The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen. Okay, great.
This is the newcomers session, and I would like just to introduce the Chair of the MAG, Carol Roach.
>> MAG CHAIR: Hello.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: And I'm the head of the secretariat.
So shall we stand or sit?
>> MAG CHAIR: I'm going to have to sit after a while.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Yes. So how many of you are newcomers? Who this is the first IGF? Oh, great. Fantastic.
And I suppose -- all right. Yes. Yes, good.
So here we're just telling you a little bit about what the IGF is, what we discuss, and what is the whole ethos behind the IGF.
But, in the IGF we don't like just telling people things, we also want some interaction, as such. Is that microphone okay? Yes, okay, great.
So what is the IGF? Is somebody tell me that? Nobody? There's a microphone there and a prize at the end.
>> (Inaudible).
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: So it's the Internet Governance Forum and we're a result of the World Summit of the Information Society. The World Summit of the Information Society was a conference that was started through the ITU but became a multi-departmental or UN organizational effort. And its main purpose was to discuss the Information Society. This is -- so the idea started around the year 2000 when the Internet was getting more and more prominent. And okay, we have this thing, there's this growing divide of people who have access to the Internet or to information resources and those who don't.
And then the question was, okay, let's discuss this, Number 1, how do we deal with the digital divide. Who runs the Internet. How do we make decisions.
As you know, the Internet mainly started off as a project from alternate, moved to the academic institutions to share knowledge, and then after that, after the commercialization of the Internet, it really exploded with -- what was the first ones called? The Facebooks of yesteryear, anybody know?
Or are you all too young for that. My Space, thank you. Et cetera.
So it was gaining more and more and more, of course, prominence in our daily lives and else the economic activity.
So from the WSIS, they decided to have the WSIS in two phases. Phase 1 was the Geneva phase and Phase 2 was the Tunis phase. When they started talking about the WSIS in 2001 and 2003, they started talking about the governance of the Internet. People were saying, okay, what is Internet Governance.
And in the UN context, if you don't know a definition of something, we set up a working group to find out what is that definition of Internet Governance.
So a working group on Internet Governance was set up to discuss and see what the definition of Internet Governance was. And they came up with a definition of Internet Governance and it was presented in Tunis in the second WSIS IGF. And Carol is going to tell you what the definition they came up with was.
>> MAG CHAIR: Okay. So the -- the definition is the Internet Governance is the development and application by governments, private sector, and Civil Society in their respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programs that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.
And I think this was kind of a new concept in terms of including all of these different roles and persons where you have a situation where it's just not governments only trying to determine governance of something, but now we're talking about other stakeholders like the private sector, the technical communities, Civil Society all coming together to bring their perspective on how things should run on the Internet or the best practices, the best policies to ensure that the Internet remains for everybody.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Yes.
So this came to a decision in Tunis and what we call the Tunis agenda. And the mandate of the Internet Governance Forum is in Paragraph 72 to 82 of the Tunis agenda. And you can just do a search on it on the Internet, go to our website, you can see the mandate of the IGF.
And in Paragraph 72 they ask the Secretary General in an open and inclusive process to convene by the second quarter of 2006 a meeting of a new forum of multi-stakeholder dialogue called the Internet Governance Forum.
So as Carol said, the most important part of this is it's not just government, it's everybody involved in using the Internet should have a say in how it's governed. So it's a multi-stakeholder dialogue, it's expressly put that it's a multi-stakeholder dialogue. This is one of the first times that governments with the power decided to devolve their power a little bit and give it in the multi-stakeholder model.
This also follows how the Internet itself is set up. Because in the Internet, there isn't one body that decides everything. Yes, you have the IETF, WC3, et cetera. But they publish -- what they do publish are not hard directives or laws known.
>> MAG CHAIR: Standards and guidelines.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Standards that people can volunteer to follow. And if they follow everything, it works well. And things have been working fairly well.
Yes, in the late '90s and early 2000s there were some companies, et cetera, who wanted to go their own way. But they eventually saw that it was better to adopt the common standards to run it.
And that's one of the things that we do as well. So we believe more in the soft power approach instead of the hard power approach as such.
So do you want --
>> MAG CHAIR: So instead of taking a top-down approach where government just pushes things down, it's more of a bottom-up approach where there's more dialogue, more listening, and hearing as opposed to just talking at.
So it comes from the bottom up from the Civil Society, the tech communities, from educators who are really on the ground knowing what the problems are, what the issues are. And they put those forward and you have a bottom-up approach to resolving things.
Now even though the IGF does not produce negotiated outcomes, it informs, inspires, and influences policies.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Yes, exactly. So we are more into the second order effect.
So we may not have decisions being made at the forum itself, but there is the value in the discussion, in norm setting, and agenda setting for other institutions and for also when they go home in their home institutions.
So we've seen throughout our 20-year history there is value in that and major changes have happened and there has been a marked improvement of the Internet in various areas of the globe which have been attributed to people attending the IGF, meeting people, discussing issues, knowledge sharing, and then going back to their home countries, implementing, or continuing that collaboration that was started at an IGF meeting.
Okay.
>> MAG CHAIR: So besides the bottom-up agenda, the IGF is more than this forum that you see here. We also have what is called intersessional work. And it comes from the -- one part of the Tunis agreement was to have the capacity building, and therefore you find that today we've grown to have things like business engagement, parliamentary and judiciary sessions, and you, yourself, newcomers, are part of the capacity building.
And then we have work during the year, the intersessional work which we'll talk about a little bit more, but things like best practice forum, the national, regional IGFs as well as the youth IGFs. You can go visit the website and see whether or not your country has a national IGF or if there's one in the region that you can participate and continue your -- your growth in the IGF.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Actually that's another point we can start asking another question. I'm always going to be asking questions.
>> MAG CHAIR: Okay.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Is there anybody here who does not have a national IGF in their country?
What country is that?
>> (Inaudible).
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Montenegro. And then the other one?
>> (Inaudible).
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Cambodia yes, that's true, we're working on that.
>> (Inaudible).
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Mongolia, okay. Thank you for coming. In the back. All right.
So we have our national and regional coordinator. She'll be coming to speak to you after this session and see if we can get one started in your country. We offer support. We have small grants, but we can also offer some organizational support, website support, et cetera.
People who have -- we have over 176 national and regional IGFs, and people who have engaged in it found it very, very useful.
Thank you for being here, that's great.
Now, the IGF, the mandate of the IGF was given to the Secretary General to convene the forum. So the UN Secretary General convenes the forum. We do have the IGF leadership panel as well. Which provides high-level direction to the IGF. They also champion the IGF and we have the IGF multi-stakeholder Advisory Group which, as I said, Carol Roach is our current Chair. She's from the Bahamas.
>> MAG CHAIR: Yes.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: And so that is the overall guidance of -- overall guidance to the IGF.
But as I said, it doesn't start there. It starts with the stakeholders, every single year we do have a broad open call for issues at the end of every single year as well.
We have a stock taking exercise, what works well, what didn't work well, what they want improvements in the next cycle.
So all this is brought in, it's presented to the multi-stakeholder Advisory Group and also to the leadership panel and they come up with plans for the following year.
We'll get more into how this is set up in the next slide. Yeah.
So as I have mentioned, we do have the multi-stakeholder Advisory Group which is made up of 14 members. And these 14 members serve -- generally serve a three-year term. I mean, three one-year terms. So it's not really automatic you go into the second year. But generally most people serve three one-year terms. And they come from all over the world.
There's regional representation. We must make sure there's also gender representation, so 50% of the MAG is male, 50% of the MAG is female.
We also make sure that all stakeholder groups are represented, government, Civil Society, the technical community, IGOs, and we also have media representatives as well.
And as we mentioned, we have the IGF leadership panel and the IGF leadership panel, the Chair is Vint Cerf, you may have heard of him. He's one of the founders of the Internet.
And the vice-chair is Maria Ressa. So there are 15 members, so ten members and five ex officio members of the leadership panel.
The IGF secretariat, which I'm head of, we are based in Geneva in Switzerland which is basically one of the digital hubs because we have the ITU, we have WIPO, we have vast intellectual property organization and we also have people who deal in big data. So that's one of the reasons.
So as we say, the core prescriptions of the IGF is open, inclusive, multi-stakeholder, bottom-up, transparent, noncommercial, so we don't expect anybody to pay to participate. So it's not pay to play at all. We want to hear everybody's voice at the IGF. And it's a community-centered process.
And also one of the things is that our funding is extra budgetary. So we don't depend on the UN regular budget, it's through donations. And the pool of donations is through governments as well. The technical community are also a big donor. And we have the IGF SA who brings in pools of donors from Civil Society.
>> MAG CHAIR: So each year we have a cycle, and we -- a different country is selected. And you see here the many different places, and you see that they're from different regions. You have Global North, Global South, and we try to mix it up.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: To rotate.
>> MAG CHAIR: Yes.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: We have Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin American and Caribbean region.
>> MAG CHAIR: Yes.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: So we started our first meeting was in Athens, so the IGF in Athens. And throughout the year we've been to -- and then we moved to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, India, Sharm El Sheikh, so that's Africa. It's quite clear Greece is -- we're Western Europe and the others group. Rio de Janeiro is LACNIC and Hyderabad is Asia-Pacific. And we try to keep this rotation. Sometimes we're not that successful, but we try to keep this rotation.
And last year the meeting was in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, and before that it was in Japan, Kyoto.
So here we have 20 years of the IGF. I think it's been a very exciting 20 years. As but can see in Germany we have had Angela Merkel and these UN Secretary General and Mexico, in Greece as I mentioned, et cetera.
And we started off with about, I don't know, 800, 1,000 participants in Greece. And in Kyoto, we managed 11,000, that's counting the online participants as well. It was 11,000 participants.
So it has grown. Also the issues that we've -- the issues that we are discussing have also grown. And they've also adapted to the contemporary issues that people are facing. You know, we had Blockchain was a big issue sometime big. And I've forgotten the real name, Zero Basics was also an issue.
Now we're talking about AI and I suppose in a couple year's time we're going to be talking about quantum computing.
>> MAG CHAIR: Yes.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Yeah.
>> MAG CHAIR: So as we said earlier, we try -- we go with a bottom-up approach. We go to the community to see what are the issues, what needs to be resolved, what's coming up and what we need to talk about. And this year you see that we talk about digital trust and resilience, sustainable and responsible innovation, universal access and digital rights, and digital cooperation. And the theme you see in there is really based -- it's very human centric. So it's not all about technology, it's about the users of technology. It's about the developers of technology.
So IGF, even though it says Internet Governance Forum, that governance is very, very key. There are different layers to the Internet, and things digital run on the Internet on most occasions. And we are the users. So therefore, we want to hear from the community what it is they want to hear about, what type of things that they want to resolve.
What's important is that we make sure that the Internet and the use of digital technology is sustainable. So we also talk about the environment. We also talk about the economies of the different Member States as well as the people.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: I think we'll just go to the next one.
And you were talking about capacity development, and so one of the key things about the IGF is that we're not just talking, we're not just a talk shop that meets once a year in exotic places. We're a year-round -- we have year-round activities and we also think that it's very key to have a capacity building component.
We have our youth engagement where, you know, we teach digital skills. We get the voices of the youth as well, because the youth are the next generation of leaders. So we have to get them involved with the now. Get their ideas and move them along so when they are -- when they do become the leaders, they do have that experience. And of course, we do know what their issues and what their main concerns are.
And also the other thing that we also want to teach is critical thinking skills, which is also very important, especially in this day and age when you don't know what's true and what's not true. And so how do you navigate that. It can be quite complex for people.
>> MAG CHAIR: We've also introduced the youth mentorship programme. A lot of the youth are getting some practical look at things, Internet and things digital. We're in a second year of the mentorship programme.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Yes. We have the newcomers. This is one of the sessions for the newcomers. We have the business engagement track. Because businesses are there and the users, Civil Society, and also the government, we need -- they need to talk together to see what is good for them and we have things like taxation, for instance. If you're a company that's based, let's say, in California, Internet is global, and you're providing services across, how do those people -- you are affecting local industries even though you're not in that environment as such.
So those are things that need to be discussed.
How can they support the local industries as such to help them thrive and to help them contribute to the global business or the global culture that is being developed there.
>> MAG CHAIR: Social responsibility.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Yes, social responsibility, yes.
We do provide travel support. I think some of you were -- came here because we provided you with travel support. And we do also have the summer schools. So the summer schools of Internet governance.
And the -- one of the other things that we do that we're very proud of is the parliamentary and the judiciary track. Because the parliaments are the ones that actually set the instruments. They set the legislative instrument, they set the public policy instrument at the local level. And those should also have -- but the Internet is a global thing.
So they should also reflect how the Internet works and --
>> MAG CHAIR: And one of the important things of putting parliamentarians from different walks of life is to make sure when they produce these instruments for their countries, they have to look at it not only on a national level, but on a regional level and a global level.
Because the Internet is global. You don't want to end one fragmentation where one set of region cannot talk to the next region because there's no interoperability between them. So that's why it's important to put them in the same room so that everybody can hear what the issues are, try to come one some type of resolution, some kind of consensus on how policies should look.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Yes. Mm-hmm.
So as we mentioned, there's best practice forums. What are best practice forums?
Each year the MAG chooses one, two, three issues that we look at and have a group of experts that come in and look at them. These groups are actually open and anybody can join.
And we set to record best practices that have helped other people. And not only best practices or good practices, but also things that have not worked that they may have thought should have worked so that people don't reinvent the wheel and redo things.
We also have policy networks. So these are a little bit different than best practice forum. But they are multi-stakeholder efforts that provide in-depth expert view on a subject. So we have the best practice network on fragmentation, which was a hot topic two years ago. We have meaningful access, we still have 2.5 billion people who don't have access to the Internet. This is something that we need to see if we can reduce that gap. Because now we have people who don't have meaningful access and then now we're having the AI divide as well.
So now we're having two divide that are operating at the same time. We really need to bridge those divide.
We have the Policy Network on artificial intelligence. As well, you know, good governance, AI ethics, you know, the race to the market has to also be balanced with safeguards, or should it. These are all discussions that we have. Is it more important to be the first on the market and then you look at the effects later on, or can this happen hand in hand.
And then the next is we have Dynamic Coalitions. So we have 32 of them, and these are Dynamic Coalitions that we have three or more stakeholder groups coming together to discuss an issue.
So for instance, dynamic coalition on accessibility, DNS, media, Internet universal indicators, because how can you measure your progress if you don't have the indicators and you can't really measure progress if one country has one set of indicators and the next country has another set of indicators. It doesn't work.
We need to come and discuss and see if we can have common indicators to measure common growth.
So at the IGF, of course, there's the workshops which is all good. But we also encourage you to connect with other people where you see outside, where you see in the -- in the receptions, where you see -- what you see in the sessions that we have for people to connect. So there's the academic and research organizations, we have GigaNet, of course the Civil Society, Internet Governance organizations, technical communities, and government, and one thing about the IGF as well, don't be afraid to approach somebody and just introduce yourself and talk to them about whatever.
If you know somebody is from a company that you really want to talk to them, just go there and introduce. This is what the IGF is about. It's not about people keeping in their silos, but people mixing, having ideas, hearing different point of views.
This is very important for us.
>> MAG CHAIR: Yes, networking. I would encourage you to network. I encourage you to visit the booths. Very interesting topics going around there. We have different companies with different products that they offer you.
And might be something that you're thinking, hey, I needed this. And here's the person. Exchange your -- your information and get connected. It's -- it's great.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Yeah.
I think we've discussed this and we have partnership. One story that I always tell everybody and I realized I didn't tell you, like, what are the benefits of the IGF, I talk about the African exchange, which they themselves attributed to their involvement. IGF. They came, they talked to different people back at clearinghouse, et cetera, and they discussed the problem is that in East Africa if I wanted to send a message to my next door neighbor, it would go overseas to Europe and then come back and of course that also increased the cost of Internet connection.
So an Internet exchange point was put in, and that of course dramatically increased the cost because it didn't have to go overseas, it stayed within the area so the cost of that connection went down. Internet was cheaper and, of course, more access and more meaningful access for people.
So you can never know what you'll get out of an idea. There are those serendipitous meetings. Don't sit alone in a corner. Talk to somebody. Introduce yourself, they'll talk back to you.
>> MAG CHAIR: So here's just a map, and you can see how well spread the IGF is in terms of the national, regional, and youth IGFs.
So the blue pegs are the national IGFs. The red pegs are the regional IGFs. And the green are the youth IGFs. And I must say the youth IGF is really growing leaps and bounds year-over-year. So we're very proud of that, that we are -- we have young people coming up to be old people.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Yes. Yes.
And yes, we're going to put together focus on Mongolia, Cambodia, and -- am I missing some -- Bhutan, yes. So we are here and we are very eager to engage in those communities.
>> MAG CHAIR: And add some more blue pegs.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Yes, add some more blue pegs, yes.
So yes, this is another thing. It can be overwhelming at times. Just pick a track, see what interests you, and then when you go back home, we also have our intersessional activities. Check our website, join one of these groups. You can listen in at first and then you can also put in an intervention. Nobody will laugh at you or chase you out the group. Everybody's willing to support each other, so, yeah.
One of the things that we also is important is the idea of outputs. Is that we do have outputs.
So this is a list of the outputs that we are expecting from this IGF.
>> MAG CHAIR: I'll say within my day job as a government person that I've actually used a lot of these outputs. It's the starting point, a point where you can trust for developing policies or guidelines for your own country, for your company. So feel free to go to dive in to these outputs that we have produced over the years.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Yes. IGF summary report, the messages, as I say, the best practices and the commitment report. Every session is transcribed, it's recorded on YouTube as well. If you miss something, you can go to YouTube and search for it.
Just quickly, I'm sure some of you have questions. Does anybody have questions? Okay. We'll just finish this --
>> MAG CHAIR: Here you go, question.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Okay. We'll go very quick now. I realize we're going a little bit too long.
For the IGF, those are the four main themes that we have. And we connect them to the GDC. As you know the GDC was passed last year in September and we have the WSIS action lines and also the Sustainable Development Goals.
So each one of them -- and each session as well is connected to a specific -- specific SDGs, WSIS action lines, and also GDC and you can see right there. I won't read them because we are out of time, I would say.
As you know, this year is also the WSIS+20 review process. The WSIS and the IGF is coming up for renewal at the end of this year. This is the end of our third mandate, and we do hope that the IGF will be renewed for another mandate at the end of this year. But for that, we really do need your help and we really do need your support.
Quickly and in the end, yes, stay connected with us, please. Subscribe to the IGF newsletter. There's the mailing lists. You can always write to us at [email protected], and we are there on social media, so follow us on Twitter, follow us -- sorry, X now.
>> MAG CHAIR: Yes.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Follow us on Instagram and follow us on Facebook as well.
So that's it. And we are there for questions now, please.
>> Good evening, and thank you for this introduction. And thank you for inviting me to this interesting event as a matter of fact.
I will start by asking you a question.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Yes.
>> If you don't mind.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Great.
>> How do we govern Internet?
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: How do we govern the Internet?
>> Yes.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Well, at the moment there is a multi-stakeholder approach of governance. Which is actually a reflection of how the Internet was formed. The Internet was -- wasn't formed by one entity and that entity continued to run the Internet as such. No.
It was a collaboration of academia, governments, and collaboration of the private sector as well to give us the Internet that we have now. Now we have organizations such as ICAN that runs the DNS system. We have IETF, we have the W3C that runs the consortium and various others who are responsible for different layers of the Internet.
But then there's also the social layer as well, which we are striving to keep as a multi-stakeholder input. We have input from all the people that are involved. Because the consumers are very important, the people who build it are very important. The technical community, the people who run the Internet are also very important. And we need feedback from all those.
>> May I give the same question in a different expression?
How do we regulate the Internet?
>> MAG CHAIR: How do we --
>> Regulate. So I start with governance, how regulating.
>> MAG CHAIR: Right. So that's one of the reasons that we saw that it was very important to start the capacity building with parliaments and with the judiciary. Because you can set policies or you can create policies, but these policies need some kind of legislation behind it.
So that's why it's very important that we recognise that the government stakeholder when it comes to this part of the Internet are aware, and they listen to all the stakeholders. We don't want to go to -- go back to a point where, you know, a law was created, you have to follow.
Now you find a lot of Member States are now getting contributions from their constituents. And this is one of the ways that we were saying, that we need your help to ensure that it's in your national area and your regional area that your voice is being heard and that you set the narrative for how you want the Internet to be regulated. But not regulated to the point where it stifles innovation, where it stifles growth or economic development within your country.
So it's not only now pointing at government, it's now pointing the finger back at me, at you.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: And also at a base level, standard norms on the Internet should be also as our social standards. Human rights is not different on the Internet. They should be the same.
>> You have read my mind, exactly. This is what -- this is -- I'm sorry, I wish to hear what you have really said, okay.
Because we can only regulate things by rules, legislation, provisions. This is a point.
I read about the IGF and development through the years. So as you already mentioned, the stakeholders and mainly those working in fields, and this is very important, but let's have in mind that the UN itself, secretariat and UN, it consists of nations, countries. And the countries, they govern -- they should govern what happens in their territory through law, legislation.
So what I notice today, on the first day, that the couldn't, the legal component is a little bit missing here.
For example, for example, we do know that last year in December the United Nations convention against cybercrime have been issued by the UN. United Nations convention against cybercrime. When you look at the programme, it's very important. Because it focuses the United Nations convention against cybercrime, it's international cooperation to regulate cybercrimes that was committed through communications and information means.
So the issue of legal aspects is very important. Either the international legal framework or the national framework.
Today I attended this parliamentarian session about making the balance between freedoms and cyber -- fight against cybercrimes. Most of the speakers, they are coming from tech backgrounds. So what is the legislator?
So I ask them, please give me some -- some -- an overview about the strategic legislative approach that we should follow to combat this issue to make this balance.
So to brief and conclude as well, I think it is very important to have some legal inputs in your sessions and in the core of your goals as well.
Because finally, at the end, we are living according to the rule of law. Either is applied at the international level or national level. And this is what I said exactly today.
I'm a judge, when I see crimes, cyber crimes, I conclude cyber crimes, I go to the legislation. So I have legislation. And this is what governs the issue, law.
So this is my last conclusion and please, let's have this legal aspect embedded in our work.
Thank you.
>> MAG CHAIR: Thank you.
I think it's kind of embedded, but you -- maybe you have to dig too deep. But if you look at the digital trust and resilience track as well as the sustainable and responsible innovations, you will find you have workshops that speak to these things.
If you don't mind, what stakeholder group are you?
Okay. I'm just saying that we need to spell out what we do in the judiciary track into the -- into the global part.
>> (Inaudible).
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Yes, mm-hmm.
>> MAG CHAIR: Right.
>> (Inaudible).
>> MAG CHAIR: Expand. Expand. Okay, I agree.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Next, please.
>> ANDREW: Thank you. For the record, my name is Andrew from Kenya.
I represent the community and we run the dot-KE country [?] domain.
14 years ago Kenya hosted the IGF. And I was working in government then and I was very young, much older now.
So my question to you is, assuming the IGF gets a new mandate, what do you anticipate for the next ten, 20 years?
Thank you.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: It's not just us, because remember, IGF is a bottom-up multi-stakeholder model. And at first order of business is to go to the community and ask them what they want us to do and we help them to do it. But we do want to continue to carry on the discussion.
We do want to continue carrying on the multi-stakeholder model and with capacity building when we think is very, very important and to make sure that those people who were traditionally excluded can come in and have their voices heard.
We're not -- we've made great strides in inclusion, but we're not there yet. There's still a lot more work has to be done. Still a lot more work has to be done in capacity building.
We need to work hard to close the digital divides, as mentioned earlier. So those -- but anything else?
>> MAG CHAIR: I think what's key is that we hear from you. We have an open mic and it's an opportunity for you to tell us what it is you need more of, what we need more of, what you'd like to see, what you like, what you don't like. So it's really up to the communities to let us know. We don't want to sit here and set an agenda that our communities are just not interested in.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: One minute. Oh, last question. Yes, please. Thank you.
>> I guess there's not enough time for my question.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: We can have two minutes over, I'm sure.
>> I'll make it quick. Thank you very much. My name is [?] from Cambodia. I'm with the Ministry of Telecommunication and this is my first time in IGF.
>> MAG CHAIR: Welcome.
>> I'm very excited to be here in this beautiful City of Oslo.
So I just want to follow up on what you mentioned earlier about how IGF got started was from the WSIS meeting, and then you formed -- you went -- come together to define what it means to govern the Internet.
And then you came back with a definition. And what happened after, you know, providing this definition to WSIS and to the UN? Is there anymore mechanism, follow-up, you know, that definition?
This morning in the opening sessions one of the minister and Norwegian government mentioned you're using the word public good to define the Internet. So what has been done to kind of follow up on this kind of definition with multi-stakeholder here? It's amazing to bring all the global community here, government, private sector, research, Civil Society, but what has been done beyond talking?
You know, from what I can see, the Internet today has grown -- I mean, this has tremendous benefit, but if you look at another angle, some countries are actually taking their kid off the Internet. So for example, making a law like kids lower in age can't -- it's what I heard.
So was this the original intent, you know when the Internet got started, was there a definition defined how the Internet would look like ten, 20 years. I'll close my question. Thank you.
>> MAG CHAIR: It comes down to we want the Internet you want, the Internet you want for your children, your God children, your nieces, your nephews.
And countries I think grappling with the pace in which technology is growing and they're putting in what they feel are guardrails that will at least slow down a negative impact without hindering.
So yes, you do have some countries that are putting in legislation that prohibits children of a certain age using some of the social media. Because at this point, they feel as a government that this is the best way to either slow it down or to prevent other things from happening.
And that's why places like the Internet Governance Forum, it's important. Is it really? We're not only talk about the positives. Is that really the way in which a Member State or country should go, or is there an alternative?
You look and see, okay there is what this country did, is that something that we can add to best practice? Or can it be tweaked?
A country may look at that and say hey, that's a good idea, but it really doesn't match my norm, my culture. So let me change it. But at least there's a discussion about it, nobody's just being silent. It's an open discussion. You can hear and you can reflect and we expect you to go back to your homes, to your workplace, to your governments, to your constituency and to help shape the Internet that you need, that your children or our future is required.
So again, it comes back to us.
>> IGF SECRETARIAT: Okay. Thank you very much. And please, after this session, please feel free to approach me, approach Carol, approach any one of us. We can carry on the discussion. As I said, we very approachable and thank you for coming and attending.
>> MAG CHAIR: Thank you. Thanks.
(Applause)
(Session ended at 17:02 p.m. CEST)
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