IGF 2023 – Day 0 – Global Youth Summit: Safe Digital Future – RAW

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen.  Let's start with the session.  It's called the youth session.  It should be intergenerational dialogue.  They say it nicely, between experienced leaders and the brightest young minds.  And I will ask my co‑moderator really to explain a little bit more about the concept of the session before I ask the Under‑Secretary‑General, Mr. Li, and co‑chair of the Leadership Panel, Mr. Vint Cerf, to make formal opening remarks.

But over to you, Lily, as my co‑moderator.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you. 

Hi, everyone.  Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where in the world you are joining us from.  And this is to our online audience.  We know you are joining us and we are excited you are online and joining us. 

And to you in the room, can I hear a cheer for everyone, a clap, a shout?  Can we say go youth!

All right.  So, we know on this panel, we see what we call an intergenerational mix of what we call the seasoned leaders and the young, bright minds.  So, I want to share with you what it is we are looking to do in this session today.

For the global Youth Summit, we aim to bring together some of the brightest young minds and seasoned leaders of today from around the world.  Fostering meaningful dialogue and collaboration between generations.  So, we are young and we have people who are also young at heart.

Intergenerational open exchange of ideas, experiences and expertise, this summit seeks to cause and underscore a safer landscape, underscore the crucial elements of policies laying the foundation for secure and responsible digital future.

And at this summit today, I would embark on an exciting journey of digital innovation and collective action to create a world with youth and senior architects for a safer and better tomorrow.

You are welcome, everyone.  And over to my co‑moderator.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, Lily.  And with that, I invite the Under‑Secretary‑General of the United Nations to give his address.  Please, Mr. Li.

>> JINHUA LI: Thank you, Moderator. 

Good afternoon, young minds from around the world.  I am very, very delighted to greet you, to meet you here in Kyoto on the 2023 IGF Forum.  This IGF Forum is a result of the yearlong global collaboration between the Youth IGFs from around the world.

It has evolved organically from the dialogues they held at the different regional IGFs, expanded continents from Finland to the Colombia, Australia, Nigeria and now Kyoto, Japan.

The issue you discuss, you address, are crucial in today's world, such as the mental well‑being of the young people in the digital era.  Online human rights, cybersecurity capacity building and the inference of the AI or artificial intelligence.

The scope of this collective effort has underscored the commitment of the young people or the brightest of the young minds to creating a safer digital world, fostering dialogue and enhancing digital literacy and security for everyone.

The digital age as we all know, as we all witness as ushered in tremendous opportunities and the conveniences from the instant of the communications to the access to the vast and knowledgeable resources.

But it has also brought about the numerous challenges.  We can name it, such as cybersecurity, cyber bullying, online harassment, privacy breaches and the spread of misinformation and disinformation.  About one‑third of the global population upon the people remain unconnected.  Let us this year is phenomenon during our life with the majority from among the least developed countries and in African region.

Absolutely, more deliberated and sustained efforts are needed to achieve the universal and meaningful connectivity by 2030.  As we grapple with these issues, it has become evident that young people, the brightest of young minds must play a pivotal role in shaping the future solutions.

The reason for this, is twofold.  First, you, the brightest of young minds, are most qualified among us to address these issues.  You have grown up with digital technology as an integral part of your lives.

Second, because you are not just a mere users of the digital technologies, you are also creators and innovators.  You also know its strength, its weaknesses and its potential.

But young people, the brightest of the young minds are not only on this journey alone to best deliver your contributions, your engagement with other stakeholders is the key.

A healthy intergenerational exchange of ideas can foster mutual understanding and lead to more effective strategies for the digital safety.

Today, I am so delighted to witness the realization of this vision.  Sitting around here are not only the youth from the diverse backgrounds, but also the esteemed senior experts, including diplomats, legislators and the cyber leaders.  This presents a valuable opportunity for all of us to learn from the conference of experiences and innovations.

So, that I hope that today's session will inspire commitments around the world to create environment where the youth feel their voices are heard, their contributions acknowledged.  Should be encouraged to take the lead in initiatives aimed at promoting digital literacy, cybersecurity and responsible online behavior.

I thank you so much.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you so much.  We just heard that advocating for an open, safe and secure internet and just the recommendations we bring to bear in our conversations.  We are not alone.  He just shared how there is a need for us to consider other people who are stakeholders in the conversation and also to work side by side to be able to realize our aims.

So, continuing in the same light, I want to hear an address from Mr. Vint Cerf who is a father of the internet and also part of the IGF Leadership Panel and he is not new to many of us.  He is one of the people who is, actually, young at heart.  The floor is yours.

>> VINT CERF: Thank you for inviting me.  I was young once.  You have had an opportunity to do what I had the opportunity to do in a new iteration.  I just turned 80 years old this year.  But I tell everybody I'm 50 years old in hexadecimal, and that's my technique for staying young.

First of all, one of the things you should appreciate is the fundamental key to the internet is connectivity.  That's what it was designed to do, connect things together all around the world.  Everything should be able to communicate with everything else.

You don't have to communicate.  It's like a phone call.  You don't have to answer the phone.  You can hang up the phone.  The computers don't have to talk to each other.  But we want the technology to allow them to do that.

Now, what are the consequences of having achieved that objective?  By the way, this is the 50^th anniversary of the design of the internet, which began in 1973.

And so I have lived through every single one of those 50 years.

One of the unintended consequences of this connectivity is that we wanted to reduce the barrier for access to the sharing of and discovery of information.  That's, basically, what we wanted to accomplish.  And we did that.

We haven't done it for everyone in the world, and part of your job is to help us get there, to the additional people who are not yet online.

But we have also discovered that just as there are harms in the physical world, there are harms in the online world.  In the physical world, the social contract that we often believe we have accepted and adopted says that your freedom is open until you get in the way of someone else's freedom.

So, for example, my freedom stops right here, just about, you know, two millimeters from his nose.  I am not allowed to punch him in the nose.  There might be times when I would want to do that.  But, you know, he's freedom is to be protected from that.  And it's important for you to appreciate this, that the freedoms in the online environment need to be protected.  And at the moment they are at risk.

We may have more freedom than we should have.  We need to find ways of continuing to gather value from this online connectivity while protecting people from its potential harms.

This is hard.  Now, that's why it's important that you are young, because you are too young to know that you can't do that, for some value of that.  And believe me, when we first started the internet, we didn't know whether it was going to work either.  And there were many mountains to climb, many challenges to overcome.  And now there are more.  And you are now part of that story.

The thing that I look to you to do, as you talk about the internet and the applications that now ride on top of it, thanks to the Worldwide Web and Tim Berners‑Lee and others, is to figure out how we maintain the human rights that we want to retain, both online and offline, while at the same time protecting people from potential harms in the online environment.

I don't have to tell you that part of the solution involves using this thing up here called your brain.  And applying what's called critical thinking to what you see and hear.  This takes work.  This is not free.  All of the advantages and possibilities of the internet and online environment are not free.  You have to pay and price and that's to use your head.

So, please, as you are thinking about how to revise this social contract, to work in this global online environment, be aware that people have to learn how to think critically about what they see and hear.

We have to give them some clues.  We might have to help them discover where information comes from.  There's a term for that.  It's called provenance.  There's transparency.  Whose information is this?  Why did they put this information online?  Is there something they are trying to get me to do that I shouldn't do or don't want to do?

We need to help people answer those questions.  And you are the right team to do that.

So, I will stop there, Mr. Chairman, Madam Chairman.  And excuse myself.  Because I have another meeting I have to go to.  But I am so glad that you are here, those of you physically here in Kyoto, and those of you who are online.  We need your energy and thinking and creativity to make this environment what we all hoped for 50 years ago.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: In the name of low participants, I would like to thank you, Vint, for your inspirational remarks.  You are free to go.  Thank you. 

With that, may me invite all the other speakers on this session to join us up on the stage?  There may not be enough chairs up here yet.  That doesn't matter.  Lily and I can stand and walk around.  But there's enough chairs for ‑‑ both chairs are coming.  Okay.  Excellent.  Excellent.

In the interest of time, you may sit wherever you like.

>> Thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: I think we do away with the introduction, a round of the names.  We introduce you each time when we address the issue.  Just follow the notes the Secretariat prepared.

So, setting up the stage with current and next generation of experts and leaders cooperating for a safer digital future.  We have first to address the question, how can we effectively develop and enforce policies to safeguard the online privacy and safety of youth, while promoting digital engagement and innovation?  We have first Mr. Peter Marien, from the European Commission.  Please, Peter.

>> PETER MARIEN: Good afternoon, everybody or indaud morning or evening online.  Happy to be here.  Thank you very much for this opportunity.  I will try to get straight to the point.

On the question of enforcing policies to safeguard online privacy and safety while promoting the digital engagement.  So, first of all, I'd like to say that at the European Union, the way that we are working on digital transformation is what we call a human centric approach.  Human centric approach, meaning we put the individual at the middle of all our policies, not the state, not the companies.

And, of course, when we look at individuals, that includes, then the youth.  And in that respect, there is quite some things that we do to focus on that part of our society.

So, recently, the EU has adopted a joint declaration on digital rights and principles, and it's important to state that this declaration, actually, has special attention to children and young people who should feel safe and be empowered.

So, I invite you all to have a look at that declaration.  There's even, for the very young amongst maybe not here, but elsewhere, there's even a child friendly version of that declaration.

Now, what does this mean in practice?  So, the EU is currently working on the adoption of one of our legal instruments, it's a regulation and it's called the Digital Services Act.  And the Digital Services Act and I think you will hear probably quite a lot of it in the next month, it, for example, bans targeted advertising to minors based on personal data profiling.

So, this is just to say that we go from these high‑level principles to real action at the lowest level.  And this is possible and it's happening.

Now, apart from protecting through legal instruments, of course, there is the importance of working on skills and competencies.  And the previous speakers already mentioned this.  I'd like to also underline the importance of critical thinking, which is a long‑term, it's a process, educational process, but apart from that, there are also tools available which can support countries and states in their digital, let's say, intereducational systems.

For example, the EU has created a digital competence framework, it's a framework to think about the digital competencies and educational system and this system is currently being adopted by a lot of our partners worldwide.

Apart from that, we are also working with our partners worldwide on their digital educational systems.  For example, in Africa we have a 100 million euro teacher training programme ongoing.  And we are also working just to name a few in Nigeria, in Uganda, Mozambique, Jamaica on all types of approaches to promote these digital skills.

And don't want to take too much time just to say that apart from regulatory approach, skilling and so on, there's, of course, the whole important aspect of multistakeholder involvement and ensuring that the youth is also part of this societal discussions and these regulatory approaches.

So, the EU, especially, for example, the DG where I work.  We have created a youth sounding board where youth can engage with us and, for example, at the last IGF there was an engagement between our commissioner and people sitting on this youth sounding board.

Thank you very much.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that.  And now we turn to youth perspective.  We have Jenna Fung from Asia Pacific Youth IGF.  Please, Jenna.

>> JENNA FUNG: Thank you.  Hello, everyone.  Thank you for having me and giving me this opportunity to address such an important topic on this panel with everyone today.  I will try to keep everything short and concise so we can save some time for all of us to discuss this topic at the open floor discussion that's the most exciting part.

So, to begin with, I would like to look into the nuanced interplay between policy development and enforcement in safeguarding online privacy and safety, particularly for a young generation.

In the world of online safety, crafting policy and ensuring their enforcement are two distinctive components, yet fundamentally interconnected processes.  Developing policies without effectively enforcement mechanism, it's like being in a house without walls.

On the flip side, attending to enforce policy without the right framework in places, like trying to cross over a river with a bridge that's no solid foundation.  A structure that is meant to crumble and collapse eventually.

Therefore, I think the effectiveness of policies in safeguarding online privacy and safety for youth hinge upon simultaneous migration to both well‑constructed framework and a vigilance enforcement mechanism.  Otherwise, it would just be a pointless effort that leaves our young people vulnerable to many risks exposed on the internet.

But what exactly constitute the right framework and who should take charge of defining and developing it?

In my recent collaboration with a group of amateur policy researchers in Asia Pacific, we studied different approaches to online safety policies and legislation Asia Pacific and we found that, for example, Australia adopted a more industry code approach.  Whereas in Singapore, they lean towards a more government driven policy.

So, we found different approaches in different countries.  So, the question remains, who should be determining what constitute the right framework and my straightforward answer is that it should be a collective effort that involves everyone.

Our ever evolving cyberspace, particularly at the application and contents level, it's predominantly driven by big tech.  They governor and regulate these private‑owned public spaces with policies that often designed for the interest of their business, yet there are many layers to online safety with a discourse, especially among the youth, primarily we focus on the application and content level quite a lot, which it gets pretty myopic sometimes.

It's very important not to overlook the critical technical aspect that underpin ‑‑ that under online safety.  To truly protect our young people, a discussion must be driven by global public interests that transcend national and local agendas.

In order to achieve that, we need a multistakeholder, multi disciplinary and multilevel approach to establish an international standard to help different jurisdictions establish their own framework to enforce the policy to protect their younger generation.

With that, we must engage everyone's voice, not only ours, but those who may have the knowledge and expertise to contribute to the process, but prehistorically might not be included in this space to achieve an inclusive approach, I think, collaboration among key stakeholders is paramount.

And as we democratize the process to ensure a diverse and inclusive representation of voices, empowering our younger generation with knowledge to protect ourselves becomes very ‑‑ it's a key to afford success.  Likewise, educating the parent and educator on how to safeguard their own children is equally vital.

As a young professional that work at a top‑level domain registry, who advocate for internationalized domain names and universal sections, I would like us to also acknowledge how powerful language can be as a tool for inclusivity, while English is often seen as a universal language, many of us in this room and online today don't speak English as a first language, myself included as a Cantonese speaker.  So, therefore, why is our internet so monolingual still today, especially at a technical level?

This may have something to do with the legacy of the internet and I don't have the full comprehensive knowledge about that, but as someone that advocates for a more inclusive and diverse multicultural internet, I think that should be something we eventually explore as well.

Lastly, let's remember that online safety isn't just about security, but also a preservation of privacy and digital freedom.  Striking this balance is a challenge, but it's one that we must address collectively.  Thank you very much.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you so much.

So, we have a conversation moving on and we have heard from the perspectives of both Mr. Peter and Ms. Jenna, how to approach this enhancing privacy for all in a human centric approach.  And also doing it with key stakeholders present.

We want to continue the conversation, and this time we want to ask how policymakers strike a balance, how can policymakers strike a balance between protecting individual privacy and ensuring cybersecurity measures are robust and effective in ever evolving digital landscape.  How can we reassure these are pretty much up to date, are protecting us as much as it can.

And for this part, we are going to have two speakers, the first is going to be Mr. Nicolas Fiumareli from the youth LACIGF.  The floor is yours.

>> NICOLAS FIUMARELI: Thank you.  My name is Nicolas Fiumareli.  Thank you, everyone.  Today I am here in place of Omod, who unfortunately has a collision with another session at the same time.  But with hopefully join for the second part.  Some of you may know mes a co‑coordinator of the youth LACIGF as a youth of the coalition on internet governance.  But beyond this role a represent a generation that has seamlessly woven its narrative with additional tapestry.  Striking this balance between protecting individual privacy and ensuring robust and effective cybersecurity measures in 2023 is paramount as Jenna said, from the discussion we heard during the workshop tour the youth track, several critical insights on strategies were highlighted to say it was emphasizing the worship that cybersecurity awareness must be across all society, all societal tiers, webinar security education, into school and curricular, we are nursing the generation that understand the nuances of online safety.  This should cover topics like regular software updates, formulation of strong passwords, the identification of the phishing attempts and also importance of consistent data backup.

So, the importance of embodying young people more actively in the cybersecurity Mertz, given that innate familiarity with digital age, can bring valuable opportunities like the mentorships, research supports, Dynamic Coalitions, research coalitions, hackathons, et cetera, further refine their cybersecurity skills.

Additionally inviting them to engage in the policy discussions directly ensures that the young generation are incorporated into this national cybersecurity policies as we say.

So, they do have role of artificial intelligence and also quantum computing, talking about these technologies that are related, was the focal point of the discussion of the youth last year.  While these technologies present ground breaking protective tools, they also open the door to vulnerabilities as we know.  Policymakers include them Workshops inside to facilitate national and international cooperation.

We have seen the prospects of cybersecurity treaty by the UN were discussing also the workshop.  And standardized practices and fostering the cybersecurity norms, but providing a structured pathway to the cybersecurity mechanisms as we have seen.

This platform is good and connect as a nexus for consistent change, best practices, for defining the global cybersecurity standards.

But the Workshop also brought to light regarding the limited stakeholder participation.  How to ensure that everyone and this is all encompassing to everyone.  So, just for concluding, the insights from the youth track worship clearly that indicate that while individual privacy remains a cornerstone, should shouldn't compromise global cybersecurity.  So, the policymakers can have delicate balance between education and embracing the youth, promoting international collaboration.  Thank you.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you so much, Nicolas.  We see that a need for the balance first for privacy and security.  I mean, I just came from a session where that was also discussed and parliamentarians were looking at it in very different aspects.

Now, because I mentioned parliamentarian, we are going to also have a parliamentarian and a representative from the parliament.  Ms. Susan Dossi, the floor is yours.

>> SUSAN DOSSI: I'm from Malawi.  I chair the Media and ICT Committee of parliament in Malawi, as well as a member of APNIC.

I understand the digital era has many benefits, but some digital technologies have enabled privacy to be violated and I believe that privacy is a fundamental right that enables us to make decisions.

As policymakers, our role is legislation representation as well as oversight.

On the ‑‑ speaking on the policymakers site, I believe that as policymakers, what we can do is to make sure that we come up with legislation that protects the individuals that we represent, and also make sure that we strengthen our oversight role, because most of the times we come up with laws, but implementation comes ‑‑ becomes a problem.

So, it is our role as members of parliament to make sure that we do our oversight role, making sure that the laws that we pass are being complied with.

So, and then I take it also as a challenge that balancing individual privacy on cybersecurity on digital world, it is manifested challenge, and that can only be achieved if we come up with legal frameworks, through ethical principles, technological advancement, as well as making sure that we do, as youths, we engage them and make sure that we engage in conversations whereby we are able to discuss and see how we should progress.

Because I believe that cybersecurity is key in this digital era.  Thank you very much.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you very much.

Now let's turn our attention to social media platforms and ask the question, should there be more effective governance of social media platforms, including algorithm‑based moderation to shield young users from cyber bullying and online harassment.

And first we have Mr. Christopher Painter, President of the global forum on cyber expertise foundation board.  You have the floor.

>> CHRISTOPHER PAINTER: Thank you and wonderful to be with all of you.  I have supported the youth and IGF moment, a movement and groups in the beginning.  And I should say I am a youth emeritus, I view.  I was youth like Vint said, I was young once like you.  And you have lots of opportunities before you.

But I recall now, back in 2012, so, a while ago, they had this big meeting about the future of the internet called the London process, in London, not surprisingly.  And they had the two forums.  They had a Youth Forum that was separate from the main forum.  And I remember at the end, the person who was speaking on behalf of the Youth Forum came and spoke to the main forum and said, I don't know why you old people keep talking about the internet.  It's where we live.

And I think that is exactly, it's only become clearer over time that that really is where many people are living their lives, their social interactions, et cetera.  When we are talking about these issues of content moderation, it really goes to the theme that we have talked about: Balancing your ability to use the technology, balancing your right to privacy, balancing your other human rights, not just privacy.  That's one of many human rights and we talked about this morning in another session, how do you make sure you achieve those basic human rights and protect things like free speech and association, while at the same time achieving security.  And this is not an easy thing to do.

So, on the one hand, should we have more content moderation, et cetera, might view is, yes.  But we have to do it in a smart way, because at the same time, too often we see, particularly in certain governments around the world, more oppressive governments say look at this, they use that as a proxy to then restrict speech, restrict content they don't like.

And we have seen this, even now in the UN, they are negotiating a cybercrime treaty.  And you see the debates in the cybercrime debates.  I was a former prosecutor, at the White House, and civil society, so I have seen all the different aspects of this.

And I say that these tensions are not new, but they are bubbling up more and more when we think about how do we do the regulatory approach, for instance, the social media.  How do we encourage best practices.  Because you don't want to lose why the internet is created it's real strength to allow that free expression of ideas, among everyone, including youth.

So, yes, we want to protect youth but we don't want to use that as a proxy by governments to have a broader agenda which again goes after content they don't like.

My organization, the global forum on cyber expertise is a worldwide platform for cyber capacity building.  We have about 60 countries, 200 total groups that are part of it, both civil society, industry and multistakeholder approach and I think that's really important.

One of the things that we have done recently is we have various working groups and cybersecurity one is on working group D on awareness and skills.  And that group has just issued a report or had a report come out that talked about the education, and this was by the University of Kent that did this.  It's preuniversity cybersecurity education report on developing cyber skills amongst children and young people, that just came out in February of last year.

And I think that helps try to set the tone for this, how do we make sure we mix these in an appropriate way.  It's not an easy topic, certainly.

The final thing I would say, and I look forward to the interaction as well, is that in this area, my experience, when I was a diplomate, when I was a prosecutor, when I was at the White House, and all these different roles, and now, is there's tremendous opportunity for the people in this room to actually make a difference.

Unlike many other areas of policy where everything is set, you have talking points, there's not much wiggle room, you know, it's been boiled down for years.  Even as a young person in these various agencies, whether be in government or in the private sector, you have much more influence than I think you do in other areas, because it's ‑‑ the policies are still developing.  The debates are still live.

So, I encourage you to be involved in all those debates and I think it makes us all stronger for it.  Certainly in my group, we try to reach out, make sure we have that diversity of opinion that includes yours.  Because these issues while they are going to determine the future for all of us and they are not easy issues.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that, Christopher.

And we now have a youth perspective from Ms. Ihita Gangavarapu from the Youth India IGF.  Please.

>> IHITA GANGAVARAPU: Thank you so much.  It's an absolute pleasure to be here to address and talk, give my perspective on something so critical and pressing at the moment.  I am Ihita Gangavarapu the coordinator for India youth IGF.

To answer your question, oh, yes, without a doubt, we need effective governance of social media platforms to ensure that there is safety and there's trust and security when vulnerable groups, especially young people, when they are navigating the online spaces.  To shield them from cyber bullying, from harassment and e Porsche to harmful content.

You know, with more and more users coming in online, there is a lot of increase in the activities that are happening online.  And the sheer volume of data itself, right?  Interventions from humans to moderate the content is quite challenging.

And if you see most platforms from my experience have a reactive moderation mechanism, wherein once the issue is reported, moderation happens, right.

So, coming from a tech background and having worked with little bit of algorithms myself, I think that proactive mechanism is what is required when it comes for flagging moderation, removal of harmful content online by social media platforms.  And this is where I think algorithm moderation will come into place.

Taking down content, of course, does sound like censorship of our free speech and rights online.  So, it's important to ensure transparency in terms of the guidelines of the social media platforms are put forward.  The principles that they are following and making sure that proactive moderation could be considered to be conditional to situations.

Formal reporting structure of the platforms for those who are being bullied and harassed and there should be a mechanism for collecting evidence and there should be a helpline which is accessible and easy to use by those who are experiencing these aspects.

And not just the platform, right?  Even at the national level, we are looking at legislation across all platforms.  For example, in India, that's where I belong, under the ID act there's a requirement to have a grievance officer.  A very important aspect here is to note the role that awareness plays both in terms of a young person who is maybe being a bully without realizing or realizing and for someone who is experiencing bullying.  In this regard it's very important to ensure sensitivity in identifying what is a healthy debate, what categorizes as bullying, what categorizes as harassment.  What personal details should not be disclosed, this at the platform level but also at an educational awareness, at a school level.

In terms of my recommendations, I am looking at awareness, looking at legislation, effective legislation.  For platforms we are looking at proactive measures, using algorithms, access control mechanisms, age appropriate content.  And all of these things, these requirements, are not ‑‑ have to be at the design level itself.  The platform level.  They have to be inherent in it.

And they have to be in built as functional requirements.

So, that's without a doubt, I would say that youth need to be protected and empowered for them to safely and meaningfully access the online space, and I think all of us sitting in the room today have a role to play in ensuring so.  Thank you so much.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you so much.

So, our speakers have shown us what a struggle is right now for people to enjoy or maximize the use of social media and also a way to protect so much so that it gets to a good point where we are not censoring and that is really important and I hear how we say that we require many things coming into play, effective policies, we require education, that's widespread and all of that.

Now we are moving from the conversation to what role do we play.  And I think Ihita hinted at it, it behooves us all to do something.  And what exactly can we do?

The question I'm going to ask now to our next speakers is, how can young people actively participate in shaping cybersecurity policies and governance frameworks and sharing their voices are ‑‑ and ensuring their voices are heard in the making press.

I'm going to introduce Veronica Piccolo with the ISOC Youth Standing Group.  Veronica.  The floor is yours.

>> VERONICA PICCOLO: Thank you Lily, thank you, everyone, and into the speakers for setting the floor for this discussion.  My name is Veronica Piccolo.  I am a youth IGF coordinator for Italy but some of you might know me as Chair of the Internet Society youth sending group.  It's a group that mainly engage young people globally, with a big presence from ‑‑ in Africa and Latin America.

And we have a solid experience in youth engagement, trying to empowering them to, you know, take the floor in policymaking discussion.

In this regard, I would quote my colleague from Benning, when I say that the lack of meaningful inclusion of youth voices in decision making, especially with regard to how existential threats are tackled, leads to what he called intergenerational disconnection.

There is a lack of understanding between generation, a conflict over priorities and how to achieve long‑term progress that benefit future generation.

This is true for how young ‑‑ for how current leaders tackle climate change, AI‑driven existential threat, and how they frame the response to cyberattack and cybercriminality.

In a world that is more and more globally connected but is, at the same time, faces the same old, how to say, geopolitical tension, it is concerning also the lack of ICT experts in times when cyber threats are weaponized against civil society.

And in many countries, there is also a lack of expertise and basic cybersecurity framework.  And the solution starts from the major investment in youth education and youth involvement and engagement.

I could share some of the best practices we have in Europe, but I am from a privileged country and I cannot turn my head the other way when I say ‑‑ when I saw some of my valuable colleague from Global South who could talk firsthand about barriers to youth participation.  They had to miss their flight and accommodation because their visa was rejected.

So, the fact is that even in 2023, being born in a given geographical area, that means chances that young people can shape their own careers into the ICT industry, and their ability to play an active part in the local global community.

Being born and raised in a certain countries of the Global South brings about substantially less possibility than those available in many other parts of the world.  But there are a lot of talented people there and their project is contained in this book.  This book will be presented on Thursday.  And it contains all the interviews from people, especially from Africa, about the work they do into the internet governance base.  You can see their interviews and some today live interviews.

Besides this, I would also like to share a concrete proposal that the youth community of the Internet Society included in the position paper on the Global Digital Compact, that we proposed to overcome barriers to youth participation.  The first is to promote higher education and facilitate cross continental exchanges in ICT degree courses, a low number of young people leave their country to study in the European Union and in the United States, but they are fortunate enough to be able to afford that.

Many others don't have that opportunity.  They don't get through the visa application.

Secondly, we need to adopt a more granular approach.  We can't keep talking in the same terms about youth participation and youth engagement when it concerns issues stemming Global North to young people and Global South to young people.  Young people from low‑income and marginalized community do not benefit from equal access to the technology and infrastructure needed to fully participate in the digital economy.

This impede their participation on ample footing and influence and their ability to influence the global agenda.

Private business should invest and support youth‑led digital activities, projects and mentorship programmes to connect young people with professionals in the business and digital skill bidding programme that target youth in marginalized area.

Lastly, it is necessary to mainstream youth issues into the development agenda by recognizing young people as one of the key stakeholders and create special consultation processes that include youth representative and organization in order to allow them to participate in decision making processes and make sure the young perspectives are taken into account and considered.

I am aware that some of these points might be, how to say, bold.  But we need to invest more in young people because that means also investing more in the future generation, the future leader and future professional in the internet governance space.  Thank you.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you so much, Veronica.  Thank you for amplifying the work of young people around the world.

And now we welcome Paula Pinha who works with NetFlix.  The floor is yours.

>> PAULA PINHA: Thank you very much, Lily.  Good afternoon, everybody.  First of all, I would like to thank the organizers for the invitation to speak on this panel, which I think has the potential of being one of the most impactful ones of this week of events.

I mean, when you think about connecting and how to influence policymaking and I'm not going to focus just on digital security or cybersecurity, just cyber policy, digital policy as a whole.  There are lots of opportunities now for engaging in influencing those discussions.  You know, there's fora like this.  I know other international organizations, the Internet Society, all of them have youth groups and I highly encourage everybody to get involved because those are being influential when governments and companies are looking at the future of policymaking in this area.

Certainly governments, when they are legislating, when they are regulating, today there's a big push for transparency in those discussions, getting involved, contributing to those discussions, participating in the dialogue is an important part of that.  And I encourage you all to get involved as well.

But I wanted to touch, having the benefit of being the last, sort of, speaker here, touch on a few of the ideas that were discussed by my fellow panelists.  We heard a lot about connectivity and how that's the foundation of the internet and how we can't dismiss it.  We heard about the freedom of expression.  We heard about the internet in which you all live, in which we all live.

And we need to be recognized that in order for all of that to happen, in order for all of that to allow you to participate in these discussions, for you all ‑‑ allow you all have to have a voice in these discussions, we need to make sure that the internet remains free and open, the way it's been until now.  And as we are, sort of, as Veronica mentioned, we are facing this conflict of priorities and we don't know which area to focus in and do we talk about this issue or that issue, connectivity, and openness of the internet is a basic issue that we all should be aware of.

Today the internet functions very much in a way that you all, we all, the users, get to pick the winners and losers and we get to decide which content we access and, of course, we need to apply critical thinking and judgment and there's a lot that can be done there in terms of digital literacy to identify the right information.  But the information is there.  And we are able to choose the products and services and the information that at the end of the day will influence discussions.

And if we start inserting artificial filters into which conversations get access and which conversations you all get access to and which products and services we all get access to, the more we start limiting the types of services that are available to us, then those that dialogue shifts completely.

So, I encourage us all to when we are engaging in policymaking and forums like this and with governments, we keep in mind that basic connectivity is the key to all of the discussions that are happening on the internet and we need to push that that remains as it's been open, free and easable accessible to all.  And then we can get into the conversation of how to make it accessible to all, which is a whole other set of issues.  But without that basic openness, I think the conversation shifts completely.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you.  And with that, we have finished our round of speakers on the panel.  And we open the discussion to the floor.

There are two microphones in the room.  I would suggest, please, just queue up behind the microphone and we can take it in turns.  There are two microphones in the room.  Stand up, stand behind the microphone and we take it in turns.

You are the first.  Okay.  You get started.  Just if you want to say something, go behind the microphone and then you take it in Terps.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you, everyone.  Hello, everyone.  My name is (?) I'm from Nepal, for the record.

Thank you so much, Veronica, for such a nice thing and all the guests.  I represent from Nepal and Asia Pacific.  So, my point is, youth, youth is youthful session, and we are all youth.  We are the biggest stakeholder of the internet today.  And still, in the regional and national level, we don't have secured space so, actually, chirp into the policy discussions, policymaking space.  Being a biggest stakeholder of the internet, we have to, actually, capacity building kind of thing from our national incentives and regional incentives so that youth can get a seat into the policy‑making, which is really and we have a lot of youth leaders that are in this Youth Summit.  And I encourage myself and all youth leaders that we have to work hard so that youth can be represented in policy‑making space and maybe we can work more diligently to make internet open, accessible and affordable.  Thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: I would suggest we shift from microphone to microphone.  Now we go to this microphone here.  And please introduce yourself.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you.  I'm (?) from Zambia.  Zambia youth IGF as well as the Internet Society Zambia chapter.

I have two questions.  One I think directed towards ‑‑ I have forgotten the name of the man, but I think he was talking about security related to the internet.

And then one, I think I would like to get a comment from Veronica and Ihita.  That the first question is around security.  We have noticed there's been an increase in AI.  To some extent it can be a threat, but also it's one of the great issues to initiate development by observation there's been a bit more curtailing the use of AI.  Let me give a case example.  Where in certain universities it's prohibited to use AI with regard to academic writing.  When in the sense it can be an effective tool to enhance learning among the youth.

Now, youth are among the big adopters of the internet, as we can all see, right?  But if we are bringing in regulation around AI that inhibits its effective usage, then how do we not get around the balance between AI usage as well as academia and any other related development to ensure that internet technology is futuristic, but also ensuring there's security?  That's number one.

The second part of it is, how do we enhance internet adoption in the Global South?  A case example is, I love the fact that the satellite technology to increase connectivity, but so far it's been observed that it's, actually, very costly and majority of people that are found in digital divide spaces cannot afford the convention of internet service providers fees.  But certain technology which is supposed to be helpful in creating a digital inclusion society is proving to be a bit costly.  How, then do we balance satellite technology with existing internet service providers infrastructure to create digital inclusion?  I rest my case.  Thanks.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you.  In the interest of time, may I suggest that the panelists at the end, we give them a round to react to the comments?

And we have counted quite a long line there.  So in the interest of time, again, can you keep your remarks as short as possible?  And, again, we shift from one microphone to the other.  So, the next speaker will be over there.  Please introduce yourself.

>> AUDIENCE: Yes, thank you very much.  My name is Emanuel Litus from Togo.  So, my question is directed to the MP.  I will not, actually, stress over the challenges that were raised.  My question is for those who are already connected, those youth who are already connected, what's the progressive legislations that those policymakers, like the MPs to Africa are putting in place to minimize the risk of the use of social media?  Because it's a main concern today for the youth who are connected, we are, actually, fighting to connect more, but what kind of progressive legislation are we putting in place to limit the risk of the use of social media on the continent?  Thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Next speaker.

>> AUDIENCE: Hello.  Thank you for the panel.  My name is Laura, I'm from Brazil.  I am a mentor at the youth Brazil for IGF.

And my question is, internet governance is one of the few fields where the youth have a seat at the table.  We have in the Internet Governance Forum, we have youth track.  We have the national programmes.  We have Internet Society programmes.  And so, we have this structure built and a little bit consolidated.

However, the process that you all described about cybersecurity, about artificial intelligence, they review kind of a process of forum shifting in internet governance where decisions are being made on other places outside of this traditional spaces.

How can we make sure that the youth has a seat at the table in the threats and institutional recognition on those other spaces?  How can we take what we have here to other institutional spaces that are more prominent right now?  Thank you all.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you so much.  We go back to this microphone and to you, Amelia.

>> AUDIENCE: My name is Amelia (?), I work for the Polish research institute.  And I have the pleasure to be youth IGF coordinator.

I wanted to ask you a question, but I believe that looking on how many questions we will have, it will be just an issue to be put in the air.  Because what we heard today in all these, really, and input by speakers, is that a lot of questions about balance.  Balance between privacy, between human rights, and between cybersecurity, between protection, protection of minors.

So, what I wanted to bring up is the particular case that there's a lot of discussion around today encryption, like we could observe different tendencies on the one hand we have got more and more legislation proposals, to protect young people, especially the minors more from, for example, sexual abuse, and on the other hand, we talk encryption enables human rights, enables privacy.  It is crucial to be kept, not to be omitted in order to detect bullying, to detect the sexual abuse of minors.

So, what I think it is an important issue, important example of this specific issue when this balance is needed between the privacy protection, freedom of speech protection, and other human rights, and at the same time, the cybersecurity in the scope of protecting the youngest ones from the others.  Thanks.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Now to you.

>> AUDIENCE: Okay.  Thank you very much.  I'm Abraham from Nigeria, from the technical development agency.

We can all notice there is a cap that is keep becoming wider and wider, which is trust between the policymakers and the youth participation, when it comes to ‑‑ because even enforcing, enforcing, enforcing, because of data privacy, security and transparency.

How do you think we can breach such a gap?  Because it keep increasing and becoming more wider.  Thank you very much.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you.  We are going to put a time limit so ensure we keep the time.  Now the floor is yours.

>> AUDIENCE: Hello, everyone.  My is Franca, and I'm from Germany.  We talked about youth participation, about social media platforms, and one thing I was always wondering, there are existing platforms in social media platforms, like Oversight Boards who give input for civil society, for example, Meta has the Oversight Board, which is about free speech.

I just checked their website.  They are really proud to have 50% women and there's not a single person under the age of 40.  So, I was wondering if it's not possible anymore to have a woman, like men only Oversight Board or panel, why is it still possible for social media platforms to have an adult only panel?  This would really be a first step, not over the government area, but really about the platforms and accompanies itself to bring in youth.

So, this is my question to everyone who is here from the company, like why are you not including us directly?  Thank you.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Right.  Now your turn.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you.  My name is Ahmad Kareem.  I'm from UNWomen, working on online gender‑based violence.  And my question is related to the internet governance and how far the youth are in the latter of the governments where it's the leadership of the internet still with private sector.  And that conversation with policymakers who, yes, they were once youth, but they have no idea of the reality of young people life at the moment.

So, there is a huge gap between policymakers and private sector.  And with the youth not included in that conversation.  And in practice, they are way far behind in being part of the decision making.

So, I wonder if, like you see an opportunity that will come, especially for, you know, how far distance the youth from the Global South and being in the conversation that is led by the major private sector companies and internet governance, which is way far from the Global South and young people.  Thank you.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you so much.

So, we will go to you to.

>> AUDIENCE: (?) North Africa IGF.  I want to talk about awareness and privacy.  I think there is main point in privacy is awareness, increasing awareness is very important things and about the privacy and online harassment.

My question, what is main project to do in this point about increasing awareness, and what is the role of the youth?

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you.  Your turn.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you.  Imanu from Brazil, and I represent (?) which is an organization that defends childs' rights.

My question is a little structural.  We are talking a lot about participation, but what about the effects of unemployment and the lack of time, money to participate?  And I would like to know if there are regulatory experiences that actually create the institutional framework so that you allow for effective participation, because although we have a lot of youth here, normally the process is very hard to participate.  You have to have internet access, you have to go through a course, which it's very hard for the reality of a lot of people to go through the steps to be able to do advocacy on this issue.

So, how do we amplify this kind of possibility of effective participation thinking about especially income, well‑being and time to participate?

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you.

Our question queues are closed now.  We will take you and that's the line, the queue and no new to be added.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you.  This is Jasmin Ko from Hong Kong, from technical community.

I, actually, have a case, a personal case to share.  So, actually, in Hong Kong there was rising number of cybercrime related to, so the thing is my home ID, my ID number was being stolen and then the criminal that used my personal information to do some kind of phone scam, and I was ‑‑ yeah, it's, actually, little bit simple to say that.

But the fact that the police force, like, they were trying to warn me about this is the things that was happening.  But in the background, to give you background, it's, actually, Hong Kong implementing something similar to China.  So when you register for phone number, you need to use your real name and also identical number.  But at the same time, the entire system did not cover that.  It's linkage and gray area that the criminals could be able to use my, each of your personal identical number or your phone number to commit crimes.

So, this is a problem.  Being vulnerable in this case.  So, oh, instead of just, you know, being my capacity on how to be more careful, we all the terms when I have agree, whenever it comes up or, like, how would you advise us to behave or whatever the system.  I feel like it's not just a single person or youth problem.  But I feel like it's almost a systematic problem.  I would love to hear about your advice on this situation.  Thank you very much.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you so much.

The floor is yours.

>> AUDIENCE: Hi, everyone.  My name is Miriam Heart.  I'm a Gen Z technologist.  Something that's really important about this issue in particular when it comes to digital governance is that it's a very technical problem, requiring a lot of technosity to be involved, and when you have a very technical problem, the technologists and the experts usually work for big tech, and a lot of auditors in governments, like the e‑parliament, actually audit people that come from the big tech companies to make these policies in place, like the EU Digital Act. 

So, my question is, how do you get good technologists to work for the government when they are not being paid the same kind of salaries that they are getting paid for from big tech?

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you.  Going down to one minute.  The floor is yours.

>> AUDIENCE: My name is Naza Karamas.  I work with the Internet Society Tanzania chapter and IGF and cofounder of the Southern Africa regional school on internet governance.

I think there is a huge problem.  I wanted to make a comment on the issue of engaging young people.

I think the issue has been engaging.  Instead of inviting.  There is a difference between engaging and inviting.  Because when you engage, it's just you engage for the purpose of.  But when you invite young people to be able to participate, they will be able to, you know, contribute their fair share of the digital future.

So, I think my advice to young people who are in the room, do not wait to be engaged.  Invite yourself on the table so you can discuss these issues that are for you now.

Because this tendency of saying young people of the future.  Young people are not the future.  They are now.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you.

>> AUDIENCE: If I may say.  Thank you.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Absolutely.  The floor is yours now.  Thank you so much.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much.  My name is James.  I am from Cameroon.  Some of our countries have exhibited a certainly level of (?).  I believe it is imperative for our legislators, you know, to establish an environment that respects the rights of young people who are aspiring to present in arenas where the future has been determined.

Now, to achieve this, I think lawmakers could consider a maximum legislation that ensures due respect for embassies and, you know, their functions.  I think the MPs could ‑‑ I think the MP could throw more light on this if anything has been done towards this perspective.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you so much.

Now, the floor is yours.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you so much.  I am Ethan from Hong Kong.  I am the deaf ambassador of one pile foundation.

So, just a very short question.  So, we have just talked about how should we put effective government ‑‑ governance to show young users on social media.

So, I want to ask how effective are the current governance and moderation practice been mitigating the cyber bullying and online harassment on social media platforms?  And that's all.  Thank you.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you so much.

Now to you.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you.  This is Viv Vick from Nepal.  While there are ample amount of youth initiatives that are going in and it's quite successful in terms of creating awareness, but I have a question.  Are we really doing enough?  With that, my question is, we need to empower community rather than empower individuals.  And one of the major challenges, I believe, is the ample amount of information for youths in awareness.

And with this, I want to emphasize including internet awareness, case studies, indicating level from schools, secondary to higher secondary and college level.  And awareness in safety that in these places quite essential because we are envisioning a safer future tomorrow.

And even local and regional youth initiatives should emphasize a part in creating those programmes.  And deliberate considerations are required for the academic sector from basic level.  Thank you.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you.  Over to you.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you.  My name is Terry, I'm also from Hong Kong.  I would like to draw a question about cyber bullying.  As we know that youth is one of the most active but also the most passive one regarding to the internet, so how can we ensure youth is empowered enough to maximize themselves and benefits to themselves, by using the internet, but at the same time, they will not be very vulnerable and overwhelming by the overload, message, mass media, like I am from Hong Kong.  Over 50% of teenagers have suffered from cyber bullying as well as they don't know how to deal with the situation.

And also 50% of people, of teenagers, they ‑‑ they as a bystander, they don't know how to respond to these cyber bullying.  How can we deal to this situation and provide a more efficient practice?  Yeah.  I would like to know more about this question.  Thank you.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you.

The floor is yours.

>> AUDIENCE: Yeah I would like to read a comment from the online participant.  He is ray from Bangladesh, also the Vice‑Chair of Bangladesh chair.

His question is to the Moderator and speaker.  There is a large number of youth entered the digital divide and out of the connectivity.  What is your plan to include connected youth in the mainstream across the globe?  That is a comment coming from the Bangladesh remote hub, youth IGF.

And then I would like to share my comment regarding to ‑‑ from the youth perspective regarding to our safety and ‑‑ our involvement in the internet governance.

First of all, I think meaningful participation and deliver engagement in this community is very important for everyone.  But on one hand, the challenges are like satellite, we have lots of challenges.  In terms of the financial of costs.

I would like to mention we also need support from every kind of governments, like Japanese government who are supporting to get visas so we will be very happy to see continued support to the (?) for ‑‑ to get the Visa to travel to the events like this.  Thank you very much.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you so much.

The floor is yours, and one minute.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you.  My name is (?) from Ghana communication technology.  And also a member of Ghana youth IGF.

My question is, is there a way pornographic acts can be banned from advertising on the Worldwide Web?  Because we have most of our kids connected on the internet.  Just so they are doing, we know they are safe.  So, that's my question.  Thank you.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you so much.

Now the floor is yours.

>> AUDIENCE: Hi, my name is Boras and I'm from Hong Kong.  My question is targeted to policymakers.  My question is, how can we ensure that new internet policies do not limit the ability of youth in accessing valuable internet resources, as some governments restrict the ability of youth in accessing certain websites, platforms or resources.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you.  Over to you.

>> AUDIENCE: Hello, everyone, my name is Naria, owes u, I'm from Ghana.  My question is on declaration of the future of the internet.  I want to know what the youth IGF stance is on the declaration because the declaration represents a political commitment by various stakeholders including the U.S. State Department and the EU commission on advancing a positive vision for the internet.  I wanted to know what the youth IGF is doing to spread awareness and to make sure the principles are inclusive of youth, marginalized groups and women and girls.  Thank you.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: And our last speaker?

>> AUDIENCE: Hi, everyone.  Sorry for the voice.  I am (?) and I am come from the Amazon region.  I am from the Amazon youth cooperation for sustainable development.

Also, I am a youth mentor for the Brazil delegation.  And I just feel that this discussion was a little far from my reality.  Not just because I come from the global, especially in the Amazon region where you are fighting for survival.  Because we are feeling with the most intensity the impacts of the pollution of the climate crises and biodiversity laws.

I was thinking, how can we about how to make this space safe for the youth if we don't have the skills and we have so much energy, how to make this space safe for the environment too.

You know, since the internet, it's for young people.  And talk about the climate crises, it's also respecting about how we can preserve the young people and how we can build space that is safe for these persons too.  Thank you.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: Thank you so much.  Over to you, Mr. Markus.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: We have a lot of food for thought and not much time left.  So, my suggestion is a very simple one.  I give each one of you one minute to react whatever you want to react to.

You start, Nicolas.

>> NICOLAS FIUMARELI: Short comment.  With the IGF 2023 empowering all people, it is clear that real empowerment need a safe digital space.  You mentioned old and the lesson from the youth track say there is a need for built‑in digital safety from the start.  It's like having braking a car.  You don't need to learn how to stop.  The brakes do for you.  Issues like online bullying show why this is crucial.  And true empowerment means the internet is safe by default.  There are a lot of research about it.  Making it open and secure for everyone.

So, this will be a thing work for governments, tech experts, users, private sector and on and on for achieving the IGF 2023 vision, right?

>> So, I have a few questions, actually.  But I will try to be very Tweeting or now it's X.

So, there was a question about inclusion of youth in the Global South and especially when not able to be connected online.  Indeed, this type of forum needs youth to be connected online.  If you don't have internet access, you cannot, actually, engage in any way.  So, that's a structural problem.

But I would advise the person below asked the question to connect with (?).  He has done a lot of good work with community network.  So maybe you can connect with him.  Can you stand up just ‑‑ so, he's a great person.

About how to bring young people in decision making.  In Europe, we ‑‑ in the European Union we have a programme which is called Shuman trainingship, where young people get the chance to spend up to five months at European parliament and see how decision making processes work.  You can also have the chance to work with the member of the European parliament.  It's another type of ‑‑ another type of activities.  But I don't think, I'm not aware of any other programmes like these in other countries.  But this is a good practice to share.

About the youth governance and the engagement of very young participants, especially generation Z, to internet governance related spaces, with a few other people, including Stacy and pilot, we have co‑founded the dynamic team coalition, which is open to young people, teenagers, aged 13 to 19 years old, and we try to ‑‑ we want to try to engage teenager from a very young age to the internet governance space.

This is, I think, the coalition was launched yesterday.  I was not there, because I was on my flight.  But in the next year we plan to do some activity and we already teenagers involved.  Pilot itself is 14 years old and she is a great example of how young people, like teenagers can be, how to say?  Engaged.  I will leave it for you.

>> I will try to keep it short.  But we have lots of questions, and I just want to reflect a little bit to a bit of everything.  Really happy to, actually, see quite a lot of folks from Hong Kong.  I am from Hong Kong as well.  And after so many years we finally back in Asia Pacific and we finally have more voices from Asia Pacific to be in this global internet governance community.  It's been a long time.  Me myself being here for five years, I think it is really good to see, you know, full of human colors in this room and thank you so much for policymakers and private sectors, as well as the team that put together this global Youth Summit, to make things happen.  Because, I mean, embracing our youthness probably don't have that diplomatic or political wisdom to be very accountable on what we speak.  But thank you for being so open to listen to our opinion.

But one big thing, as someone who works as an youth leader in this space, particularly for a programme that focused on building people's digital literacy in Asia Pacific, I think for some countries, there are ways for us to get involved into policymaking by participating in open consultation and all, but apparently not all the countries that do that and ironically from the place I come from, I don't think we can contribute to anything constructively.

So, this is a space for us to just give our 2 cents, but how is it going to change, right?  This is very questionable.

But in the international level and especially in internet governance, I think one thing very important for us to be able to be part of the policymaking process is to also have the capacity to be policy literate.  I don't know how to put it.  Because in order to contribute to legislation, policymaking process, you have to know about what is going on.  We can't just go into a room telling people that they need to listen to young people.  So, I am really glad for people of the previous generation to stay in this room to listen to us today regarding all the comments that we just made.

I think I am really, really glad that we are not shy and to make our voice heard.  And I believe this conversation does not end here, because it is just an hour of a session.

And I probably ‑‑ not everyone knows too much about the scenes in Asia Pacific probably, but we believe that young people should ‑‑

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Sorry.  I hate to rush you.

>> I will wrap up.  That's my last sentence.  Young people would like to contribute with substance and we should work hard on that in order to make our community here working.  Thank you.

>> Thank you very much.  There was a question that many youth are already connected and as legislators what are we doing to make sure that most of them are ‑‑ there's a risk on social media.  So, I think one of the issues that as the legislators do is to make sure that we, the executive, develops digital literacy programmes, especially for the youth to make sure that they are taught on how to use digital tools safely and responsibly.  So, government has to make sure that they invest much in education and awareness campaigns so that they can be able to inform youth and individuals as well as the public on the issues of online privacy and cybersecurity best practices.

What I believe is an informed public is better equipped to protect their digital identities.

I think in conclusion, to recognize the digital landscape is ever evolving.  And as policymakers we have to regularly review and update regulations to keep pace with the technological advancements and emerging threats.  Thank you very much.

>> CHRISTOPHER PAINTER: Thanks, and lots of great questions.  I wish we had a chance to address more of them in depth.  I will take a basket of them.  A number of questions revolved around how do you get youth voice heard not just in the Internet Governance Forum, but in a lot of these decision making levels.  And how do you have that multistakeholder approach?  This is a larger issue, right?  We also ‑‑ we always talk about multistakeholder involvement.

And the reality is often far different than the mantra of saying multistakeholder over and over again.  Actually having an impact makes a difference.

I have been a government stakeholder.  I have been a nongovernment stakeholder and I think we all realize it's a lot harder when you are not in the government to have the impact that you want to have.  And that's true whether you're young or older or whatever age you are, whatever sex you are.

So, it can't just be a box checking exercise saying, oh, we have consulted the youth.  We had a form here.  We consulted youth.  We are done.  We pat ourselves on the back.  We say we have done a great job.  It has to be meaningful and that's a process.

And I think it's not easy.  There are economic constraints and access constraints.  That's also true in the nonyouth area, too, for lots of folks.  So, how can we address this more meaningful and make sure that people have those access, and I think there's a couple of examples.

One, when there are open consultations in your country or ones international, it doesn't matter if you are young or old, if you are young, take advantage of those.  Make your comments.  Submit written comments if you can.  Try to be part of that conversation.  Try to group together, too.  There's a programme we have been running with a number of governments, my organization the global forum on expertise ‑‑ cyber expertise for women diplomats to get women in cyber to get them to come to UN meetings.  That's been successful.  More women have voices now.  Maybe there should be a programme like that, like was talked about in this fellowship that we should do for youth to come to these meetings.  To see where the sausage is being made, to participate in these.

I think that's really important.

So, those issues I think are really at the heart of everything else we discussed.  Just one other thing I would say is someone asked the question of how do you make sure to protect youth without limiting their access to the internet and to these tools.  That's exactly the issue here.  I think that you cannot, that the name of protecting youth, limit their access so they don't have the ability to participate in all these different forums and see it.  That's for policymakers to find the right balance, but that's where we really do, I think, need your input and help.  So, thank you for participating.

And like everyone else said, great we meet every year here.  Great you are meeting nationally but it's got to be a more sustained conversation.

>> Thank you very much.  A few comment from my side.  What we have seen recently and what we are actively supporting, so in practice and also financially, is a shift in paradigm from connectivity where people, this was the mantra of the last years or decades where everybody should be connected to meaningful connectivity, meaning that it's not sufficient that you have coverage, it also has to be affordable.  It's not sufficient that you can log onto the internet.  You also need skills to actually do something useful.

And other such indicators.  So, this called universal meaningful connectivity and there's a session on this during the IGF, one of the next days.

That also means collecting data in countries that participate, many and all UN countries around the world.  And then, of course, informing policy in these countries.  So, I think a lot of questions were about not only connectivity but other aspects of that.  And this is one way that we are trying to have this paradigm shift towards a meaningful connectivity.

The second point I wanted to make which might also be of interest is as I mentioned before, the digital serves as a new Legal Instrument Act in the EU, which really tries to be part of the answer to many of these questions.  We feel industry isn't doing enough on a voluntary or self‑regulatory basis.  There have been all of these questions about balance.  So, in this act, there is, I think one of ‑‑ I mean, the first serious approach to this around the world that we are taking now.

Maybe a few more things.  So, part of the answer to also quite a few of these questions, in our opinion, lies in education.  So, it is about education.  It is about skilling.  There's no shortcuts.  No easy answers.  As some people said, this is hard.  You have to go through this.  And we ‑‑ so, education is part of the answer. and the critical thinking.

About participation, I think some people have already responded.  Maybe last point is that, yes, we are also completely supporting at the European Union the concept of a free and open internet, because we are seeing, it's been some years now but this is not stopping, potential shifts where we might end up with a fractured global, so not a global internet anymore, but a fractured internet, where access to information, to free information itself, is really under threat amongst other things.  But thank you.

>> I'm not going to try to restate what was already said so brilliantly by my colleagues here.  So, what I would say is just to encourage you all to continue to ask these questions, you know, and you are asking the right questions.  You are identifying the right problems.  You are challenging the right ideas, and, you know, to follow what my colleague here, Peter just said is really the idea of the open internet and making sure that you have these forums, these avenues, this ability to say that in a global universe, in a global internet, because otherwise we can't fix ‑‑ these are not problems that are going to be fixed piecemeal.  It does need to be addressed at a global level and we can only do that if we are speaking on the same internet, on the same ‑‑ with the same voice.  But I was really encouraged by seeing all of the engagement and all of the questions, you all asked very hard questions and I think it's important to continue to ask them.

>> IHITA GANGAVARAPU: I completely agree the questions were something to counter upon.  Great points by all of the panelists.

A couple of things I would like to highlight upon.  There was a point around digital divide with more emerging technologies coming and there's more adoption, but let's look at it from a different lens.  Leveraging emerging technologies while bridging the digitized divide for accelerating SDGs give quality healthcare, quality education, maybe that's something we can also think about.

There was also a point around the concern, rather, on how to decrease the scab between policymakers and meaningful youth inclusion.  From my experience working with young people through youth IGF India, we have noticed that a lot of people are concerned about the lack of understanding of the subject and this gap in terms of awareness of the level at which the discussions are happening in the policy and tech forums.

So, that results in lack of confidence and that is something we are working towards through IGF fellowship programme and as well as at the other fora, which is an intergenerational dialogue that builds in confidence and comfort for them to discuss such critical issues of importance along with decisionmakers.

Now, with respect to amplifying the participation, there's also ‑‑ it's also important for young people to understand the relevance of their participation.  Why is it important?  And this is also something I think we should look into working upon.

There was a point about young people, we have seen a lot of young people in this room in the IGF internet process, Internet Society and so.  There are lots of organizations that are meaningfully engaging young people.  But something I have noticed is the multilateral bodies also, not just multistakeholder, engaging young people.  For example the international telecommunications communication has an initiative under the ITUD vertical where they are looking at participation, empowerment and engagement of young people, I am part of the generation connect and we are not just looking at young people's involvement in the ITU processes internally but implementation of the UN strategy, making sure young people are placed at an equal footing, at various forums, platforms and at the table along with key decisionmakers in the digital space.  Thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Well, thank you very much.  This is a very rich intergenerational dialogue.  Can't possibly sum it up.  But it reminded me that a good friend told me once the difference between the online and the offline world is in the offline world, it's the natives who make the laws and the immigrants have to abide by the laws.

In the online world it's the other way around.  The immigrants make the laws and the natives have to support these laws and have to abide by these laws.  But anyway, I think the message is clear, the room is clearly in favor of more youth empowerment at youth engagement.

And what I retained was the importance of basic connectivity.  Without connectivity, without an open global and interoperable internet, we cannot have these discussions.  So, that is the very basics.

And lastly, what Vint Cerf said at the beginning, the importance which is not digital, but analog.  Use your brain.  I think that was a healthy reminder.  With that, I give to my co‑moderator Lily to sum it up and close the meeting.

>> LILY EDINAM BOTSYOE: All right.  We are at the end of our session.  And one of the things that came out of this is essentially our voices matter.  And what you have heard today for promoting a safe digital future is to bring to bear the things that affect us the most as youth and we don't, like was said before, we don't want to just be engaged and it ends there.  We want to be continually invited and to follow, possibly see some changes and also implementation.  Seeing how there's a struggle to be able to balance both privacy, security and making whatever we do online also open for people to use.

And even certain information that as an open system, open space, there is that struggle that still exists.  And what we want to do is make sure that we are reminded continually on how to make sure that we create the space, making it in such a way that it's trustworthy that all of us can use and leave it behind for future generation.  Thank you for being an amazing audience and the time was, I mean, probably racing with us but we have come to the end and we want the conversation to continue.  Please meet any of our panel members to discuss if your question wasn't answered.

Before we go, we want to do a photo for all of us.  So, if you can, anyone on this stage, just run up, come stand.  Leave your seat, don't feel like you don't know somebody here.  Just come back, come to the stage.  Let's have a photo together and sum of our Youth Summit this year.  Thank you so much for participating.