ensuring that anyone can take part, we are forced to propose moving this year's physical meeting in Poland most likely to late autumn 2021. It is a decision taken jointly with the U.N. in full responsibility incumbent on the host country and UN DESA. This liability is not limited to just a physical event.
By the time of IGF 2021, Poland will be ready to support the IGF, MAG secretariat, and the entire international community in continuing the dialogue on the importance and the future of the digital space.
We are prepared to delegate the necessary human resources to help organize the event in 2020 in the online formula. We want to help IGF financially, in particular in transcription and translation but also in terms of content as a contribution to the organization of the high-level and parliamentarian paths.
Poland wants to remain an active and responsible participant in the multilateral debate on the future of digital space. Of course, we are open to other comments and suggestions. We hope together we will be able to work out the best solution in an extremely difficult and unforeseen situation.
I believe that IGF 2021 in Poland will be a unique forum organized in a completely different digital reality which will show new challenges towards Internet united. I have no doubt that we will meet them.
I wish you fruitful deliberation, and I hope to meet you in 2021 in Katowice.
[Video concludes]
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much for that message from Poland. And we really do look forward to working with you and visiting you next year.
Next we have a message from UN DESA, the United Nations' Division for Economic and Social Affairs in New York, which is the host of the IGF secretariat.
>>WAI-MIN KWOK: Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, distinguished delegates, Madam Chair Anriette, co-chair, Her Excellency Wanda Buk, MAG members, colleagues and friends from Poland and stakeholders and everyone joining online. This is Wai-Min Kwok from U.N. Department of Economy and Social Affairs.
I'm here just to extend a very short welcome to everyone to these special open consultations and MAG meeting. As you can see from the agenda, The Under-Secretary-General for Economy and Social Affairs, Mr. Liu Zhenmin, he will join live with you tomorrow, 16 June, at 10 UTC.
Myself and other colleagues here at DESA, we stand fully ready to support the MAG and stakeholders in convening the first-ever virtual global meeting of IGF this November, as well as the IGF Poland in 2021, IGF Ethiopia in 2022, and IGF Japan in 2023. I think most of you have seen the announcement on the IGF website.
So I wish you all a vibrant, successful and outcome-ridden meeting.
Over back to you, Madam Chair. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Wai-Min, for getting up so early to be with us.
Now we'll have an update from the secretariat on the state of preparations for IGF 2020, keeping in mind that we have not -- that these preparations were based on the assumption that we would have a face-to-face IGF but with at the back of our minds this plan B for having a virtual IGF being present.
And also just keep in mind that we have the thematic tracks. We had a really good response, thanks to you, the IGF community. We had 240 workshop proposals, and we had all together more than 300 proposals for sessions at the IGF. So thanks to everyone who were part of that.
And that's what the MAG has been working with, in particular the workshop proposals but the other preparations under way as well. So over to the secretariat.
>>LUIS BOBO: Chengetai, I apologize. It seems you are muted on your side.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Chengetai, are you there? Can you hear us? We just need you to unmute. Good.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Hello. Can you hear me now?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: We can. Clearly.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Okay, great. Sorry. Those are one of those glitches I was talking about at the beginning.
Can you see my screen now?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: We can see your screen clearly, so you can go ahead.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Okay. So I'll just give a chronological update on the process so far since the first Open Consultations and MAG meeting which were held on 14th to 16th of January at the Palais.
So after that meeting, we had the discussion on the themes, and the secretariat issued a call for validation of the thematic tracks on the 23rd of January to the 6th of February 2020, and the results of which validated the 2020 thematic tracks that the MAG selected, which are data, inclusion and trust, and it also established broad community support for the environment track. So that's the new track that we have this year, environment track. And keeping in line with also the CSTD recommendations on improvement, et cetera, the tracks have remained focused, because in the previous years we used to have up to eight tracks. So this year, it was four tracks. So we're keeping in the line with those recommendations.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Chengetai, sorry to interrupt you.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: But I'm not sure if you're trying to have the presentation move. It's still -- the screen is still on the cover. So just to --
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: No, not yet.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Oh, good. Good.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Not yet.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Sorry about that.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: No, no. It's fine. It's fine.
So we issued a call for workshops and also for the open forums, village booths, IGF music night was issued from the 2nd of March to 22 of April. And this here now is the timeline for the call for workshops timeline, and we have succeeded in keeping with this timeline. So this is just a short overview of the timeline for the call for workshops.
The results came in on the 22nd of April, and we had 237 valid workshop proposals, and baking these workshop proposals into the thematic tracks, we had 42% on the trust track, inclusion had 29%, and data had 21%, and 8% under the new environment track.
For the statistics, for the organizing teams overall, so these are the people who submitted the proposers -- the proposals as the organizing team or as the proposers. We achieved gender parity. So we had 49% female and 50% male and 1% other. So I think this is a very good milestone that the proposers were 50/50 and we achieved gender parity there.
For the stakeholder distribution, 52% came from civil society, 20 from the technical community, 14 from private sector, 9 from intergovernmental organizations, and 5% from government. The 52% from civil society is not that surprising because civil society does contain the largest number of organizations and also of people. So it does give that they would actually submit the largest number of workshops or be involved in the largest number of workshop proposals.
We do still have quite a bit of work to do, particularly on the other end of the spectrum, from government, which only 5% came from government or with were organized by government, but this is also slightly understandable. I'm not saying that we don't have to do more work on that, but it's also slightly understandable because government officials do have quite a lot of other work to do, and governments also have the open forum track to go through as well.
For the regional distribution, 37% came from WEOG, 16% came from GRULAC, 16% also came from Asia Pacific, 12% from Eastern Europe, 13% from Africa, and 12% from Eastern Europe. So as far as Eastern Europe goes and also GRULAC goes, I think they are very well represented, and I think they are represented above their either population or number of countries in those regions. So that's very good. We still have work to do for the Asia Pacific region and the Africa region, which we will continue to do. But this is still an improvement from the previous year. So we are making progress as far as stakeholder and regional representation, those for workshop submissions.
The speaker representation is also very important. So we'll see who is having their -- who is making their voices heard in the workshops.
For civil society, it's 50%, technical community 16%, private sector 16%, governments government 9%, and IGOs 9%. So slightly better than the stakeholder representation for the proposers, which also follows the same logic. People are -- it is much easier to be a speaker or a presenter at a workshop than actually going through the process of organizing it. But again, we still have to do some work in upping those -- the representative percentages.
For regional groupings, WEOG 34%, Africa 15%, Asia Pacific 19%, GRULAC 19%, sorry, and Eastern Europe 14%, IGOs 4%. So this is better than the regional representation for the proposers as well for exactly the same reasons. And I think this is also very good that we are tracking and we are improving as the years go by.
Now, for the topics for the thematic tracks, because when proposers submitted their workshops, we did ask them to tag their workshops for the topics that were involved -- which that workshop was about, and this is self-tagging. It wasn't done by the secretariat or the MAG. And we had a total of over 80 new tags or topics.
So for the data track, we had 138 topics, and the top one or the most popular one was data protection followed by digital rights, data governance, and then data privacy and AI.
For the inclusion track, we had 189 self-declared topics, and the most popular one was about digital divide, followed by economic development, inclusion, connecting the unconnected, and number five was digital skills.
The next, trust, we had 275 topics, and the most popular one is disinformation, followed by freedom of expression, cybersecurity best practices, human rights, and the fifth most popular one was norms.
For environment, the most popular topic or the most popular tag was ICTs' impact on the environment, followed by emerging technologies and the environment, and then technological development for climate change, responsible consumption came in at number four, and the fifth most popular tag was climate change. So that was the trend. And I should remind you this was before, actually, COVID-19 actually became such a big issue. So it was just before the impact of COVID-19 hit.
Now, for the other session proposals, we had 30 open forums from organizations such as IEEE, WHO, OECD, African Union and European Commission. We had 45 Day Zero events, and these are series regulars like the GIGAnet but also new organizations like PWC, and then also we had Kaspersky, the -- I think they make anti-virus software, computer security software. They also have a Day Zero event.
We have 16 dynamic coalition sessions that have been applied for, and for the NRI sessions, we had seven, and you will hear more about those NRI sessions when Anja gives her update tomorrow, I think it is.
For village booths, we had 72 village booths. And nine remote hubs have been applied for or registered, I should say, and 40 people are registered for their music night.
So in light that we are going to have a virtual IGF meeting, we have to take all these into consideration. How do we have a virtual IGF village booth? We do need to do a lot more work with the remote hubs, but the call is still open, so I would ask all stakeholders to please try and organize remote hubs, and I think this is a very good way of participating in IGF. And since it's all virtual, it will be very good. And I think the secretariat can also step in and support virtual hubs if they need some sort of support. Yes, please contact us and state your need and then we will consider it.
For the -- for the other elements, we do have the youth track, which the host country was working on, and the parliamentary track, and the high-level session track.
Now, since the change of the host now becomes the United Nations and it will fall mostly on UN DESA and IGF Secretariat to be the host, as such, but of course we're not doing this alone. This is a community effort, and we do encourage and expect that the whole community will chip in and -- to support these youth track, parliamentary tracks and the high-level tracks. We have issued calls for names for people to invite for the parliamentary track, and we still expect those to come in. Poland, the former host country, is still committed to support, and also Germany has been supporting us. So we will have those, and we have the future host countries as well, which we will call upon them to support these tracks.
With that, I will stop here for the discussion because we do have some things to discuss, especially we would also like your input and views on how we should carry out this virtual IGF. I mean, over the last couple of months, you all have attended virtual meetings, and I'm sure you have noted what you liked about these virtual meetings and what could be improved, and we all need to share your input into that. And tomorrow and the rest of the week the MAG will be discussing that to come up with some advice to give about how to construct the IGF virtual 2020 meeting.
Thank you very much. Anriette, I will hand it back to you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Chengetai, for that excellent update on the state of preparations.
We have -- We don't have a presentation for you on the pandemic and the IGF. We can share that user community showed awareness of the impacts on Internet governance. It was evident in the content of the proposals that we received. So from a substantive perspective, there's already attention being given to the nature of the pandemic and the challenges that that poses for Internet governance.
But now we have, I think, to broach this challenge at two levels. On the one hand, there is the format, the format of a virtual IGF. So share with us your suggestions, what you think works well. As Chengetai said, you've all experienced online meetings in one form or another, and I think you've all done fantastic work, those of you that have organized online meetings. So we need to address the pandemic challenge at the level of a format of a virtual IGF but we also need to make sure that we address it at the level of the content and the governance challenges and Internet policy-related challenges that are linked to that.
And we also have, in IGF 2020, two other important factors that I think we should keep in mind. One is that we are midway through our WSIS+10 mandate. In 2015, the U.N. General Assembly renewed the IGF's mandate for a further ten years, up to 2025. So it's important for us to be aware of the fact that we are halfway through that mandate. So results and effectiveness of the IGF is important.
And then the second new factor that we need to take into account is the Roadmap on Digital Cooperation, which, as I said earlier, is a very exciting opportunity for us to respond to.
So on that note, I hereby open the floor to your inputs and questions about the state of present operation, about the virtual IGF, about the pandemic, and anything else that you -- that you would like to ask a question or contribute around.
And please use the speaking queue. We will keep an eye on the list of participants for hands, but if you can, please do open the speaking queue.
I see it's still empty at this point in time, but please go ahead and add your name to it.
I -- I'm looking forward to who will be the first person to open our Open Consultation for us.
Anja has just posted the link for requesting the floor into the chat, so just click on the chat and you'll find the link there.
Thanks very much. So I see we have our first request for the floor, and I'm very happy to give the floor to -- I think it's Barbara? Please introduce yourself when you take the floor for the record, your name and your organization. You have the floor.
>>BARBARA WANNER: Thank you very much, Anriette. Can you hear me okay?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Can hear you very clearly.
>>BARBARA WANNER: Excellent, excellent. I really appreciate your recognizing me to make an intervention, and I'd like to build upon the wonderful comments that everyone has made. I think it is a tribute to our resource (indiscernible) going ahead with this IGF and being creative about the approaches to virtual meetings. I think we can learn a lot. I've heard -- seen references in the chat to EuroDIG. I think ICANN has some lessons to learn. So I think we'll continue to have another wonderful meeting.
The U.S. Council for International Business, which is the organization that I speak on behalf of, has participated in the past 14 IGFs. We strongly encourage the MAG to devote at least one plenary session to enable discussion about how to implement the IGF+ model of digital cooperation which U.N. Secretary-General has included as an element in the roadmap that you referenced.
Importantly, it would be interesting to find ways to facilitate such a discussion so that it goes beyond an actual exchange of views and actually enables practical brainstorming about how an IGF+ model should work and how to transition to it.
The IGF will take place after the 75th anniversary declaration of the U.N. which we anticipate will highlight the importance of digital transform transformation of the economy.
As indicated in the roadmap, the IGF+ model enjoys broad stakeholder support, a mechanism for improving digital cooperation, and of course the options paper that the recommendation 5a, eChampions, we'll soon share, will provide some details of how do bring the IGF+ into being.
IGF 2020 seems an obvious time and space to bring the community together in a discussion about implementing concrete improvements needed to realize and enhance an expanded IGF that is fit for a new purpose. From U.S. Council for International Business's viewpoint, we remain concerned that there are not adequate funds to launch the IGF+ and sustain a model into the future. In our contribution to the champions of recommendations 5a and b, we have proposed an innovative approach to funding that we would like to share with the broader Internet governance community as well as hear other's proposals. In addition, we think we need to thoughtfully explore how specifically to address the call for actionable outcomes. The envisaged cooperation accelerator and policy incubator functions combined with the evolution over the last three IGF meetings of concise summaries of viewpoints and areas of consensus already lay the groundwork for a more outcome-oriented IGF. We can and should develop this further.
Thank you again, Madam Chair. I appreciate everyone's time.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much for your input, Barbara.
It's important that I note -- which I did not earlier -- that we structured the IGF open consultation agenda today in such a manner that you can all participate and listen to the implementation dialogue on the roadmap on digital cooperation this afternoon, "afternoon" being our time. We've noted the details of how you can view and listen to that dialogue this afternoon.
And tomorrow during the open consultation, we'll have more time to discuss the roadmap and have a Q&A on that and the IGF+ model with Under-Secretary-General Fabrizio Hochschild, who will be joining us during the open consultation. So I'm not saying you shouldn't raise this issue now, but we've dedicated time and space in the agenda for more in-depth discussion tomorrow.
Next I give the floor to Nigel Hickson. Please remember to introduce yourself and your institution for the record. Nigel, you have the floor.
>>NIGEL HICKSON: Yes, yes, thanks very much. And good -- good morning, good afternoon. I hope you can hear me.
I can't see myself. So I might be on the screen, or I might not be. And if I'm not on the screen, that's probably better.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: We can hear you clearly. And now we can see you as well.
>>NIGEL HICKSON: All right. I can see myself now. Yes, it's quite frightening, isn't it, when you can see yourself?
I'm speaking in my own capacity, and I will be very brief. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for the hosting of this open consultation and MAG session. Thank you to the U.N. secretariat, of course, the IGF secretariat as usual.
It is, of course, disappointing that the IGF community won't have the opportunity of going to Poland this year, but it's really fantastic news that Poland has graciously agreed to host 2021 and then, of course, Ethiopia and Japan. That's fantastic news.
In terms of the meeting this year, clearly, it's coming at a very important part for the Internet community. And it's really great to see this positive approach being taken by everyone.
In terms of the platform, I think there is, indeed, lessons to be learned from the last three or four months on all the different institutions that have been holding their meetings online, some with more success than others, through all sorts of reasons. We're all experimenting in this game to an extent.
But I think the format used last week by EuroDIG was incredibly successful. The concept of having different studios or different locations to go to for parallel tracks seemed to work very well. And, of course, there's lots of expert people that can advise much better than I can, but I think that went well.
I think it's very important that in all of these tracks you have lists of participants have taken part in U.N. discussions and some other discussions where you don't have lists of participants. And then it's very difficult, indeed, to understand how the dialogue is progressing. But, obviously, this platform we have today is a good example of the way to do it. So I think there is examples of things that work better and not so good.
In terms of the structure, I mean, it's fantastic to see all the workshop proposals being made.
I concur with Barbara in that I think it will be opportune honestly to have a discussion on the roadmap, which we obviously will do on the implementation of the roadmap. I also think that should be linked ostensibly to the WSIS 2025 mandate discussions. They will be taking part in other U.N. structures. So I think it's important that the IGF this year and next year, 2021, has a very sort of compelling input into that process.
And I'll stop there. Thank you very much for this opportunity.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much for that input, Nigel.
And just before I hand the floor to the next speaker, I think this is very helpful for us and for the MAG to hear how you feel about the format because there are many different options. There's the option of doing what EuroDIG, the European regional IGF, has done, which is really take a face-to-face event and run it virtually over a three-day period.
And then there's the option that the WSIS Forum is following, which is to space out the event over a much longer period of time.
So getting the community's feedback on these different options is extremely useful for us.
And I now give the floor to Roberto Zambrana.
>>ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Good morning to you. Good afternoon and good afternoon to everyone who is in this call. It's really great to meet again with this broad audience.
Well, about the inputs that we need to provide, I think it's going to be a challenging IGF. We already know that. And as some of our colleagues said before, it could be lovely to have the same shape that we were having in the previous events. But it's not going to be easy. When we meet together in one place, we already are planning how we're going to develop this kind of event. And we are dedicated to this.
Now, that we're going to have it online. It's -- for several people, it's more challenging to attend to all different activities, all different sessions that we will be organizing.
So I think one of the options -- and it was on the table -- is to have maybe a longer period of time and try to perhaps have some slots conducted on a smaller slot time. It's going to be also good to have a time rotation so we could cover all different regions around the world. But as far as we could be having a very similar event like we did before, it would be great, including the other side events like this new musical encounter we would be having. It would be good to have something like that.
That should be my input for now. Thank you, Madam Chair.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Roberto.
I notice some people are asking for the -- to speak in the chat. So, secretariat, if you can just assist them and add their names to the speakers queue, please.
Next I give the floor to Annie Tourette. Annie, please introduce yourself.
>>ANNIE TOURETTE: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. So I'm Annie Tourette. I work for Plan International headquarter in the U.K. on policy and advocating matters.
Thank you very much, Chengetai, for your presentation, which I followed -- which was really important.
I was wondering, I didn't see in the presentation of the next IGF any mention of a session or a focus on the violence directed to woman -- girls and a woman. And I was wondering if that something you planned on discussing in the next IGF or if there was a session dedicated to it. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much for that.
Annie, I think that is a question I can't answer immediately. I think there are workshops that are dealing with the issue. But I think if you feel that that's an important topic for us to discuss, it's important for us to note that. So thanks for highlighting that.
It, indeed, has been a huge challenge. And I know that there are many organizations in the IGF community who are working on that.
But if anyone else can respond to that, please do so. The secretariat as well. And we can give you time at a later stage to respond to questions.
Next, we have Auke and then Jutta and then Constance Bommelaer.
Please continue to use the speakers queue or note in the chat. But it is easier for us if you use the speakers queue.
Auke, you have the floor.
>>AUKE PALS: Great. Good morning. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And, also, thanks very much, everyone. My name is Auke Pals. And I'm organizing youth events, and I'm part of the Dutch IGF.
And I'm also really happy to hear that people liked EuroDIG last week. And I'm also really happy to hear that this meeting of this year will still continue but in a different forum.
First of all, I have difficulties with discussion and offense taking place online. But, however, last week, as part of the organizing team of EuroDIG 2020, I've seen that it really works and it brings more people together. And, also, it makes it more accessible for people to participate.
The Internet connection might still be an issue for some regions, but I hope that we can find a way to make everyone participate in their full capacity.
For the online IGF in 2020, I hope to see more outcomes and also to see what the IGF has reached for in the current mandate so far. And I hope to see really in-depth discussions also, also taking place online.
As being part of EuroDIG 2020, I've seen that it's still difficult to manage discussions, not only for online meetings -- that's always the case at IGF. We need more discussions. So I hope that in the facilitation, there will be more opportunities to also have a discussion throughout the workshops or plenaries or in what forum that will consist. So not only afterwards but also throughout the sessions.
And, furthermore, I'm really happy to help everyone set up a youth event in an online Internet Governance Forum, and I will share my experience very soon. Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Auke. Thanks for the reminding us that a virtual IGF is actually an opportunity for enhancing participation, for making the IGF more accessible to some people. It might be challenging for many in terms of connectivity, but it also creates many new opportunities for participation.
Next I give the floor to Jutta.
>>JUTTA CROLL: Hello. Good morning, good evening, good day to everybody taking part in this session. Although I am a MAG member, I wanted to take the opportunity to underline that I also see the opportunities in having a virtual MAG meeting.
With regard to the format, like you said before, Anriette, we have the example of EuroDIG last week and we have the WSIS Forum. I do think we need to consider that in advance before the MAG will be going to shape the program within the next few days.
I do think we need to take into consideration that the program needs to be consistent and easily to be followed up. So I'm a bit reluctant to the solution that would stretch the IGF over too long period of time so that we would lose track of the issues that are discussed within the program. But it is important to know that in advance definitely.
And shortly to answer the question from Annie, I've been assessing workshops in the track for trust, which is covering also safety and security. I do know that we had got several proposals related to violence that is gender-related. We cannot yet say which one will come through, but definitely this issue was addressed by several workshop proposers.
Thank you for listening. And bye-bye.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much, Jutta. And thanks for responding to Annie's question.
And, Annie, there was also a response in the chat that the best practice forum on gender -- and we'll hear more about their work tomorrow -- they're also addressing the issue of gender-based violence.
Next I'm very happy to give the floor to Constance Bommelaer from The Internet Society.
>>CONSTANCE BOMMELAER: Yes. Thank you very much, Anriette. And good morning or good afternoon to everyone. So I'm Constance Bommelaer. I work with The Internet Society.
I'm a former MAG member. And at the Internet Society, we've been very strong supporters of the IGF and its reforms and improvements. And so, first of all, thank you very much to the secretariat, to the chair, to all MAG members, and all of you for your ongoing efforts.
In listening to the presentation and listening to all your comments, I think we have an opportunity here if we have to rethink the model, rethink perhaps the pace of work of the IGF, thinking also about the latest improvements around BPFs, policy options, the work happening intersessionally because initially this was not the case. And progressively IGF has learned to work on an ongoing basis.
I see several opportunities. First of all, to continue improving the methodology. Someone just made a very good comment about the fact if the IGF is remote, then it might be more accessible actually because there's not the travel burden. There's not the barrier of finding funds to travel. So that's already a positive point.
The second, I think, opportunity is around the thematic development of our work. If we have more time, if some of the sessions are spread out during the weeks, perhaps this means we can better, I would say, aggregate some interest around specific themes.
And at ISOC, we're happy to propose perhaps a new track around emerging issues. And we'll have a video presentation to talk about that and how Internet frameworks can help us think about some of these policy -- policy topics.
So the idea that if we have more time, we can better organize our different communities and also work in a less overwhelming fashion. We've heard many participants to IGF events in the past come out of the IGF week a little overwhelmed because of too many sessions, too many workshops, too many of everything.
And, finally, the impression that it's difficult to be very clear about a few strong outputs. Here people will have the opportunity to navigate virtually and go towards the topics they are interested in. And the secretariat will have more time, I believe, to organize, help monitor, support, and so on and so forth.
So I see a lot of opportunities. I hear -- and I feel all of you are very creative about them. And I believe we have a very good chair that's going to be able to help us work towards a successful, although innovative and probably full of surprises, next IGF. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Constance, for being so constructive and supportive.
Next I want to give the floor -- he's not in the speakers queue but I see his hand -- Abdulkarim Oloyede.
Abdul, can you switch on your mic?
>>ABDULKARIM OLOYEDE: Thank you very much. Can you hear me?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Yes, we can hear you clearly. Please just introduce yourself and go ahead.
>>ABDULKARIM OLOYEDE: First of all, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are for this meeting.
I want to say, yes, I agree with a lot of speakers that spoke earlier on that IGF going virtual, it's going to create opportunities for us to have some other people to come into the conversation.
At the same time, I also want to acknowledge that it's going to also create some difficulties, especially in terms of connectivity because in some parts of the world, we still have connectivity issues and issues with Internet connectivity.
So my advice is, I really like the idea of -- which was used by EuroDIG, especially the fact that they used YouTube, whereby you can actually go back in time to be able to cover whatever session you've missed. And also to be able to -- if you lose connectivity, you are not going to lose some of the sessions. So you will be able to, like, go back whenever -- whenever you are convening to be able -- whenever is convenient for you to be able to do that. That's my own contribution. Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much.
(Multiple people speaking)
>> Rudolf, are you requesting the floor?
>>RUDOLF GRIDL: Sorry, I was trying to request the floor but --
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: That's fine. You have the floor. Go ahead.
>>RUDOLF GRIDL: I'm sorry.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Go ahead.
>>RUDOLF GRIDL: Oh --
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Introduce yourself for the record, please of the.
>>RUDOLF GRIDL: I just have two observations. Okay. My name is Rudolf Gridl. I'm from the German (indiscernible) responsible for Internet governance and (indiscernible).
IGF and MAG member in the third year.
I have one observation regarding virtual IGF concept. Coming from the, let's say, business models, from the digital business models, the most successful ones are -- are the models that break with the (indiscernible).
If you want to (indiscernible), I think it will be not possible to transpose (indiscernible) physical IGF to (indiscernible). You have to think about what elements are good elements for a digital format and which ones are (indiscernible) thinking for instance about the parliamentarians meeting and the ministers meeting that we had last year in Berlin and that were largely (indiscernible) people and informal character.
So maybe it is an idea to take more time for these events and (indiscernible) in the regular kind of virtual (indiscernible) rather than all virtual (indiscernible) fear that it will not -- the spark will not ignite.
If you have the opportunity to (indiscernible) program, it will perhaps be more enriching for (indiscernible) and also (indiscernible).
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you, Rudolf. Rudolf, we were struggling to hear you, and the captioners also were struggling to hear you. I think I got the gist, very important point that you made which is that we cannot assume that we can take what the IGF is, as such a massive face-to-face event, and that we can just transport it and run it virtually.
So what I hear from you is an argument for us to use the fact that we are virtual to actually strengthen the process, and to think very carefully about format and which parts of the IGF to take virtually and in what way.
But if you can please type some of your key points in the chat, that would be really important because the transcribers couldn't hear you, and we couldn't hear you clearly. But thanks very much for your input.
I don't see anyone else requesting the floor, but I see a very lively discussion in the chat. But I want to urge people, rather, to speak. We have 99 participants online, and it's not possible for everyone or easy for everyone to follow the chat. So please, if people have suggestions or questions, I urge you to request the floor.
I see no one asking for the floor at the moment. Abdulkarim, is that an old hand or a new hand?
>>ABDULKARIM OLOYEDE: It's a new hand.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Go ahead.
>>ABDULKARIM OLOYEDE: Thank you very much.
I think the other thing I want to -- Sorry. Let me introduce myself this time. My name is Abdulkarim Oloyede. I'm from Nigeria. I am an assistant professor in a university.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Abdulkarim, can you just speak slowly for the interpreters, please?
>>ABDULKARIM OLOYEDE: Okay. I will do that. I will speak a little bit more slowly.
My name is Abdulkarim. I am an assistant professor from the university here in Nigeria.
I want to add that whichever platform is used, the use of captioning is also really important so that a lot of people who will be able to have access to the caption and be able to read whatever is going on. That's the other thing I wanted to add, which I already had it in the chat.
Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Abdulkarim.
I see no one else requesting the floor, so I want to welcome or invite the MAG members. MAG members usually keep a back seat during the Open Consultation because the purpose of the Open Consultation is for MAG members to listen to the rest of the community. But the floor is open at the moment. There's no one in the queue. So I want to invite MAG members to respond to some of the suggestions and considerations that we've heard so far.
Any MAG member who is ready to respond.
Someone is entering the speakers' queue. There's a little bit of a delay. So just be patient.
>>CONCETTINA CASSA: So hello, Anriette. This is Titi. Can you hear me?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Go ahead, Titi, and after you it will be Jennifer.
>>CONCETTINA CASSA: Okay. I want just to comment the suggestion that came from Chrystiane about saving the NRIs connected during the virtual meeting, in the IGF virtual meeting. I think this is a good idea because I think it will create more synergy with the NRIs. We share more perspective and ideas. So maybe Chrystiane can take the floor and explain better what is the idea. This is just my comment.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much, Titi. And, Chrystiane, consider yourself invited multiple times to take the mic.
So next we have Jennifer Chung from the MAG. Introduce yourself, please, Jennifer.
>>JENNIFER CHUNG: Thank you, Madam Chair. Am I able to be heard?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Yes, we can hear you. We can't see you yet but we can hear you.
>>JENNIFER CHUNG: Apologies.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: By the way, please do activate your mics. If we lose quality, we can always switch them off but it is important for us to see one another. So if you can, please activate your camera when you -- sorry, your camera, when you speak.
>>JENNIFER CHUNG: Thank you, Madam Chair. Let me try to activate the camera right now. It is quite early for me, so let's -- apologies for my appearance.
So introducing myself first, my name is Jennifer Chung. I am a third year MAG member from the private sector, and I represent an organization called DotAsia.
Just wanted to commend Chrystiane's suggestion regarding leveraging the extensive NRI network to help facilitate connectivity. I know Titi already made this remark already, but I just wanted to underline how important it is. It would be also very useful for the NRIs to be able to help connect everyone to the global IGF. I think this is a great, great suggestion, and we should probably take that forward. You know, explore ways to facilitate that.
And the second thing I wanted to highlight was listening to Auke speak and also seeing the chat from various colleagues as well, I'm very happy to note that the youth track is still going forward for the virtual IGF because it is a little bit newer for the global IGF. It may not be as new for other regional IGFs and other national IGFs, but it is actually a good progression forward to have this track involved for the virtual IGF as well as possibly for the IGF in Katowice next year as well.
So that's my reflections on the contributions so far.
Thank you much.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Jennifer. And I've been notified that Chrystiane doesn't have a mic. She is from the Canadian mission in Geneva, and I'm just going to read her comment in the chat.
She says: Dear colleagues, unfortunately my microphone does not work on this laptop and I cannot take the floor. Building on the idea of making the virtual IGF more accessible for new participants, I wonder if NRIs can be used as facilitators by setting up local Wi-Fi access points in schools or community centers for participants who may not have broadband access in their homes. It would also be an opportunity to bring participants together locally, even if we cannot travel overseas.
So thanks very much for that input, Chrystiane.
Anyone else requesting the floor?
>>JUTTA CROLL: Madam Chair, I did not request the floor via the queue, but I would like to respond to Chrystiane's proposition, if I may. It's Jutta Croll speaking here, MAG member in my third year for civil society.
I do think what Chrystiane has suggested is a very good idea, and also in Germany I don't think we really have a problem with people not having access. Many people have, but still we have over 6,000 so-called public Internet access points here in Germany where people who don't have broadband can go to like schools, like libraries, and so on, to have access. And I do think it's a good idea to bring people together in these places.
And also, in Europe we have the platform of All Digital, which is an organization working across Europe with so-called tailor centers, which is more or less also another term for public Internet access points.
We already made contact with some of our colleagues from the African continent whether it be possible to have an exchange how these centers are run in rural areas, for example, in European countries under the umbrella of All Digital, and how that could be an example for setting up new public Internet access points also in other countries around the world.
So I would be happy to make that contact between All Digital and people interested from other countries, how to run such an umbrella organization for public Internet access points, how they can learn from each other how to address people, how to provide access to people who don't have access at home or mobile access. So I would be happy to do so. Just send an email to the IGF MAG list, and then I will connect you to All Digital.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much, Jutta, and thanks for that suggestion. And that's clearly a -- that form of creating accessibility in different ways is something that the MAG and the secretariat need to take on board.
We also do need to consider the constraints that will still exist in many countries around people getting together physically in numbers. In fact, many schools are still closed. But I think there is also an opening up. So we can take that into account.
And I'm wondering if we shouldn't try and partner with the private sector to make a virtual IGF zero rated. We have, in many developing countries, zero rating of university and school content online has made the difference between people being able to continue their education during the pandemic or not.
So I wonder if our private sector colleagues, and if we can't make an effort to reach out to mobile operators around making the virtual IGF zero rated just to reduce the data costs of participating. So let's flag that for further discussion as well.
Next I give the floor to Arsene Tungali from the MAG. Arsene, please introduce yourself.
Arsene, we cannot hear you. Is your mic unmuted?
>>LUIS BOBO: Sorry, but he lost the connection. Maybe later.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Arsene is online from eastern Congo and DRC, and his connectivity is not good most of the time.
Auke, I see your hand. Please take the floor.
>>AUKE PALS: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'm seeing a lot of commenting in the chat and also during the participants' speaking that, however, I think that we should not forget that we already had remote participation initiatives going on, both at the Internet Governance Forum, both at EuroDIG. So I guess there are opportunities already there for remote participation. So I really want to stress that because it now seems also that we're in a complete new era. Now the only thing is we cannot meet physically, so we cannot have knowledge sharing going on in coffee breaks and not have that lively interactive discussion. But still, I guess we did already have the opportunities to participate for everyone at one space also remotely. So I really want to stress that here.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Yes. I think that's really important. Thanks for that reminder.
I don't see any further hands, but there's a very lively discussion in the chat. And, secretariat, I know you are monitoring the chat. So --
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Can I say something about the comment about the virtual hubs in schools, et cetera?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: You absolutely can, but before you go ahead, Chengetai, I'm just going to ask Anja who is monitoring the chat, Anja if you can read some of the comments for us that people are making in the chat so we have them on the transcription record as well.
Chengetai, you go ahead first.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Okay. Thanks.
I was just going to say that I think it is a very interesting idea, and, yes, I think we can take a multistakeholder approach to it. And from the IGF Secretariat side, UN DESA side, we do have this fund for encouraging participation from the Global South. So I think we may be also able to give small grants, if needed, to set up these access points in these -- whether it's going to be a library or a school, et cetera. I think we will start working on that is expect of it.
Thank you, Chrystiane.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks for that. And, Anja, are there any comments that you can read for us? Can you actually read Rudolf's comment? I see he has written it out in the chat, just so everyone can hear it, and any other comments that you would like to read for us.
>>ANJA GENGO: Yes, Anriette, thank you, and I hope you can hear me. So I am going to read a few comments that I've noted now.
So let's start from Rudolf's comment, as you said. From Rudolf Gridl: Just few ideas about the virtual IGF. We should be aware of the fact that the usual IGF format will probably be too large and unclear for it to be transposed one-to-one into virtual format. I think we have to in one way or another rethink the IGF as a virtual meeting. Example, parliamentarians and ministers. It could be enriching to try to implicate parliamentarians and/or ministers into regular workshops, main sessions, or open forums rather than to organize virtual ministers or parliamentarians meetings that could turn out to be a little bit sterile not to mention the question of who would be the host of such a meeting. Another idea could be to spread out the IGF events a little bit over time, meaning that we could perhaps organize ministers meeting a little bit later than November when we have more clarity about the IGF+ and the follow-up process.
If we were organize this meeting in an IGF context, we have the change of an open exchange because no one has to fear any decisions to be made there. Just some thoughts from me.
I would read also a comment from Mark Carvell saying that the IGF community should aim to reduce the environmental impact of stakeholders traveling to big events and consider how making the IGF success as a virtual forum will reduce that impact.
And a couple of -- yes, there are a couple of follow-up comments for supporting Mark's point.
So let me just see if there's anything new in the meantime, but I think for now, that would be the critical comments.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks, Anja. I see there is also a comment from Uganda, from Peace Amuge from Women of Uganda Network, that, in fact, this is an opportunity for us to increase participation from Africa. I think Abdulkarim also inferred that earlier because of physical participation hindered by the cost of travel and visas being denied. So this is an opportunity for us to be inclusive at that level.
Is Arsene online yet? I don't think so.
So next I'm going to give the floor to Hisham Aboulyazed from Egypt.
Hisham, you have the floor.
>>HISHAM ABOULYAZED: Can you hear me okay?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Yes, we can hear you clearly.
>>HISHAM ABOULYAZED: Very good to hear your voice, Anriette. And very glad to be talking to you all and very grateful to the secretariat and to everyone actually who is making this possible.
The discussion has been very lively, and I'm very happy to listen to the great ideas everyone is exchanging. I want to take maybe a minute to echo one of the comments, I think, made by Rudolf that is to rethink how we are going to approach an IGF event in the new format of an online-only event. This is not an easy transposition, and I think we can really make use of the experience from other organizations, including some of the technical organizations that have made online-only events in the last month or two.
We need really to rethink the schedule, how we want to put all of these sessions. In the last year or two, I think the total number of sessions sometimes exceeds the 250 mark. I stand to be corrected, of course, by the total number of sessions. We need to think how many days we need to spread these and how we can make some sort of aggregation and some of these elements so that we can come up with a program that makes sense for people to be able to participate.
I do like the idea that we can extend the number of days to an extent. And in saying that, I'm also conscious of the impact the IGF used to have, including the media coverage when it's an event made over five days. If we stretch that too much, I'm afraid we run the risk of losing that impact as well. So we need to be balancing the two factors.
On the item of making this more accessible to everyone and the connectivity challenge, I'm calling this meeting from Egypt, from Cairo. I'm very conscious of how the connectivity can be challenging, whether in north Africa region or the African continent at-large.
I think the regulators here can play out. I work for one. I'm with NTRA, which is the regulator of the telecommunications in Egypt.
I think we can find a way maybe with the secretariat to find how we can bring on the table some of the business partners from the ISPs and the mobile operators as well so that we can provide some sort of connectivity to participants who will be connecting from Egypt.
I'm sure this can be elaborated further and be replicated in other places as well. Maybe we should think also of some place that would reach out to other regulators across the region in Africa, like other regions as well, as usually regulators can do this facilitation between the operators and the users.
And for sure the idea of zero rating the content on the IGF. This can, of course, also examined.
I'm really looking forward to this one. I do agree with other comments made that the digital-only events may be -- from one side we are losing the benefit of meeting face-to-face, but we still have this flattening effect of making it more accessible to everyone from different places, still with less impact on the environment, which is something to capitalize on moving forward for sure.
Thank you, Anriette. Glad to talk to you all.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much for those comments, Hisham. Hisham is from the Egyptian telecommunications regulator. And the IGF has strong partnerships with many of the regulators. So I think building on these partnerships and organizing the IGF and exploring this issue of zero rating, I think it's actually very exciting.
But I think the main take-away from your input is also that we need to be creative, we can't make assumptions about just taking a face-to-face event and make it virtual. We also don't want to lose some of that immediacy that the face-to-face event generates. So thanks very much for that input.
And next we have Danko, unless Arsene is back online.
Luis, I trust you will let me know when Arsene is online.
But go ahead, Danko Jevtovich. You have the floor.
After that, Anja, if you can read some more comments for us from the chat, please.
Danko, over to you.
>>DANKO JEVTOVIC: Thank you. Hopefully you can hear me. I'm a MAG member from technical community from Serbia. But I see that not too many hands are up. So as a MAG member, I took the opportunity to support the current discussion.
I believe that for a virtual meeting, we need to have fewer hours per day because of the Zoom fatigue or hour of this call. So we can extend the IGF meeting for a few days. But I believe it's unreasonable to ask for more than a week because of the focus of all the participants. And if we extend it for longer period, we will actually lose the focus of the meeting.
So in my opinion, that means we need to have a significantly reduced number of workshops of substance. And that leads back to the work we've done, in my case, the trust and the other groups. So we have to focus on fewer sessions on the topic and maybe rethink and rebalance the important ones we need for a balance of different topics. Because if you just reduce the number of thematic, then some subtopics are totally lost.
EuroDIG was a good example. And I would say fortunately we can benefit from a lot of Zoom examples from other meetings that happened previous, like ICANN meetings and others.
So I believe we are experiencing the secretariat and (indiscernible), we will find a good way to go forward. So thank you all for supporting this, and this is a big milestone. But, also, it shouldn't be viewed as negative because this will encourage us to refocus our thinking on the number of workshops and other profiles for the IGF.
So maybe out of all this, also future IGFs will help us to move the way of a more effective direction. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much for that, Danko. And that's important for us to consider.
I think my only caution in response to that is that if -- we obviously have to have a tight and accessible program. But if we reduce sessions too dramatically, I think that could undermine the contributions from the community and the need for discussion that the community has expressed. So we are going to have to find a way of balancing that.
Arsene Tungali is now online. So, Arsene, I'm very happy to give you the floor.
>>ARSENE TUNGALI: Hi, everyone. Hi, Anriette. And thank you very much for giving me the floor.
This is Arsene Tungali, civil society MAG member from the DRC. It's actually strange. By the time I requested the floor, my connectivity failed on me. So I apologize for that.
And I actually wanted to speak about online meetings in Africa. I'm not so sure that this is still relevant, though.
So I wanted to share that the African Union, through the African IGF secretariat, has developed an important tool for organizing IGF virtual conferences in Africa. And I'd be happy to share the documents, if anyone is interested.
But we have to note that it will be difficult for many, for many national IGFs in Africa to be held online due to connectivity issues this year, which is unfortunate.
The host must be able to get the broadband. The participant member would be able, too, which would make the event less successful.
So it would be very good to hear if there are some successful events that happened online in Africa and if those hosts can share some best practices, some practical best practices. Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you, Arsene, for that reminder.
And next I'm giving the floor to Fulvia Menin from the European Commission.
Fulvia, you have the floor.
>>FULVIA MENIN: Thank you, Madam Chair. Hello, everyone. I hope you can hear me well. Yes.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Yes, we can hear you very clearly.
>>FULVIA MENIN: Very good. I will start also the video so you can maybe see me since it's my first MAG meeting, so you can put a face to a voice.
So what I wanted to say is that judging from the experience that we had at the last EuroDIG -- at the EuroDIG meeting of last week, it's clear that the infrastructure to host such an online big meeting, it's key and it's very important.
Also, another point, it might be important to have a very good and broad advertisement of the event allowing even more participants to join and not just the people that are usually following the IGF and informed about it. So it would be a bit -- it would be very informative, which is one of the biggest points of the IGF in this sense.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks for that, Fulvia. That's really -- it's really good to have so many people who have participated in EuroDIG share their experience.
Auke, you have the floor next.
>>AUKE PALS: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I also want to give away some advice AL SO to keep in mind the time zones because it's a global meeting. So time zones could be something to take into account.
And furthermore, I would also suggest to reduce the time of speakers or the amount of speakers because, otherwise, the kind of interaction will decrease.
That's two things I just want to stress. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you, Auke.
Next I give the floor to Sandra Hoferichter who is the Secretary-General of EuroDIG. So, Sandra, thanks very much for being with us. You have the floor.
>>SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you very much. I have a strange virtual background. I think I should stop that.
Anyway, first of all, thank you for hosting this meeting.
Now I should be clear.
And it was mentioned already a couple of times that a virtual EuroDIG took place last week. And I'm pretty much happy with how it went, and so far I received only positive feedback.
However, we will send out a feedback form to our participants. And we hope that we will get a lot of answers on our feedback form. And, also, what we will do is a recap of all the technical details and what it needed, basically, at the end to organize this virtual meeting.
And what we will do, we will make this document public for the global IGF and any other national or regional IGFs to have a basic document to start from.
We realized how much it takes to organize such a meeting coming from a walk-in session to test your equipment or giving clear instructions to moderators, having clear tasks assigned to the studio hosts -- we call them "studio" -- but the Zoom room hosts. It leaves so much on coordination and also technical details. I don't want to go too much into detail, but how to switch between the rooms and how useful is such an overall moderation, yes or no, and all these kinds of things that we would like to put out in a document and make it public. So I think that would be a benefit for the entire Internet governance community.
What we also hope to get from the feedback is it was mentioned already to reduce the number of sessions. And I can tell you we had the same discussions in EuroDIG, if we should reduce the number of sessions or not.
Personally, I'm not such a huge fan of reducing the number of sessions because it's a virtual meeting. I was always a fan of reducing the number of sessions for a physical meeting. But since we learned over the years -- and you might remember that, in particular, with the IGF in Berlin, it was on purpose that we said we introduced certain tracks to a certain stakeholder that would otherwise not attend the IGF. And we also did it at EuroDIG. And I think this works pretty well.
And we should not expect that people are participating three days, four days, a full week, not even a full day in any governance forum.
I think -- and the feedback form will possibly underline what I say. I think people are very selective in what they attend. So selecting -- sorry, reducing the number of sessions might also keep a very certain stakeholder that would otherwise have participated just in certain sessions. So what I would like to ask, you should not expect that everyone will be online for the entire day. But this is not the purpose of an Internet Governance Forum. If we want to reach out to new communities, we also have to offer them dedicated tracks or slots for parliamentarians, for business sector, for tech, whatever their community is. And if they participate only in those tracks, I think that is fine and we should not be disappointed by that fact.
That's what I wanted to say. And moreover, wait, give us a little bit of two weeks, three weeks, and then we will share our findings publicly, possibly on the NRI list or with the IGF MAG and wherever it's appropriate. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much, Sandra. It's really wise words and good advice. And we look forward to seeing your evaluation.
In fact, we feel really privileged that we have partner institutions and processes that have been hosting virtual events that we can learn from. There's ICANN. There's UNCTAD. There's the ITU and many others. And we definitely are ready. We've already started actually taking some of that learning on board. Diplo as well. Diplo has done immense work in this area.
Anja, can you read some highlights from the chat for us again.
And I see the speaking queue is empty. And that's probably a good idea because then we can break for our social/coffee/tea break early.
Anja, over to you.
>>ANJA GENGO: Thank you, Anriette. There are a few comments of support for Rudolf's statements in the chat as well as from Mark's. I'm reading now a comment from Nigel Hickson. Would be concerned that we could lose focus of IGF if spread over too long a period. But you could, for example, have a week in November and then an IGF follow-up the following month to report on key outputs.
From Jennifer Chung, a follow-up: It could be an exercise in thinking about strategic lead-up events, like a virtual day zero, could possibly be extended into a preweekend instead of packing it into a single day.
Time zones need to be taken into account, whether we take Poland time zone or if we take the Geneva time zone where the IGF secretariat is based, or something altogether.
People's attention span also would be fluctuating if we drag it too long.
Virtual workshops also need to be reformatted from the physical proposal.
June Parris suggesting maybe to stretch over two weekends and three days.
There's a comment also from Giacomo Mazzone, which I'm going to read. Many meetings are orienting the hybrid model, some people onsite and some participating from remote. IGF global was already on that way. We simply need to articulate it better.
Renouncing to bring the IGF on the field would be a pity. The IGF impact on pushing the IG discussion in that country or region is a very important collateral impact. Remember the Nairobi IGF.
And I'm just going to read two more comments.
One is from Mark Carvell: A more coherent IGF approach to involving national parliamentarians as lawmakers is needed. The U.K. experience it is not easy for parliamentary committee members involved in digital law making to dedicate the time and get the funding to travel to multistakeholder events in other countries. We do need virtual solutions to increase their participation, I think.
And a just final comment from Juliana Harsianti: Perhaps we could consider about the road to IGF or pre-IGF. It would accommodate something from introduction or short workshop.
A couple of comments also expressed agreements with Sandra's remarks.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Anja, and everyone who has contributed, whether you took the floor or whether you contributed in chat. We'll document your comments, and we'll take them on board as we plan for the virtual IGF.
It's now time for our break. We also prepared a short poll. And I'm just consulting the secretariat. I think we should -- Should we do the poll now before we break out? And then people can discuss the results in their breakout coffee/tea groups.
Secretariat, are you ready to put our poll online?
>>LUIS BOBO: Hi, Anriette. This is Luis. We can launch it now. I will launch it now.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Great, everyone. So we're going to give you a very simple, not very serious but important question to consider.
I hope you can all see it.
We are just asking you what your -- your immediate reaction is to a virtual IGF. Does it make you feel intimidated? Excited by the challenge? Or a bit of both?
It looks like there's a bit of a race between excited and a bit of both, intimidated and excited.
I think that looks good. I think, Luis, that looks like everyone has responded more or less.
>>LUIS BOBO: Okay. We can close when you say so. Yeah, we have 64 of 98 responses because the --
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Okay. Let's give it a few more seconds. Everyone, try and respond if you can.
We'll be using -- If we do use Zoom, we're not sure what platform we will be using, but we will definitely encourage session facilitators to use these types of mechanisms and tools that online platforms provide. So it's good for us to get used to using them. But I think we can close. I don't see any changes. So, Luis, you can close the poll for us now, please.
>>LUIS BOBO: I will share the results now, okay?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you.
>>LUIS BOBO: For the participants.
So everyone is seeing the results at the moment.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Good, everyone.
So I think this is a very positive note on which we can close this opening session of the second 2020 IGF Open Consultation. More people are excited by the challenge than those who are intimidated, a very dramatic difference. And I think many of us are being realistic, and there's a bit of both. We are both intimidated and excited by the challenge. And I think that's exactly the spirit with which we should work together to face this new challenge.
So on that, we are ending this session. You will now be automatically broken into breakout groups. And I ask you to switch your cameras and your mics on and to engage in a little bit of discussion with those you are in the room with. If you know them, you can catch them. If you don't know them, you can get to know them a little bit. And if there's time you can talk about the virtual IGF, but it's all very informal. This is really just an opportunity for you to connect with one another as part of this Open Consultation process.
Thanks.
Luis, you can group everyone into their breakout sessions.
>>LUIS BOBO: Thank you, Anriette. So -- thank you, Anriette. So I will clear the breakout rooms. They will be random with about five people per room. Okay. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: For those of you that don't know, we have a limit of 20 rooms for Zoom.
I see everyone is still in plenary. There it is. It's happening.
>>LUIS BOBO: So, hello, everyone. Apologies for this. There was a problem -- I mean, it's not a problem. It's just that the time of the room is one minute. So we will recreate the rooms and put 15 minutes, if it's okay, Anriette. Sorry for this. It was set one minute.
>>AUKE PALS: It was a really quick introduction.
[ Laughter ]
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: We started a little bit early, you can make it --
>> That was magical. Everyone, magical!
>> We already start talking and was (indiscernible) to the main room.
>>LUIS BOBO: Okay. Let's put another time. Anriette, you were saying how much time we want to put in the breakout rooms?
>> I hope we'll have the same people because we already start talking together.
>>LUIS BOBO: Yes, it's the same people. It's the same people, yes.
Let's put, then, Anriette, 25 minutes?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: No, 20 minutes is enough.
>>LUIS BOBO: 20 minutes.
>> 20 is good.
>>LUIS BOBO: Okay. So you will see this counter when the time is over; okay?
Okay. So you are invited to join. You are -- We will move you automatically; okay? But you can come back at any time to the main room.
Okay. Let's launch it again. Now it's going to take 20 minutes.
Thank you.
[ Breakout rooms ]
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Well, welcome back, everyone, and back to the plenary. We are now into the second component of our MAG meeting and Open Consultation. Thanks, everyone, for being part of this experiment and this learning experience.
All of this, every little bit of this is going to help us have a really fantastic virtual IGF this year.
So this component of the Open Consultation is a really important one. an aspect of the IGF's mandate that I think we often undervalue is that it is -- it was created as an outcome of the WSIS in Tunis to be a space where different institutions involved in many different aspects of Internet governance can share their work and exchange their views and interact with one another. And what we normally do at Open Consultations is to give these different institutions involved in some aspect of Internet governance the opportunity to give their feedback on the IGF, to give advice to the IGF for that year, and to show us their work and work that relates into the IGF.
So we received many contributions. Thank you very much to all of you who took the time to record videos. And these are all up on the IGF website.
So now -- unfortunately, we don't have enough time to play all of those. We trust that you've had a chance to look at them. If you've not had a chance to look at them, go and listen to them. And they are all on the IGF's YouTube channel.
And -- but to help us get into the question-and-answer session on these presentations, we've prepared a short summary of it. And I'm going to hand over to the secretariat now to take us into the session by including -- by presenting the summary. And I think you might want to give an organization who -- I think there was a technical error with one presentation, but I'll let the secretariat brief you on that.
So, Chengetai, can I hand over to you at this point?
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes. Thank you very much, Anriette.
We had 18 submissions, as Anriette said. Unfortunately, we about -- they each are about five, six or seven minutes in length, and unfortunately we can't show them all because that would be about 90 minutes. So they are available on YouTube and also there's a link available in the agenda.
I'd also like to apologize to UNESCO. Their video got dropped for some reason, and we can play it after these briefings just so that it's included, but I'll try to do a very rough summary. The secretariat tried to summarize them but as you know, they're all packed full of information. So I'll just try my best to be as concise as possible.
So of the 18 submissions, we had a submission from the African Union. That video pointed out an increasing number of African leaders, including heads of state, are becoming interested in the Internet Governance Forum. And this resulted in two African Union resolutions related to Internet governance, which I think is very good.
And of course because of the COVID-19 pandemic, very, very few national and regional IGFs in Africa were able to hold their meetings. But to mitigate this, the African Union Commission and the African IGF produced a toolkit for the organizing the virtual Internet Governance Forum conferences in Africa. The policy and regulatory initiatives of the digital Africa, it's a PIIDA project that's in cooperation with the European Union, was also very vital in supporting and building the Internet governance capacity for people in Africa.
In collaboration with the DiploFoundation, the African Union Commission has also developed manuals documenting how to create national IGFs as well as conducting training activities. And the African Union's Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa which is for the period of 2020 to 2030, is also vital in advancing Internet governance-related goals.
The next submission was from the Association for Progressive Communications, APC, and it detailed how APC has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant increase in the importance of the Internet in a series of activities collectively called "Closer Than Ever." So the APC had a series of activities called "Closer Than Ever."
The APC in particular has been raising the issue of human rights-related implications such as -- sorry, my screen got taken up by Zoom again. I still have a reward out for people who could let me know how to stop that.
So the APC in particular has been raising the issue of human rights-related implications such as digital inclusion and of the governments' responses to the pandemic. The APC is also active in the Best Practice Forum on gender and access as well as the Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity. And the APC is actively engaged in Internet governance activities in Latin America, the Caribbean region, and also Africa.
APNIC also did a briefing, and they detailed the -- in 2019, APNIC had 250 separate face-to-face engagements across 35 economies in the Asia Pacific region related to capacity building, network operators groups and security and development of IPv6. COVID-19 also meant that these face-to-face engagements had to be replaced with online engagements, and the APNIC's 50th meeting will also be online rather than a physical event later this year.
They also spoke about the APNIC Academy, which is expanding its online courses, and the APNIC Foundation, which supports the Internet Society Innovation Fund, or ISIF Asia, that funds capacity-building initiatives in Asia.
They have a call for proposals for funding, and the deadline for that is 21st of June.
CGI Brazil, .br, is -- was the next organization, and this is cgi.br's 25th year, and cgi.br has launched a national Internet award to honor important figures in the Brazilian Internet governance history, and these also are available online on YouTube. I watched a couple of them. They are very good and worth watching.
And cgi.br has published two policy notes recently. The first one is a set of recommendations on Internet user resilience, and the second addresses concerns related to privacy, data protection in the context of COVID-19 and related data collection and processing.
The Council of Europe is the next one, and they have new -- presented the new priorities for the Council's Information Society's department which are cybercrime and new media.
In terms of data protection, there is a new priority to develop guidelines to safeguard privacy in the field of facial recognition. National education systems, electrical data, and also profiling online. So they put guidelines for those.
In the area of Internet governance, new priorities also include addressing the business models of large online platforms, developing legal frameworks for the design and development of AI tools, and also promoting balanced legal frameworks to combat illegal online content.
The Under-Secretary-General's Digital Cooperation Initiative led by Fabrizio Hochschild also organized a series of webinars -- in particular, with the ITU -- on digital cooperation in -- digital cooperation in time of COVID-19 and beyond.
The U.N. Secretary-General has also presented his roadmap, and I think most of you were in attendance on Friday when this was done, and Thursday, and which also described a range of actions for all stakeholders to engage in the achievement of digital cooperation. The United Nations, including the IGF, can truly serve as a platform for informed discussion and evidence-based decisions and practices. So that video is also online and I encourage you all to view that one, too.
DiploFoundation. Diplo has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in a number of ways, including setting up the conference tech lab to meet the growing demand for help in transitioning to online work because of the COVID-19 pandemic and delivering online courses for diplomacy and global governance and mapping how different countries have rolled out digital contact tracing apps.
In the lead-up to the U.N. World Data Forum in Bern, the permanent mission of Switzerland to the U.N. in Geneva and other Geneva-based organizations have launched a series of dialogues on data governance. Diplo is also in partnership with the Swiss government on the Geneva dialogue on responsible behavior in cyberspace to discuss with the global industry on how to secure their digital products and services.
The next organization was DotAsia, and DotAsia has launched its ProjectLockdown.asia which mobilizes youth from DotAsia's Net Missions Ambassadors Program and other Asia Pacific regional fellowship alumni to collect data on how countries implemented COVID-19 lockdowns, not only in terms of their effectiveness in combating the spreading of the virus but also on whether lockdowns also had other effects, such as human rights infringements.
EBU presented their response to the COVID-19. The EBU has intensified efforts on joint initiatives such as journalism trust initiatives and the trusted news initiative. The EBU is also trying to raise awareness of the sustainability of the media business models, particularly in the wake of COVID-19, as if the media can function properly, democracy can be adversely affected, particularly since media really depends on advertising, and with the lockdown I think there was a decidedly drop-down in advertising revenue.
The EBU has also created a sharing hub of experiences and best practices for media on how to create programs safely with lockdowns and social distancing in place.
The European Commission. The Commission has adopted a digital strategy shaping Europe's digital future on the 19th February 2020, making digital policy one of the top priorities of the Commission.
The Commission has adopted a series of digital tools and actions in the fight against COVID-19, including European supercomputers being used to research and fight the virus.
The Commission also suggested that the IGF should take up responsibility for discussing -- discussions on open standards settings.
ICANN: Capacity development across the ICANN ecosystem has remained a key priority during the time of COVID-19 and has -- which has moved to the virtual environment. ICANN has been active in responding to the DNS abuse cases that have taken advantage of the pandemic.
Team members from the Office of the CTO joined both the COVID-19 Cyber Threat Coalition and the COVID-19 Cyber Threat Intelligence League groups which share valuable threat information focused on the response to the pandemic in the cyber realm.
ICC-BASIS. ICC-BASIS has partnered with the World Health Organization to facilitate information flows by disseminating the latest and most reliable information on the COVID-19 outbreaks to businesses worldwide and also has launched a COVID-19 portal that offers trusted advice to businesses, policymakers and chambers of commerce.
ICC has launched Save our SMEs SOS campaign -- that's small and medium enterprises -- working with partners from international organizations, like WHO, ILO, and UNESA (phonetic), with companies like Amazon or Facebook, with nonprofits like the Cyber Readiness Institute with local chambers of commerce together and offer resources supporting policy advice and training of SMEs during the pandemic.
ICC has also been providing cybersecurity training tailored for businesses and workers as they move their operations to a virtual setting or use their home networks and personal devices to conduct businesses.
In addition to responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, ICC has identified three main focus areas for 2020 and that is: Cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and multistakeholder digital cooperation.
ISOC. ISOC is working on a set of use cases and case studies that use its Internet way of networking frameworks to challenge or affirm a variety of emerging policies. The current areas of focus include intermediary -- intermediary liabilities focused on data localization, content filtering, interconnection and routing, as well as new I.P. proposals that have been submitted to the ITU.
ISOC would like to organize a track of work in collaboration with the IGF MAG on different frameworks that have been developed for understanding how the Internet works and how it is developing.
The ITU. The ITU has launched a new multistakeholder platform, REG4COVID, to ensure that networks are kept resilient.
The ITU was instrumental in the adoption of the Broadband Commission agenda for action which outlines immediate measures that stakeholders can take to show off their digital networks, strengthen capacity especially at critical connectivity points such as hospitals, transportation hubs, and boost digital access and inclusion.
The WSIS Forum for 2020 will also be held virtually from the 22nd of June, cumulating in the final week of online events from the 7th to the 10th of September.
The ITU has two online public consultations open to contribution from all stakeholders. The Council Working Group on Internet Consultation is about expanding Internet connectivity. And the third, draft of the Secretary-General's report for the World Telecommunication ICT Policy Forum, WTPF, on the topic of policies for mobilizing new and emerging telecommunication ICTs for sustainable development. And this is also for comment.
RIPE NCC. RIPE NCC held the first fully virtual RIPE meeting, RIPE 80, in May. And this also attracted more than 2,000 registrants. The potential for such remote events in allowing many more people to participate than can participate in a physical meeting is self-evident.
After 15 years, the IGF is an institution well-prepared to help RIPE NCC come to greater understanding in the ways in which the Internet is being used and the risk inheritance in that use.
The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. That's UNIDIR. In 2019, UNIDIR established a cyber policy portal which provides details of their cyber policies of 193 states of the United Nations as well as key international and regional organizations.
UNIDIR has been conducting a series of Webinars exploring the experiences and practices and the lessons that some states have undertaken to continue to learn in their efforts to reinforce the cybersecurity and stability. The final episode of the series is on June 25. And they look forward -- and they look at the role of civil society in implementing norms.
UNIDIR is supporting the open-ended working group and the group of government experts currently under way at the United Nations to advance cybersecurity, stability -- cybersecurity and norms development as well as their implementation. UNIDIR's annual Cybersecurity Stability Conference will go ahead this year on 8th of September in a hybrid form. This is, of course, due to the pandemic.
I hope that was understandable. I did try to be concise. And I think it was less than the 90 minutes that the videos would take.
We do have a video from UNESCO, which I said was unfortunately dropped for some reason. And we can play that now. I'll just defer to the chair if we should go ahead and play it.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you, Chengetai. I think, yes, I think we do need to because the error was on our side. We somehow lost the UNESCO video.
But before that, I actually want to pose a question to those IN the technical community that gave us input.
What has happened with data usage and Internet usage around the world since the outbreak of the pandemic? I noticed that I think Paul Wilson from APNIC referred to that. I don't want to put anyone on the spot. But if you can just consider whether you have some information you can share with the meeting after the UNESCO video, I think it will be important and interesting for us to look at what has happened with Internet usage.
So now, Chengetai, please go ahead and play the UNESCO video.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Okay. Just give me a second just to switch my microphone.
[Video]
>> Dear colleagues, dear Internet governance community, it's a pleasure to address you to second open consultations and MAG meeting held online to present to IGF stakeholders UNESCO's action in terms of Internet governance and to share some highlights of our response to COVID-19 in this spirit.
The fact that I'm here today over the screen and that we can, thanks to digital technologies, continue to ensure multistakeholder engagement in the time of the pandemic is a testament to the importance of access to information, access to the Internet, and digital literacy.
And while pandemics are not new, this time we have the capacity to develop tech-based solutions to address age-old problems.
Allow me first to highlight that UNESCO is the co-founder of the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, is working closely with heads of United Nations' agencies and the main actors in Internet and mobile development, rights-based, open, accessible, and multistakeholder-shaped Internet.
In response to COVID-19, the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development has launched the agenda for action of faster and better recovery, outlining immediate measures that stakeholders can adopt across three pillars: Resilient connectivity, affordable access, and safe use for informed and educated societies.
The agenda is a framework for the commissioners and their organizations to share and support each other's initiatives, make new commitments, and foster collaboration and partnerships to combat COVID-19 through innovation and digital transformation.
In the face of the pandemic and even though the law allows for emergency powers in response to significant threats, we are convinced that human rights including those related to data privacy should not be compromised.
The pandemic has also been compounded by an epidemic, which directly impacts lives and livelihoods around the world.
Falsehoods and misinformation have proven deadly. And so conclusions were about life-saving personal and policy choices.
To share knowledge, UNESCO has published two policy briefs offering particular insights into the academic that is impeding access to trustworthy sources and reliable information. Within this Broadband Commission, UNESCO co-chairs the working group of freedom of expression and tackling misinformation, which will launch a report and set of recommendations in the coming months.
UNESCO also co-chairs the working group on school connectivity with UNICEF and the ITU. This group is conducting research to support school connectivity investments around the world.
With UNESCO focused on curriculum content, teacher training and adaptation locally, in this regard, UNESCO is fostering open education resources to support learners and educational professionals in online learning during the pandemic.
COVID-19 has caused widespread school closures in 185 countries, forcing 89.4% of learners to stay home. And in the context, open education resources represent an important means to supplement formal online classes and even temporarily serve as the main form of education for those who are unable to access online learning.
Many educational institutions and companies have opened up their resources so that students in the current time can continue to learn. And UNESCO has identified a number of MOOCs and open education resources, which can provide online courses and self-directed learning content through both mobile and desktop platforms.
As an additional response to COVID-19, UNESCO has mobilized young innovators in the response of COVID-19. In April, UNESCO IBM, and SAP joined forces in the organization of the global hackathon, CodeTheCurve, an initiative for young developers, innovators, data scientists, and designers to use their digital skills, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit, and to team up to inspire digital solutions to current and future pandemic-related challenges.
In the face of COVID-19, more countries are seeking to further enhance their Internet. And UNESCO's Internet universality indicators offer a helpful framework of governments and organizations to enhance the Internet and use digital technology to combat the virus and address its impact.
We have been working with stakeholders from an increasing number of countries across the world to implement national assessments of Internet development using the Internet universality indicators.
These assessments have attracted a high level of attention and support from country's ministers, policymakers, as well as multistakeholder actors. And their impact on policy improvements has been evident.
Based on its deep engagement with the IGF community over the past 15 years and as discussed with the MAG, UNESCO will be launching a dynamic coalition on Internet universality indicators at the IGF 2020 as a new space for sharing experiences and raising awareness of the value of these indicators and the good practice in applying them in more countries.
This dynamic coalition will strengthen UNESCO's partnership with the IGF's Multistakeholder Advisory Group and with other stakeholders, including national and regional IGFs, best practice platforms, and other coalitions to join the strategy advanced Internet policies at national, regional, and global levels.
UNESCO is also building an online platform and policy observatory with data, tools, and reports related to the Internet universality indicators. The online platform will contribute the deepening synergies among stakeholders and advancing country agendas which will transform information and policy recommendations into concrete actions.
The Internet universality approach has also been applied to artificial intelligence in UNESCO's publications, steering AI in advance of ICTs for (indiscernible) societies which provides a number of key recommendations on ensuring that use of artificial intelligence is human centric.
UNESCO will continue to engage governments, the private sector, Internet intermediaries, the technical community, and academia to ensure there are adequate safeguards of privacy and personal data protection are put in place in artificial intelligence-related apps and measures to counter COVID-19.
Ladies and gentlemen, I will close by highlighting that artificial intelligence was a developed by Alan Turing as a technology used during World War II. At the time, Turing said, "We can only see a short distance ahead. We can see plenty there that needs to be done."
Plenty can and needs to be done with artificial intelligence. And UNESCO is committed to ensuring that questions of human rights and ethics are not afterthoughts in the process of technological innovation, whose mission is to reduce suffering, not increase it.
As many of you are aware, UNESCO is in the process of developing a standard-setting instrument on the ethics of artificial intelligence. They are currently inviting multistakeholder input into the draft text of the recommendation that we can have a truly inclusive approach to developing this global instrument.
I invite you all at the MAG to participate by sharing your views, thoughts through this online portal, and encourage you to share it among your networks for a truly inclusive and diverse artificial intelligence. We must ensure that everyone has a seat at the table and that the future of artificial intelligence is co-created as a social good.
In the spirit of inclusive multistakeholderism and smooth cooperation for the better good, I wish you successful deliberations. Thank you very much.
Dear colleagues --
[Video concludes]
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much for that input, Moez Chakchouk from UNESCO, and your colleagues. And, again, our apologies that your prepared recording somehow fell off our platform.
And thanks to everyone else.
I now open the floor to questions on these contributions. And if there's anyone else who has a contribution to share, please do so.
I just want to start us off by asking, if they saw my note in the chat, when I reviewed and listened to all these inputs, I noted that particularly people from the technical community -- and it's fantastic that we had several regional Internet registries respond -- talk about the changes in Internet data usage, the fact that people are working from home, the increased use of video.
So I don't know if any of you are ready to be put on the spot just to give everyone a short indication of what the change has been and how current Internet infrastructure has been able to respond to that.
My sense has been that existing infrastructure has responded quite well and where the real gap has been has been the exclusion of those that don't have access.
But if anyone from the technical community is to give a little bit of an update on how the infrastructure has upheld, that would be useful.
I don't see anyone responding. And others, please start requesting the floor. I'm checking our list of participants to see if there are hands. And I see several hands. Paul Wilson, you have the floor. And after that we will have Arthur from AfriNIC.
Paul, over to you.
>>PAUL WILSON: Thank you very much, Anriette. Can you hear me?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: We can hear you.
>>PAUL WILSON: My camera is on. Hopefully you can see me.
Thank you very much, Anriette. Congratulations to you on your appointment has chair of the MAG. And thanks to the secretariat for organizing this meeting.
I don't have a really comprehensive information at all about what's been happening technically in terms of infrastructure or traffic across the net. I mean, this will be a long and involved story from all corners of the net, I have no doubt, because I can say that there's a few very interesting things being seen which are being reported and which give you sort of indications of the types of shifts that have been happening.
So at one of APNIC's recent online networking-from-home events that we've held that I referred to in my submission there, these are events which are receiving -- like the RIPE NCC reported -- at least double, probably a tripling of the attendance that we would normally have expected at an event like that. So incidentally, they're being really well-attended and in themselves contributing to the sorts of patterns that I'm about to refer to.
But one of the sessions that we hosted at this event was for network operators reporting on the impacts of COVID-19. And we had, in particular, representatives from Internet exchange points around the region who were reporting a really very clear shift in traffic patterns which coincided with the beginning of lockdowns in their respective sort of areas.
That tended to be a change or even an inversion in the pattern of traffic direction. So where networks were -- where consumer networks were traditionally and normally receiving the vast majority of traffic through the exchange, for instance, through users receiving -- in the normal way receiving video and so forth, those networks were starting to transmit a lot more than before. And so sort of inverting that pattern of traffic was something that was seen in a really distinct change that had been -- that was shown in several cases.
This is just a small tiny handful of exchange points concerned. So like I say, the interesting thing will be to see the broad-scale patterns and how the patterns might have been replicated and how they might be different in different places. The impact of video conferencing, which is what people have been commenting on, is critical there. But it's only going to be critical where users have got upstream bandwidth to allow them to participate in video conferencing in both directions. Because even in Australia, for instance, those who are unlucky enough to have the lower class of NBN connections can often have a sub-megabit upstream bandwidth even if they've got 20 meg down or so. And it's very obvious if you are on a video conference with a bunch of people, it's very obvious from the quality of the images that you see who has got a decent level of upstream bandwidth from their user connection.
And so the reason they may not have that upstream bandwidth could be some network effect in the middle of the network. It could be an underprovisioning in the network. It could be, as I say, the fact that user connections in many cases are still asymmetrical. Those are the things which are being really challenged.
So an Australian prime minister said famously a few years ago that the Internet was nothing but a video entertainment system. And it's pretty obvious when you're looking at this kind of situation that that's exactly not what it is. And when it's been called on to provide this service, this sort of new level of service, it's come through really well.
And, I mean, another interesting impact is very visibly Google's public statistics of their IPv6 usage. Those stats have got a very interesting oscillation on a weekly basis, which show much higher or significantly higher IPv6 usage on the weekends indicating that people, through their office connectivity, don't use IPv6 so much -- as much as they do through home connections. That's also changed very markedly. So you could look in all different corners of the net, different -- of the different indicators and see these changes.
I think one of the things that is really notable is that what we haven't seen, that I don't -- I don't think has been reported at any time, is any wide scale outage across the Internet as a result of what's been going on. So in terms of the provisioning of DNS, even the performance of the carrier networks, even the performance of the video -- the video networks, they have -- there hasn't been a kind of a -- like an infrastructure attack that's come from -- that's come from COVID-19. The effects have actually been very -- very much locally experienced and locally handled. And I actually think this is a really important point to the IGF, that even with this kind of very documented, very noticeable global impact on infrastructure that could easily really kind of somehow fundamentally threaten the viability of the Internet, what you've actually seen is the stresses that have occurred have been localized, and they have caused all sorts of different local effects but those local effects are dealt with locally so that the ISP that happens to be dealing with overloaded infrastructure or that happens to be dealing with traffic patterns that are unexpected, they're able to deal with those local and I that's really how the Internet operates, right? That's the distributed model.
And I do think it would be very interested to see wider -- wider research and some analysis on what's been going on in the -- in the context of the kind of Internet architectural model which is actually proven to be fantastically robust at this time. So, yeah, I think it's --
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: And I think it's also demonstrated how we take the technical governance of the Internet for granted, because it works, and it works more or less invisibly to most people. But it's important to recognize that.
And just a quick -- That was Paul Wilson from the Asia Pacific Network Information Center.
And Arthur from the African Network Information Center, can you briefly share an update from Africa?
>>ARTHUR CARINDAL: Thank you, Anriette and --
>> Can't hear you.
>>ARTHUR CARINDAL: Can you hear me?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Yes, we can hear you.
>>ARTHUR CARINDAL: Okay. following Paul mentioned, I would like to add a few point regarding as to what's happening in the AfriNIC region.
So due to COVID-19 we notice I can say a slowdown regarding the request for additional resources that are very important for -- for service deployment at the ISP's level; okay? And that can explain, okay, what is happening on the -- at the market, at the ISP's market in Africa.
Before the COVID-19, we received a lot of requests because most of the members were ready to deploy significant services. But when the pandemic happened, that really impacted the businesses. That can impact as well the request or demand for IP resources. Okay. That is one of the first point. And this is also explain the slowdown of our membership.
But one thing or so you have to notice is in term of what we have at the area industry is membership fees. So most -- not as most, but we notice some members that are mostly ISPs that will request AfriNIC to postpone the payment of the fees because they are facing some issues, financial issues, at the (indiscernible) level. So that can explain the real impact of COVID on the ISP service within our region.
But we also decided to react vis-a-vis of that situation is to provide more services, online services, to our different higher space. (Indiscernible) postpone some of (indiscernible), we decided to work with them, to take the opportunity of the, I can say, the frozen period of activities to increase the skills in terms of (indiscernible) to increase the skill in term of IPv6 deployment that will be necessary for the 5G services that probably will happen after the pandemic.
So at AfriNIC, we decided to engage more with our members and the community for online services. That's the reason we are promoting our eLearning platform to invite government, to invite ISPs, to invite civil society group to learn more about the Internet governance and technical skills we need to deploy the different services.
Another role, we notice that why -- that is sometime where. Why -- why most of the African government and the country were relying on Internet, okay, to mitigate the COVID-19, we didn't notice a significant increase of Internet (indiscernible). That is something that we found a bit weird because we made a presentation during the last month of webinars. So there is a lot of demand, but in term of creating increase of bandwidth, didn't notice something very, very significant. Probably it's because Internet is not very good in a certain place.
But this is roughly what we decided to do.
And last point is for the coming month, AfriNIC has initiated some -- many will be done in both English and in French and sometimes official language to bring all of our community to invest in more exactly what Internet governance is and how they can contribute to build a sustainable Internet in Africa.
This is roughly what I would like to share with you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much for that input, Arthur and Paul. And I think it -- you know, your comment, Arthur, demonstrates that -- I think an opportunity for us in the Internet governance community is that the relevance and the essentialness of the Internet is being grasped by more actors than used to be engaged with it, including governments. And I think it's really important that we use this opportunity to get them involved in the Internet governance conversation.
Let's open the floor to other issues. I think our input so far, we only talked about the technical issues now, but the range of issues raised by the contributions is really broad, from the human rights issues raised by the Council of Europe, for example, to issues of information and misinformation and getting trust into journalistic sources reestablished.
So I'd like to open the floor. We have a few people in the queue. We have roughly half an hour left for the session, so please add your name to the queue to ask a question or to share your information. Remember, this is to help us plan and enrich the program. So ISOC, for example, made some contributions on how we can deal with emerging issues.
So please, everyone, the floor is open to raise any issue you think is relevant to the IGF this year.
So next we have Giacomo Mazzone. Giacomo, you have the floor.
>>GIACOMO MAZZONE: Thank you, Anriette. I will not cot come back on what is already my written intervention because I'm sure all of you already have seen it.
So I just want to stress and share with you -- I'm trying to put the video as you request, even if the connection is not ideal at all. I want to share with you one of the main lessons we learned during this period, and it is the fact that the -- we have seen very much how it is important to have a holistic approach to the connectivity problem, because we have seen, for instance, that many of our members' countries, television started immediately after the school have been closed to provide services, online services for the school. But also -- and for children that were confined at home. But we have also an enormous request directly from the school to continue to have this not only online but also on normal terrestrial distribution or television and radio signal. Because the digital divide in reality is, even in Europe, a big problem. And most -- a large part of the population, a significant part of the population and those that are more in need in the schools are exactly the people that cannot join properly online lessons because they are not well equipped with a computer or they have not a good online connection.
So we have seen that if -- when our members started the online offer, they were able to reach a part of the population, significant in certain countries, not significant in other countries. But the next layer, when the same offer was also transferred into programming schedule on the air, on terrestrial distribution, on cable, on satellite, et cetera, et cetera, for all the means, and on radio, of course, then they were able to reach 100% of the population. So thing this is the most important lessons learned. Instead of thinking only how we -- I can increase access to the Internet, we have to think in realistic approach how I can reach 100% of the population, especially those that are more in need, using all available tools. And I think that this is very interesting lessons that also for you is important to list.
Then I have another question for UNESCO, because I listened with great interest what Moez Chakchouk former MAG member, by the way, said about universal indicators. I would like to know more what's next, because I know that some of these universal indicators have been applied to certain countries. It would be useful to know if this now will be extended to all the countries. How will be the approach, we will have a map of the world based on universal indicators? Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much for that, Giacomo.
Let's take two more speakers, and then, UNESCO, you can respond to this question.
Next we have Suzanne Taylor from RIPE NCC. And, Edmon, you can come after Suzanne.
>>SUZANNE TAYLOR: Hi, thank you so much. I know that Paul and Arthur have already spoken, so is it helpful to have another perspective from another RIR?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Yes, Suzanne, go ahead.
>>SUZANNE TAYLOR: Okay; great. So I mean I will generally echo a lot of what they've already said. So just briefly, we haven't seen a huge impact. It seems that the Internet, by its very nature, was very well positioned to handle the increase load that we have seen during the COVID impact.
A lot of major European ISPs did show significant increases in traffic. Euro-IX had a report about this showing a sort of 30 to 50% increase in March, but again not seeing a major impact in terms of services.
So all indications so far have generally been that the core seems very well positioned to handle this. Barrick (phonetic) has been putting out reports looking at the impact and has generally found that although traffic on fixed and mobile networks have increased significantly there haven't been any major congestion issues so far. The data from the RIPE NCC's own measurement platforms, RIPE Atlas and our routing information service also shows a lot of stability. We have seen some drops in download speed, and I think that this is one thing that regulators are possibly going to be looking at in the future in terms of needing to redefine the traditional definition of what adequate broadband is, which currently stands at two megabits per second. So I think that's something that's possibly going to get some attention in the future.
Where we have noticed some challenges globally is -- and Paul mentioned this, in last-mile access I think has been an issue for some. Europe has generally fared better than some other parts of the globe, but even within Europe, we see a fairly pretty big proven rural divide that I think has impacted a lot of users during this time.
And of course there is the human factor. I think you mentioned, Anriette, that a lot of governments and other stakeholders have been paying attention to the Internet more and more in recent years as more of our lives and economies and societies move online. This has only served to shine an even greater spotlight on that. And I think what we're starting to see come out from -- from the EU, at least, in terms of regulation, because the RIPE NCC follows fairly closely what's being discussed in those spheres, is sort of a continuation of a trend that we've noticed in the past few years already of sort of shifting away from more ideas of innovation online and economic growth to one of really national digital sovereignty and protecting core infrastructure, keeping things more local, more national. And so I think this is where we see the conversation shifting.
I think this has been probably the biggest regulatory impact that the crisis has had, and I think some of those issues are going to be -- along with, you know, issues of equality and accessibility, I think we're going to see a real focus on that.
And I think these would be some of the interesting topics that could be discussed at the IGF.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks, Suzanne, and very, very useful input.
And, Edmon, you have the floor. And then after that, we'll give UNESCO the opportunity to respond, and then we will continue with our speakers' queue. And thanks to people who are adding their names to the queue.
So, Edmon, you have the floor.
And by the way, everyone, just for the record, a reminder that you need to -- that you need to introduce yourself.
>>EDMON CHUNG: Certainly. Thank you, Anriette. This is Edmon Chung from DotAsia.
I put my hand up really to respond a little bit to your conclusion, which I think is quite spot on and important, but I want to tangent off a little bit as well that the technical governance of the Internet really held up quite well. This is part of the proof of that.
In a meeting last week here in Hong Kong with a lot of the social welfare and social services and rehab services, they're sharing information, sharing discussion about how they responded to COVID-19 and how they used the Internet and technologies to respond, what is very interesting there is how the capacities of these NGOs that are providing social services were challenged and had to grow quickly over time. And why I wanted to bring this up here is that what I found in -- as an output from that meeting is twofold, which is very interesting for this community.
One, by introducing to them the Internet governance part, which they have no idea whatsoever prior to this nor felt that they, you know, really needed to care anything about it, they now started to really realize.
So I see this as an opportunity because of the widespread use of the Internet now in those areas where traditionally they are less connected to, like social welfare, dealing with SCN students, dealing with elderly, dealing with rehab which are traditionally face to face and, you know, high-touch areas, now they realize that, you know, the Internet cannot be taken for granted. And there is, I think, an opportunity for us to engage their participation from those sectors as well as business who are increasingly using the Internet as a core infrastructure.
Another part that is interesting that I think this community could take -- take note is, you know, there was a lot of discussion of how they would then start to use the Internet even after -- after the -- you know, hopefully, and I'm sure at some point COVID-19 will start to go down, and even after, how they would utilize the Internet coming from the experience of originally putting things together ad hoc and learning, you know, as they run, thinking about how to augment but not replace, augment their existing services and improve the experience of people utilizing the Internet.
And I think those two areas would, you know, kind of in conjunction allow us to better engage them to participate here and enrich the conversation here as well. And that's I think the part that I wanted to add.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Edmon, for that input.
And just to remind everyone that we do have interpretation in French and English. So you can speak in French, and you can also follow the interpretation in French. So just -- Luis has just sent instructions to chat. So please, everyone, feel free to use this facility. We don't always have it, and we only have it today thanks to Poland who is supporting it for the purpose of this consultation.
Now, before we go to the rest of our queue, UNESCO, can you please respond to the question from Giacomo.
>>XIANHONG HU: Yeah. Thank you, Anriette. This is Xianhong from UNESCO. Thank you for excellent moderation for the first place. And, also, I'd like to thank Giacomo for also your interest in UNESCO project. And, also, I'd like to thank you and other stakeholders, like Adam and Nigel. You are all our long-term partners in this important UNESCO project of Internet universality indicators.
You have participated in our day zero event last year at IGF in Berlin. It was a five-hour intensive discussion presenting -- showcasing 16 countries' initiatives of assessing the universality indicators. I mean, just after one year of UNESCO is seeing governmental bodies endorsing this instrument of voluntary assessment by all countries. So see a high unprecedented interest from our member states voluntarily to conduct this assessment.
So for the future, we are actually looking to straight directions. Some have already been mentioned by our ADG and Mr. Chakchouk in his video, which I would like to elaborate a little bit more.
First, we are really receiving more interest from our member states and also from our stakeholders to the assessment. Also, we are continuing our work not only to the assessment but also to implement those recommendations from the assessment because the assessment aimed to identify the policy gaps and to find a way to formulate the policy reforms in the country, including coping with COVID and other new threats.
So the implementation of the recommendation would be one of the areas we are continuing to work in the future in those countries who are already conducting assessments.
Second is that we have been receiving increasing interest from different stakeholders, not only governments but also from civil society and other actors who are interested to the assessment in their country. We are able to coordinate, to support the entire process. That's why Mr. Chakchouk just announced that we are going to launch IGF dynamic coalition. It's going to be a new dynamic coalition under umbrella of IGF to engage further with those partners and also those stakeholders. Plus, we have been working well with the NRIs which are an excellent platform for us to engage in national stakeholders experts and also we are working with best practice platforms on different semantic areas, including one hosted by Giacomo on the local content. We are really working in all directions to make sure that interested countries will be assessed, and also the useful recommendation will be recommended through different committees based on IGF.
And the third direction that I think Mr. Chakchouk also mentioned, we're going to use some innovation to support the entire process. We are planning to launch an online platform of UNESCO indicators. It will be a very holistic database, the platform, which will provide all the existing data we have collected from those indicators. The ROAMX indicator of universality has 303 indicators to measure human rights, to measure the access, the inclusiveness, to measure openness, to measure multistakeholder governance models and initiative levels, and also gender issues in Africa, development (indiscernible), et cetera.
So we are actually building up this kind of data platform so for all these stakeholders, you will have a very smart platform to check on data in each indicator, how -- how the evidence have been collected from different country regions. Also, we are also trying consolidating other indicators of UNESCO, not only Internet but also media indicators. For instance, we had many countries in media develop indicators assessment, which are also being holistically combined to this new platform. Plus (indiscernible), et cetera.
So that's why I think this innovation again, I mean, will contribute to all stakeholders to follow, to make good use of the indicator assessment.
Also, we are providing the online tutorial, the methodological guidance because the indicator assessment is quite complicated. We have realized at the national level we are trying to operationalize the multistakeholder approach in assessing indicators. Then, there's a lot of need for technical support. Our platform also providing this kind of support.
All in all, I think I can stop here. And I'll be here -- I'll be around online and happy to discuss, whether private or collectively.
And, also, I already share our website online. And also we have our page on this IGF website, our mailing list, et cetera. I welcome all of you to contact me or contact our mailing list to join this joint process in the future. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much for that input, Xianhong.
I notice in the chat that Anne-Rachel Inne from ARIN has also responded. And please note she points out that the video highlights the situation of small islands states in the Caribbean. Definitely, please take time to watch that. It's very interesting.
And next I give the floor to Chat Garcia Ramilo from my institution I have been associated with for a long time, Association for Progressive Communications.
Chat, very nice to see you and hear you.
>>Chat Garcia Ramilo: Nice to see you, too, Anriette, and everyone else.
I just want to point out a couple of things. One is in response to the last-mile connectivity. I think this is where what we are seeing is the divide is definitely -- potentially is growing, and it's becoming more intense for those people -- for people who do not have connectivity.
And I think one of the things that we -- we at APC have been working on and that we feel needs to be much more -- that needs more attention is definitely around enabling environment for community networks.
I think at this stage where it's -- people are being locked down in communities, it really is a situation where if one -- if there are community networks that people trust and people have connections with around community levels, that really will increase people's connection to information, health, et cetera. And I do think that really needs to be in the conversation in a bigger way. So that's the one thing.
The second thing I wanted to point out, I was at a forum today where the discussion of the conviction of Maria Ressa, who is the editor of Rappler in the Philippines, was convicted under the cybercrime law in the Philippines. And it's a huge issue. David Kaye has sent a support that the U.N. special rapporteurs have supported Maria Ressa. And still there was a conviction, and the basis of the conviction was the cybercrime law.
And I think it is a trend that we need to look at because governments are using laws to really close down freedom of expression, to criminalize speech as well in social media at a time of the pandemic when people really need to be much more in touch. And I do think that really is going to threaten the openness of the Internet as we know it and the trust in the system.
One of the things that we've also noticed -- is noted is that there has been a proliferation of more misinformation. And it's difficult -- it's much more difficult for people to really see, to really understand what is going on. This is the time when they need to trust the information that they get. And the information really has been not that -- it's becoming more difficult for people to trust the information. And that, I think, is something that needs to be -- that we need to look at at this time.
The one issue that has come up as well -- and I know the World Health Organization has looked into this -- is around tracing apps. A lot of states have adopted. This is tracing apps in relation to COVID. And there is a World Health Organization ethics guidelines around it. But there are also, I think -- what we're seeing from our members on the ground is that people are -- it's very -- are confused about either to use the apps or not to use the apps.
I was also at a forum where there was a comparison in three countries: South Korea, Australia is the other one, and in the U.K. And all of this in relation to what kinds of laws and what kinds of platforms are states rolling out.
And one of the issues that came up is that South Korea is being seen as a model; but at the same time it has the most, if you like, the draconian law around surveillance and collection of data without permission.
So I'd like to put that on the table as some of the issues, I think, that really -- that needs to be looked at in relation to rights and digital rights at this time. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much, chat. And it just illustrates the range of issues we have to deal with.
Next I want to give the floor to Abdul Muqset Rahimi, who I think is calling in from Afghanistan. Abdul, you have the floor.
>>ABDUL MUQSET RAHIMI: Good morning, everybody. My name is Abdul Muqset. I'm here from Afghanistan. Due to COVID-19 lockdown, so we have some problem with our jobs and stuff, working places and this stuff. So in short, I lost my job. But I really don't care about it, and I started teaching online.
But the huge problem in Afghanistan -- it's not only about me -- that most of the people are facing these issues.
One of those are Internet. Most of the people has no connection -- has no access to good connection in Afghanistan. And, also, they have no good access to the tools they can use.
But in these parts, Afghanistan, Internet governance and IGF is working very well. They are trying -- and there are so many communities working. But there is another issue like the payment solutions. In the world, we have so many solutions like we have online payment system like PayPal and so many others that we can have examples.
My request from the IGF and U.N. IGF is that if they can keep it secret for the countries like Afghanistan and the countries like us, they can help us more and more.
What I'm talking is too short. It's not a long story. The only thing I just want to know is how many -- how much Internet governance -- I mean, U.N. IGF is working for us and what are new plans for the countries like Afghanistan and other Asian countries that they have problem with their tools and solutions that are in the world but we cannot reach them, we cannot use them.
So please, can you give me any idea? Or you can keep it in your note that you can work on it and that's it.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much for that input, Abdul. We will definitely take note of it in the planning for the IGF, and maybe others can respond to it.
So the last person we have in our queue, unless Anne-Rachel -- unless you wanted to -- I know your hand was up. If you do want to speak, then just please tell us.
But now I give the floor again to Nigel Hickson.
>>NIGEL HICKSON: Thank you very much, indeed, Anriette. And I'll be very brief. I just wanted to sort of come in and support what some other people have already said to a large extent.
One of the -- one of the factors that I've sort of come across in looking at online conferences, online discussions, is that there's a greater sense of immediacy, if you see what I mean.
I mean, in the physical world, you look at an agenda for a conference, like an ICANN meeting, three or four weeks in advance or a month in advance. You go along, you discuss those subjects obviously in the coffee breaks or whatever. You discuss other issues as well.
In the online environment, there is a sense that you have to be a bit more agile. And other people have said this, and this is no surprise or whatever. It's not me.
And so to an extent, I think when the MAG are discussing in -- and obviously excellent people on the MAG -- are discussing all this in the next few days, discussing the program, I think if you can build in opportunities for some immediacy in terms of these emerging issues, which we've just learned from APC about prosecutions. We know there's violation in terms of surveillance and things like that. And some of those should perhaps come up.
And I think Constance from ISOC mentioned earlier this concept of having emerging issues, emerging issues, having a sort of theme where people can say: Do you know what's happening in this country? Or do you know what's happening on this technology? We should be looking at this because it's really relevant to us. And whether we do that on day zero or in some other way, you know, this is obviously -- whatever.
But I think this should be some sort of sense of being able to react to developments that are pertinent by November. Thank you.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much, Nigel. That's a good observation. And I hope we can integrate it into our planning.
And next the floor is going to Anne-Rachel Inne from ARIN. Anne-Rachel.
>>ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Hello. And good morning, everybody. Anriette, thanks to you, to the MAG, and, you know, IGF for asking for input from us. And it's a pleasure to see you all here.
One of the things that I was saying is that we have been helping working with the community in the islands that we cover, basically, as I was saying, to reconnect to the connected but also connect the unconnected. It's really, really come to the fore right now that it is something that is needed. And what we have seen is that for a lot of governments who, you know, don't be mistaken, have been thinking for the past few years about how to connect -- in fact, the Caribbean has an initiative that is called The 21st Century Government, meaning that they really have been looking for the past few years about connecting their phones and moving quite a few services online.
But this has become something that is now just not only urgent -- it was for yesterday and everybody is crumbling to get there in an area where bandwidth has been dire.
And that's why we have been working. We have been having Webinars. We have been supporting the communities in terms of connectivity, in terms of some of the things that they want to put together and taking into account, of course, you know, issues that are very particular to the Caribbean and small island developing states that are lack of human resources as well as, you know, financial resources in general, not to mention the bandwidth, as I said.
So it is really very important that we do not forget all of these places where we have more than ever need for people to be connected and connected properly, meaningfully, taking into account their own also wishes into how they want to be connected.
And as Susan said, really, a lot of the policy issues are now coming to the fore because they're all concerned about issues of, yes, data transfer. You said it, Anriette. They're concerned about security. They're concerned about -- how to connect internationally to be there but at the same time, you know, keep their particular processes.
So thank you very much for allowing us to be here.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much for your contribution.
Anja, can you give us a highlight of what is being discussed in the chat?
>>ANJA GENGO: Yes. Thank you, Anriette. Not a lot of questions in the chat as most speakers also took the floor, but I'm just going to highlight critical comments that could be of interest to you.
So one is from Amir from Iran, from the academic community, asking how can the Internet community raise some important Internet policy issues like digital sanctions during the pandemic time?
And then followed by a comment from Giacomo Mazzone about the next IGF focusing on the restrictions to freedom of expression and media, especially during this time.
There are also comments -- there are also statements on sharing some resources for the -- for the already-referenced practices, such as, for example, Xianfong from UNESCO sharing the link to UNESCO's Internet universality indicators, for those that would like to know more and her email address. And I believe that would be all that wasn't addressed during the people's taking the floor time.
Thank you, Anriette.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks, Anja.
And, everyone, we're doing good for time.
Before I move towards closing this discussion, does any one of the institutions that submitted contributions, do you want to respond or react to any of the inputs that we've heard from the floor?
I see someone is joining this -- the queue.
Vinicius, you have the floor.
We can't hear you. I'm not sure that your mic is unmuted.
>>LUIS BOBO: Hello, Anriette. It seems his microphone is unmuted, but for some reason --
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: So Vinicius, we cannot hear you, but please type your contribution into the chat.
I don't see anyone else taking the floor, so I am going to -- to bring us to a close.
So this was a very rich session. I want to start off by -- oh, Vinicius, are you ready to speak now?
>>VINICIUS SANTOS: Can you hear me now?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Yes, we can hear you. Go ahead.
>>VINICIUS SANTOS: Oh, thank you. I don't know what was happening. I was using a headset, and unfortunately I had some audio issues.
Well, I'm not talking from an RIR perspective, but I could provide you with a brief overview in a more national perspective. So just trying to add to that discussion about the traffic increase.
Before that, thank you, Anriette, to give the space. And hello, colleagues, Vinicius from the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee. We did, indeed, send a video giving a brief overview of our activities locally. And just trying to add to this discussion, yes, Brazil -- in Brazil we had an overall increase in traffic as well. Observing the traffic behavior in our ecosystem of Internet exchange points, for example, we have experienced an increase in bandwidth demands in the overall scenario for the country. But, for example, the IX in Sao Paulo has measured traffic peaks over 11 terabits per second. So it was a huge increase in some sense. But after that, we had some sort of harmonization of traffic and having some sort of keeping of average weekly measurements.
There was also a shifting in terms of traffic peaks during the days, because you have less concentrated moments as the traffic is more uniformly distributed for the day. You know, more people are home and demanding more traffic from streaming content, video conferencing, and so on.
It is what we can see through the lens of our IXPs, but of course Brazil is a huge country and there are several disparities in the different regions of the country and even in the different neighborhoods of the big cities. As other colleagues have stated as well, the overall comprehension is that we have, indeed, a natural increase in traffic demand, but we can also realize that the Internet has been resilient through this (indiscernible). I think this is what we -- what I would have to say as of now, but I'm -- I'm available to answer and to chat about any other question.
Thank you, Anriette. Thank you, all.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Vinicius, for that input. It's really good to get voices from so many different parts of the world.
So, everyone, this brings us to a close of this session. Let me make sure that my camera is well positioned. And, yes.
I want to start by thanking everyone for taking the time to say contributions. I also want to highlight that these contributions are not exhaustive. We know that there are many more institutions and actors that are involved in Internet governance in one way or another. And so -- so we don't want to privilege only those that have contributed today. We really want to be a platform as the IGF for everyone involved in Internet governance to share information. And I'm very pleased. I think many of you would have seen the announcement that the IGF is getting a contribution from the British government to improve the IGF website, and we really want to use those resources to make the IGF website a stronger platform for facilitating this type of information sharing.
I think the discussion was really useful. I think it depicted the richness, the range of issues, from issues of technical governance and inclusion, and impact on small businesses, to the rights issues. I think the issues that was mentioned about affordability, about -- you know, AfriNIC mentioned people are members. AfriNIC members are asking for extension on paying their fees. I think in many parts of the world, the pandemic has currency impacts that has made it really difficult for people who have to pay for services. And many Internet services are paid for in U.S. dollars and euro. So I think we've touched on a lot of those issues.
Just to think back a little bit about the structure of the IGF, I think one of the challenges that we have this year is to retain the thematic structure and not lose that. We've selected this thematic structure of these four themes primarily because there was very positive feedback from the community to having three themes in Berlin; to not have the IGF, the global forum focus on too many things. We've added environment in response to community input. So we have four themes. And I think we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that having a cohesive, thematic structure is important.
And then we have -- I think you've made it very clear that we need to keep space for dealing with emerging issues in the IGF. Many of the contributors have touched on that. So I think the MAG can and will take that into account when planning.
And then with regard to -- to the virtual give. I think thank you for all the reflections and the ideas. We're only at the beginning of this process of planning for a virtual IGF, so having your input today is very valuable. The MAG will work with that. And I don't think we should rush into this planning. I think we need to listen. We need to learn, look at what others have done and learn from their experiences. So it will take a little bit of time to get this planning off the ground, but working with all of you, we will.
And so to just close our session, I want to remind you that later this afternoon, for those of us that are afternoon, for morning for others, there will be the live session from New York where Under-Secretary-General Fabrizio Hochschild will mention the roadmap and initiate the implementation dialogue on recommendation 5a and b which are those recommendations in the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation that deal with the architecture of digital cooperation. And the IGF is very much a part of that, and the IGF+, which we hope to be and help create, is part of that. So please join that.
And then finally, just to remind you that tomorrow we also have Open Consultation. I'm just opening up the agenda in front of me on my phone.
Tomorrow we start a little bit later. So I hope for those who had to get up very early to be with us today, it's better. Apologies to those for whom it's late. Tomorrow we start at 10:30 UTC, and we then continue, not a very long session, but we will continue until 15:30 UTC. The Open Consultation agenda tomorrow deals with Best Practice Forums, the intersessional work, dynamic coalitions, and also the national and regional IGF initiatives. And we will have with us at 14:00 UTC tomorrow the Under-Secretary-General to talk to us about the roadmap on digital cooperation.
So on that, thanks very much, everyone. I'm very happy to see the result of the poll. And sorry to see that there are people that had bad connection. I'm afraid that's part of our reality. And that is all from me.
Secretariat, do you have anything to add?
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: No, we don't have anything to add.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Well, with that, thanks very much to the interpreters, to the captioners, to the secretariat, the MAG members, and all the observers. It was really a good meeting. I was very nervous at the beginning, but I feel much more relaxed and happy now.
So thanks very much, everyone. Have a good rest of day.
>> Thank you very much, Anriette.
>> Thank you, Anriette and a big round of applause to all of you, the secretariat. Thank you.
>> Thank you.
[ Chorus of thank yous ]