Session
YouthLACIGF
- Valeria Saul - Civil Society - YouthLACIGF Organizer
- Joao Moreno Falcao - Technical Community - YouthLACIGF Organizer
- Umut Pajaro Velasquez - Technical Community - YouthLACIGF Organizer
- Laura Margolis - Technical Community - Uruguay IGF Organizer
- Pedro de Perdigao Lana - Academia - YouthLACIGF Organizer
- Benjamin Chong Castillo - Private Sector - YouthLACIGF Organizer
- Nicolas Fiumarelli - YouthLACIGF Organizer
- Roberto Zambrana - IGF Bolivia
- Umut Pajaro Velasquez - Youth LACIGF Organizer
- Virginia Alonso - Youth IGF Uruguay
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
10. Reduced Inequalities
16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
17. Partnerships for the Goals
Targets: As the main objective of our session is to incentive the cooperation and find solutions through a possible common agenda in the Latinamerican region and bring our perspectives to other regions and at the global level the SDGs 9, 10, 16, and 17 are the ones that aim more for these kinds of perspective, especially the 17 that is more about direct actions to promote strong institutions and with that achieve the rest of the goals as 9 with the aim of foster innovation, 10 with reducing inequality and 16 with promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
The session will be divided into three different parts: 1) LACIGF and Youth LACIGF results presentation, 2) National IGFs results and discussion, and 3) share local or regional projects, discussion, and conclusions. This way, the time allocated for presentations and the time allocated for questions and discussion will be clearly defined. The session moderators will be responsible for guaranteeing the time defined in the agenda and organizing the participation of speakers and attendees in order to meet the objectives of the session and foster informed regional dialogue in a hybrid environment for everyone.
This edition of the IGF LAC Space will bring together organizations, stakeholders, and researchers from the Latin America and Caribbean Internet community to present and share projects and research undertaken over the past year. The aim of the LAC NRI Space is to have a room dedicated to IGF NRI's Coordinators from Latin America and the Caribbean, to present and share their reports, and articulate cooperation as a roadmap for the future of NRIs in the region. Firstly, a report from the YouthLACIGF and LACIGF meetings will be presented, with the key findings and possibilities for the future of IGF NRIs in GRULAC, and how these have contributed to connecting all people, Safeguarding Human Rights, Data Governance, Online Safety, and Addressing new technologies including AI. Secondly, some distinguished NRI members and coordinators will be dedicated to presenting and discussing the results from their national IGF or projects develop on it and papers that have addressed the use, development, evolution, and regulation of the Internet in Latin America the Caribbean. The session will thus seek to foster informed discussion and new opportunities for regional collaboration and create a robust NRIs network in the GRULAC region that can align and cooperate in a better and easy way with the general purpose of the global IGF and NRIs from other regions.
The online and onsite moderator will lead the conversation between participants with an equal time (if the session allows it) for both and have mainly into account the order of how participants requested the floor. Participants can make questions or participation in Spanish, English, and Portuguese. But as it is an international event English as lingua franca is encouraged. We guarantee the full participation of everyone in the session, despite the location, both moderators will be granted according to petition the floor to the people that want to be part of the discussion with questions and comments related to the presentation and topic directly or indirectly.
Report
(Nicolas) There are many LAC Spaces, but this one is dedicated to NRIs - national, regional and youth initiatives in the region, instead of NGOs and other organizations, for experience sharing and cooperation, such as identifying common outputs.
(Nicolas) Youth LACIGF: It happened on day 0 of the LACIGF, and the YouthLACIGF was responsible for the session on cybersecurity in the LACIGF (with João Falcão and Wout de Narris). The outcomes will be shared during the IGF Youth Summit. Anja was part of the Youth LACIGF, explaining the role of these youth initiatives to the Internet Governance ecosystem. There was a keynote from Raquel Gatto about meaningful access, focused on digital skills. New technologies relating to more quantum computing were addressed, pointing out to problems such a cryptography in this context. The lack of an open-source database within Latin America to create safe software was a concern. The issue about digital education was a focal point of discussion. Local initiatives talked about their experiences and shares difficulties and learnings, including about the growth of youth participation in decision-making processes.
(Julia) Youth Brasil: Started in 2016, organized by CGI.br, addressed to Brazilians between 18 and 25 years. Not actually an NRI, but a program to introduce young people to Internet Governance and fund a selected cohort to be part of local NRIs and the global IGF. There is an important aspect of it, which is diversity criteria related to gender, region (although some regions still have less participation) and area of work/studies. More than 800 people went through the capacity building stage, and there are a lot of success cases with ex-fellows nowadays in leadership positions, organizing and talking in sessions of the IGF.
(Rodrigo y Virginia) Youth IGF Uruguay: Although it is a small country with small initiatives, this NRI is going on for a few years. It tries to collect new insights among society. *Recording audio failed here*. Three important outputs: (i) how to approach the discussion on digital citizenship (there is a recent government strategy on this topic, built with broad participation); (ii) how to build fundamental digital skills, especially among Youth, but there is a gap in education resources and planning; (iii) the existence of information about how the Internet functions and its governance. There are few direct spaces of direct dialogue between the Youth and public policies' formulation spaces.
(Nicolas) It was too early for Youth Nicaragua and Youth Colombia to participate in this session, considering time zone differences between Addis Ababa and their cities.
(Roberto) About the regional non-youth NRIs, there is a need to find articulation spaces between NRIs in the LAC region, besides the LACIGF. The LACIGF is a great space to find these common topics and for people engaged in IG activities in the region to interact among themselves.
(Olga) Universal and Meaningful Access: There is a lot of diversity in the region, including in geographical and economic terms (not only infrastructure, but also on access to devices, for example), generating different levels of difficulties to implement policies. It is necessary to inform people not only about the potential of the Internet, but also on its risks, to achieve a fruitful use.
(Lito) Internet fragmentation: This was an extremely hot issue in Internet Governance this year, and it is necessary to build a regional perspective on the issue. Since there is no country that wants to deeply separate their Internet from the global one, the focus was on connectivity and how we need first to prioritize connecting people to the global Internet to really be able to talk about its fragmentation.
(Roberto) There was also a session about organizing the NRIs in the region, and three questions were posed to all of them, about recent IGFs: (i) what were persistent issues in our region; (ii) changes and impacts caused by the pandemic, during and after; (iii) their opinion and participation on the digital compact.
(Andre) There are differences among countries, but connectivity, digital transformation and digital rights in public arena seems to be the main challenges in the region. The negative pandemics are known, but many digital processes were accelerated in the LAC region. There is a good alignment between the global pact that is being discussed and the regional debate, allowing for a constructive dialogue.
(Augusto) The pandemic had some intense negative effects in the youth participation in the forums. There is a need to include more topics in regional discussions, diversity-wise. Online participation made people continue with their everyday activities while participating in forums, which decreased quality engagement, and NRIs actually start competing among themselves for attention, since people are now able to actively participate in all of them. It would be important to articulate among NRIs to use this new context in their favor, building on each other outputs and discussions. Environment and ecologic impact of the Internet is a persistent issue, at least in the Youth IGF Argentina.
(Fred) Cybersecurity is a persistent issue, but public policies is the main subject that appears every year. Online education became a hot issue, especially during after the pandemic. Child and teen protection on the internet is another recurrent topic. The pandemic brought attention to the non-recreative use of the Internet, which not evident to many people, with reflect on more availability of services online.