IGF 2022 Day 1 Newcomers Session – RAW

>> MODERATOR: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming to our session. Can you close the door? This is the Newcomers Session. And we'll just go briefly over what the IGF is. And a little bit about the history and also the specific meeting of 2022.

Can I ask a quick question, how many of you, this is the first IGF? Okay. Fantastic. That's what I like to see that we have newcomers coming in. And infusing new blood into the system. Because that's what we want. And the Internet is for everybody and the IGF is for everybody who cares about the Internet.

So my name is Chenga. I lead the IGF secretariat. We're based in Geneva. My colleague here is ‑‑

>> Good morning, everyone, my name is Anya.

>> And she is mainly oversees the national and regional initiatives and a lot more than that, too. Thank you.

Does anybody know when the IGF started? How the IGF started? I want to see if I can make this interactive. I'll count to six. Yes, please. Mic.

>> I think it was in 2005 after the declaration.

>> Yes, exactly. If we can have the PowerPoint slide up, if possible. Technical? Yes, so the IGF is a result of the World Summit of the Information Society and World Summit for the Information Society was made in two phases. Phase 1 which was the Geneva phase when stakeholders got together to basically discuss issues about the Internet digital divide. Issues like that. People, governments. And other stakeholders. The government was gaining more and more prominence. A lot of, you know, commercial activity, social activity as well was going on on the Internet. People also were noticing that there was this digital divide that was happening.

So the summit was there to discuss the Internet, discuss the Information Society. See what could be done about the digital divide as well. Also to work out governing the Internet. Since so much activity was happening on the Internet, there was thoughts about how this global resource can be governed.

I'm tried to move ‑‑ next slide. So in the first phase they started discussing about Internet and started discussing about Internet Governance. And when you discuss things, you first of all have to have a good definition of what you're discussing. Is Internet Governance about the pipes and tubes and the numbers? The physical resources? Or is it a more broader definition of Internet Governance? All the social activities, the norms, et cetera, that happen on the Internet. With the UN, if you don't know or can't come on an agreement with something, you form a working group. In 2003, the summit in phase 1 decided to form the working group on Internet Governance which met between the two summits. The Working Group on Internet Governance was actually composed of all stakeholders. The government, Civil Society, the private sector, Internet community, and IGOs. Which was also something that was rather new for the UN because the UN is about Member States. Multilateralism. It was going into multistakeholderism. This working group on Internet Governance came up with this definition of Internet Governance which is the Internet Governance is the development and application by governments, the private sector and Civil Society in respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision‑making procedures and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet. Don't worry. These slides will also be shared so you can look at them later.

Then in the phase, 97 heads of state came together. In the Tunis agenda where we had the mandate of the IGF, the paragraph 72 called on the United Nations Secretary General to convene a forum for the discussion of public policy issues relating to the Internet using this broad definition of Internet Governance. And so the Secretary General took this mandate given to him by the stakeholders and he decided to form a secretariat in Geneva to help him with this.

Can I have the next slide? Next slide, please. Ah, thank you. To help him with this. So that's where the IGF is. That's where we're based. We're based in Geneva at the Palais Des Nations. Excuse my pronunciation in French.

The Internet is a multistakeholder effort. You could say that it started off as a research project, right. Then it went into academia. Then it went into the private sector to commercialize. So there's multiple stakeholders. And after holding some consultations it was decided there would be a Multistakeholder Advisory Group to advise on the programme of the IGF. What issues were going to be discussed at the IGF.

And the core principles of the IGF is the same as we wish for the Internet. That it is open. There's a very low barrier of entry. It's inclusive. It's transparent. For the IGF, we're noncommercial. Or community or human‑centric process that we have. And so we have the Multistakeholder Advisory Group made up currently of 40 people. There's a rotation which is roughly of one‑third each year that we have. And this year as well, there was the IGF Leadership Panel which was also inaugurated this year and appointed by the Secretary General. We've seen some of the leadership panel members around here. Vint Cerf is the Chair. The Vice‑Chair is Maria Ressa, the Nobel Peace Prize winner. We have other noted distinguished personalities like the tech Envoy and we have the Vice Minister of Japan. Et cetera. We have Hatem Dowidar from the private sector. And Lisa Fuhr from ETNO. We provide the linkage between the IGF and other fora that we have.

Now, the IGF, we ‑‑ next slide, please. This is the 17th IGF which you may have noticed in the process that it's the 17th IGF. Our first IGF was in Athens. And we do strive to go around the five regions. That's Africa, Asia‑Pacific. Eastern Europe. WEOG, that's Western Europe and Others. That also contains North America region and Australia and New Zealand. And the GRULAC region which is South America and the Caribbean region. Which was in Athens. Then we went to Brazil. Last year was in Poland. We did have one virtual IGF because of COVID.

Next slide, please. So that's 17 years of the IGF. So the IGF ‑‑ next slide. The IGF is basically a week‑long process. We have day zero, which we did have yesterday. Day zero is not formally part of the IGF. As such. But it used to be, or still is, you know, a day for people like the Giganet. Tuesday is actually the first day of the IGF. We have the main opening ceremony.

This IGF, we have over 300 sessions. We've had, last year we had about 10,000 participants. So that is divided between on‑site participants and off‑site participants. Because we do strive for it to be a hybrid kind of model.

And we also ‑‑ I don't know if you have seen if you go to our website, we do have a virtual venue built in cyberspace where you can go. You can enter. It's an exact copy of this building. But it's in cyberspace. You can go into the rooms and can view the sessions. Have you seen that? Great. Please do. I thought that was kind of cool. So, and then we also have the IGF Village as well, which is exhibition booths for people to showcase their Internet Governance initiatives, et cetera.

Okay. Good. Nope. Oh, there. So this is where I am. We have the annual IGF programme. We have the intersessional work. The IGF is not just about this meeting. We have a lot of intersessional work which I'm go to touch on on the next slide. We have capacity development which Anya oversees as well. Capacity Development Programme. We have outreach and engagement with other institutions such as ISOC, ICANN and anybody else who deals with the Internet. So, and we do like to forge these connections. Also with our sister organisations. Such as the ITU, UNESCO, et cetera, that we also do engage with.

For our ‑‑ okay. For our intersessional work ‑‑ let's see. For our intersessional work, this is an example. We have Best Practice Forums. Where we try and collect good practices for people to follow. So if people are starting out, they can download these Best Practices and see what has worked in other situations. May not necessarily work in their situation. But they know what has worked for others. They may find others in similar situations. And they can follow those.

So this year, we have Best Practice Forum in cybersecurity. That also focuses on cyber norms. Cybersecurity norms. And we have a Best Practice Forum on gender and digital rights.

We also have a very new thing that we call Policy Networks. I think this is the third year we have Policy Networks. Second year we have Policy Networks. And we have Policy Networks on Internet fragmentation, which is I think very contemporary issue which a lot of people are concerned about. So we discuss Internet fragmentation, Internet blocking. We try and discuss it in a multistakeholder mode, which is also very, very important that we are not trying to be antagonistic as such. We want to discuss the issue. Because people who do carry out this blocking, et cetera, they carry it out for a reason. So if we discuss it among Civil Society, people who are affected by it, the government, the police, the Internet community, et cetera, they can come to solutions that doesn't include blocking. Blocking doesn't just block that site. You know, it disrupts traffic of the Internet, et cetera. And there are solutions that can work and achieve some security aim, if that is the aim. That doesn't necessarily mean that you have to block, you know, IP addresses, et cetera. I mean, we had this similar thing when we were discussing child pornography and counterfeiting on the Internet, et cetera. Because one IP address that may be hosting a website that is breaking the law may host several other websites that are legitimate websites, et cetera.

The way the Internet works with packet switching will also slow down and create bottlenecks if you block IP ranges, et cetera.

And we also have Dynamic Coalitions. Dynamic Coalitions are where three or more stakeholders get together and to discuss issues. At the moment, we have 24 Dynamic Coalitions. And these range from Dynamic Coalitions on accessibility, climate change, Internet Bill of Rights, schools, et cetera. Connectivity. Where we discuss these issues and see whether there's some issues and also good practices or best practices and how we can actually increase the benefits for the good of all. And if it's something that, for instance, child rights, how do you protect children on the Internet, et cetera. People do not have to start from zero. They can get these resources and have a good starting point.

I think I talked too much for now and will give it to my colleague to carry on. And get into more depth.

>> A lot has been said. Especially for you who are the first‑time participants at this forum. Also for the first time getting familiar with the whole process which has as you can see complex history. Maybe let's see if there are any questions on this first part. Before we focus on what this week is all about.

If there are no questions, I will ‑‑

>> Wait, wait, there must be a question. You can't have understood everything I said and must have some question on core principles on IGF. Why don't we make agreements? What is the benefit of soft power? Why do we think discussing these issues are good? Ask a question. Yes, thank you.

>> Hi, good morning. I'd like to know the challenges you faced first time to have IGF.

>> Well, that's very good. Because for the challenges, the active secretariat is UN. IGF is not UN, as such. We're multistakeholder. The IGF basically ‑‑ IGF Secretariat basically provides the support and the framework and the institutional memory and the coordination for the IGF. And in Athens, one of the major issues that we faced is that for almost the first time in the same room, we had government. We had the private sector. We had Civil Society. And we have IGOs. So governments are very formal, very formalistic. They know when to talk. They have this order in which they do things. Civil Society is more activist oriented. They know about protesting, et cetera.

And at the IGF, we say that everybody is equal. You should allow people to speak. And at the first IGF when somebody was speaking that somebody and another group did not like what they were saying, you would have cat calls, for instance, from the crowd. And boos, et cetera. That is not really conducive to a debate or an exchange of views. So there had to be learning of all sides. The governments had to loosen up a little bit. Civil Society had to also meet them part of the way as well. So that was actually quite interesting.

>> One more question. I'm Executive Director of an Organisation for Sustainable Development of Africa. It's really an interesting forum. Since 2006.

I have an idea that how really this Internet Governance Forum is working with large international organisations like the Internet Society and the International Telecommunications Cooperation. And to extend your initiatives to others in the community. And how are you engaging multisector stakeholders and partners to promote your ideas? Thank you very much.

>> Thank you for the question. First of all, they're not our ideas. They are the ideas of the community. We are not imposing any of our ideas as such. We are basically a platform where multistakeholders can come together. What we usually say is we're breaking down those silos. Our role at the secretariat, yes, for part of your question is correct. We do do outreach. Try to bring people in. Especially people who are not normally involved in the conversation. Not just under‑represented groups or marginalized communities, which we do pay particular attention to. We fund them to come it the IGF. And we actually go there tell them about the IGF. But also companies, private sector. Yesterday, you saw there was people from the Vatican, for instance, you know, coming in. We do outreach. We had people from Walmart a few years ago coming in. You don't really associate Walmart and Internet Governance. So we do endeavor to reach out to those groups as part of our outreach.

Part of our outputs as well, we try to distribute the outputs of the IGF widely. That's also the job of the new Leadership Panel to reach those larger organisations like OECD. Like the G7, et cetera. So it's broadly not just going in one direction. Thank you.

>> Thank you so much. I think it's a big opportunity to host such a big event. So I know that the last year event was in Poland. Now in Ethiopia. The coming one is in Japan. To know whether you have really the kind of criteria to choose the hosting country. It's really a good opportunity for the country to have such an expert. You know, diversified expert all over the world. So we have really kind of a selecting mechanism to just provide a chance and opportunity to the host country. Thank you so much.

>> Thank you. The IGF is a Global Forum. We do endeavor to at least visit one amongst the five regions that were named earlier. So if you can't make it to Ethiopia, for instance, because you're in the Pacific, you know, Pacific Island or in the far east. That's why we're going to Japan next year to make it easier for those people to come and participate in the IGF. So we try and go where we haven't been before. Where there's also interest and enthusiasm about the IGF and to draw in those people who have not connected with the IGF. So that's how we try to rotate amongst the regions and go to those places.

How they are chosen is a government makes an offer to host the IGF. And sometimes, two governments make an offer at the same time. And we have to go there to evaluate both offers to see, first of all, the region it is. Do they have enough facilities? Can people get there easily? Et cetera. So we use all those. Do they have facilities for People with Disabilities? All those things go into it. Also the commitment of the local community. Are the local community interested? They don't have to be experts but just have to show interest.

I'll repeat it. He wanted to know whether or not the topics of the IGF change from year to year. So the answer is that the way we set our topics is that we do do an open quorum for issues. And people submit issues which they want to discuss. Internet fragmentation, for instance, was a new one. We had lots of interest on that. So once we collate all the topics coming in, we give that to the MAG and say, okay, we had 500 contributions. This percentage said they were interested in that. That percentage say they were interested in that. We also do regional breakdowns. Because if we go to a region, we'd also want to make sure that we choose topics that are of interest in that region as well but also globally. There must be a balance. The Multistakeholder Advisory Group is actually the ones that chooses the topics that we would follow. It's based on input from the community.

>> Thank you. I would like to congratulate you for successfully organizing this event. And thank you for choosing Ethiopia. I'm an Ethiopian. Just in person.

I'd like to know, someone asked you about the challenges. The challenges mostly I think when I read the IGF articles are political sometimes, I think, between the multistakeholder and multilateral stance. How do you tackle this challenge when you're choosing even the topics and topics of discussions? And even areas where you organize the countries. Because there's this global issue. I'm listening. Some people say we're policy takers. Technology takers. Some people were saying it even yesterday. How do you compromise such things? Thank you.

>> In that they don't contribute, they just take?

>> Someone said from the south yesterday.

>> Not true.

>> Sorry, they were even saying about digital colonization stuff. You understand?

>> I'm not too sure about the conversation. But I think that wisdom comes from everywhere. I know Africa has budding industries especially in the finance sector. Microfinance sector. Even in AI. It was very interesting. So I don't think you can characterize some group, whichever it is, as just takers. I mean, it's a two‑way street. That's if I'm getting you correctly. And that can be seen in the contributions of the IGF.

And as I said, you know, we encourage everybody to contribute. Even, you know, if you are 80. You can have some insight that other people don't have. If you're 12 years old, you can still have some insight and look at things differently that other people don't have. And it doesn't really matter because you get insights from people with no experience at all and insights from people with loads of experience. Because sometimes people with loads of experience are set in their ways. And in the way they look at the world. And other people who don't have that experience can look at it at different angles. You know that things aren't static. They always shift.

I don't know if you have any ‑‑

>> I think this response, certainly it's a good question. As Chenga said, there's always a shift. Every year when we call for inputs you can easily see how policy priorities change on a global scale. One of the probably best examples to illustrate that is the recent COVID‑19 pandemic. During the COVID‑19 pandemic when we called for inputs, there was a really radical shift in terms of the priorities for the global community on Internet Governance topics.

Before the pandemic, for example, what was dominating the global discourse were subjects related to safety, cybersecurity. Suddenly, we saw a change. Access, affordability. The need for capacity development. Delivery of services for health, for education, so on. During the pandemic. So hopefully that is a (?) response.

If you don't mind, I want to continue discussing what this week is about because we have less than around ten minutes until we're finished. There was one question I think here. Do you want to ask your question before I start? Okay. And then we can go.

>> Thank you. My name is Anwar. I came from some 100 kilometers away from the capital.

Yesterday, we were discussing different topics. Actually, I was in this room. But my very question goes to the Internet Governance Forum. The term, governance. How do we govern the Internet? We're making an e‑society. We're connecting people.

If we only govern that, can't we hold people behind? Or the faster societies, the developed societies, have these all facilities, these all infrastructures, and then they grow faster. And the poor go back to the poorest environments. That's how I understand.

Given that, the term is a little bit, I can understand that, if you make. To make the language clearer, I'm sure a little bit, second language matters sometimes. Developed nations have all the facilities, all the infrastructures, and all the Internet power there. Under‑developed and developing nations do not have that. So are you really here to govern that or to bridge the gaps? Or to monitor the things? Or what my friend says. Is that something as an organisation in digitalizing the world? Thank you.

>> Thank you for your question. And I would say that you actually responded to your question in terms of why we need the governance. You are right. You are stating some of the facts that correspond to our reality. Huge gap when it comes about digital divide between developed and developing countries. Huge economical gap, which is depend also on the Internet and digital economy to an extent between developed and developing countries. Providing services from the developed world to the developing countries. While in return, it's very questionable what you get back from. I think that's why the governance is needed.

Also, let's also think about any social activity. It's not given that any human interactions are related to respect for human rights. There needs to be a framework for it. Just in a regular life. And the Internet should not be an exception to it. The question is how do we want to govern it? And what do we want to achieve in terms of the principles? In terms of the Internet that can serve us all. That's the purpose of the IGF. Really to discuss that, to discuss within a framework of the highest values that you can find to ensure that the governance in a multistakeholder manner treats everyone equally. And finally bridge the digital divide that you very well illustrated in your response.

>> Also just in my time at the IGF, at the start, basically, all traffic went to Europe. I mean, I'm talking about the African continent. Went to Europe and then came back. I'm from Zimbabwe. When I wanted to send ‑‑ when I was in school and I wanted to send an email to my friend next door, I sent the email. It went to the UK. Wherever the access point was. Then went back to the next door. Right? Now that has changed. One of the outcomes, we had a review. One of the outcomes of the IGF, which was stated by the community was that it helped set up the East African Exchange Point. And that kept traffic local. And also really dramatically decreased the cost of Internet connections, et cetera.

So as far as the IGF is concerned, I think that it has helped, in fact, lower down the cost of access. It has helped with, if you want to call them, these de‑colonization issues as such. And it has also helped promote the Internet locally through capacity‑building activities, et cetera. And through what my colleague here was saying through norms and principles as well. Those norms and principles.

And, again, I mean, this is, of course, my opinion. This is the IGF and we encourage different opinions. That it is, as far as I see, it is a two‑way street. If you look at the panelists, if you look at the discussions, you don't just see one region being represented in the panel. It's multiple. That's also something that we've also pushed for.

So it's not perfect by any means. But we're not static going there. We are actually shifting to a more freer, open, fairer, Internet. As far as my point of view is concerned.

>> This is my first time at IGF. And I attended yesterday's session. Amazing sessions that I attended. Just wanted to make a comment here that, you know, what I saw was that there was very low representation of the Asian region. Especially in terms of the presenters and the discussions that were going on with regards ‑‑ of course, if it is in Africa, it has to be focusing on Africa. The Asian perspective has to be in there as well. That is also, we make up a bigger part of the Global South. Then all the economies over there are emerging economies as far as Internet and telecommunication is concerned.

So my comment is that I believe Asian perspective should have been, you know, more presentable in all the sessions that were there. Especially the gender session. I saw there was hardly any presentation from Asian economy. Thank you.

>> Yes, it's true. In regard to each region, there is a skewing of representation from that region. And that is also one of the reasons why we try and move region to region.

And as part of that effort, again, we do require that with each workshop, you have at least three regions represented since this is a Global Forum.

And we do communicate a lot with the Asia‑Pacific regional IGF as such. We do have representation and do try for the High Level Panel, for instance, you saw one of the presenters was actually from Asia, right? So, yes, not perfect. But, yeah.

>> If there are no more questions, I'll take the next couple minutes. We only have I think five minutes left. To speak a little bit about what the next four days including this one will be about. And how you can benefit the most. I'm going to ask our colleagues, technicians, to share the slide number 8.

To respond to some of yes questions in terms of how do we facilitate stakeholder engagement, or better yet to put it in simple terms, how do we connect with people and organisations from different parts of the world? It's certainly one of the challenges of the IGF. We're very fortunate the participation at the IGF looking back historically is growing. On average, around 170 countries are represented at the IGF Annual Meeting, annually speaking. That's certainly a good number. We're hoping to also track the rest of the countries to ensure we have a good country representation at the IGF.

Stakeholder wise, the IGF balances very well in terms of the participation coming from the Civil Society which is probably the largest stakeholder group because it also includes academia, research, and NGO sector. Then the governments, IGO, international organisations, private sector and technical communities.

Speaking across regions, just to respond to the latest point, I think this slide probably best illustrates the presence of the IGF as a process in different parts of the world. These are our colleagues spanning the IGFs around the world through the national, subregional, regional, IGFs. For example, our host country for this year's IGF established a national Ethiopian IGF. I hope some of you were part of it. We're also on a continent that has a good regional IGF process and a couple of subregional IGFs that are present here including very good organizational processes for engagement of young people.

In terms of the participation from, for example, Asia and the Pacific region, which by surface and also population, is the biggest region of all, we are very grateful to the Asia‑Pacific regional IGF covering the vast region. Also a number of subregional IGFs and national IGFs that you can see. 155 autonomous, independent, recognized by the IGF secretariat and listed on its website. Most are present here at this meeting. In fact, some of the colleagues sitting in this room are the colleagues that I work with on a daily basis. Such as colleagues from Afghanistan IGF, West Africa, African IGF, Mozambique IGF, and so on.

The presence of the NRIs here is displayed or illustrated through a couple of collaborative sessions you can see on the IGF session. The main session of the NRIs which will be hosted on Friday.

If you go to the next slide because we have just a very few minutes. I want to just draw your attention to a couple of maybe important aspects of this year's IGF meeting for which you could benefit a lot.

Can I ask to move to the next slide, please? I'm not sure ‑‑ it works. Thank you. So the IGF this year, if you look at the agenda, the programme that's available on the IGF website, can be overwhelming. It contains over 300 sessions including some of the sessions that were hosted yesterday during what we call the day zero.

Your interest certainly at the sessions is the High Level Leaders track. It's interesting to hear what those who hold positions of power in different stakeholder groups think on some of the most are the highest priorities for the global community.

And I believe we will hear two of those sessions today.

In addition to that, you will notice probably among the participants of this year's IGF, and I think we have close to 4,000 participants who are registered. So we'll see who will eventually show up at the venue. Among those participants, quite a solid number come from national and regional parliaments. And that's because of the IGF's specific development activity for engagement of legislators as stakeholders who make concrete decisions. The whole vision for this is to ensure that before decisions are made, they are informed and discussed in a multistakeholder manner.

So parliamentary roundtable will be open to all. I strongly encourage you to participate and to speak up there as well.

The youth track concluded yesterday. Some of you attended the Global Youth Summit which was organized in cooperation between the secretariat and a huge number of NRIs, Youth IGFs which are involved. Our commitment remains to engage with the young people. Because I think it's a promise for sustainability of the Internet Governance Forum processes speaking long term. Certainly for next year in preparing for the IGF in Japan, we will continue with these activities and try to expand to reach those that are still the missing voices in our processes.

I hope that you already visited what we call the IGF Village area, which is very close to the accreditation area where you picked up your badges. That's an comment way to co‑mingle to see what others are doing and to present your work and hopefully form some partnerships in cooperation through informal conversations. All the booths that are present there physically also have their counterparts online. I think the online system allows you to schedule bilateral meetings or communicate your questions to those booth organizers to speak up.

We spoke a little bit about the topic for this year's IGF. Resilient Internet for shared sustainable and common future is the overarching theme for this year's IGF. Teams are nested under this overarching theme. Whatever your interest is, I think you will find it through this very complex agenda. From connectivity to Internet fragmentation, data governance, safety online, to advance the technologies including the AI.

The schedule is color coded. The colors correspond to these colors that you can see on this slide. That should hopefully help you to follow your interest.

Finally, this is what was mentioned at the beginning. Where we are physically, unfortunately, not everyone are fortunate as us to be here. We try to create a 3‑D version of the venue so those participating online can also have the feeling of where we are here physically. And also connect to us. So we do encourage you to visit the link that you see on this slide and explore further this venue.

Finally, it's very, very complex to participate in all these complex discussions throughout the day. The programme goes from usually 9:15 until 6:00 p.m. with some small breaks in between. So do not forget to relax in the evening. There are plenty of social events at this year's IGF. One coming just this evening. And I think the highlight of this evening's dinner, which will include the dinner hosted by the host government, will also be the IGF delegates, participants at the IGF. In addition, skills to discuss Internet Governance, have skills to play instruments or sing. We'll hear from them this evening. I hope to see many of you at Friendship Park later I think 6:00 p.m. and on.

The rest you can see on these slides. Tomorrow, we have some events. Some on Thursday. Try also to schedule, meet new people, schedule your own informal meetings.

Because we are out of time, I certainly would like to see if there are any questions. [email protected] is our email address. Feel free to contact us. We do have a question here.

>> (Off-microphone)

>> Thank you very much. Just because you didn't have a microphone, I'll repeat. There's a suggestion that we introduce a mentorship programme for those participating the first time so that more experienced IGF participants can provide advice and how to navigate the process. That's a very good proposal. Thank you very much. I take note of it and will bring it to the attention of my management. Hopefully maybe for Japan, next year we can have a plan on that. Thank you.

Any other questions before we conclude? I don't see any questions. Thank you very much for being here. I hope we'll have an opportunity to meet also better informally on the halls of the IGF. Enjoy the 17th annual IGF. Let us know, please, how you feel about it because your feedback is extremely important to us.

We do have one intervention here.

>> President of Internet Society. We have organized so many events online and physical events for schoolchildren and youth. Next, I want to mention IGF Youth Forum and Kids Forum. I think this conversation is very valuable for me. Thank you so much.

>> Thank you very much for that initiative. Just for your information, the forum that the national IGFs take can also be what you mention now. There are kid IGF, capacity development for children, Youth IGFs. IGFs for women and so on. Those are different forums of capacity development and NRIs. I'd be happy to speak to you. There's a national IGF in Sri Lanka that's been very operational for years. Unfortunately, Sri Lanka as a community and country went through a very difficult period. I think that's been reflected also in the national IGF. The spirit is there. I mean, I'm in communication with my dear colleague that runs the IGF. I'd be happy that we connect and discuss these ideas. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you for being here. And hope to see you around. Thank you.