IGF 2025 - Day 1 - Plenary Hall - Recap 20 Years Of IGF

>> ANNOUNCER: Please welcome to the stage, the Moderator, Chengetai Masango, head of the United Nations Secretariat for the Internet Governance Forum.

>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And also good afternoon, evening to those of you who are joining us online. Thank you very much for joining us this early in the morning, for those of you who are in the room. Welcome to the first session of day 1 of the IGF 2025 meeting, here in beautiful Lillestrøm.

To commemorate the IGF's 20th Anniversary, we are holding the 70-minute session providing the journey of the past two decades, reflecting upon its significant achievements and the challenges it has navigated.

Honoring the diverse community that has helped shape it, examining its history, impact, and possible future directions, we will start with a short visual retrospective of the IGF 20 years in motion, then a short video tribute to community members who have passed, followed by a short keynote speech by the Chair of the Leadership Panel, Vint Cerf, and then a panel discussion with the MAG Chairs.

So, now we will have the video of the visual retrospective, IGF, 20 years in motion, please.

(Video shown)

>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you. We have come a long way. But let us now have a short tribute, remembering those who have gone before us.

(Video shown)

>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you. Can we stand and have a minute of silence for them? Thank you.

(Silence)

>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you. Their contribution will always be remembered.

Now, if Vint Cerf is online, he will give a short keynote speech on the enduring relevance of the IGF. Vint Cerf, take it away.

>> VINT CERF: Good morning to you. It's just a little after 3:00 in the morning here in Washington. So, I hope I am awake.

First of all, I must say the tribute was lovely, seeing all of those familiar faces, it's a little hard to believe that they are not with us anymore. But thank you to the staff for preparing that.

20 years ago, a question was asked -- actually, a little more than 20, in 2003, the question was asked, what is an Information Society? And I think a lot of us believe that we have always been an Information Society, but the technology of holding and propagating that information has changed. And at the time that question was asked, new technology had emerged, the Internet and the Worldwide Web, which, by that time in 2003, were already 20 years old from the operational point of view, 10 years old, roughly, with regard to the Worldwide Web, and by that time, 2003, there was prescient recognition that this was powerful technology and it was going to have a big impact on the rest of the world. As indeed it has, as we look back over the last 20 years of its evolution and penetration into our society.

Well, then the question was, how do we govern such an Information Society? And no one was sure, but they said the Internet is clearly something that is core to this concept. So, they set up the Working Group on Internet Governance, the WGIG. And they couldn't resolve that. And by 2005, 20 years ago, the conclusion was to create an Internet Governance Forum to talk about that problem and try to address it. And here we are, 20 years later, we need the Internet Governance Forum more now than we ever did, even though it was recognized 20 years ago.

What is it that we are looking for? We are looking for policies that will make the Internet resilient, reliable, and safe. Those are paramount objectives, but there's more. It has to be accessible in every sense of the word. That includes affordable, and it has to be sustainable. We have 17 Sustainable Development Goals, but the 18^th one is keeping the Internet going, because we have become so much more dependent on it in the 20 years of the IGF's operation.

So, our work continues. And here it is, 2025, and we can report to the World Summit on the Information Society that the Internet Governance Forum, the Multistakeholder Advisory Group, the Leadership Panel and all of you are ready to continue the work. Thank you very much.

>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, Vint, and thank you for your continued support for the IGF process.

I would like now to introduce the current Chair of the IGF's Multistakeholder Advisory Group, Ms. Carol Roach of the Bahamas, who is going to chair the Voices from the Helm section. Carol.

>> CAROL ROACH: Thank you. So, this session at IGF 2025 will provide a retrospective of the Internet Governance Forum to celebrate the IGF's journey over the past two decades, to reflect on its journey, to speak of the significant achievements, and the challenges navigated and to honour the diverse community that has shaped it.

We will examine its history and impact, and take a forward look to possible future direction. Who better to deliver this, than a panel of former MAG chairs, and from you, the community of participants. I look forward to what promises to be an engaging and meaningful reflection on IGF's journey, past, present, and future.

As introduced, I am Carol Roach, MAG Chair 2024-2025, and I am from the government stakeholder group and please help me welcome our panelists today. Nitin Desai, who is online, remote.

Markus Kumar. Markus? Round of applause.

(Applause)

>> CAROL ROACH: Janis Karklins, also remote. Lynn St. Amour, and Anriette Esterhuysen. Thank you.

I feel very blessed to be up here with these great captains that we have had over the years, as well as those that are online. And I am going to just quickly ask them to introduce themselves, to say which years that they were Chair and the stakeholder group which they came. Markus.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: I chaired the MAG in 2013, then I was working for the Internet Society, that is taking a community. But before that, I was head of the secretariat from 2006 until 2010, and there I came from government.

>> CAROL ROACH: Excellent. Lynn.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: I was chair from 2016 to 2019 and I came from the technical community.

>> CAROL ROACH: Anriette.

>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: And I was Chair from the end of 2019 when Lynn left, until 2021, beginning of '22.

>> CAROL ROACH: Yes, you were my Chair.

>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: And I am from civil society and Carol was a very hard working MAG member.

>> CAROL ROACH: And then we have Nitin.

>> NITIN DESAI: I am Nitin Desai I was the person who chaired the working group on Internet Governance and MAG in five years. I was put in there because I had no connection with the Internet, but I had had a long tradition of working and getting agreement between different governments and including a lot of nongovernment law organizations in it. I am now in retirement and really look forward to listening to what everybody has to say of what has been happening in IGF. Thank you.

>> CAROL ROACH: Thank you. Janis.

>> JANIS KARKLINS: Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. So, I was chairing the MAG 2014-2015, but also I was -- I feel kind of eternity to the idea of the MAG because I was chairing the committee of the World Summit in a space where the decision to establish IGF was created or was mistaken and I feel very much emotionally attached to the process. So, looking forward to discussion. Thank you.

>> CAROL ROACH: Thank you.

So, to Nitin and Markus, you have been through the evolution of the IGF, and why don't you tell us about the role that IGF started with in the time that you were there and how it's impacted lives over the last two decades. Also, let us know what's the key challenges that you think we faced and we have overcome over that period as well.

Nitin.

>> NITIN DESAI: The origin of the IGF was to discussion at the Geneva session of the World Summit on Information Society where a large number of developing countries had expressed their concern about the fact that we had very little influence on how the Internet evolved and that it was done mainly by a private company, ICANN or was also under U.S. control. So the origin of IGF was this concern about how the Internet was being managed at that time.

The second point I would stress is, it was very clear that this is a very extraordinary situation. The normal thing that I was used to as Under-Secretary-General of the UN was that you had governments in charge of everything and people from the nongovernmental organization wanting a say, people from outside the government wanting a say. Here it was opposite. The whole thing was run by engineers, the technocrats or by ICANN and the governments didn't have a say. And they wanted a say in this.

And in many ways, what we look for and what I personally pressed for as the Chair of IGF, was to make it a multistakeholder, to bring together technologies, governments, nongovernmental Internet activists, and the representatives of organizations, all of them to be brought together and to be brought together on equality.

If I had to explain how it evolved, the great challenge in the beginning wasn't getting these people to work together. Because in many ways they had different ways. Technocrats are people who work on a census, ignoring extreme use. Governments and diplomacy are people who believe in a great deal of, far be it for me to say, type of statements when they disagree.

Nongovernmental activists, because of the work, often tend to be, very much, were outspoken in what they want. And the representatives of corporations are very much concerned about limited things.

What I found most challenging was to see that these things, people work together in some ways, and that was in some ways the most useful outcome of those first five years, when we were running the MAG. And what I found was that instead of these groups talking against each other, started talking with each other, and they started being constructive in helping how to get certain consensus, how to get to certain texts, et cetera, to be -- come out of this whole exercise. And this for me was in some ways the most valuable and useful outcome of the IGF.

And I think it's a very valuable outcome, because I frankly think we need this in many other areas besides the Internet. And we don't have it. Something which really brings together all of the people who have a say or potential contribution in effective management.

Now, at that time, the early years, the focus was very much on governance of the Internet. But I think increasingly as somebody who is a user of Internet, et cetera, I would say is this emergence of importance of the Internet in our everyday life, that has become very important. The social media, e-commerce, et cetera, et cetera, the communication system. And in many ways the large companies which are coming in and dominating the place, so in many ways the issue that I hope the IGF has started looking a little bit more on is the use of the Internet by operations, et cetera.

So, my hope is that IGF sets a certain standard, yes, it is not an organization which has the power to make a decision. But it is an organization which has the power to influence industry and we are seeing this again and again.

And my hope is that it continues doing this and my hope, even bigger hope is that people learn a lesson from the IGF on what we need to do in other areas of connection between governments, between corporations, between nongovernmental organizations, between technologies, et cetera. Let me stop here. I have taken my five minutes. Thank you.

>> CAROL ROACH: Thank you very much. That was very powerful, power to influence and the change that you saw and you helped to bring about.

Markus.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Yes. Nitin said it all and we learned from him a lot on how to herd the cats and bring the people together.

Allow me to add a name to the tribute of people who passed. There was one colleague, friend, who worked very hard with me on the working group on Internet Governance. He was not part of the IGF, but he was part of the community that laid the foundation for the IGF. That is Frank March. He passed away a few years ago and I would like to add his name to those we pay tribute to.

Now, the challenges we had when we started with the IGF was, obviously, we did not know what to expect. And there was a lot of nervousness and mistrust. There were those, especially civil society, who wanted almost a new organization. They want to start with working groups and whatever. And there was a strong resistance against that and there was strong resistance and the fear that the IGF might come up with wrong decisions. So, there were a lot of people who were on the defensive. But I think we learned how to work together.

One of the challenges was to convince people that there was merit in, shall we say, the soft power approach. That the IGF has not the hard power to make decisions. But as Nitin said, it can shape decisions that are taken for decisions that are taken elsewhere in other organizations. And that, I think, is increasingly recognized, that it allows for an open discussion. You cannot have in a forum, where there is decision-making power because you fear that whatever you say today might be held against you tomorrow.

Whereas in the IGF, because it has no decision-making power, it is much more open for discussions for thinking aloud, for brainstorming, and that is the real power of the IGF. And the fact that it brings people together, as I said, to begin with, there was a certain nervousness, people did not quite trust each other. And I had, for the first time, the sense that the IGF turned into a community, was in 2008 when we met in Hyderabad, and there had been a terrorist attack in Mumbai, same country, India, but thousands of miles away.

But there were a number of delegations that canceled their trip because of the understandable fear of terrorism. And those who were there then had the feeling we are braving the danger and there was a sort of sense of community evolving. And I think ever since, you could see that there is, when people meet each other, we see them at the receptions, you recognize faces you haven't seen for years, and there is a sense of community and people actually trust each other. People from governments now talk to people from business, civil society and learn from each other. And that is the true value of the IGF, as Nitin already said.

And the question is also, what is the impact? A lot of it is not easily tangible, but quite often you hear, I was once on a panel, I think it was in Sydney, I sat next to a gentleman who was from a Pacific Island. He said, well, thanks to the IGF we now have an IXP. I learned at an IGF meeting how to set up an IXP. Was in touch with the people who helped me then, and now his island was much better access to the Internet, thanks to the IGF.

And there are many, many stories like that. It's not a negotiated outcome, but it has a direct impact because people learn from each other. They have contacts. They exchange business cards. And IXP is a very good example we had from the beginning lots of workshops on IXPs. Before people knew it was important but they didn't know that it is not rocket science to set up an Internet exchange point, but you have to go about, and a lot of it is social engineering, the technical side is relatively easy. But this is just one example. And I stop here. Thank you.

>> CAROL ROACH: Thank you very much. We see that the IGF went from storming to norming to performing that we have today. And I agree that the soft approach has allowed us to influence a lot of policy decision making in member states.

So, we will move on to the -- thank you very much, Nitin and Markus.

We will move on to the second question that I am going to pose to Janis and Lynn. What do you think are the most significant achievements and milestones and what do you think are the lessons learned from the multistakeholder approach? Lynn.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Janis.

>> CAROL ROACH: Janis. Sorry.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Is Janis in an airplane?

>> CAROL ROACH: Can you hear us, Janis?

>> JANIS KARKLINS: Yes, I do. And I think you hear me, too.

>> CAROL ROACH: Yes.

>> JANIS KARKLINS: Look, my answer to your question would be maybe a little bit shocking, but the mere existence of IGF after 20 years is already a major achievement, if I may say. Why I'm saying this, because when we started or were thinking about IGF, it was never meant to be funded by regular UN budget because then that would be completely different sort of marketplace.

It was always, the idea was that it would be funded by voluntary contributions, and I still remember myself arguing that the IGF will exist as long as funding will flow, and funding will flow only until then that IGF will be relevant.

And since IGF is now celebrating 20th edition, I think that is already proof of its relevance and need for everyone, because funding is not necessarily or was not necessarily coming only from government or companies. It was very mixed flow of funding, and that proves that it is needed for every stakeholder group. So, that's the one element.

The second is, proliferation of IGFs at national level I think is another proof of a good idea that we had at the time. Because idea was to discuss topics of rather big complexity as we thought at that time, and inform those who need to make decisions when they go back to make those decisions. It's never meant to be a decision-making body. And this idea that IGF would inform decisionmakers is I think also a good achievement.

And on multistakeholder governance model, actually, when I am looking in retrospect, there is not really big difference between multistakeholder model and intergovernmental model in a sense that it may take long time to make a decision also in governments. I know that in some instances definitions are negotiated for decades. So it might be very heated, sometimes emotional. But it's always constructive. And IGF is a very good proof of it.

And what also is, as already Nitin said, that the cyberspace does not have monopoly of decision-making of any of stakeholder groups. And it was well-placed by the WGIG when they came up with this formulation that every stakeholder group act in their own responsibility and their own capacity.

So, these would be my thoughts on those two questions that you asked. Thank you very much.

>> CAROL ROACH: Thank you very much.

Lynn.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: I'd like to respond from certainly my time in the IGF and as MAG Chair, but also from the technical community, the previous three speakers have been from government or UN. And I'd like to talk generally about my experiences and how I think the technical community has benefited from these processes as well as, of course, governments.

So, during the WSIS 1 and WSIS 2 summits and the preceding prep coms and for the first eight years at the IGF, I was the President and CEO of the Internet Society. And this was my first significant exposure to UN processes. The same could be said for most of the organizations in what came to be called the technical community.

Technical community refers to individuals and organizations who possess expertise and deep understanding of the Internet's technical architecture, standards, operations, and related technologies. These organizations play a vital role in shaping and maintaining a technically viable and secure Internet. While often seen as part of civil society or sometimes the private sector, the technical community really has a distinct perspective due to its specialized knowledge and focus on the technical aspects of the Internet.

At that time, ISOC was quite a small organization, but the importance of this whole endeavor was so clear that I dedicated a significant amount of time to attend the prep coms, which were several weeks long, as well as the WSIS 1 and 2 summits themselves. As did so many of my colleagues from the technical community. It's still deemed important to participate and financially support the IGF, as witnessed by the significant number of participants here from the technical organizations, the Internet Society, ICANN, the regional Internet registries, Internet engineering task forces, Internet Architecture Board, the root server community, CCTLDs, GTLDs and W3C, Worldwide Web Consortium.

The technical community has been the second largest donor to the IGF trust fund and contributes significantly in funds and programme support to the IGF as well as many of its intersessional activities. We would only continue doing that if we actually saw benefit, both to the development of the Internet and, of course, a clear benefit and reward for the organizations themselves.

But coming back to the prep coms and WSIS 1 and 2, fortunately, some governments thought it important for the organizations that played a role in managing the Internet infrastructure or contributing to its development to participate in these discussions. It wasn't easy, as we didn't fit neatly into the UN structure.

But with the help of Nitin Desai, Markus Kumar and Janis Karklins, who we are all eternally grateful to, we actually were given the opportunity to participate, which wasn't a small feat because for those who remember the Prepcom or WSIS modalities for every three-hour working session, roughly 2 1/2 hours was for governments and UN entities to speak, and if we were lucky and we weren't squeezed against the lunch break, 10 minutes each for the private sector and civil society. But due to the very maneuvering of the aforementioned chairs, we actually managed to slip a speaking slot in for the technical community in between those two communities.

So, at that point, as I said, we weren't yet recognized, recognition as a fourth stakeholder group came later. But it's important to note those meetings were not at all like the current IGF environment, which focuses on discussion, openness, collaboration, and works hard to recognize and include all parties as equals in the discussions.

Nitin, Markus and Janis listened, actually I think frankly they followed their own great common sense, recognizing that additional voices and viewpoints were needed in those deliberations.

The Internet's unique architecture had enabled for the first time new applications, which had come literally from any corner of the world and be deployed globally and very rapidly at scale. The uptake or success of these applications were based on end users' views of their utility, not a regulatory decision by a government which, of course, was common in the telecommunications environment at that time or a service offering from an established company. This fact, of course, put additional pressure on any intersections of technology and policy.

One lesson learned, one that we are still trying to get right -- striving to get right is to be open, to listen, and to engage. The Internet Engineering Task Force has the principle known as a robustness principle or Pastel's law, it says be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send or in an IGF context, what you might support as policy.

The key principle here is to be tolerant of variations of incoming data. This is especially important in today's world. So, it's important to learn from the past and focus on what we should do in the future. The Internet affects virtually everything we do. And new applications, new uses, new threats can spring from anywhere. Dealing with all this takes a global village, acting in concert from the authentic and deep engagements of many actors, it is not uniquely the prerogative of governments or the private sector. Thank you.

>> CAROL ROACH: Thank you very much. I like what you said at the end, that it takes a global village in concert. Yeah. Harmonizing, no discord. Thank you very much.

And thank you as well, Janis. Yes, I agree that the NRIs have really made a mark on the IGF. They are eyes and ears and hands and feet on the ground.

Now moving on to Anriette, our last question and a reflection on what you think is the most significant adaptation of the IGF, how the IGF has adapted to this ever fast changing pace of Internet and digital governance.

>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you. At the heart of this, and this is why the IGF has survived for 20 years, Janis, is to recognize that the global village is not such a healthy village. That it has sometimes no roads or it has roads with very big pot holes in them. And people don't have cars to drive on those roads anyway. And I think the reason that the IGF became and has remained and I think continues to be relevant is that it managed to make the shift and it wasn't an easy shift. And I will talk about how that came about. From being a forum about the governance of the Internet, to being a forum about the governance of the use and evolution of the Internet, which is the working group on Internet Governance definition. And that we have managed to make that shift from talking about issues that are more narrowly related to Internet Governance, very much what the technical community is so strong at, to a forum that talks about a broader digital ecosystem, one that has so many challenges, so many inequalities, so many contradictions, but with the Internet at the heart of that ecosystem. And that's why the IGF is so continuously able to reinvent itself, to remain relevant, to expand the topics, and to not just talk about critical Internet resources, but to actually talk about Internet, the challenge about how to you regulate emerging technologies, how censorship affects reproductive rights of women, about technology gender-based violence. Topics so relevant to the Internet but maybe not part of Internet Governance as it was envisaged originally.

Now, who made that possible? I think it's civil society. Because civil society is not necessarily always tolerant. Because if you are always tolerant, then you don't achieve change. If you want to confront injustice, you have to take risk. And I think civil society has managed to bring that dynamic tension into the IGF process. And I think having leaders and MAG chairs, people like all of you here, Nitin, who set an incredible tone for us, I think, and his receptiveness and his appreciation of the role of civil society in governance processes, and I think that tradition has continued. Sometimes there are tensions. But that also adds to the value of the IGF.

So, I think the role of civil society in the IGF is really underestimated. I often hear people say, oh, the largest number of participants are from civil society. In fact, they were not last year. They were the smallest group.

But what civil society brings to the IGF is a very diverse set of people, organizations, institutions, who are actually not here to further their own particular interests, but to further the public interest at large. And I think that is what gives the IGF this relevance.

And I think if the IGF can manage to continue having that openness to taking on these emerging challenges and areas of subject matter that relates very integrally to Internet and Internet Governance but that has a much broader and much more interdisciplinary relevance I think it will continue to have the power that it has.

>> CAROL ROACH: Thank you, Anriette. Yes, I think you are quite right that the IGF has been agile, and therefore it remains relevant. And, yes, civil society does -- I really like that term, dynamic tension and it keeps people accountable, when you have that element in there. So, thank you very much.

So, we have heard from the past chairs and let's give them a round of applause for giving us a glimpse of the past and the present and hopefully where we can go in the future.

Now, this being our 20th year, we have a special MAG team, and it consists of former MAG members and they were brought back. And I am so pleased that at the last minute, they said that they would jump in and give us their perspective on what it was like when they were first on the MAG and present now.

We will first Olga to give us a perspective for the MAG. Let's welcome Olga as she comes. Thank you.

>> OLGA: good morning, evening to everyone here and online. Thank you, Madam Chair. Profiting from the good translation services, I will speak in my mother tongue, which is Spanish.

Arrange the headphones. It was very enlightening and interesting, and I almost cried with all the memories of so many years about the IGF.

In 2005, I had the great privilege of representing my country, Argentina, in the World Summit. This was 2005. We hadn't even finished our documents. But Argentina was one of the first documents to propose the creation of this forum. We were one of the first countries to propose this and, well, later other countries supported our proposal. And at that time, I didn't know but my life changed forever. I was in the Ministry of Foreign affairs and then the technical department and then I certainly had to understand the process of the United Nations. I had to learn from my colleagues in the diplomatic delegations.

From that time on, my evolution as an official changed. I became much more involved in the technical matter. We had 1 billion users. Now we have lots of people who are still not connected. We have more now, but there's still people who are not connected. We have to learn how to attract the next billion.

We also centered our attention on the international connections, because at that time to connect Latin America with the principal internet hubs was very difficult and it had a great impact on the price to the users. So, that was one of the principal topics. And in the rest of the meetings, subsequent meetings, we sought re-emergence of a topic that was much as the beginning, the critical parts of the Internet. And this discussion started on the role of ICANN, the United States, et cetera. And we saw how all that impacted in the institutions and we saw the infrastructure was not well prepared for this, particularly in developing countries.

So, in the first years, we talked about privacy, security, and then we had NeTEx coming up and what we see now is the need to create capacities. New people, attract them to this process, and we had a different approach at the time. But then suddenly, 2007, 8, 9, we saw that strengthening capacity was important. We followed up in Latin America with a school for training in Internet, and there were trainings for young people. And there were friends from 2H, I think, that was the first time I saw an activity that involved young people. The schools on Internet Governance, and we saw that this spread regionally.

And with this have been foundational and they have integrated great community, set up a big framework that had created dialogues and spaces for dialogue on the Internet. And we see the need for continuing this discussion about all these challenges in Internet for continuing this exchange. Thank you very much.

>> CAROL ROACH: Thank you. Yes, there's a saying that the more things change, the more they stay the same. So, yes, we do have a lot of work still to do with regard to capacity building involving the youth more. Thank you, Olga.

Now we will have Jen, I think it is. Is it Jen? Cheryl. Sorry. Let's welcome Cheryl.

(Applause)

>> CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, everyone. For those who don't know me, I'm Cheryl Miller, and I currently lead digital policy work at the U.S. Council for International Business. My first time on the MAG, I started in 2013, and back then, I was a young attorney at Verizon. And you all may know a women named Theresa Swinehart with ICANN, she was a senior leader at Verizon and walked into my office with this huge stack of papers and things, and she sat it down on my desk and said, you now have the portfolio for Internet Governance. And I didn't even know what Internet Governance was at the time. And I certainly had a lot of reading, next thing I knew, I was on a plane to Bali, Indonesia for my first IGF and that was back in 2013.

Back then, I think we were struggling with a lot of different issues, just as an Internet community. We had seen a real increase in data breaches and there were a number of cyberattacks and so there was a big focus on privacy and managing those issues.

The IGF 2015 in Brazil, I remember it was the first time I saw the word sustainable. And the title for that particular IGF was Internet Governance, empowering sustainable development and we started to see this flux of issues and I think Anriette touched on this a little bit and, perhaps, Olga as well, how digital issues were really sort of mingling with other really important global issues and coming together. And so I could recall that just from my post reporting back to my company, trying to explain the importance of things. And that's when we really started to grow our corporate responsibility programme. And I think other companies as well started to really grow some of their corporate responsibility programmes.

Then I heard this word that I never heard before, the word IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, and we were dealing with what was known as the IANA transition, and so as many of you know, historically the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Department of Commerce had been responsible for managing those functions, all the Internet protocols, just the collection of registries that are critical to ensure the global coordination of Internet protocol, so the DNS root zone, IP addressing, et cetera. We were talking about that topic throughout at the IGF and also through the different ICANN meetings, and a lot of focus on the future of the IGF.

We were thinking about how do we make it sustainable financially and how do we shape it. Markus does a wonderful job of really discussing the real value of the IGF. And from a business standpoint, it was one of the few places where I could come and really sit down and learn from different governments, from civil society, and it was a humbling experience just to see how little that I knew. And it was also humbling just to work on the MAG, just some of the most intelligent people I have ever met. So, it was truly, truly a great experience. And we certainly, we had our disagreements. But what I have seen now as a MAG member today, I think there is a stronger collaboration. I think there's actually a stronger collaboration across issues as well with business, civil society, the technical community. That was one thing that also was really heavily impressed upon me in all the talks around the IANA transition, just learning the technical components of the Internet, because when you are a lawyer focused on policy, a lot of times you go down this policy rabbit hole and you forget how it really connects to the bricks and mortar of how things work.

And so, we certainly saw a large emphasis on the Dynamic Coalitions and their growth. They really took off with all the intersessional work and that was really impressive just to see, as well as the national and regional initiatives. And thank you so much for the wonderful tribute you gave. I know Marylin Cade, that was one of her projects that were near and dear to her heart. I would add one other name to that list from a business perspective. Joe Alhadeff, who is with ICC BASIS. He was also very involved in a lot of the privacy work from a business standpoint in the Internet community as a whole.

And so for those of you who --

>> CAROL ROACH: Thank you, Cheryl. We are out of time.

>> CHERYL MILLER: Sorry. I am out of time. Thank you so much. Those are my impressions.

>> CAROL ROACH: Thank you.

So, Jen, you have a task of one minute.

>> JENNIFER CHUNG: One minute? Okay. Hello, everyone. My name is Jennifer Chung. I guess standing before me is the wisdom and luminaries, I see my past chairs, and Markus, who is our chair of the Support Association, my fellow MAG members who spoke before me, Olga touched on something that I wanted to bring forth as well. Starting before my personal involvement with IGF and even Internet Governance, the 2009 Sharm el-Sheikh meeting is the first time DotAsia brought in youth delegates to a meeting and that is the birth place of the discussion that actually resulted in the Asia Pacific regional IGF. So, that was very important for me.

My actual first IGF meeting, and I was very, very new into my Internet Governance, meeting was Istanbul in 2014. I had the task to observe the IANA Transition Coordination Group because I became the head of Secretariat for them. Those two years were very, very busy for the entire community and I think that a lot of the good discussion also happened and was enabled by all the discussions at the IGF.

One of the very important things I wanted to also point out was that the Brazil meeting in 2015 saw a huge growth in youth participation that continues until this day. In fact, the Berlin meeting in 2019 I think was the first time there was a Global Youth Summit, also the first time there was a parliamentarian track, both of which continue to this meeting. I think it's super, super important to understand bringing in the young voices, bringing in the parliamentarians who are really making these regulations, legislations around the world so they really understand what we are talking about here when we talk about issues with Internet Governance.

When I served on the MAG, and it was between 2018 to 2020, I saw very interesting shift from all of the calling of we need to talk more about Internet Governance, we need to bring in people who need to listen from, from the global majority, from the Global South, from the young voices, and then we went into the pandemic where we had the very first and hopefully, fingers crossed, only virtual meeting of the IGF, where it was so much highlighted that the Internet, the technology that enables us to continue to work, to play, to discuss all these issues, that we are discussing right now, here in the room, in Norway and also across the world, that we still want to improve, to look to the future, and I think I will stop here because maybe that minute is gone. Thank you, Carol.

>> CAROL ROACH: Thank you very much.

(Applause)

So, I am just going to end. Are they giving me eight minutes? No? Okay.

I have 10 more minutes? Okay. Great. Super.

A wise person said that if there wasn't an IGF, we would have to create one. And just sitting here, watching the videos, listening to the history, listening to the different stages that the IGF has gone through, and through each stage, it also improved the global outlook in terms of reaching the Internet to the point where we are really human focused. We have moved away from the arm of the government, to everybody getting on to a certain level in order to perform for the people. So, this is great.

So, I'm going to ask Anriette to give us a last word with regards to WSIS and our hope for the future.

>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks. Thanks. You see how you need civil society. We always give them the tough questions.

Carol, I think there are so many things we could have also said more of. But I think those things also as part of that way. I think the youth participation, the evolution of new modalities, the recognition that legislatures are important, so create the parliamentary track. The recognition that youth need spaces. The recognition that complex issues, such as human rights need spaces. And I think that that is really the connection between WSIS and what the IGF does. And I think you have actually all touched on it.

I think we do need to be people oriented. We need to have a big picture. But we also need to take the infrastructure and the technology and its resilience seriously and I think that's what the IGF gives us. And I think it gives -- and I think we have evolved an approach, in a way of working that is interdisciplinary, multistakeholder, that gives us the capacity to face these challenges going forward. But I also think we have to always keep the WSIS vision in mind. I think the people-centered development, the ability for people to use technology to improve their lives has to also inform what we do at the IGF.

I think we have to recognize that there are challenges and be open to take on and not be too risk averse, because we need the IGF, we need the UN now more than ever, we need the IGF more than ever, because there is a lot of fragmentation. We have wars in our world. We have digital inequalities. We have big tech companies that are growing in ways which is hard to grasp and hard to deal with.

So, and I think we need to be able to -- those concepts of good governance, accountability, inclusion, respect for people, for human rights, we need to be able to talk about them collaboratively, but also in a way that takes on the tough questions, fair tax payment, for example, authoritarian governments, repression, you know, war. We need to be able to -- the role of technology and militarization, and the role that the Internet plays in that.

So, I think that's what we can bring to the future. We can bring it to the WSIS process and be grounded. I think the IGF needs to evolve, celebrate its own achievements, but also evolve, continue to improve, recognize where the exclusions are. Do we take development and the realities of people that still live with digital exclusion seriously enough? And are we inclusive enough? Are we diverse enough? But I think we have all the elements.

I think we haven't given a shout-out to the Secretariat yet and I think that's something else to recognize, how the Secretariat has evolved as well, to be able to support the evolution of the IGF, to support the national and Regional Internet Governance Forum. But the Secretariat needs to continue to evolve, which means it needs resources, it needs capacity. But I think we have all the building blocks, and I think we have the people.

I think one of the IGF's greatest strengths is that there are so many people who feel ownership. Even the people who submitted workshop proposals that were rejected have some intimate relationship with the IGF. And I think I would hope that going forward, we have a more stable, permanent, well-resourced IGF, but still an IGF that maintains this bottom-up ownership and participation that the modalities that we have evolved over the last 20 years have given us.

>> CAROL ROACH: Thank you, Anriette. And I agree, the IGF, we ask the hard questions, we take on the tough questions. And, Anriette, you are not afraid to take on those potholes.

>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: We have to fill them, too, or make sure other people do.

>> CAROL ROACH: We fill them in and pave them over and make them look nice and good so that the people can drive smoothly, Anriette. That's what the IGF is about. So, thank you very much, audience. I want to thank my panelists. Great job. Let's give them a round of applause.

(Applause)

And I want to thank my fellow MAG members, and a few of them are here. I call them the brains, the big brains. Thank you, all the MAG members, current MAG members, those that are past, those that continue to come to the open consultations, and to give their views to enrich the IGF and indeed enrich the lives of persons. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.