2nd CONSULTATIONS ON THE CONVENING OF THE INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM TRANSCRIPT OF THE MORNING SESSION FRIDAY 19 MAY 2006 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the 2nd Consultations on the Convening of the Internet Governance Forum, in Geneva on 19 May 2006 in Geneva, Switzerland. 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 to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: Good morning. And welcome to Geneva. This is the second time we are meeting on this whole question of planning for the first meeting of the Internet Governance Forum, which, as you know, was one of the major decisions which came out of the Tunis summit. We -- as you know, we had the consultation in February. Many of you were here. There was a range of views which was expressed on how this forum should be convened, constituted, and managed. Subsequent to that, I'm truly grateful to many of you who gave your views in more detail to the secretariat. And I must really thank all of the missions in Geneva who cooperated so well with the head of the secretariat, Mr. Markus Kummer, in developing this notion. Obviously, we were not trying to get a complete sort of negotiated agreement or any such thing, but to get a good sense of what's the range of views, what would be possible, what is definitely not possible, et cetera, and conveyed that to the secretary general. And the secretary general has constituted this advisory group to assist him in convening the Internet Governance Forum. As you will recollect, this forum is something which is of a very unique character. It is in not a formal intergovernmental meeting, as most U.N. meetings are, but it is a meeting which will be convened by the secretary general of the United Nations. And therefore this -- the primary purpose of this advisory group is to advise the secretary general on the processes of convening this meeting. We also know that the first meeting, which the host is the government of Greece, the government of Greece is represented on this advisory group. And, of course, the United Nations, the secretary general's office, the secretariat, which has been set up, they're in the United Nations to support the IGF, which is headed by Markus Kummer, and the host country will work very closely together on organizational issues. I may just here just mention in -- as a slight digression that I have requested, if it's feasible, somebody from the government of Greece, possibly Mr. George Papadatos himself, to give a little briefing on logistical issues, because I don't know when we will have a chance again to come together. And hopefully we will do that first thing in the afternoon. I don't see Mr. PAPADATOS here, but I did convey to him earlier. And I do hope that he will be able to do that, because I think it's very important that while discussing policy issues, we should keep in sight the logistical questions as to the meeting access space, hotels, et cetera. The announcement about the establishment of the advisory group came, if I may be permitted to say so, in the nick of time, on the 17th of May. It's there. You will see it. And as you can see from the short preamble to the list of members which is there, the main task which has been given to us as an advisory group is to prepare the substantive agenda and program for the first meeting of the forum which is to be held in Athens, from 30th October to 2nd of November. I would like to stress that at this stage, we are only focusing on the first meeting. Questions about how the future will be handled, et cetera, we will perhaps have to come to after we gain some experience, some learning, from this process. Of course, when we discuss issues about priorities for the substantive agenda and program, we will also have to have a little thought to the format of the meeting. And I hope that when you speak, you will be able to give your views and comments on that also. What we are doing to do is a process of open consultation. The advisory group will be meeting on Monday and Tuesday. It is very important that the members of the advisory group have a good sense of what is the broad sentiment on these issues amongst the people who are -- who are likely to be very active participants in the forum. And it's for this reason that we have this open consultation. The questions from my side are basically your views on issues of what agenda, the themes which should be on the agenda, the program itself, which at the moment is scheduled to be there for -- well, it's 30th October to 2nd November, that's four days. But presumably, that is something that we should address. But the provision is there for up to four days of meeting. I would also very much welcome your views on issues of format and so on. And I have no doubts that you also, in your turn, will have certain questions about the convening of the meeting to the secretary general, and I will try and respond to that as best as I can. My suggestion for our process today of open consultation is that there are -- many members of the group are present here, and I hope that they will also listen carefully to all that is going on. That we have a general discussion, open the floor for a general discussion in the morning. That if, after we've heard views which I hope will cover the range of issues that we need to decide, I will try and summarize it. And then, of course, we will take it to the advisory group on Monday. And my hope is that at the end of Tuesday, the advisory group will have a fairly clear set of proposals on how this meeting is to be organized, what its themes will be, what will be the sessions, et cetera, so that we have a basis for forward planning. The -- there are other issues which the advisory group may have to consider, like does it need to meet again before the Athens meeting. But I will leave that to the advisory group to look at. So with these words, I would like to start the discussions. But before that, I would like to hand the floor to Markus Kummer, if he wishes to add anything or if there are any other announcements that he needs to make. SECRETARY KUMMER: Thank you, chairman. Just a few words of explanation. You may be used that we have interpretation in all six languages. Unfortunately, this time, this was not possible. So we only have French and Spanish and English. Again, you're used to the system now that everything is put on the screen immediately as it is spoken. So we would ask that people who are planning to say something, that they may write down their name or have a business card ready so our helpers can go around the room and get the names and give them to our scribes so that they're correctly on the screen. And last, but maybe most importantly, I have to apologize. An error occurred when we put up the list with members of the advisory group. And for some inexplicable reason, the member proposed by the government of Ghana got left out. The list has been corrected now. It's on our Web site and also on the U.N. Web site in New York. His name is Issah Yahaya. He is head of the policy planning, monitoring, and evaluation of telecoms in the Ministry of Telecommunications of Ghana. We have apologized to him, and he will be attending the meeting of the advisory group. Thank you, chairman. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: Okay. The floor is open. Japan, Pakistan, United States, Brazil. >>JAPAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: Russian federation. >>JAPAN: Let me congratulate the IGF on its establishment and, more specifically, its secretariat. Japan welcomes Mr. Desai and Mr. Kummer. Japan welcomes excellent nomination of the members of the advisory group, who are quite appropriate in addressing the diversity of issues on ICT that are emerging today. Let us reiterate our understanding that the private sector has played a significant role in the development of the Internet. At the same time, since the Internet has become an important part of social infrastructure, not only the private sector, but also government, as well as various users, should be involved in addressing issues of social and global importance. As there are many emerging issues related to the Internet, it is greatly beneficial to share experiences among multistakeholders. Japan welcomes such a multistakeholder meeting where thorough discussions can take place and Japan can share the diversity of experience in broadband and ubiquitous network environment, including issues related to capacity-building, spam, as well as issues related to the benefit of broadband and ubiquitous society and so on. On a final note, Japan wishes the IGF every success. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: Then I have Pakistan, Brazil, United States. >>PAKISTAN: Thank you, Mr. DESAI. I'd like to thank you and Mr. Kummer for arranging this meeting, these consultations, which are extremely useful. I take the floor on behalf of the Group of 77 and China. Most of you may know already that this statement is therefore on behalf of 133 member states of the United Nations. Mr. DESAI, we are glad to see the process of preparations of the IGF getting on road with the composition of the ad hoc advisory process being posted on the Web site, and with the meetings being proposed for next week. As mentioned in the discussions held yesterday, the Group of 77 and China believe that WSIS belongs to the series of U.N. summits that focused on economic and social development issues our declared commitment in the Geneva Declaration of Principles that began the objective of the summit, including all aspects dealing with the Internet governance, was to create a people-centered, inclusive, and development-oriented information society. The Internet Governance Forum should operationalize this commitment of a development-oriented information society. With therefore believe that the mandate, work, agenda, structure, composition, frequency, and venue of meetings of the IGF must be geared towards achieving this objective. Internet Governance Forum must be structured on the basis of regional representation and convened on the principle of geographic rotation, with particular reference to developing countries. Mr. Chairman, the Group of 77 and China would like to reiterate paragraph 65 of the Tunis Agenda that underlines the need to maximize participation of developing countries in decisions of Internet governance. IGF must be characterized by a balanced approach to its multistakeholder participation. Such an approach, from our perspective, would necessitate ensuring adequate and effective participation by governments, civil society, and businesses from developing countries, as well as international organizations that are representative of their development aspirations. The objectives must be to seek balanced representation both in terms of physical presence and intellectual input in all formal and informal meetings, in all deliberations, and in any decision-making processes. This would ensure diversity of view, a transparent, democratic, and a multilateral process on Internet governance that would be inclusive and responsive to the needs of developing countries. Mechanisms must also be devised, including through support through businesses and NGOs to fund multistakeholder participation from developing countries. We would also like to reiterate in this context and recall paragraph 17 of the Tunis Agenda, which underscores the principles of good corporate governance and corporate social responsibility towards economic and social development of host countries. Mr. DESAI, paragraph 65 of the Tunis Agenda needs to be operationalized through the IGF. The Group of 77 and China believe that this paragraph is not limited to capacity-building issues only, but highlights the systemic perspective of development-oriented governance. We've said this earlier, we'd like to reiterate that instead of a reductionist approach to the development aspects of Internet governance, by limiting it to capacity-building, the Group of 77 and China reiterate that these issues have to be dealt in a comprehensive manner. The development aspects have been addressed in a number of paragraphs in the Tunis Agenda. Paragraph 49 is one example that affirms commitment on behalf of the international community to turning the digital divide into digital opportunity by ensuring harmonious and equitable development for all and addressing issues like international interconnectivity costs, know-how, transfer, multilingualism, and providing the users with a choice of different software models, including open source, free proprietary software. It would therefore be important for our deliberations to development -- to develop a substantive agenda that is development-oriented. In this context, the Group of 77 and China have already sent forth a list of subjects that it considers of priority for discussions within the IGF. While outlining a multiyear program, the IGF must not lose the development perspective in examining all these issues and seek to operationalize the development content of the Tunis Agenda, with particular reference to the following -- and this is the list that has already been provided to Mr. Kummer. The list is as follows: A, bridging the digital divide, access, policy, and financing. B, affordability and availability of the Internet. C, international interconnection costs. D, technology and know-how transfer. E, multilingualism and local content. F, local development of software and open source software. G, capacity-building and participation of multistakeholders from developing countries. H, equitable and stable and -- resource management. I, Internet access and international transit arrangements. This, basically, will be the focus of the agenda of the Group of 77 and China in the discussions that we hope to be -- that we hope that will be held in the context of the IGF. We believe that the IGF process must stay close to the WSIS model and build and draw on the established concepts and practices. The Group of 77 and China, being the largest stakeholders in the process, would be willing to work closely with all other stakeholders to ensure a development-oriented future for Internet governance that promotes interconnectivity and affords universal accessibility. We look forward to working with the advisory group in preparations to prepare for the first IGF meeting in Greece. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: Thank you very much. Brazil and the United States or the United States and Brazil. Which way? Would you like to go? >>UNITED STATES: Thank you, Mr. Desai. I would just like to reiterate the views of the United States on the Internet Governance Forum. The United States reiterates its commitments to the results of the WSIS and, in particular, to the convening of the IGF. In order for the Internet Governance Forum to realize its full potential, we believe that it is critical to ensure that all stakeholders from the Internet community participate in the event and its planning on an equal footing. The IGF should offer an opportunity for leading Internet experts from around the world to share experiences and offer visions that support the continued evolution and expansion of the Internet. Consequently, the issue of the use of information and communication technologies to advance development should be at the heart of these discussions. One possible approach to the IGF would involve a series of panels composed of innovators, scholars, and industry leaders from around the world who could debate inter-related policy matters such as the free flow of information, capacity-building, expanded Internet access, cybersecurity, spam, and privacy. The United States believes that the IGF should be a truly multistakeholder event. Therefore, it is important that it not be encumbered by extensive existing United Nations processes and procedures. Attendance and participation in the IGF should be open to a broad array of stakeholders, including governments, business entities, civil society, scientists, and intergovernmental organizations. Linkages to the U.N. should be minimal in terms of procedures. And the IGF should avoid burdensome preparatory processes. The secretariat should be small, with the mission to support the smooth functioning of the IGF, and to facilitate broad participation in the event. Finally, a multistakeholder bureau will be extremely important to act as a program committee and to offer input as to discussion topics, speakers, and format. The promise of the IGF and open and inclusive dialogue amongst all stakeholders of the international Internet community to discuss critical issues concerning the future of the Internet is viewed by the United States as a positive development. We look forward to a successful inaugural meeting of the IGF in Athens, Greece, later this year. Thank you very much. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: If I may now turn to Brazil. >>BRAZIL: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Nice to see you here again. I wish you all the luck that you are going to need. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: That doesn't sound very promising. [ Laughter ] >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: I hope I will manage without luck this time. >>BRAZIL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just for the record, let me say at the outset that Brazil fully supports the statement delivered by the delegation of Pakistan on behalf of the Group of 77, which is composed of more than 100 countries. A development perspective shall be the background of our debate. This umbrella should also encompass capacity-building, global public policies related to the generic top-level domain names, and international interconnection costs. Mr. Chairman, Brazil would like to convey to the United Nations secretary general its appreciation for the organization of this second consultation on the Internet Governance Forum. This is certainly a step forward to the international community in its endeavor to set up what our heads of states and heads of governments decided at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis last year. I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, to repeat myself. Nevertheless, as the Brazilian delegation has already stated during the first consultation on the IGF last February, we decided in Tunis to request the United Nations secretary general to help us on two tasks. The first one was to convene by the second quarter of 2006 a meeting of the new forum for multistakeholder policy dialogue, called Internet Governance Forum, which is paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda. But we also asked the secretary general to start a process towards an enhanced cooperation by the end of the first quarter of 2006, Mr. Chairman. I think it's March 31st, which is paragraph 71 of the Tunis Agenda. We are aware of the fact that this meeting is related specifically to the Internet Governance Forum, and therefore, it is the Brazilian delegation's understanding that another meeting is going to be organized to take care of the enhanced cooperation process. Brazil is confident of that, Mr. Chairman. In fact, not only Brazil is confident and eager to help; Latin America and the Caribbean region, the GRULAC, is also confident. To be precise, Mr. Chairman, the European Union is also ready to support the United Nations secretary general on this task, which is to start a process towards an enhanced cooperation. Let me quote paragraph 6 of the Lisbon declaration approved at the fourth European Union, Latin America, and the Caribbean ministerial forum on the information society, held in Portugal last April. And I quote: We -- and this "we," of course, means the E.U. and GRULAC. We welcome with satisfaction the efforts put forward by the secretary general of the United Nations to organize the first meeting of the Internet Governance Forum in Athens next October. We also -- and this is the most important thing. We also reaffirm our conviction that the process towards an enhanced cooperation initiative on Internet governance shall deserve the full commitment of our governments, and we express our support to and offer our help for the United Nations secretary general during the preparatory process aiming at the first meeting of this initiative in 2006. End of quote. Mr. Chairman, let's turn to the topics on discussion today. On the paper prepared by the IGF secretariat, which summarizes the discussions and contributions to the first meeting of the Internet Governance Forum, one topic was underplayed, which is, Internet governance itself. One has to agree that it would be ironic not to discuss Internet governance at an Internet Governance Forum. One may argue that this would depend on what one means by "Internet governance." That is fair. For Brazil, Mr. Chairman, Internet governance is a set of globally applicable principles on public policy issues associated with the coordination and management of critical Internet resources. The paper prepared by the secretariat mentioned what we mean by Internet governance marginally, and I quote: "Another frequently discussed issue involved the transparent and equitable management of critical Internet resources." End of quote. Only two lines in a five-page report. Mr. Chairman, allow me to conclude by quoting paragraph 60 of the Tunis Agenda. "We further recognize that there are many cross-cutting international public-policy issues that require attention and are not -- not -- adequately addressed by current mechanisms." End of quote. After more than two years negotiating how to reach a globally applicable principles on public policy issues associated with the coordination and management of critical Internet resources aiming at a transparent and equitable management of critical Internet resources, Mr. Chairman, we cannot, we should not, go to Athens and not debate this central topic. I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: Yes, I think I'm going to need the luck. Austria. >>AUSTRIA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for giving me the floor. Mr. Chairman, I speak on behalf of the European Union and the acceding countries Bulgaria and Romania today. The E.U. would like to thank you for holding the consultations, which we appreciate very much. We appreciate this opportunity to further exchange views on the Internet Governance Forum, as we attach great importance to making this forum a success. In this context, the present consultations, as well as the meeting of the advisory group in the following days, constitute for us a welcome opportunity to work towards ensuring that the first meeting of the IGF will focus on substance. We hope that the upcoming meeting of the advisory group will decide on the agenda of the inaugural meeting of the IGF in Athens, the themes to be discussed there, and the number of working groups and/or panels. We looked with great interest into the submissions by other participants, as we have already stressed during the previous consultations, we consider the multistakeholder nature of the forum as essential, and we are glad to see that, indeed, this forum attracts the interest of a wide range of representatives on the different stakeholder groups. On issues of substance, we had already the opportunity to present the topics that we would consider appropriate for a first meeting of the IGF at the last consultations, held in February. Spam and relevant security-related aspects and multilingualism. We had already welcomed developing countries to bring forward additional topics of importance to them in the context of bridging the digital divide. Therefore, we reassured to see that those topics were also raised in other contributions and that there is broad consensus on an overall development orientation of the IGF. We would also like to reiterate our view that aiming at the constructive debate, the IGF meetings might benefit from focusing on a limited number of subjects. We welcome the establishment of the advisory group. We would also like to stress that the participating E.U. members are committed to supporting the effective work of this group in the following days. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: The Russian federation. >>RUSSIAN FEDERATION: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for giving the floor to us. The main task for us that we have to avoid the risk of very deep decomposition of the subjects and putting the results of this decomposition into the agenda as a separate topics. According to that, Russian federation submitted proposals to the Internet Governance Forum agenda. And they are as follows: First, information security, the consideration of the international information security issue should, in our view, constitute one of the priority directions in the work of the Internet Governance Forum. Within the framework of this issue, we propose to examine inter alia the following interrelated topics: Spam, cybercrime, and cybersecurity. We have to avoid the risk of very deep decomposition and loss of understanding the information security as it is. We would like to pay attention to the fact that serious concerns are caused by the potential to use Internet means and resources by states to exert hostile military and political influence on other countries. Such potential is a great threat to international security and stability. Therefore, in the context of security-related matters, we propose to examine the topic of international information security in a comprehensive manner, including the issues of cyber security, Spam, the threats of cyber crime, cyber terrorism, and hostile use of the Internet potential by states. Second, bridging the digital divide. The problem of digital divide, or that of the non-equal access to the information, is one of the key problems of development in the framework of creation and development of the global information society, as well as of the information society in individual countries. Second -- excuse me, third: Ensuring the stability, security, and continuity of the Internet and the affordability, reliability, and quality of service. Ensuring the stability, security, and continuity of the Internet is required for any activity that is carried out in this global information network or uses it. The international community should give close attention to the principles of the Internet Governance Forum. We also would like to mention that the above-mentioned problems could not be started and resolved within ITU participation. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. >> CHAIRMAN DESAI: I have two -- >>RUSSIAN FEDERATION: Excuse me, I do apologize for my mistake. The last sentence was definitely not "with ITU," but "without ITU participation." [ Laughter ] >>RUSSIAN FEDERATION: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I do believe that. I do apologize. >> CHAIRMAN DESAI: We would not dream of doing this without their help. And repeat, I have a couple people. I would like to invite some people from civil society now because I think we need to get a mix of views. And I have Art Reilly from Cisco Systems and Robert Guerra from Privaterra. >>ART REILLY: Yes, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Kummer. My name is Art Reilly speaking on behalf of the International Chamber of Commerce and the CCBI. The first meeting of the Internet Governance Forum in Athens will set the stage for future IGF events. The global business community, represented here by ICC/CCBI, has the following preliminary comments on a few critical issues to make this first IGF a success and to ensure that it can have positive impact and results and tangible benefits for the discussions. The heads of state at WSIS clearly recognize that all aspects of the Internet Governance Forum are a matter for all stakeholders. We are pleased that the U.N. Secretary-General has announced the members of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group, and we welcome the selection of this group. Those business advisors and indeed the whole business community look forward to contributing to a successful first IGF meeting in the same way that our colleagues from civil society, the Internet community, and governments contribute. Careful selection of the agenda consistent with a few well-defined criteria will be essential to meet the goal of a successful IGF in Athens. This preliminary input proposes a few of these criteria and demonstrates how they can be applied to a given topic. Innovation, creativity, and investment by business is a major driving force behind development of the Internet. To ensure its continued positive development with the involvement of all stakeholders from around the world, we believe it is critical to increase the ability of people to participate in the Internet's development and must be addressed as a priority. Business firmly believes that the first IGF meeting in Athens and future IGF events will be more successful if there is focus on one overarching topic and perhaps a few closely related issues. This view has also been expressed by a number of governments. This would ensure effective use of limited resources, both financial and human, to achieve substantial progress. Some of the main objectives of the IGF are to encourage dialogue, exchange of information and experiences, raise awareness as well as foster a better understanding of all dimensions, challenges, and the existing and ongoing work on a particular issue that could benefit from such global multistakeholder discussion. With this in mind, an end-up discussion and exchange among all the attendees will be much more constructive. We believe the participants at the IGF should come away from it with substantive experience, and this can best be achieved by ensuring true focus and sufficient depth of discussion on key aspects of the topic. Given the topics selected will be of general interest to all attendees who are likely to participate and want to participate. For example, especially small delegations will find a single-topic approach will allow all delegations to participate in the entire program. We believe that the following criteria should be given and applied to the agenda topic, considered for the first IGF, and future IGF meetings, and should be evaluated in light of the WSIS objectives and in particular the Tunis Agenda. Any topic to be considered for the IGF agenda should be important to the continued development of the Internet and it should help bring the benefits of the Internet to all people. The topic should truly benefit from further outreach and information exchange in order to build human capacity at the global level, to foster a common understanding among all the stakeholders. It should be ripe for discussion at the time of the IGF, and would further the economic and social development objectives contained in the WSIS commitments. And the topics should also respond to a need expressed by many stakeholders, particularly from developing countries, for assistance in building a knowledge base for their involvement and participation in the Internet Governance processes. It is clear that any topic selected will require a variety of experts and their selection as speakers or panelists for the IGF program must reflect the range of expertise required for the topic under discussion. We appreciate this opportunity very much to provide these initial views on the subject, and we look forward to additional contributions over the course of the day. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. >> CHAIRMAN DESAI: Next Mr. Robert Guerra from Privaterra. >>ROBERT GUERRA:Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and distinguished IGF attendees. I would like to first say that it's my first IGF consultation and would like to thank the IGF and the Secretariat for the virtual methods being used to transmit the proceedings of this meeting. I followed the meeting in February virtually, and I must say it was quite useful to have the transcripts real time. I would suggest any further consultation and the IGF forum itself not only use these tools but also use more real-time tools as well. Not everyone can attend these meetings. Not all countries can attend these meetings. And the use of such technology emphasizes that we are using tools of the information society for the discussions of the information society in the Internet Governance Forum. I will limit my comments to three very short points. One is in regards to the advisory group, and secondly on the Internet Governance Forum itself. In regards to discussions that have been taking place on civil society discussion spaces on the advisory group I think it would be important over the course of the day to more idea and information on the exact scope and term limit of any of the advisory group. There is perhaps a misunderstanding, perhaps it might be personal, that the advisory group has been set up only to prepare the Athens meeting. Shall it be set up to prepare other meetings, that should be known in advance because it would be important to have that information. And specifically, how the advisory group will work with stakeholders between now and the Athens meeting itself. I think that working in a collaborative fashion, in an open fashion, in a consultative fashion would be appropriate. In regards to the forum itself, and specific areas or themes it should address, I want to make reference to point 23-A and 90 of the Tunis Agenda that emphasizes capacity building. Privaterra's focus area is capacity building around security and privacy, but we would call that the forum specifically focus on capacity building to both understand but to develop policy areas. I think another area as well, too, that if the Internet Governance Forum is a process that will go forward for the five-year mandate, something that has not been mentioned earlier is the area of benchmarks and indicators to track the progress of the Internet Governance Forum, whether we're going forward in a positive way or not. That was called on other areas of the WSIS, and that might be useful for the IGF. With that, I conclude my comments and wish us a productive couple of hours. Thank you. >> CHAIRMAN DESAI: Just a clarification on a question you raised. Your understanding is correct. At the present stage, this forum's job is preparing for the Athens meeting. And what press release says is, decisions on how to prepare subsequent meetings and on any future structured working methods of the forum will be taken in the light of experiences gained during the preparatory process for the Athens meeting. Let's put it this way. This is an experiment. And we will see how it works out before we jump in and commit ourselves to a particular model for five years. We don't know. This is the first time we are trying something like this out in the U.N., and let's see how it works out, and how effective it is in generating a valuable and useful meeting. So we'll take stock afterwards. Nothing is ruled out, nothing is off the table. But right now, our focus is just the Athens meeting. May I say this, that this does not mean that we cannot give, if people have some suggestions on how the agenda could be structured over two or three years, because you can't possibly deal with everything that has been mentioned in one full-day meeting. That will also be welcome. One can always transmit it to whatever process will be carried on beyond Athens. But please do not feel inhibited on commenting on the full sequence of meetings, though our primary task is that of Athens. Yes, I have the government of Chile. >>CHILE: ...preparatory meeting looking ahead to the IGF. I would also, on behalf of Chile, to state that it would be useful to identify the most significant major themes, and then move on to consider the format that would be most appropriate for dealing with these themes. We feel that the themes that we have been discussing, such as security or the question of access are important. We also feel that we should do what we can to avoid duplicating our work. And we also feel that we should try to benefit from the -- to the utmost from the work done by working groups. We have to bear in mind that there are other groups working on the same issues and avoid overlap. Then with respect to those issues that we feel should be on the Athens agenda, as has already been said by the Pakistan delegation, it would be useful to consider ways of helping developing countries to fully participate. We think that would be important. And also, as was said by Brazil earlier, we also feel that it is very important that we consider what is enshrined in paragraph 70 and what it has to say about Internet resources. Thank you, sir. >> CHAIRMAN DESAI: I have one more person from ICC, Zahaib Jamil. >> Opportunity on behalf of the developing community private sector and for this opportunity to make this intervention today. On the behalf of the CCBI I would like to make an intervention. Business endorses the topic of human capacity building. Human capacity building, training, and education are the fundamental basis for progress on all other issues in the IGF and the Information Society. Human capacity building in developing countries is essential to effect meaningful participation in government processes at all levels. It also enables the meaningful exchange of information and experiences among all stakeholders to build human capacities true the IGF that can make a substantive contribution towards increasing and improving the involvement of all stakeholders, particularly from developing countries in Internet Governance. Furthermore, since the human capacity building must be implemented at the national, regional and international levels by the concerted efforts of all stakeholders, the multistakeholder nature of the IGF will support this very objective. We believe that meaningful participation and discussions on access and policies is essential for effective Internet Governance. If we apply the criteria outlined earlier to the issue of bridging the digital divide or increasing digital opportunities, particularly from the perspective of increasing and improving access and shaping policies to support this, we believe that focusing on human capacity building permits us collectively to address the other important Internet Governance issues of today and starts preparing us now to address the issues of the future. If all stakeholders from around the world were to have a greater understanding of both Internet policies and Internet technologies, they would be better able to address such key Internet issues in the various organizations addressing them. Education and training, [inaudible] capacity, human capacity building are the cornerstones of success, not only in the use of ICTs, but also for participating in meaningful and productive deliberations and decision-making bodies, thus promoting the beneficial goals of an Information Society for all, which lies at the heart of the Geneva and Tunis commitments. From a business perspective, for economic and social development to flourish, all people must have access to basic education as a first step, and this must be followed by ICT-related skills development. Business recognizes the size of that task. In this regard, human capacity building in the area of ICT-related skills can be advanced through partnerships among stakeholders that would ensure that ICT training is widely available which would help apply the power and potential of ICTs in schools, communities and in the workplace. Indeed, such partnerships exist today. The IGF environment could naturally provide a place for stakeholders to share and network and potentially pursue new partnerships. For these reasons, business supports a focus on education and skills training for ICTs as essential elements to promote an information society for all as the ideal first topic on which to focus IGF attention. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Kummer. >> CHAIRMAN DESAI: Thank you. Mr. David Wood of EBU. >> David Wood: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, hello. Hi, my name is David Wood, and I am representing here the World Broadcasting Unions. They are eight unions of national broadcasters in the world and the combined club is called the world broadcasting unions. So we have really a wide parish. I personally am with the European Broadcasting Union which is the organization of the 72 national broadcasters in Europe. We are very pleased and honored to be part of this discussion, and we were particularly pleased to be allowed to be part of the advisory group in a sense to bring the media industry, or part of the media industry's dimension to this discussion. And our feeling is the media industry is an important actor in the discussion about Internet, and that we have quite a lot to offer. We have activities in terms of technology and, in fact, if you are interested, tomorrow night we have what will probably be the world's largest peer-to-peer live stream with our large audience program which is called the EURO-vision songs contest. I am not responsible for the songs but I help a bit with the infrastructure. Anyway, that you can watch along with 100 million other viewers tomorrow night, or see on the Internet along with a couple of million people on the Internet. But our real core business is to deal with content, to do with media content, that is really what we do. When we look at the replies you had had, it did seem as if the number one on the hit parade for the song contest or anything else was capacity building. That seemed to be, and naturally seemed to be, the key component, the key job that the Internet Governance Forum has to do. And we've heard about how this discussion on capacity building might take place in Athens, and of course there are important issues to discuss concerning infrastructure, concerning open standards and so on, the technology. But my point, the reason I ask the floor is to suggest to you that that is not all that is needed. Capacity building must include for developing countries arrangements, measures which are associated with giving people the capacity to make good, compelling, interesting content, which people will use for education, for cultural, and for knowledge. If it is the case that the know-how, the audiovisual literacy resides, if you like, in the developed world and not in the developing world, this may well be a downstream passage of education, cultural, and knowledge into the developing world. It has to be that we have to equalize the Internet literacy, the audiovisual literacy of the world if we are to make use of the capacity. In the end, people do not want wires and resistors. They do not want rules and regulations. What they want is the content, the education, the culture and the knowledge. And we have to help people, at the same time as giving them the means, we have to help people be able to be creative. We have to help people on the creative side. So when you think of having a workshop on capacity building at Athens, please think, if you will, in terms of the different dimensions. Of course the technical dimension, the legal dimension. But please not forgetting that there has to be a creative dimension, there has to be a content side, there has to be measures and discussions about how to achieve and help people to achieve audiovisual expression if we are to make the full use of Internet capacity. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. >> CHAIRMAN DESAI: UNESCO. >>UNESCO: Thank you, chair. UNESCO is delighted to see you back in the chair, and Mr. Kummer in the Secretariat. Congratulations to all members of the advisory group. My name is Liz Longworth from UNESCO, as you have heard. On the topic of structuring, we would suggest that structuring around discrete topics, separates topics, without showing the linkages or end goal could possibly risk a lack of coherence, and perhaps we might miss an opportunity. By way of illustration, I have just participated in some of the action-line facilitation meetings, and one of the challenges in those meetings was how to deal with interlinked, interconnected, interdependent topics. Frequent, if I look back to the February discussions on how we should structure this forum, I note that freedom of expression and human rights sits in isolation from the other topics of where there is clearly a huge interdependence. And so to treat that subject, as one example, separately from others would not do justice to such an important issue. So UNESCO suggests that we could approach structuring around what needs to be done to ensure the Internet does grow and develop in a way that the potential and the power of the Internet can be harnessed for social and economic development, and particularly empowerment of people through access to knowledge. That takes us to an idea that perhaps we could approach the forum by looking again at the key attributes of governance of the Internet, and plenty of work and understandings now exist on that. And we look at what is desirable, and then we articulate a series of strategic objectives for the Internet, and we can structure around that. I have two examples. The first is one of the key characteristics of the Internet is its openness, its transparency and its transversal nature, meaning it's not fragmented, not yet. Therefore, we could focus on what is needed to ensure that its evolution builds on these characteristics that would take you into dialogues on ways to ensure it remains open, that would take you to discussing the free flow of information, its technically distributed and interoperable nature. And within that context we could then be discussing freedom of expression and the importance of multilingualism on the Internet. The second idea, the second strategic objective, could be to structure around the democratizing effect of the Internet, where the forum could build on this by looking at ways to ensure that there is far greater participation by ordinary people and ordinary communities. And that would allow you to build in the development orientation that was discussed in February. I should note, though, just a little caution, that we do not end up replicating the action line facilitation and doing what is being done in the other fora. However, an approach like this would then allow you to take the second strategic objective of increasing participation and break it down into the number of issues that were raised by some of the first speakers this morning, where they had specific issues around Internet costs and all the other barriers. The other point I want to endorse is that this forum is a great opportunity to keep the dialogue going on how to respond to the challenges of the future. So I would endorse previous speakers who have called for the broadest possible participation in the forum, the broadest possible multistakeholder approach, and I would support the idea of using the forum as an opportunity for innovators and experts to actually come, present their ideas on how the Internet can be evolving. And we can bring some of the different communities around the Internet together. The -- To conclude, then, if we are to take a cross-cutting approach, then the forum could be a lot more -- a much better opportunity to bring all these experts together. So perhaps, to summarize, the two strategic objectives, without excluding any of the other good ideas that have come from the floor, first one, the first objective, would be how to ensure or to ensure that the Internet develops in a way that builds on the positive attributes of being open, transparent, and nonfragmented, and in this context, we address the importance of fostering the free flow of information, which includes the ability to communicate across linguistic boundaries. And in that way, we would incorporate the importance of multilingual Internet, and we would also incorporate the importance of respect for article 19 or freedom of expression. The second strategic objective would be to ensure that another attribute of the Internet, namely, its democratizing effect, is fostered by building the capacities, policies, and approaches that will result in increased participation by ordinary people and ordinary communities, in other words, that's the development perspective. I thank you, chair, for giving UNESCO the opportunity to participate. We are extremely interested in the outcome of this forum, and we will be with you and supporting the Advisory Group all the way. Thank you. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: Thank you. Azerbaijan. >>AZERBAIJAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning, Mr. Kummer. I'm really thankful for, first of all, I'd like to extend sincere gratitude to secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, for allowing for the prompt and very easy convening of our meetings. And I would like also to extend thanks to you, Mr. Chairman, for being the very democratic and very comfortable facilitator of our discussions today. I would like also to thank Mr. Kummer for the comfort he gave, at least to my delegation, to my mission, to work in this respect, in this regard. Now I'd like to turn and thank also the Greek government, the government of the Hellenic Republic, in advance. Now, I'd like to concur, of course, with the distinguished delegate of the Russian federation in his voicing his concern about information security as a broad conceptual and fundamental approach. It could not be discussed or may not be discussed, as he requested. From the other side, I would like also to concur with some other distinguished delegates in their comments, in their visions of how we should go ahead. Now, as it comes to my delegation, we are of the view that the Internet Governance Forum should address the following three topics: First, cultural diversity. And here, congratulations also goes to the distinguished representative of UNESCO for also voicing this concern of hers. Second topic would be information security. Again, I would reiterate our position as a broad, conceptual, and fundamental crucial component, not to lose on our cultural. And third, the last but not the least, is, of course, the ethical and objective information exchange, which is management of Internet resources in an ethical and responsible fashion. I would like also to mention that the references to United Nations general assembly resolutions need to be ensured. Yet, in such a context that they should be also an accurate and clear mechanism which would allow for active participation of civil society, private sector, and, of course, mass media. Hence, process must be inclusive and allow for as wide a spectrum of debates as possible and as required. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: (inaudible). >> Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Bill Drake. >>WILLIAM DRAKE: I would like to make three quick points by way of suggestion. First is, in thinking about the question of selecting topics, it's clear that lots of people have many different ideas about what should be put forward. And it's also clear that we can't accommodate all those if you are planning to address things primarily through sort of large plenary-type sessions. There will be real tradeoffs imposed by creating artificial scarcities, and, obviously, some parties will go away quite unhappy. So I can't help thinking that it would be really useful in thinking about the structuring of this event to have a very good blend between the sort of large and plenary type sessions and smaller breakout workshops and that some of these various items that people have raised that they're very concerned about could be addressed in those. Many of them are issues that are, after all, subject to ongoing work in many different institutions and are probably not soluble over the course of four days in Athens, anyway. But they could at least be the subject of some focused conversation and perhaps workshops like this could then generate some preliminary recommendations or points of consensus which could then be brought back into plenary sessions. And the plenary sessions could also, then, focus more on the cross-cutting issues and the linkages between the recommendations that have been put forth by some of these workshops. So I guess, as a general point, I would just say that I do hope that as the Advisory Group contemplates the structure of the event, that there will be sufficient room for more specialized sorts of events which would then feedback into larger plenary things. A second question which I think is related to this, there's been a lot of talk about principles. And I do think that the plenary sessions in particular would be well served by focusing on guiding, overarching principles that should shape the way particular problems are addressed. And a number of people have put forward different visions of what the key principles are. Clearly, article 65 and a sort of systemic development approach is one very important sort of guiding principle. Another, of course, are the WSIS principles that were agreed throughout the WSIS process and which article 72 says the IGF should promote and assess on an ongoing basis with regard to their embodiment in existing Internet governance processes. And it would seem to me that, in particular, of those principles, that transparency and inclusive decision-making are important, overarching principles that should be looked at in relation to how we go about doing Internet governance in a variety of different forums. And that one could productively look at this and think about it in terms of identifying best practices, which then might be replicated in different environments. So I would simply suggest that perhaps this focus on principles would be very much consistent with the kind of blend that I was talking about. The last point I would make is, I hope that the Advisory Group will also consider the question of whether and how to recognize or incorporate parallel initiatives that might be launched by stakeholders that would be productively linked to the forum. I'm thinking in particular of the discussion that's been going on amongst many of us, including yesterday, about creating a global network of scholars, of academics, that are doing research on Internet governance issues, which could, for example, organize a meeting before the IGF's formal agenda, which might be interesting and useful to participants. But, of course, it would be most effective if such initiatives -- and there could be others -- would be formally recognized or linked to the IGF in some manner. But the modalities of doing that have to be identified. Obviously, they should be flexible and supportive to foster the greatest amount of buy-in and participation and contribution to the global dialogue as possible. So just those three points I'd like to make. Thank you. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: Maybe I should try and pose a few further questions to -- I think in terms of themes, quite a few ideas have come up. Obviously, we can't cover all of it in the very first meeting. But clearly, I think, here there is some obvious consensus here on keeping the developmental orientation. There were justifiable questions raised about don't make this something which completely overlaps with what is being done, more generally in the WSIS follow-up on, say, e-education or e-health, or e-governance. There's a strong plea from Brazil saying, don't forget that there is a governance forum, that somewhere in your agenda, you must talk about this. I would stress that there is a forum for dialogue. This is a forum for discussion. It is not a decision-making forum. It's a forum whose influence will come by being abled interest other spaces where decisions are being taken. Because this itself doesn't have the capacity to pass a resolution which is any value. So it must do its work in a way which attracts sufficient -- or which commands sufficient influence in the spaces where decisions are going to be taken. And I think it's -- in constructing the agenda, what I would put to you is, we would have to keep in mind that a forum like this is effective if it is widely -- well, if a lot of people participate, if a lot of people take interest, and recognizing that participation is not just physical presence, but also watching it on the Web, commenting on it in a blog, and all of those things. My own experience is that there is a sort of -- if you take an ordinary Internet user and talk to that person and ask them, you know, what -- what is it that would interest them, there are some who are very -- professional users, particularly, have an interest in issues of what we would call management of the core Internet resources. I think if you go, then, to issues about Internet security, then the class of people who are interested widens, because many even lay users have faced problems of Internet security. If you go beyond that and start talking in terms of issues like affordable access, interconnection cost, then the group which is interested becomes even larger, because many more people are affected. Go on to issues of freedom of expression, free movement of information, again you get a lot of interest. And that's the sense that I have when I've talked to people outside. If you want a forum which is going to attract everybody, then without getting into some of the totality of ICT for development, we really do have to have an overall developmental orientation, talk about things which really do affect users everywhere. And I think a lot of very interesting ideas have come up. And I hope that the Advisory Group will be able to get to grips with it and make some suggestions on how that first meeting in Athens could be structured. I also heard a lot from people where some people were talking about things which necessarily would require a big meeting like this, where everybody has the chance to participate. Some were talking more about exchanges of experiences, particularly between people who have done pioneering work in some of these areas, for instance, let's say affordable access, there are people who have done pioneering work in this area. That would be more a workshop type of exercise. There are clearly differences in the degree of how these themes can be tackled. It would seem to me, though nobody mentioned it, that none of these things will work unless we also give some thought to what will we have on the table when we meet in Athens. You can't just set these other themes, now come on the 30th of October; let's talk about it. Because we will end up spending a fair amount of time just getting ourselves organized. So some suggestions, reflections from you on how we prepare for Athens, because there's not a negotiating body, it doesn't require any committee or any such thing. But we encourage people to workshops? Do we encourage the secretariat to find people who would write background papers in this? Would that be a possibility of the stakeholders also contributing their expertise and knowledge in order to prepare for this? Give a little thought to this, say some what you would wish to -- on this theme. I think some people did mention this whole notion that don't just restrict yourself to the people who can come to Athens; find ways of connecting with the world outside. There was a reference to the fact that the material from these meetings is available online. And that's very valuable. I want us to think of the next step, which is how would material which is online be fed into this process? For instance, I'm sure there are NGOs who are reading this and typing away stuff on some blog or the other, commenting on this. But we are not getting that comment here, you see. So give some thought to some of these concepts, see how do we bring the outside in, how do we structure these things, how do we have a balance in our themes from things which are clearly of interest to practically any Internet users to things which are of interest to the professional Internet user? Keep in mind the questions raised by Brazil and others. So I just wanted to pose these as questions. I see now I have a couple -- hopefully I have provoked a couple of people. So Brazil, and then Mr. Papadatos from Greece. >>BRAZIL: Yes, I think, Mr. Chairman, it's time for some dialogue after reading statements. And I think I can say to you that for sure in Brazil's mind, the idea of IGF is not to have a school, to organize a school for little boys and girls to go there to be taught by big companies and academics. That's not the idea. You know that we are of the view that if we are going to an Internet Governance Forum, we would like to discuss governance. And our secretary general, Kofi Annan, is very wise when he selected the group. From what I've seen from the list, we have four representatives from the ICANN. Three of them from the board of ICANN, and one employee of ICANN. If we have ICANN over there, maybe we could discuss governance. That's what ICANN used to do. The second point, Mr. Chairman, about the list. We would like -- I have to send back to Brazil a small C.V. of the people here selected from the Brazilian side, I have on my right side, Dr. Jose Bicalho. He is from our national telecommunications agency. He is a member of the Brazilian government. I am going to say this in public to be sure that the Brazilian government has one representative in the group, representing the Brazilian government. But I would like to know which and who the others are representing, then it will help us, including a kind of C.V. of the organization they are working for. Let me give you an example. We have here a very well-known man, Michael Gallagher. He used to work for the United States government, if I am not mistaken. He used to be the head of the NDIA, Department of Commerce. Nowadays, it's written here, Chairman of the Communications Group, Perkins School. I have no idea what it means, and my government would like to know what this organization is doing nowadays, what are their objectives and who they are working for and things like that. And I think this could make this Advisory Group more transparent. I think I'm going to stop here, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: I think certainly we can make information available. But I would like to stress that the people who are participating in the Advisory Group are advising the secretary general. They are advising the secretary general. They are participating there. And they are named people. It's not the organization which has been asked. It was the individuals who were asked. Yes, the individuals were asked after consultation with organizations, including governments and regional groups. Let me also say that in addition, the secretary general has authorized me, as the chairman of this group, to have, so to speak, advisors to assist me. Because I do understand that this process needs more institutionalization. And I will certainly propose to use that flexibility, particularly to bring people in who could speak, so to speak, say, for instance, for regional groups, to give an example. But -- so that's a separate issue. At this stage, I would stress that these are people who are there as individuals. They have been selected after consulting with organizations. But I would say that we will certainly ask when we meet on Monday, ask all the members to give us a brief C.V. I will give you mine, which is an unemployed former United Nations under-secretary general. [ Laughter ] >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: If that helps. Okay, can I have Mr. PAPADATOS. >>GEORGE PAPADATOS: Thank you, Mr. President. I would like to comment a little bit on your summing up and also on some of the remarks that I've heard so far. Well, as you very well know, early this afternoon, I'm going to make a PowerPoint presentation regarding the facilities that have been prebooked in Athens for the IGF. Listening to the different interventions today, I realize that the road to Athens is full of challenges, and there are new things coming up. Now, several people have approached me, and also from the interventions, I realize that there is a demand for side events or workshops that are not directly related to the IGF, but there are some special interests or special topics that need to be examined. I would like very much this to be taken up by the board for the simple reason that we are in the business of planning the physical facilities. And there are certain limitations of space regarding to what can be accommodated. So we are already running late in the process. And I think that we would like to know in advance to see how we can accommodate. Also, I would like to express the view that some others have expressed, that we need to have a focused -- a discussion on a limited number of topics. I think that the success will pretty much depend on having a successful treatment of a small number of topics. And as you very well said, the -- how the results will be taken up by other institutions. In previous interventions and presentations, I did stress the power of ideas and their influence in general. So that's all for the time being. Thank you. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: I have Heather Shaw of CCBI. >>HEATHER SHAW: Thank you, Mr. Chair. As you just mentioned in your summary, several of the earlier interventions talked about human capacity-building. And on behalf of CCBI, I wanted to elaborate a little bit more about how business sees the topic of human capacity-building, ICT skills training, and education being realized at the IGF in Athens. Key entities that are addressing Internet-related issues could provide comprehensive information about what they can do, how people can contribute and become involved in highlighting the issues they are working on. For instance, sessions at the first IGF could start with an interactive panel explaining the international organizations with work programs related to the Internet. The same explanatory approach could be applied to technical standards bodies and technical management and coordination organizations. It would be important to consider national and regional perspectives so that awareness is raised about the organizations from all of these categories at those levels. In order to ensure informed participation, briefing materials should -- briefing materials and background information should be made available well in advance to allow participants to prepare. Translation would also be important. Thank you. Just to clarify, Mr. Papadatos, I was not trying to summarize the discussion. I was simply trying to indicate from my experience what is it that the world outside is expecting us to do, just more or less to pose it as a question, what is it that would interest them out there. There's this gradation of interest across this. I will -- not yet in a position to summarize. I have Robin gross, the executive director of I.P. justice, a member of our Advisory Group. And then I have John Mathiason of Syracuse University. >>ROBIN GROSS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for organizing this forum and for permitting a robust dialogue on these important issues. I speak on behalf of I.P. justice, an international civil liberties organization. Mr. Chairman, one of the primary focuses of IGF should be on protecting and promoting civil liberties and cyberspace. As the United Nations project, the global public interest must be paramount in this effort. One, freedom of expression. I'd like to underscore and draw attention to the United Nations human rights declaration, freedom of expression, article 19, which guarantees freedom of expression in any medium and regardless of frontiers. So here before us, we have an opportunity to put into action words that were agreed to more than 50 years ago. Two, privacy rights. Consumers are most concerned about the loss of their privacy rights due to technological advances such as the Internet. We must look at the privacy implications of every issue IGF addresses, draw attention to the substantive submission dished' like to draw attention to the substantive submission of the council of Europe, which recognizes the interrelationship of human rights and governance issues. Three, balanced intellectual property rights. I'd also like to encourage the IGF to recognize that intellectual property rules have become paramount relevance in the online world, and any serious discussion about Internet governance must look at the balance between intellectual property rights and the public rights to access information. Tension between freedom of expression and intellectual property rights in cyberspace must be addressed by this forum. Four, a development agenda. Member states at WIPO have undertaken a development agenda to reform WIPO's policies and practices to better reflect the global public interest and encourage development among poorer nations. IGF should likewise undertake a development agenda and commit to examining the development aspects in all of the policy issues IGF deals with. I.P. justice supports the comments of UNESCO this morning on this point. Five, access to knowledge. The Internet is an unprecedented opportunity to provide information and knowledge to the world's most disadvantaged at very low cost. IGF should encourage the Internet as a powerful educational tool and development policies that ensure these qualities are not hampered, but expanded. We should recognize this as a significance opportunity to promote the Internet for human development, enhance democracy, individual freedom, education, and access to knowledge and culture. I'd like to encourage the IGF to resist the urge to use this forum to mainly focus on perceived threats of the Internet, but, rather, recognize that efforts to curb cybercrime and beef up cybersecurity will always involve issues of civil liberties. I'd like to draw attention to the 2002 OECD guidelines for security of information systems and networks, which recognized that an aim to develop global culture for security must bear in mind and preserve important societal values such as privacy and individual freedom. In summary, Mr. Chairman, each of the issues IGF deals with must address the civil liberties and development implications of those issues. I'd like to support UNESCO's comments that these policy issues do not exist in isolation to each other. They often overlap. Dealing with cybercrime and cybersecurity as a higher priority than civil liberties issues, such as freedom of expression and privacy rights, would be an inappropriate approach to take, which will inevitably leave the civil liberties concerns inadequately addressed. Not only would we miss the opportunity to do some real good in this world, but we would end up harming the global public interest. And we must not let that happen. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: Did you want the floor? John Mathiason. >>JOHN MATHIASON: Thank you, Mr. Desai. Just a short intervention in response to your suggestion that we make comments on process. As everyone knows, the success of the forum, like any other large event, will depend on its preparations. And this is something on which we would hope that the Advisory Group would focus. This is also an area in which, since the forum itself is a very interesting and important experiment, its preparations offer the possibility for innovation. The Internet Governance Project with which I participate has just issued a paper which we call the distributed secretariat, making the Internet Governance Forum work, this is available on the Web site www.internetgovernanceforum@intergovernance.org. But it substantially makes a series of proposals on how the function of substantive secretariat, which in many events is very important, is a way of making a -- putting a common set of facts and normative principles on the table to expedite discussion, could be prepared in a new way, through finding a way of distributing the function among different stakeholders. Thank you, Mr. Desai. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: Thank you. Yes. Sorry, I'm not -- I don't know who -- what -- would you just announce yourself. >> IRINI VASSILAKI: Yes. My name is Irini Vassilaki, and I am representing here the German Foundation for Law and Informatics. After we saw all the comments of the participations, we thought -- we defined three issues on which the meeting in Athens should focus. First, the foundational issue. Second, a political issue. And, third, a legal issue. The foundational issue first. It's a precondition for a country and region that wants to become part of the global information society is the universal access, namely, access to infrastructure, content, service, application to the Internet. The first meeting in Athens should assist in the preparation of international agreements that enable cooperation between international backbone operations and the local ISPs. Furthermore, the meeting in Athens to develop a decision-making policy which will make the free flow of content possible which considers intellectual property rights for the enforcement of capacity-building, the following, among others, should be discussed: The high cost of Internet connections in developing countries, the use of open standards for E-mails, Voice over IP, streaming audio and video, and measures to ensure the security and reliability of systems and networks. The political issue, it's clear that there exists a gap between developed and developing countries as far as the access to the Internet and its associated technologies and services are concerned. It is obvious that this fact has important social, political, and economic consequences. Internet Governance Forum has the possibility to work on the development of a strategy that will reduce the digital divide. Some topics that are connected with this are: Multilingualism on the Internet, training and education regarding the Internet, the human capacity-building, and affordability of equipment and services. Third, the legal issue. The realization of the above-mentioned task is not possible without the development of common legal principles that will regulate the use and misuse of information and communication technologies. Furthermore, it is necessary to create international enforcement legal mechanism that will guaranty the enforcement of the international agreements, considering the main problems and risks arising out of the use of EST, the following legal issues have to be discussed during the first meeting in Athens. Basic legal principles concerning the access and dissemination of contents; legislation to ensure and protect privacy on the Internet; regulation making the (inaudible) use of EST; and the legal regulations of e-Commerce. It is obvious, of course, that the first meeting in Athens will only be a first step and that it will indicate the main areas of the work of the international government forum. The first meeting in Athens will only prepare the platform where all the actors ever the information society will be able to work toward the realization of the IGF mandate. The German Foundation for Law and Informatics offer its support to the activities of IGF and participation in the corresponding thematic sessions. Thank you very much. >> CHAIRMAN DESAI: Okay. I think one overall theme that I have heard from everybody here, which perhaps allows us to subsume the specifics which the group would look at in detail, is the notion of focusing on an Internet for all. It's a theme which is capable of handling both the governance type issues that were raised several times, particularly by Brazil, but it is also a theme which can address issues about the digital divide, about access, about connection, and so on. My plea to the advisory group is, having heard this, they now need to do a little bit of work, between now and Monday. And they need to do a little bit of work and come on Monday, without us having to go over all of this ground all over again, to say okay, this is the sense of what people want. And it's been quite wide ranging. How do we structure it? How do we accommodate all of these concerns? We clearly can't have everything in the very first meeting, but how do we do that? What sort of structure? May I say a word just for your consideration, if you have comments or if the working group members want to think about it over the weekend. I don't think that we have to be prisons of any mixed model. At one end you have a U.N. model with a very set pattern. There has to be a plenary and then groups for negotiations, et cetera. Now, that is not required in our case. We are not going to negotiate anything there, in Athens. But we are really focused he that we must always have a plenary, a grand meeting, where everybody speaks on the full issue. Is that how -- where the general statement is made by each participant. I would urge to you look at that. Is that the best model, the U.N. plenary, or can the plenary be done differently, more thematically? An example would be the way the plenary in Johannesburg was run where you had initially a panel commenting on the issue, and then the people who were in the room commented on what the panel said. And it was sufficiently structured. Are there other ways of handling this? Are there -- is there some way in which one can have plenaries and maybe parallel smaller meetings dealing with specific issues. Mr. Papadatos has raised the issue of people wanting side events. Is there a distinction between events which would be organized by the IGF secretariat and events which would be organized by others. Or do we have a much more free policy of what constitutes an IGF event. For instance, at the other extreme we are the World Social Forum where the forum secretariat does not organize any meeting. It simply provides a space. Anybody is free to come and organize a meeting. These are some issues which you need to come and address because we are not organizing a U.N. meeting. We are organizing something which is a little different from a normal U.N. meeting. It's a meeting convened by the U.N., and yet it has to have some resemblance to what people are used to so we don't spend a lot of time struggling with the format when we are there. I'm just trying to pose some questions in order to provoke you into giving some views so that when the group meets on Monday, it has some ideas to look at. Brazil once again, Azerbaijan. No? Brazil and Azerbaijan. Yes. >>BRAZIL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let's try to help you in giving some thoughts on this matter. Even though the IGF is not a U.N. meeting, we expect, and I suppose the Greek government is expecting to have the U.N. secretary-general for their opening ceremony. And if you are going to have an opening ceremony that the Greeks are going to organize in a very nice way, I'm sure, we are going to have statements. And for statements, we need a plenary. Then the first question, yes, we need a plenary. Second point, we need to divide ourselves later on in groups to discuss topics. And this goes to my second point, which is again, even though we are not going to take decisions in the forum, that's why we are calling it a forum, we can have recommendations. And to have recommendations, we need to divide ourselves in topics, in groups, for each group to recommend something on specific topics, and then goes back to the second plenary and the last one where we are going to approve recommendations. Nonbinding recommendations, but it would be recommendations for -- to be delivered -- we are going to send back, I suppose, to the secretary-general of the United Nations, and then these recommendations can be delivered to specific bodies that takes decisions on matters. Then my suggestion, Mr. Chairman, then we have an opening plenary, a closing plenary. Panels, groups, study groups in between, as many as we want, as we decide, as the group decides. Each one producing recommendations on a consensus basis. Of course there will be no votes. Recommendations goes back to the last plenary, and then we approve, and we are ready to go to (inaudible). Thank you, Mr. Chairman. >> CHAIRMAN DESAI: I want to go a little further. You have used the word "we approve." Who is the "we" in the plenary? This isn't intergovernmental meeting with 1200 defined borders. This is an open-door meeting. Who is the "we"? >>BRAZIL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Of course this is not an intergovernmental body, as I told at the beginning. It is a forum. And I suppose the Greek government is going to organize a list of participants. They are going to have -- people are going to apply to be part of the forum. The "we," I suppose it will be delegations from countries, because we are going to send a delegation to Greece, and you will have a Brazilian delegations. We are going to have NGOs from Brazil going to there, representatives from the private sector going to Greece. And the "we" will be the list of participants. As simple as that. Thank you. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: ...consensus between 500 participants from multiple sectors groups. I will put it to the advisory group. It's an interesting thought. I will put it to them and see how they feel about it. Mr. Papadatos and Azerbaijan. >>GEORGE PAPADATOS: Well, thank you. I feel compelled to respond to my Brazilian colleague. In our calculations, we figured out that there's going to be a plenary. However, at this point, nobody can tell us anything about the expected number of participants. This is the best -- or the wildest guess as to -- so we have made provisions for that. However, as far as registration and all the others, these are things which will be taken up with the Secretariat at a later date. We have already had preliminary discussions, but we are anxiously awaiting the results of the advisory group. However, there are details that can be discussed later. What is important is that we get an idea of the structure so that we'll know how many rooms and so forth. The others, I expect that there may be another meeting of the advisory group to work out the details. And of course there's going to be registration and we'll try to do our best to let everyone know, together with the Secretariat, who is participating and so forth. Thank you. >> CHAIRMAN DESAI: Azerbaijan. No, sorry, he is busy. [ Laughter ] >> CHAIRMAN DESAI: Did you want the floor? >>AZERBAIJAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My apologies. Well, actually -- well, thank you for throwing this on the floor, the suggestion -- well, actual, the guidance you seek in your turn, yourself. And thank you for the Brazilian colleague also for sharing his point of view how we should proceed, how we could proceed, to be honest. I would suggest to be very concrete and to be -- yet inclusive, to allow for representation, diverse representation of sectors. I think we could -- what we could do is, we could come up with three topics. And I don't know if we go for plenary, and then we reconvene at the end to work on the recommendations to approve them. Well, in quotes, "Approve." But certainly they should be the fruit of the meeting in Athens. I think we just come up with three topics, and one topic being -- I mean, I don't know, given for particular one sector. I don't know, it may be business sector, can be NGO, civil society, excluding private sector. Private sector I would still like to see it in separate for its innovativeness. And of course the governments. I mean, the people, the bureaucrats, you may call. As simple as that. It's just to come up with concrete set of topics and work on it in those clusters and then produce a fruit. I don't know, if when we go into side events, I'm sure you call it working groups, sectors or side events, or alliance, whatever may please any one of us. But still, if we decide to go -- and by "decide," I don't mean decide prompt and final decision, because it's an open-ended exchange. It's a dialogue process. If we opt for side events, then I'm afraid I myself can come up -- not myself, being my government and NGOs from my government, my country, we will come up with several topics. And that's where we could also lose the track. When I said in my early intervention statement that we should allow for as diverse dialogue, debate as possible, as required, I also mentioned, I didn't, of course, mean to be going into multiple side events. We should cover the issues of utmost concern, of fundamental nature, but still being -- having something clear-cut and concrete. Especially when after Athens we want to take it up to the levels above. For some people, for some organization who work -- who could work on them and make decisions afterwards. Thank you, Mr. Chair. >> CHAIRMAN DESAI: Jovan, where are you? And after that, Bertrand de la Chappelle. >>JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, while I am pleased to see the continuation of the progress started with the WGIG, and I will take this opportunity to brief you about a few activities that have been done by Diplo in the field of capacity building. Before I start on this, I just want to indicate I heard this morning -- >> CHAIRMAN DESAI: The commercial must be very small. The purpose of our meeting is to organize the IGF. >>JOVAN KURBALIJA: I'll try, Mr. Chair, very hard. Basically there are different models related to capacity building, and there are also different views what should be the role of capacity building in the overall forum's activities. We tried to integrate capacity building even in the preparatory process for this building. We started in the beginning of April with 80 representatives from developing countries and there is a strong community with quite a powerful and deep interaction and knowledge exchange. And this community representing 70 countries, developing countries, is in constant touch, and they will be also integrated into the process of the preparation for the meeting in Athens. As soon as advisory group has provisional agenda, the capacity building participants will start providing -- start conducting research and providing input with particular relevance for the position of developing countries. Therefore, you can expect quite considerable input from that group, and we will keep you informed about developments within the Internet Governance capacity building program. Thank you, Mr. Chair. >> CHAIRMAN DESAI: I have Bertrand, and then after that, Karen Banks. >>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPPELLE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to make a brief comment as prompted by a reference that you made to the two somewhat extreme models, one on the U.N. meetings that are purely intergovernmental and the World Social Forum that is purely a hosting space. Interestingly enough in the last two or three years, the two processes have converged in an interesting manner, meaning the WSIS was an example where self-organization of parallel events within the framework of the summit was a complement to the official plenaries and sessions. And similarly in the context of the World Social Forum, particularly in Porto Alegre two years ago and more recently last year, a certain number of events organized by the coordination of the forum is taking place in parallel to the self bottom-up organization. I personally took part in the co-organization of what is called "Tables of Controversy" in the World Social Forum where Mr. Ocampo and representatives of international organizations came to meet a large number of NGOs there. So taking this convergence into account, and taking also into account the fact that in many professional and business conferences you also have -- scientific conferences, you have a difference of levels, between issues, topics, and tracks, which are clustering certain topics together, I think there is a possibility to combine self-organized events, more structured aspects. And I suppose that the comment of the Russian delegations earlier was an attempt at introducing this notion of meta cluster or tracks that could be security or others that could aggregate different type of sub-events. And as a final note, you may know or some of the delegates here know that civil society has introduced one of such concept as a proposal theme for the IGF around the notion of digital identity and privacy as a component for the trust framework. This is an example of a clustering approach. Thank you. >> CHAIRMAN DESAI: Okay. Karen Banks. >>KAREN BANKS: Thank you, chair. I'm from the association for progressive communications, and we are thoroughly committed to this process and very happy to see that it's continuing in this very open and energetic way. Firstly, I would like to support the statements made earlier this morning, particularly the G77 in relation to paragraph 65 and the importance of the development orientation. And I think our contributions to date reflect our commitment to that as a priority. But I also wanted to -- I wanted to pick up on the suggestion from UNESCO about the concept of strategic objectives, because I think it could provide a useful framework, not only for the inaugural forum but for the longer term. It might also provide a way of helping us structure larger open sessions but from which we can articulate specific issues, many of which have been raised this morning. And I think in the issue of democratization, I think I would go further to link it to your suggestion of Internet for all and specifically be looking at universal affordable access. So I think we clearly have to address that. Paragraph 72-E is a very important part of the IGF's mandate, and if we consider that according to ITU figures only 5% of people in developing countries have access to the Internet, it's clear we must address this as a matter of priority, I think. But I also wanted to support the importance of capacity building, but not that it be the sole purpose of the IGF. I think that would be a lost opportunity if we don't use the IGF as the global space that addresses this question of access for all in a very serious way. And so when we look at capacity building, which we obviously must do, I think that we need to look at it as cross-cutting as it relates to any of the issues that the IGF addresses. And in relation to preparation, I think it would be useful to link this to thinking about how we can ensure that there isn't duplication between the IGF and WSIS implementation, and that possibly working groups, if they were to be established, and we would be very interested in committing energy to a working group that looks at this question of access, that we try and integrate with work going on in, for example, the action lines dealing with infrastructure access, in WSIS implementation, simply to provide a conduit for sharing information and staying in touch, and maybe bringing to the IGF elements that are relevant in relation to governance of that issue. And I don't think that's a terribly difficult thing to do. I think we just need to make sure we identify people who are active in those spaces and provide conduits that will feed into the process. The other thing I would like to finish with is, it's a plea, really, I think, to everyone who's involved in the process, and particularly those who are in positions of supporting participation or doing capacity-building, that we prioritize the involvement of women in all of our work to the runup to the IGF. I think it would be great if we could start thinking about how we can do that now, in preparation for the IGF, how we can ensure that women are going to be given as much of an opportunity to participate in this process as men. Thank you. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: Do I have any -- anybody else? Matthew Shears from ISOC. >>ISOC: Thank you, chair. It's a pleasure to be here and to see you again. I just wanted to touch on the issue of success. One of the things that we will have to grapple with as a group is, what are we trying to achieve in Athens and how will we determine what success is, and particularly in terms of the issues we discuss and the various elements of those issues that we discuss. Perhaps the most important thing, as far as we concerned, is that the IGF needs to be seen as adding value in those discussions. Because it will be very important to show that we add value so that we continue to retain the commitment of the stakeholders and interested parties. Everyone's financial and personnel resources are constrained, and therefore success is a very, very important thing to ensure the continued commitment of stakeholders. Certainly for the Internet society, we have a couple of things that we'd like to put on the table in terms of success criteria. We certainly believe that one of those criteria is the degree to which the IGF engages with those organizations and individuals that are actively addressing the priority issue areas. We should not be in Athens and talking to ourselves. We should be reaching out to those experts who are not here and engaging them and bringing in other communities, a very important component. We also believe that the degree to which the IGF will be promoting a greater awareness of who is doing what in the Internet governance space is incredibly important. And, finally, we believe that perhaps one of the biggest determinants of success will be the degree to which the IGF encourages and brings about greater participation, particularly from developing nations, in the range of organizations that play a role in the administration, management, development, and evolution of the Internet. Thank you. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: Matthew, normally in the U.N., we have only two categories: A meeting is either a success or an outstanding success. We don't have a third one. [ Laughter ] >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: And so let's just focus -- and Robert Guerra also raised this question of indicators in some ways. And I think it's a good thought. And I will certainly ask the Advisory Group to address this issue as to what will be -- on the 2nd of November, what will make us sense that this exercise was worthwhile. And I think that's a good thought. We will have to try and address it. Whether we can translate it into indicators, I'm not 100% sure. But we can certainly start thinking about what is the measure of success. Yes, Robert. >> ROBERT GUERRA: I just wanted to follow up on a question or comment you laid down in terms of engaging users, to mention now different things that could be done would be inappropriate. But I think that groups that do that type of consultation, particularly NGOs, there should be a way of contacting and liaising with the advisory committee and the secretariat itself to see what existing conferences have that type of engagement already, be it someone who's monitoring online chats, be it teleconference, and how that could be incorporated. There are many ways that that could be done. I've had some experience with that, and others do as well. So I think that engagement should be done online. An example of this meeting, for example, request for speaking, if we were all online, and most people here seem to have computers, there could be something that could be done in terms of a list of who's speaking, but also comments that are generated during the meeting in terms of people preparing questions and then someone asking them could be quite efficient and could be creative. But I think that the disconnect -- and this is something that some people have mentioned in the past -- is that the governments don't have the custom to use these type of technologies, and so capacity-building focused towards governments on how to use these technologies could be part of the capacity-building exercise for the IGF. >>CHAIRMAN DESAI: Well, it's a meeting not just of governments, it's a meeting of governments and civil society and business sector and the Internet community. So I was in a meeting recently in London which was organized by the BBC, Reuters, and Media Center. And that meeting was much more interactive than many -- very little preparation, very little paper. It wasn't as if papers were prepared and circulated in advance on the theme for discussion. They relied much more on panels, directed panels, keynotes, et cetera. But more than that, what struck me was the way in which they brought the outside in, through the blogs. There were people inside the room who were putting what was going on onto a blog and getting immediate responses. And a space was created there where, let's say, in the course of a discussion, the chair would turn to the -- a person who was keeping track of the blogs, and say, "Now tell us, what's come from the blogs so far on the topic of our discussion?" And I was amazed at the distances from which comments were coming for this meeting. There are obviously many insomniacs out there in the East, because they must have been doing this at 3:00 at night or something, from as far as I could figure out. There were instantaneous responses coming from Japan, Malaysia, Egypt, India, China. And it was quite interesting. And I thought, these are the things we must do. This is a new type of meeting. It's not a meeting you're supposed to negotiate or agree on a resolution or something. This is meant to be a meeting which is primarily about raising issues and awareness of trying to find common ground amongst different people which can then be pursued somewhere else. And I think we should be creative about using this format. It's a unique chance that we have, because we have this multistakeholder Advisory Group. We are going to have a multistakeholder forum. We have a very generous host, both for the first meeting and the second meeting. So let us work on this. I think we have probably done as much as we can for the morning. We can break a little earlier for lunch and come back sharp at 3:00 o'clock. I would -- I think it's very important that you have a good sense of what are the physical facilities, et cetera, which are available in Athens. We don't have too much time. And those of you who are planning to come with delegations and so on better be here, because I think you need to know what are the parameters as far as hotel space, et cetera. So I would urge you to get here, because it's very important. The logistics are very important. And if your minister comes and finds he doesn't have a hotel room, your job is in danger. If your minister comes and finds that you agreed to something outrageous on Internet governance, your job is not in danger. So please do come at 3:00. Okay? Bye. (Lunch.)