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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>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: Good morning, everyone. We'll give it another couple seconds. I can see everyone still entering the room and then hopefully we will start. Just a reminder that this is a session on elections and the Internet, free and fair and open. I hope that's the session you've come for. If you haven't, you're very welcome to stay. Fantastic.
Let's make a start. Firstly, good morning to everyone here. I know eve got a lot of colleagues on line. Good morning from Kyoto to them wherever they may be joining us. It's a privilege for me to be moderate. I'm the head of the democratic Internet Governance Forum office. We have a wonderful panel here. I'm going to ask them each to introduce themselves when I hand them over to engage in the session. I'll start off with making a few introductory remarks to set the scene.
It's a real privilege for us to be chairing one of the task forces of the Freedom Online Coalition. In this case the Task Force on Internet Shutdowns. True to the multistakeholder spirit of the IGF would you like to be chairing that with the FOC advisory network members, access now and the Global Network Initiative. We are chairing this task force because we passionately believe that Internet shutdowns pose a significant threat to the free flow of information. They are a significant threat to the ability of everyone to express themselves online. They are a major source of censorship and as all of you know, in a world where we are increasingly exercising our offline rights online, they are a fundamental impediment to the ability to exercise our human rights. In that regard, we want to use our task force chairship to highlight the increasing pre‑‑ and we believe that the multistakeholder approach is the right one, but we also recognize that Internet shutdowns need to be seen as part of a much broader set of issues, all of which are related.
For example, we have the issue of media freedom, online violence against women, development, misinformation. All of them come together to pose a significant threat to the ability to all of us to exercise or rights and actually lead to the full exercise of the realization of development. So in that regard, I want to briefly, before I hand over to the panel, highlight for the benefit of all of you that the ‑‑ there has been a joint statement on Internet shutdowns and elections which is actually going live today. So if you have a look at the screen, we have a quick snapshot of this statement. The first issued by the FOC. In that regard, I think it's a great way to introduce the session today and a reminder of the determination of the FOC to take up the challenge that this issue poses.
For all of you in the room, and I hope for all of you online, you can see the statement now. We will share a copy of that later. I'm very happy to discuss that as well during the Q&A.
Insofar as today's session is concerned, we've got I think five speakers. I'm going to ask them each to come in. Firstly, with a few words of self‑introduction and then they'll spend about three to five minutes reflecting on a particular point of this session and then we will have I hope a good half an hour or so of discussion where we can answer questions or reflect on any points that you in the room or virtually are making.
Without any further ado I'm going to ask Felicia Anthonio to give a reflection on the campaign and what some of the initial recommendation for policymakers are. Over to you, Felicia.
>> FELICIA ANTHONIO: Hello. Can you hear me okay? All right. I'm Felicia. Campaign manager at access now. For those who don't know what the campaign is, it's a global campaign that unites over 300 organizations around the world and our objective is to fight Internet shutdowns. This campaign was launched in 2016 by access now and stakeholders and since then we've wanted to document and advocate against shutdowns globally.
So for the purpose of today's session, I'm going to give a few highlights of what we've seen across the globe with regards to shutdowns in general and then I'll narrow my submission to election related shutdowns and the impacts.
According to our data and monitoring that is access now and the keep it on coalition, Internet shutdowns are spreading and lasting longer and impacting lives. Since 2016 we've documented at least 1,200 incidents of shutdowns in about 76 countries worldwide. These incidents of shutdowns are usually perpetrated by governments, state access, military regions, or third parties, and they take place during very critical moments like elections, protests, and conflict situations.
In relation to shutdowns documented around elections, we have seen at least 57 election related shutdowns globally since 2016. Africa accounts for 44% of these shutdowns. That is about 25 of these shutdowns happened in Africa. We also have countries like Iran, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iraq, Belarus, among others that have weaponized shutdowns during elections.
We all know and believe that the Internet and digital platforms continue to enable and enhance fundamental human rights of people to access information, to express themselves, and to also enjoy their rights to freedom of assembly. And so in times of elections, the Internet plays a critical role in promoting free, transparent and fair electoral process by providing political candidates avenues to reach the supporters or audience as well as allow equal access to communication channels for both the incumbents and oppositions. For voters, keeping the Internet and essential platforms on during elections enable them to actively participate in democratic processes, scrutinize policies put forward by political candidates and also provide opportunities for people to hold their government to account.
Elections, particularly in growing democracies, are a critical time of transition and active participation in the process contributes significantly to the credible ‑‑ to a credible democratic outcome. Journalists, human right defenders, election observers, and other key stakeholders also rely on the Internet and digital communication tools to monitor the electoral process. Shutdowns makes it difficult for all the actors to monitor the electoral processes across the globe.
Some governments have attempted to justify these shutdowns as relevant to prevent the spread of misinformation or hateful content or international security measure. However, the opposite is true. When you shut down the Internet during elections, it results in chaos in the sense that it blocks alternative sources of information, verification channels, and seeks to benefit only the incumbent governments. Imposing shutdowns during elections is also likely to agitate people to protest and in that regard it questions the national security bits of governments trying to justify shutdowns.
According to a study that was done in 2019 by the collaboration of ICT policy in eastern Saudi and Africa, shutdowns remain a tool for government whose want to hold on to power with examples in Uganda, Belarus, republic of Congo and most recently we saw this happen in Gabon when the Internet was shut down and then the incumbent was announced as a winner of the elections but there was a coup which overthrew him. If that had to happen, had it the incumbent in power for the next time of elections.
Then I think that although the number of elections around the world have reduced over the past few years with some authorities and countries like Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, among others, making commitments to keep it on during elections I think is still remains a crucial priority for all actors working to advance democracy around the world. And so next year we have ‑‑ next year has been described as the year of elections with at least 50 or so elections ‑‑ 50 or so countries scheduled to go to the polls. Given the direct interference of shutdowns on electoral processes and the out comes of elections, I think it's important for all stakeholders, including governments, regional and international bodies like the United Nations, the African union, European union, Freedom Online Coalition among others to support the keep it on coalition and other stakeholders to ensure that governments do not normalize shutdowns during elections.
We welcome the just published statement by the Freedom Online Coalition denouncing election‑related shutdowns and my other recommendation also goes to the businesses and telecom companies as well as big tech companies to ensure that people have access to secure, open, free inclusive Internet access, to electoral processes as well as to ensure these platforms are safe for people to be able to express themselves and to also avoid giving governments reasons to justify their actions by shutting down the Internet.
In conclusion, I think that the fight against shutdowns requires a collaborative effort as we've seen and this is not just something that civil society alone is working on. We've seen the ‑‑ they just released Freedom Online Coalition denouncing the use of shutdowns by several governments and other institutions which we appreciate as the keep it on coalition and we look forward to working with all of you to push back against shutdowns. Thank you.
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: Thank you very much for that really great overview of the elections and shutdowns. I'm now very pleased to hand over to our colleague joining us on screen, Andrea who will reflect on the impact of shutdowns on the ground, especially as seen from the republic of Congo. Over to Andrea. Can you hear ‑‑
>> Can you hear me?
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: We can hear you. Please continue. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Working on democracy and human rights in the Republic of Congo. We started just for human rights, then we extend in many topics as democracy and we really work with keeping it on campaign.
So what happened the last election, in Congo was not just informative but it followed what Felicia said. The narrative first is about safety. The safety of republic against interference, against misinformation coming from the opposition, but never about the information coming from the government, of course. And by using this narrative of fighting interference into the electoral process, they are about to fail the Internet shutdown of something and saying we are so weak, we are a weak democracy, we don't have the tool to keep the Internet on because we don't have the necessary tool to block that information.
During that election it was surprising that this narrative was even effective in the general public opinion of Congo. It goes on for about one week without phone and Internet because we're just not blocked the Internet, they also blocked the telecommunication directly in the country.
With that narrative, they extended to the anti‑terrorist activity and my point here is to say that these Internet shutdowns is not just for the Internet. It also has impact directly on the people because of this new anti‑terrorist law in Congo they're about to arrest militants from the opposition because of social media posts. Even if the Internet was blocked, if you post something earlier about the election process, they can go and arrest you and activists are arrested and put in jail for about three or four months because of this Internet shutdown and the information they spread.
On our site, this is what I was trying to make as a point. We work with people to say that during election time in Africa, because of the behavior of our government, they need to step up. I don't ask for full and permanent task force on election, but during election time, because of the spread of hate speech from the government, someone needs to be in the middle and like a referee for the competition on the free flow of information. And we're about to secure a way to walk with Meta and they put up something called Congo fact check to check on the information putting out during that special time.
They were able to break a very fast disinformation coming from government‑related Facebook account. It was really shameful for our government to come up with this idea of blocking this information by shutting down the Internet and then themself broke because they use robot and bot to spread lies during election time. So this is what was happening. Because of that, I also think that the next move is not just about Internet shutdown. It's about control. Control of the information coming in the country. So because they are not about to have the newest technology, they use the Internet shutdown, but in the coming years, and in the first stretch of Congo, they are trying to have a set of tools coming from the republic of China, people's republic of China so they can have this kind of fire wall and secure themself from any kind of information coming from outside the world inside the country. This is what we need to be focused on. Not just the regulatory shutdown that they are trying to make to block any kind of information coming from outside inside the country. Thank you.
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: Well, thank you very much, Andrea, for that really powerful reflection on the ground, especially on those challenges. Also thank you for staying on time. A special thanks for joining us on. I think it's 1:00 where you are in Paris, so we're very grateful you've dialed in. I'm going to hand over to Ben Jones to reflect on shutdowns and freedom of expression.
>> Thanks ever so much and thank you other colleagues. My name is Ben Graham Jones. I work many elections every year and an adviser to the Westminster foundation for Democracy, a UK public body. Let me start by applauding the joint statements on international shutdowns and elections, the Freedom Online Coalition. I think it really provides a sound basis for calling out the illegitimacy of Internet shutdowns wherever they may occur.
I'm going to make three brief points today. Really the first is that I would like to imagine, if you would, a situation where you have an election and it's important during the election process, perhaps on election day or perhaps as the results are being counted and tabulated, 10,000 journalists are locked up by government authorities. How much this would attract from the community and from domestic actors, and rightly so. Yet it strikes me that when the communications of an entire population is silenced for that period, there is not always the same level and the same degree of condemnation. Perhaps we need to think carefully about how we can equate those two events that the legitimacy of the rights that we enjoy are flying and are in no way diminished when they are online.
This is the first point I wish to make. That equality between the rights we have offline as they have online, it's been agreed at the UN general assembly as something we need to underscore and I applaud the work of access now and other partners here today who do such excellent job in really raising awareness of that fact. Of course, Internet shutdowns are not just about the rights of freedom of expression.
The second point I would like to make pertains to disinformation. The right to access information, the right to credible elections which depend on having that basis of fact‑based information.
One of the things that I see as someone who specializes in counter disinformation is when Internet shutdowns occur, they amplify this information. They concentrate the sources of information that people can access. State TV, for example, may remain on or it may be that the channels are closed down or the means which are fossilled are selective. So what that means for those of us working in counter disinformation is that we need to be thinking seriously about pre‑bunking, about moving our response efforts to prevention efforts to mitigation efforts, about providing fact‑based information at an earlier stage of the process where there is a risk of Internet shutdowns. When we're working in con decks which may be vulnerable to Internet shutdowns, we need to learn from other contexts. If you sat in an election commission in Nigeria, you may not be thinking about the recent election that took place that Kenya or France. It's probably the previous elections that took place in Nigeria.
Actually what we need to bear in mind is we see overlap in the type of definition that are circulated across different electoral contexts. I work globally across lots of different elections each year, so by looking at other context we can bolster preparedness in advance of any shutdown and monopoly being imposed.
The second thing is think about narrative forecasting.
Organizations whether it's election bodies, political parties, really making a plan for thinking about what types of narratives might be deployed at different points in the process, informed by that international best practice. And then thinking about what response might look like. Thirdly, overcoming selection bias. We than people don't seek out counter disinformation. We know people don't look to check whether or not their previous opinion is correct. There's decades of psychological research. We need to think about bringing it to the place its needs to be. The people who would seek out fact‑based information are the people you need to reach least.
Fourth, thinking about drafting that response early. If you can draft info graphics, it's going to reduce your response times before any shutdowns ins are imposed.
The third point I'd like to very briefly make is on risk forecasting. Whether we're thinking about Internet shutdowns ins, but the time it takes place it's too late to have ‑‑ whether that's the licensing agreements, whether it's putting concerted pressure, the sorts of things they keep it on coalition does so effectively. And so we really need to be thinking about on a sector wide basis, but also within our individual organizations mapping out risks.
For example, if you're a body that sends election observation machines, you might be thinking about okay, what are our known risk factors of Internet shutdowns present in particular context and then prioritizing your mission to those places so that you serve as a counterweight of information.
Likewise, if you are a civil society organization whose communication plan depends on releasing a statement around election day, maybe you need to think carefully about how to communicate your messaging around the election if that's not going to be possible. So three key points. Remembering that the same rights online apply offline. Thinking about disinformation response and forecasting risk. Thanks ever so much.
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: Thank you very much, Ben, especially for those practical recommendations as well. We're now going to go back online. We've got a colleague joining us, Nicole Stremlau who will reflect on the research on government decisions around Internet shutdowns, especially in Africa. Over to you, Nicole.
>> NICOLE STREMLAW: Good morning, everyone. I hope you hear me.
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: We can. Please continue.
>> NICOLE STREMLAW: Great. Thank you so much. I just wanted to take a couple of minutes to reflect on some of the research we've been doing at Oxford around Internet shutdowns, in particularly around conflicts in Africa. We've been asking why governments are choosing this relatively blunt tool of internet shutdowns as compared with other fortunatelis of control. In Ethiopia, we've also been looking at the impact and the perception of shutdown and we found a growing acceptance that this is actually an important tool.
In the process of our research, we've also sought to come up with a different reading of Internet shutdowns. To ask whether or not it's possible to identify these alternative logics and rules rather than the assumed motivations of what's actually drive driving shutdowns. I have three points.
First of all, a somewhat obvious point, we're seeing a growing acceptance of shutdowns. They're being normalized as a tool to address very legitimate concerns around election interference, concerns about disinformation, concerns about insightment of ‑‑ and to protect the integrity of the electoral process. By this I'm talking about a lot of reflections around the research we've been doing on the ground in Africa.
So I objection it's also helpful to remember that there's long been information controls around elections in different democracies so the banning of public opinion polls within weeks of election as seen in cania, prohibition of political advertising or campaign rallies close to voting day that might arise in particular context in accordance with historical experiences. The challenge of social media is that it's making imposing these kinds of silences around elections increasingly difficult, so shutdowns are this blunt tool, this very crude tool for addressing some of these concerns in the context of having less precise tools or not knowing what else to do that might historically have been available for dealing with concerns around mass needia, for example.
Second, I think most importantly, we see shutdowns as a growing form of resistance, an expression of frustration to the overwhelming power of large social media companies that are typically based in the U.S. or China and we see this frustration with the failures and the inequalities of online content moderation. To some degree this has become well documented, and they've been righting around this particularly around the failure of content moderation in local African languages and the lack of attention given to resource poor communities. So we see governments in these more marginalize markets in the global south being frustrated with this inadequate response, the lack of engagement, the lack of product oversight from these large tech companies.
And so shutdowns are seen by some, and it's not always explicit, but as I way of expressing sovereignty, as a way of pushing back against what is often seen to be these arbitrary responses of incredibly rich companies deciding good and bad actors from a distance. And the frustration also with the rules that are being written in far off countries according to certain logics that local authorities feel powerless to engage or really to challenge opinion and so like Andrea, I agree there is a lot of discussion and debate about what more can these companies do, not necessarily in Kenya, but more in the central African republic or the failures of what's been happening in Ethiopia.
Third, we've also seen the decision to implement shutdowns partly as an information literacy challenge. To some degree this has been overlooked, but our research has shown that governments often resort to shutdowns because of a lack of experience of how to engage these large tech companies or lack of understanding about alternative ways of addressing the very legitimate concerns about the failures of online content moderation, particularly around elections or in cases of extreme violence. And how to navigate this balance between the competing rights such as the responsibility to protect in cases of extreme violence as well as freedom of expression or the right to information as we've mentioned auto this panel already.
If I can say a very tiny plug, we at Oxford were awarded a fund award to actually launch a new program to train policymakers and judges through a new executive program on information literacy and we're specifically going to be working on how to improve understanding among these key influencers and how to address these really very real challenges that information disorder poses. Particularly in the context of generative AI but really how to do so through humans rights, through human rights framework, ahead of elections, in context of extreme violence, and hopefully reducing the need or the turn towards these blunt crude tools of censorship that Internet shutdowns ins are. Thank you.
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: Thank you so much, Nicole. Really helpful there. Also grateful for you joining us. I know it's a difficult time zone where you are as well.
We're now going to go to our last speaker. That's Sarah Moulton before we open it up for Q&A. Sarah will be reflecting on the multistakeholder coordination challenge. Over you to, Sarah.
>> SARAH MOULTON: Thanks. My name is Sarah Moulton. I'm from the national democratic institute, the deputy director of democracy and technology team. NDI is a nonprofit nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization based in the U.S. but we work in about 50 countries around the world. We come at this from an implementation angle. NDI works and supports democratic processes, strengthening democratic institutions, and provides a lot of on the ground election support for many of the elections that have been discussed already, but primarily we do a lot of work with domestic observation groups, independent groups on the ground who are deployed in advance of an election to report back on what they're seeing at the polling station and reporting on the process and the results.
Obviously, for us from a practical standpoint, it's really important for the Internet to be working so that they can transmit their findings and what they're seeing throughout the day and then allowing the observer group to then report on ‑‑ make a statement about the process that they're seeing and hopefully verify that it was indeed democratic and properly run. That's not always the case.
However, what we're seeing often these days is that these disruptions are making a more challenging for groups on the ground to do so. There's definitely been a lot more concern about what might be happening and trying to plan in advance for potential shutdowns. And so one thing that we've really explored is how do we better utilize this network can often include up to 2,000 some cases observers deployed in all parts of a country and how do we take advantage of that distribution in order to collect better data on what we're seeing across country in terms of whether there's a shutdown, whether there's just a disruption, or throttling, perhaps censorship of particular sites that can lead to better data collection on that process, so how can we feed that data to the wider network of stakeholders that we've been talking about. This is, you know, our topic here is multistakeholder collaboration and how do we share that data with those who can perhaps do that more direct advocacy with individuals maybe across in an international level but also even domestically.
Our concern with that particular group obviously there's higher risks to observers these days. We've been seeing in a couple of recent examples Sierra Leone and perhaps Zimbabwe is the more difficult one to talk about but seeing observers arrested for simply the process they're doing, an independent analysis and verification. Sometimes in the middle of what they're doing on election day in the case of Zimbabwe. We have to look at how do we protect these group whose can collect this data but also enable them to do so because there's a lot of opportunity, there is a lot of tools out there now. In order to take these measurements and then report them up.
The other thing like sort of the other side of this angle is NDI also works with politicians and policy makers and I think that there is a real opportunity for collaboration here but really needing to do so well in advance, we need to get this started now, yesterday, especially with 2024. We've been talking about 2024 for years now, but when are we ‑‑ we really have to start working towards it. This statement is a great start and a great recognition of that coming up and I know thanks to keep it on campaign really puts a lot of effort into planning and tracking which elections are going to be perhaps the most significant and potential for shutdowns.
Also reflecting, having just come from the FIFA Africa event last week, I think, that there is a lot of I think interest from policymakers to engage in this process. But there's also a lack of information at times. There is a lack of understanding of the environment and sometimes the approach from civil society might potentially be aggressive in this and they perceive it as that we are not being collaborative, that we are coming at them as opposed to working together with them, and frankly sometimes there's a challenge in trying to get policymakers to care about the issue. The prospect of freedom of expression may not resonate, especially when it came up the reference ‑‑ really where we can make the difference of a shutdown, beyond that, looking at the healthcare issues, looking at economic loss, like it has a huge impact on a country. And really trying to collect that data, use the data that we're collecting in order to make that case, in order to work earlier on with not only politicians or individuals, but political parties generally, because politicians during the time of an election are really concerned more about their election than they are about potentially a shutdown. So how can you work with a wider political party ecosystem.
I think there's things we can do in preparation of that. There is a desire for training programs, for learning about these tools, for working together with multistakeholder approaches, whether that's civil society or others, and I think for us if we can make better efforts to connect civil society with political parties as also international initiatives that we can go a long way towards kind of mitigating this potential damage that's coming up. I'll stop there.
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: Thank you so much, Sarah. Really, really helpful. We're now going to open it up for Q&A really. I want to start with folks in the room first. If you briefly introduce yourself and also briefly set out your comment or question, that would be great. I see a mic in the middle. Maybe ‑‑ we've got a colleague already there. The gentleman in the white shirt, if you could start off.
>> Yes. Hello. My name is Eugene and I represent devote USA.com. Thank you for bringing up free and fair elections. One is availability of communication. We talk about Internet, but there are other ways to communicate which do not use the protocol at all. Then you talked about something also very important and that is availability of independent observers and journalists and international organizations, very important.
There are three other critical components on free and fair elections, which this panel have not touched upon. I just wanted to raise them. One of them is true immutability of election results and that is achieved by using blockchain which is what we use. Then of course there is an issue of security and safety and that is achieved vie using a crypto graphic protection. And you also need scalable networks to conduct elections with a country with 300 million voters. You must have a scalable network to conduct those.
My question is, are there any thoughts to those other components of free and fair election process that this panel is thinking about? And if not, of course come talk to us. We can help. Thank you.
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: Perfect. Thank you. Some really powerful reflections there on the wider technological context of elections. I'm going to look to the panel in the room first to see if anyone wants to respond to Eugene. Ben has volunteered. Over to you.
>> Thanks, Eugene. There's probably two components. There's the actual process itself and how that pans out and the perception of the process. Election technology is a classic target for disinformation. In part because it's very difficult to explain blockchain or to explain you can't observe elections as well. It makes it quite tricky sometimes. Of course, there are big talks of building confidence. But I think that's exactly why it's so important that we fight Internet shutdowns is because when you've got that sort of disinformation that can be levied against election technologies in particular, then you can't actually fight that if the journalists don't have the ability to do so.
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: Thank you. We have another speaker now. Over to you.
>> Hi, everyone. Nicki from the U.S. department of State, bureau of democracy, human rights and labor. I also serve as a focal point for the Freedom Online Coalition. Thank you so, so much for this panel. I was excitedly writing so plane notes and I have so many follow‑ups that I'd love to have with all of you.
I have a question that was sparked by some of Nicole's comments, but really just open it up to the whole panel. One of the things that I've also found is pretty consistent with the first finding that you noted about the acceptance it seems of this tool internationally really due to the fact that so many governments feel that they really don't have very many other tools to address what again are legitimate concerns. When we're going through the list that you see oftentimes in access now keep it on reports of these are all the real reasons that an Internet shutdown might be happening. I think one of the reasons that's often cited as I can't believe that's a reason is to prevent cheating. And so I'm a little bit curious just across the board, you know, what are some of the solutions that folks have been thinking about to address what is really just seen like as an institutional frameworks and sort of like structural issues within governments that lead them to be unable to address some of these, again, legitimate concerns that are happening within the country and then turning to the Internet to then just bluntly just use that to try to address everything and then creating so many other additional concerns that just build on top of the original legitimate concerns. Thank you.
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: Thank you. I really important point there about practical alternatives to policymakers. You suggested Nicole touched on some of these points. I might ask Nicole online if you want to comment on the question. Over to you, Nicole.
>> NICOLE STREMLAW: Thanks for that. I think we see it at both levels and maybe Andrea wants to come in with what he's seeing in the Congo. We do see it's with policymakers not understanding. I think it's particularly in markets that are peripheral to the large tech companies. So here I'm not speaking about Kenya. I'm speak being the central African republic. I'm speaking to some degree about Ethiopia where they don't have the same channels, same lines open. They don't have embasesy in silicon valley like Germany does. It's a very different environment and relationship with these companies and they're also not sure how to engage with them. And it's also an understanding about technology, an understanding about what other tools they have, how else they can deal with it, other than shutting down the Internet.
I think what is very concerning, and this is some research that as I mentioned I just returned from Ethiopia and we've been doing longstanding research in two conflict defected regions looking at how communities there are engaging with Internet shutdowns and how they see the impact of Internet shutdowns. We have seen there is an acceptance of these Internet shutdowns because people are so fed up with the content they're receiving on line, with the massive amounts of online hate speech, incitement to violence and experiencing violence on the ground. I'm putting it very crudely, but in the interest of 10 seconds, they're finding that there aren't any other alternatives so they'd rather not be exposed to this what they see as inciting real world violence and they'd rather have it shutoff.
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: Great. Thank you for that. I see some more hans in the room. If the lady at the microphone can come in. We'll take these two questions together in a bunch. Over to you.
>> Thank you. I am Sally Wentworth. I'm from the Internet society. I want to thank you for this great panel. I learned a lot of things to be concerned about. We at the Internet society are a more technical organization and we've thought hard about what role we can play to support the work that many of you are trying to do to support freedom and to support democracy and free flow of information. Where we stand is we like to look at it from what do we see in the Internet. And is there information that we can see on the Internet about shutdowns, about data flows, about cross border connectivity, and make that information available and sort of digestible ways that you all can use in your advocacy and promotion of democracy and free elections.
Sarah, I was particularly struck by your comment of putting this in a broader context of what is the impact not just in the immediate term with respect to the election, but what does this do ongoing shutdowns, what does that do for our country's economy? If we see governments saying we want to be an online economy, we want to be a digital marketplace, we want to have all these opportunities, but there's no reliability of connectivity, that makes a very difficult investment climate. That's some of what we're trying to do. We have a tool called pulse, shameless plug. We're trying to create resources that are useful for activists that are doing this kind of important work. I want to thank you for that. And express our support and willingness to be helpful in this.
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: Thank you so much. I'll take the two further questions in the room in a bunch. And then we've got a hand up in the virtual room as well and we'll do one final round of reactions from the panel. Over to.
>> I'm a barrister but also policy counsel for many of the tech companies in Pakistan. One of the things I found very effective was to run a timer, a clock that shows how main is being lost every time. It worked really well with ministers and other policy folks as well.
My question really is to Nicole. I completely understand there are certain things we're also seeing in countries like Pakistan where there is religious ceremonies or religious days where there could be violence. Handling the Internet becomes important. If they don't know what to do they will shut it down. My concern is while we legitimize that, what I'm hearing in this room is the idea that there are actually good reasons. I'm concerned about certain governments that might not be in central Africa but other places who might take heed and say wonderful, we have people who agree with us. Make sure we balance that out a little bit. Thank you so much.
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: Thank you.
Really good point there. Last but object least over to you, sir.
>> Thank you. Let me introduce myself. This is [ ? ]. While talking about the free and fair election and Internet, right now we focus only on this Internet shutdown and something else. But we should not target free and fair election meets complaints. There is a government. There is an Internet service provider, there are political parties and also citizens. So sometimes comments intentionally controls the media and the Internet. To get some vested interest in that way of how we can make the government accountable. Sometimes the public may take the sides of some of the leader of the candidates of the elections. If that is disinformation, it is spread so fast that it makes all the trust that goes down. We don't have access to the Internet service provider to control or to take our data, this information ‑‑ as Internet service providers we can make responsible to the use of AI or any tools so that such kind of disinformation should not be spread in the social media or something else.
And the second thing is how a government can make ‑‑ how we can make the government more accountable and responsive through the use of digital toll. This is very important. Thank you very much.
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: Thank you very much. Really important perspective from a policymaker expect. I'm going to ask the panel to come in. I'll introduce you to come in, but first we have Andrea, one of our speakers online who will like to come in. Andrea, did you want to come comment?
>> Yeah. Thank you. So in the case of Congo, it was successful to reach out to Meta to have a task force on the election and it's not that we are trying to justify the reason of the government. We are identifying the opinion. There is misinformation from every side. So as a civil society organization, we need to be the referee in the middle ground. And if we can take away from a group, and during these online moderation in the local level, because those companies won't do it themselves. We need to push them. By doing so, we will raise that argument of a government that Internet means violence. Because we will have the civil society working against the hate speech, working against the incitement to violence and if we are more of us doing that work, the government won't have this target to say nobody is doing that work so we have to shut down the Internet. This is our way to address that specific problem.
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: Thank you, Andrea. I think that addresses one of the points made just now about how to engage with Internet providers and content platforms.
I think we had a question from the Internet society around data and economy and making that argument. Maybe if I could ask Sarah to respond to that. And then we had a comment made from our colleague based in Pakistan about the dangers of potentially giving some arguments to those states who don't have put bluntly the best of intentions in this area and the unwitting sort of power to hand over. Maybe I can ask Felicia to respond to that. Sarah and then Felicia.
>> SARAH MOULTON: Thank you to the Internet society. I think there is a lot of work being done lately through discussions for democracy. The platform that's come out of that and also the cost of Internet shutdown ‑‑ well, different title. But that tool I think is really critical. And it's really getting it into more hands and how do we make sure that that data is creator reflects the local context, because that's the other situation that we face if we're going in and speaking to a particular policymaker, they want to make sure that it reflects their situation and their context and I think maybe as I said, these conversations, this work needs to start now. Particularly for the elections coming up. How do we I think sitting down and collaborating and figuring out what data you have, what data you have and how do we ‑‑ this is still my question is how can we, you know, have this collaboration point in advance to make sure that we're all sharing the information that we're collecting and working with the right, whether it's policymakers, civil society or ISP or tech platforms or strategic litigators, all of these components or international FOCs. This is very critical for, you know, raising the alarm and all of this data comes together to make the case. And so thank you for that. I'm not sure what the ‑‑ I'm not sure if I'm answering his particular question, but I want to note the importance of that platform and how much we value it.
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: Thank you. Over to you.
>> FELICIA ANTHONIO: For us, I will keep it on coalition campaign, we haven't seen any evidence of shutdowns contributing to resolving crisis that governments ‑‑ when you shut down the Internet during conflict in response to dangerous content being flagged on line, it only escalates the crisis. It endangers more people. It provides an opportunity for governments and perpetrators to actually commit heinous crimes against people with impunity. And so for us, we believe that what needs to be done is that yes, there is violent content on platforms. Big tech companies need to be responsible in taking down violence content or hateful content or dangerous content in order to keep people safe. And so I just want to emphasize that the keep it on coalition denounces all forms of shutdowns. We haven't seen shutdowns as a solution to any form of violence anywhere around the world. And if anything, what shutdowns do is that as I said, it provides an opportunity for governments, parties to perpetrate heinous crimes against people around the world. And so I just want to make this very clear on behalf of the keep it on coalition. Thank you.
>> KANBAR HOSSEIN-BOR: Thank you very much. We're really reaching the end. We'll try to sum this up in a minute or two. Three very quick points from me. First, a big thanks to our speakers for coming in and setting up this very complicated issue for us. And also a big thank you to all of you both online and in the room for engaging in this. Secondly, I think for me, this is a reminder of the importance from a principles‑based perspective. Namely Internet shutdowns pose a massive threat to not only the ability to exercise offline rights online, but they also pose a threat to the wider democratic fabric of society and also they pose significant economic costs to societies as well.
Finally, and the third more important I want to end on is there are a lot of good intentions I'm hearing across this discussion about trying to support policymakers where they might not have the capacity, but they have the intent to address these issues, but also recognizing that we should stand firm in the face of those who actually don't have the best of intentions here and next year we'll potentially have the fate of 2 billion people in about 50 or so elections to consider and the need to stand up for that on a normal basis. I want to remind everyone of the FOC statement that we launched.
That's the start. Two weeks ago as part of the UNESCO international day for universal access information, there is an Oxford statement also I'd like to bring your attention to. I hope it will be on screen which highlights the comprehensive impact of these issues together. And finally we hope through the FOC and the task force Internet shutdowns we can through multistakeholder approach bring all the expertise together, the data together to come up with some practical measures to try and address the significant challenges that are not only happening today but also we're facing collectively next year as well. Thanks again to all our speakers and to all of you for this session.