The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Welcome, everybody, to this session with the title Shaping Internet Governance in times of conflict. One of our panelists are missing, so let's see how we'll manage, but we will start with somebody else anyway. When we look at, you know, what we have now, a global Internet, the question that we are going to pose in this session is ‑‑ just let me look at my notes. Where is it?
We live now in times of conflict, and this conflict is both imminent, sometimes even violent, a violent conflict like the Ukraine war, like the terrorist attacks that we've seen in Israel these days, like the military coups in, but there is also a strategic competition between authoritarian and liberal systems, and I would also call it a redistribution conflict or conflict over global issues between the Global North and the Global South, and also within societies. In these conflicts, people take signs, they are forced to take sides. They are forced to protect what's theirs and sometimes they are pushed to push back to protect what's theirs. Even institutions, sometimes conversations that we have here at the IGF are becoming increasingly politicized. You have seen and remembered of course that Ukraine in March 2022 requested from ICANN to block Russian Internet domains. There are also requests from governments in a more general way to take back control of the Internet to shield societies ‑‑ here he is ‑‑ to shield societies, for example, from disinformation, from hate speak, from fake news, and sometimes governments do this even in good faith unintentionally breaking what they actually want to protect, which is the global free and open Internet. In this conversation that I'm going to have with my partners here on the panel is we want to describe the pressure on Internet governance in times of conflict and the dangers of fiddling with the architectural characteristics of the Internet, but we would also like to highlight what keeps us together, what are the elements that help us to maintain this global Internet, come tools can we use to stabilize cyberspace in times of conflict?
I would like to start to my right with David from ICANN. I would like to ask you to please introduce yourself, your affiliation, and what happens to Internet experience in times of conflict from your point of view, what is the issue or what is the tissue that keeps us together, and what does ICANN do to protect this tissue, thank you.
>> Thank you, Dr. Greenberger. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is David Huberman. I work at ICANN, and I am based in Washington D.C. I have spent the last 24 years of my life building Internet and ensuring that people around the world and societies around the world from the richest to the poorest to the newest and the oldest have functioning Internet. And what do you mean by that?
Well, when you pick up your phone, when you pick up your mobile device and you launch TikTok, and you watch a video, to me, that's not the Internet. When you open up your laptop and you send an email, to me, that's not the Internet. What we are talking about are two very different layers. There's the layer where all these platforms exists, where your social media, Walt gardens exist, where your government ministries have their Internet and the information, and the information for society exists, where your email and your videos exist, but all of these run atop a different layer, and this is the technical layer that underpins the entire Internet. You mentioned a global Internet, and that's very important because the entire world, the entire Internet works because it uses common standards. Every time you do anything in an application, anytime you do anything on your computer, underlying it is a system of routing and a system of DNS, the domain name system, a system of protocols that everybody in the world has chosen to voluntarily adopt, and they've adopted the same standards, and what that buys is us something called interoperability. Your Internet in your country in your home works the same as my Internet in my home and the same Internet everywhere around the world because of common standards. A very smart person told me yesterday that it is the system that is designed to unify the world in times when conflict tries to divide us. And I want to give you a really interesting example of it. There is a system on the Internet that pretty much none of you have ever heard of that is the most important system on the Internet or one of the most important things on the Internet and you rely on it every time you do anything and you don't even know it. It is called the root server system and it essentially allows every DNS query to work. Even if you don't know what it is, a DNS requester sewhat allows you to get to every site you visit and allows your application to get the to places that delivers the data that you're asking. And everybody in the world relies on this root system to work 24 hours a day 365 days a year for the 40 years that it has existed. So here's the thing. It's in a time of conflict where if you think about a region, chaos has erupted, violence has erupted. People are being killed. You think, OK, between the bombs and the sabotage, we can take systems like this down, right. If the root server system here in Japan were to completely disappear, all of the different servers and the root server system in Japan were to disappear or in the Middle East right now, there's a lot of chaos, a lot of war. If all of the root servers in the Middle East would go away, do you know what would happen to all the root server users still connected?
Nothing. Nothing would happen. They wouldn't notice it at all. And that's because the governance system behind this technical layer has been designed, has evolved, and has been hardened to ensure that jurisdictional concerns, no, application concerns, data concerns, no. It's about the engineering, the interoperability and the promotion of open standards that every developer can use to create whatever it is they want on the content layer, on the second layer. At the technical layer, the Internet is not fragmented. The Internet works because engineers in China and engineers in Japan and engineers in South Africa, engineers in Israel, Ukraine, and engineers in Russia all come together on mailing lists, and sometimes at face‑to‑face meetings to create these standards upon which the Internet is built, and they do so with an emphasis on quality engineering, openness, and interoperability, and so I'd like to close by remarking that in times of conflict, this is where the governance model of the technical layer actually shines because the output of this governance model is what keeps the Internet online for everybody, even as systems go off.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, David. I would like now to hear your experiences with Internet governance in times of conflict. What do you do. What does your organisation do to maintain this open, free, global Internet?
It is an important means for the Civil Society.
>> Thank you so much, ambassador. I'm very happy to introduce myself. My name is (?) And ‑‑ I am at AccessNow. AccessNow is an international society of an organisation that seeks to defend and extend the digital rights of individuals and communities at risk, and we are born from this basic understanding that tech can empower, tech it critical to Human Rights online and off line. But technology can also place people at risk and that's also an important reason why we believe this community needs to meet in this conversation and why we exist. AccessNow is a security organisation. In 2009, AccessNow founders during the revolutionary protests and many moments after that realise that technology is helping activists mobilise insight society's fear many of us depend on in autocracies and democracies, everywhere in between. People are being monitored, so that requires visual security assistance but also public conversation around what is acceptable when it comes to recognising how to prevent tech from doing harm. What that means today is we are a global digital security provider. Civil Society journalists and others request assistance from basic things what device should I use to prevent an attack or I believe I received something malicious here, and worried about the information they may have on the device on their online accounts to many more complicated requests. Alongside that, we do public policy work and advocacy, and also convene. I mention this is very important to recognise that if tech empowers and also puts people at risk, how do we approach the question of the Internet governance questions or Internet architecture. How do we address in times of conflict?
I think it's important to recognise that we are clearly aware that technology can be used to oppress and attack people whether it's in moments of general peace time within contestation within countries but also during moments of protest and activism but also conflict, whether it be internal conflict or cross‑border situations. In particular, they are interested in the rapid growth in the number of surveillance‑related measures and spy ware attacks we have seen in this global hack for fire that exists and I know that some of my other panelists will go further into this in detail but I wanted to talk about this very briefly. It's very important in the Internet governance space as well to breach into the cyberspace ‑‑ about what rules apply when it comes to Human Rights generally, many of us are very aware of how Human Rights and what other actors do every day when it comes to technology and the importance of governance coming into framework. And why I mention this is that it leads to interesting moments. It had such an interesting robust conversation in the UN system when it comes to what sort of cybernorms should apply and the work of the UN and working group on state‑related ICD behaviour as it has other processes but you still see those interesting moments pop up in the Internet governance space, for example. It's important to address the conversation that came up with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There are many actors on cybersecurity that is important for groups to take a stand and it is our belief for example that Internet governance ecosystem should not be taking entire organisations out. Shut downs working together with the global community to keep it on coalition. And we know what the danger that happens when you decide to try to black out the Internet and these decisions are going to into the technical administration of Internet resources, we believe it's dangerous pieces and would cause problems. That does not mean that Internet governance should not be accountable or should not be having conversations around who was in these cases and what takes place, and I thought I would share this based on my experience in my region. Certain countries have transition, have asked which government bodies, for example, could I recognise a digital or not. Sanctions or Human Rights applying or Human Rights claims against them, should they be allowed into meetings or not. This is an important conversation that we think can happen because conflict and Human Rights violations unfortunately are growing day by day. I did want to end with noting this. It is very, very crucial for us to recognise that when it comes to these conversations, they are based on what is happening every day, so the outward reality is that we see a massive increase in the number of society when it comes to these weapons and tools. Why I mention this is that it is critical to recognise there are certain areas that we should even more strongly say so. The work of cyberpolicy experts to say that the public core of the Internet, for the domainian function should not be targeted is something we must apply here. And I would end with noting this, that there are certain things that we can agree upon further. Cybersecurity response teams, within government, within society and those who work in technical administration should not be targeted during times of conflict. That's sort of the idea that they are emergency response actors who should never be targeted. You don't try to target the fire service. It's something you need to understand more. These basic understandingings are there, and I'm very happy we are having this conversation here.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. I would like to turn to my dear colleague from Estonia, ambassador, please introduce yourself because I would like to ask you because you are working closely with Ukraine and Estonia has also itself had experienced with attacks on the Internet and cyberspace, I think it was in 2007, so that would be one aspect I would like to hear from you about, and then the other one is you're also looking at the bright side of digital technology, and all the possibilities and opportunities that government with government applications can build on the Internet, and the potential of digital corporation also with your partners, so I would like to hear from you, what do you think should Internet governance bring also as a contribution to this kind of overcoming of conflicts and providing for opportunities for example achieving the sustainable development goals in the long one.
>> Hello, everybody, thank you. I'm a digital ambassador from Estonia and indeed when I started in my position, I thought I would only deal with the bright side of digital technologies because we also have an ambassador whose task is to deal with all the dark side of the Internet and technologies, but over time, unfortunately, some of these greyer and darker issues have also, I would say, merged on my table and increasingly so. So I would say that this is ‑‑ has become also part of my everyday job to make sure that technology is used for the good and the bad, several multistakeholder processes, one of them is why we are here, seven others, so our task as ambassadors is to make sure that the Internet remains, as it was stated, an open, free, interoperable and accessible to everybody but also that the technologies wouldn't be misused. But before I go to the second part of Regina's question, I would point to some of the takeaways of something that we have seen in the current war and Ukraine and also beyond, and we could conclude both layers that you refer to, there's the technical layer and what is on top of it is actually on the attack, and is also very fragile. And we can see that clearly that the digital cyberspace has become part of the war. The war in Ukraine did not start with physical missile attacks. It actually really started with cyberattacks that really affected their communication in Ukraine, and actually had huge spill‑over effects to several other countries including in the European union. We also saw that data centres in Ukraine were attacked and also the Internet service provider was also attacked during the very first days of the war that started on the 24th of February. So what has resulted, we of course also I know that the connectivity has been vital and has been actually dependent on very few actors in Ukraine, if not to say, currently mainly only one actor, and this brings in also other players in our, I would say in our diplomatic fora that perhaps used to be mainly focusing on the negotiations with states, now the private sector and the big tech, of course, is big part of it because they have an enormous power over the both layers. And, of course, we have seen several good practices coming out from this unfortunate war, both governments and private sector have actually also joined their forces to help Ukraine to keep the data but also to keep the services running. But the other take away from the war in Ukraine is that when we ‑‑ and this is what we have seen also in Estonia. The cyberattacks were mainly targeted at critical infrastructure, government databases, perhaps government web sites and services and so forth. This is changing. So increasingly regular people's services that they use every day are being under attack. Is it data attacks to hospitals, kindergartens, schools, and this means, actually, that cyberspace is no longer actually about cybersecurity, per se, but it's also about how we digitalise our society. So for us in Estonia has been really useful that every single person in Estonia uses, for example, a secure digital identity because it would be almost impossible to protect almost every single medical practice from these attacks if they were not using a secure digital identity, and I think this now finally comes to Regina's second question about the importance actually around digital corporations, so we have had, indeed, a long‑term corporation with Ukraine over the past 14 years building their digital infrastructure, building data governance, data centres, helping to introduce secure digital identity, helping it in compatible with EU regulations and standards. And this also has helped very clearly to help Ukraine to provide services to people under very extreme circumstances. People in Ukraine can access their documents even if they live somewhere abroad and so forth. So this, I would say long‑term corporation and really focusing on your digital society has become more crucial in times of conflicts, and perhaps we would thought before. I have some other comments but I guess we can keep them for the second round.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. And now to Mauro to my life. I would like to ask you to introduce yourself. I wanted to have you on this panel because I wanted to highlight another element or another means that helps us to keep the world together and unified also in times of conflict, and my understanding that is also the role of international law and especially international humanitarian law, which are basically rules of the road for societies, for governments to minimize harms to civilians in times of war, and to perhaps also solve conflicts in peaceful ways. So please could you explain a little bit where you stand, what you observe as threats to the global Internet, and what can be done to prevent this harm or this damage done.
>> Thank you. I am maurorianti. I'm senior advisor of digital technologies of warfare, the Red Cross. I don't think there's a need to introduce the ICRC. Two remarks. What you said Regina at the beginning, we have armed conflicts from one side and then we have political tensions that will impact the Internet. The two influence each other so we have armed conflicts that are increasing the polarisation of political and economic and opposite situations. This is the first comment. The second one is about the introduction. We should talk about Internet governance and digital governance. We should talk about what is the infrastructure and what is built on top. So referring to the infrastructure, so what we see at the beginning of each conflict, one of the first infrastructure that is disrupted is the ICT, information, communication, technology and infrastructure. It can be a cable, so those are the first pieces of the infrastructure that are taken down and disrupted, and here we have a fiscal situation. So Internet has been built with the idea to split what is to be used for military purposes and what is to be used for civilian purposes. So when we talk about that, so we receive immediate reaction, say hey, Internet is like that. You want to modify ‑‑ it's not our goal to think of having two Internets but we have a consideration there. So Internet is not just a bubble. Internet is 77,000 auton mouse systems that are connected to each other. Those are auton mouse because those can work without interconnection to the other, if they want to connect to the other, OK, and then we create the Internet. But just to be aware that we're talking about independent system that are connecting eaching, and with the fact that the military armed forces are using more and more civilian infrastructure, we have a situation where logically the civilian infrastructure will be taken down because it was by armed forces. So this is the first consideration. In terms of the principle of distinction, civilians and civilian objects must be distinguished to competence and military objects. So in this case, we have an intermingled situation where the infrastructure is not clearly defined and displayed among civilians. This is the first part what we call Internet governance for the part of the digital. So what we see is after the armed conflict and even before the armed conflict are starting, we have a disruption of what we call the global digital supply. So this disruption of the global supply chain is done through sanctions, restrictions, even we see literally self‑exclusion from companies that are territories in conflicts, and this has huge impact on civilians and also on the relief operations that international organisations like ours is doing. So when we talk about that, we saw conflicts that are specific and not providing any more services that the civilians are used to use for several reasons, so for keeping in contact with families, to be able to understand and receive information about relief operation that we deploy in the territory. And by then, there would be isolated in terms of information so they would not receive any more information coming from outside the territory of the conflict. So this is the first consideration about the disruption of the supply chain. In an organisation like ours, we have to work on both sides of the conflict. If the technologies we are used to are used in those territories are no more there, how we can operate in the two territories and have been able to coordinate our relief operations if those technologies are no more available in those territories, and so this increased the difficulties for NGOs, for interorganisationals to create conflict.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. I would like to put now a second round of questions to my panelists. While I do this, think about questions you might want to raise. My first question goes to David. You've heard about the roles that other players in the game take of themselves, so like of international law organisations and Civil Society but do you make of this burden‑sharing for maintaining the global Internet and perhaps you can also give us a little bit your take on the role of international because we had a conversation about that before and it was interesting what David said about that.
>> Thank you, Regina. For 30, 40, 50 years when we were building the Internet in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and the 1990s, this was an engineering endeavor, OK. These were smart men and women from engineering backgrounds pursuing an engineering pursuit. But it's 2023, and the Internet is a matter of national security for countries. Just like you said, the intermingling of both military and civilian purposes over the same wires, over the same routers. My friend from AccessNow talked very pointedly, very passionately about the public core of the Internet and how we must maintain this neutrality, right. We can't do this as an engineering endeavor anymore because there are the real‑world implications of what happen in how we build and how we build Internet and Internet standards. It's too much part of our lives today. And so it's never been more important that Civil Society, that government policymakers, that engineers work together to develop standards, to build Internet, and today equally important, more important, I'm not sure, harden the core of the Internet to help prevent attacks from state actors, from bad actors, from terrorists, from whomever it is who wants to lower the quality of our lives by interrupting our digital lives. It is so important that we now start securing or better secure what we have built and what we are building. This is what ICANN does. The actual mission of ICANN is to increase the security, stability, and resilience of the part of the Internet that we are in, the unique identifier system, and reduce through this multistakeholder model, and the multistakeholder model is only enriched through the spirit of collaboration, cooperation, and the shared expertise of government, of Civil Society, of academia, and engineering, to better build this Internet that we all rely on. As for international law, she's making me uncomfortable on purpose. You can see her smiling. ICANN is an organisation. It's based in the United States, OK. ICANN respects international law. The ICANN ecosystem is made from stakeholders all around the world, and, of course, we hope they respect international law. But that's really easy for us to say because I'm an American and you're a German ‑‑ German, and you're e stonian, we want to comport with what our idea of international law is. But the truth is when I go into countries, economies in transition, many of which are in the Global South, many of which are remote, many of which are found in remote corners of oceans, what we're trying to do is build Internet that works for their people so they can connect and get information and share information with the rest of the world, and in these economies, the priority is on commercial development and the focus becomes on securing it so these do not become vulnerable islands on the Internet, and the discussions about international law, that's not in the discussion. That's not part of it because we're just trying to get connected, stay connected, and build connectivity that is secure. So it's a very north‑centric. It's a very, very western and European‑centric‑type concept, and while ICANN strongly believes in these precepts, we have to understand that in the end we are building this public core and trying to make it good for everybody.
>> MODERATOR: Of course Mauro has to respond to this.
>> Thank you. So the two years on the global advisory board of high‑level person worldwide and we're going to publish in a week a report, the final report, of the consultation with those persons, and one of the ‑‑ so we have to prepare a recommendasion for competence for states, for tech companies, and for military organisations. So one of the recommendasions that we have for states, that the states should for the maximum extend data infrastructure for military purposes. So I fully understand the argument that you are doing everything. The principal goal is connectivity and guaranteed connectivity but the connectivity is ‑‑ if the State decided to disrupt this connectivity, they can do it. So what we recommend to State here is to start to think about segmenting and segregating the communication systems and the data that they are providing on their territory. The same we ask the tech companies to start to think about it. When satellite companies and cloud infrastructure are providing services to military or to civilians, they should start to think how to segment those. How we would like to have the Internet in the future. How we would like digital being structured in the future. Do we want to go on with the non‑distinguishing what is a military from what is civilian, or we would like to think think now to evolve on a new level where data and the infrastructure are separated between.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Mauro. I saw you nodding. I would like to hear from you, what road do you see for the international law in comparison to the other elements of the connectivity tissue that we have mentioned?
>> Thank you so much. I think it's important when you go into this conversation to recognise governance and law are linked but not the same topic. For example when you mentioned many countries in the majority may not want international law, I hear some do but many do want governance conversations, in the sense that they brought up these conversations elsewhere. Why I mention that is very important to recognise where that imperative comes from. That's the first part I want to recognise. We've seen that in many cybersecurity conversations. Many countries may not be fully informed or may be asking for something contradictive. We want clarity. I think it's useful that the cyberprocesses have been slow really evolutionarily, and it is the UN job on this type of behaviour. It's not a landscape. The elements that are more clear than perhaps are including some of the conversation on the public which I acknowledge is not fully recognized, every actor in the UN system which is unfortunate and perhaps we need more clarity there. But I think what's really important to recognise is that fundamentally, we do need to acknowledge that we need more evolution of this. I am a bit cautious on the idea of saying that we need to separate and create different standards, and I want to step back a moment to the conversation we see domestically in many countries during shut downs. When many countries in shut downs, Internet shut downs are never acceptable full stop. They are not legal on the Human Rights law, and in terms of efficacy laws are in effective. We know they disrupt public services, access to critical care. Maybe that's creating different layers. We have government systems that are not shut down on the Internet and others that are shut down. I recognise very importantly that the ICRC are targeting here. But the main thing we have here is this is never acceptable policy. Regina, that's the intention we see in the UN process itself. Many do not ‑‑ we do know it is already happening and we don't acknowledge that operators will conduct all sorts of problematic behaviour. This is why it's this concept of Internet governance and separating layers and other parts there. The basic principle it to reduce conflict rather than encourage more of it. All sorts of cyberdestructive activity all by state actors is problematic. I think other challenges we apply in this space is when we try to make sure when conflict takes space, it is giving permission to certain actors. When they don't always mean it, there are other reasons. It is the intention, I see, because for example I see so many actors in Global South countries that say don't shut down the problematic. Can we say that certain systems will always be accessible, the rest will shut it down. I know it's a crude battle and it's perhaps in many ways does not recognise the sophistication of many of the countries that many others have. I would mention that as a sort of challenging reality check of how many governments may actually take these rules and apply them.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, I would like to touch briefly on something mentioned before and that is what is built on the Internet is public infrastructure and I would like to invite you to elaborate a little bit on digital public goods and digital public infrastructure and digital commons also as elements that can be seen as connective tissue on the basis of the Internet.
>> Thank you regena. I I opened a new deep conversation. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the terms that have merged the past years, the digital public goods and digital public infrastructure and digital commons. One is more philosophical, and the other is a little bit more practical, and actually, the first one is really related to how we see the role of governments, but everybody in building a digital society, and it started actually in Estonia really with rebuilding of our state, with really demom raitizing our state ‑‑ democratising our state, that whatever the government does, it does not do it for itself or just serving certain stakeholders in a society. It started more with access to information. It moved then I would say to open data movement, reuse of data. But also ultimately the technological sphere to open standards, interoperability, and the force. But the other part of this is actually very practical. We didn't realise for example that in Estonia, that the needs that governments have but also Civil Society has and the private sector has are quite similar. For example, in digitalisation, we would need to all authenticate ourselves, as a service. Whether it's a bank, civil registry or minister of interior so we sort of kind of combined our sources and there are aspects that we do together as a government, as a private sector, as every author, participant in our society, and this in a way has helped us first to habit to work together and share what we have done and reuse what we have done so ultimately, it comes back to resources. But I think now, maybe it's related to creating a global cord that the Internet allows us but also digital technologies allow us to create and for everyone to use. There are several examples from different countries around different solutions or products that have been made available for everybody for use. We have several of these products from Estonia that I used globally also, also in Ukraine that actually help us to save resources, and this is something that we would actually like to see perhaps more taking place. We have some systems created in Estonia, for example, we are working together with Finland and ice land. There are some digital solutions that we developed together. We maintained them together. It allows us to save not only money but increasing actually the human capital. It's very challenging to find data architects or specialists but surprisingly, we don't see that much yet but we are starting to talk about it. I think the movement of DPI, digital public goods, commons, is another push towards this, so I am a little bit positive to perhaps start sharing more of the good things we do.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Nele. The floor is open with questions. We have two microphones at both corners and also I have a mic here. And ask your questions. Who is first at the mic?
OK then, it's your question first. Other gentleman first, and then it's your turn.
>> Audience: Hi, thank you. My name is Gerald James, and I have some questions just specifically on governance and actual action. I think there's been attempts to try and get some kind of discussion going on this but I think there's just a lot of fear around it and I think that's kind of doing a disservice to those of us in the room who have lost family members or friends due to Internet shutdowns, which I'm not sure if there's anyone else in here but I have. And so I do think that there's not a seriousness taken into account with the idea of Internet shut down and I think they are often like an ancillary feature to society for a lot of different cultures and it's often something that we don't actually necessarily give to everyone. It's certain countries like you mentioned, Ukraine, Iran, where we have interest from a global western perspective. Those people we drop Internet to. We drop them satellites and make sure to take care of that. But I wonder where we actually see governance action around sanctions on Internet shut downs. If you shut down the Internet, why is that not a sanctionable offense, especially if you are UN member state or IGF member stakeholder, why would we endorse in any capacity your shutdown. So I think that would be my first question. The bulk of my question. And going forward, I guess the next part is how do we relate the actual damage that's done to women's safety, to family safety, to health infrastructure, and show the whole world that that is something that's kept in place by the Internet and access of information and when it's turned off, freeing people of their humanity. That is something I'm very curious to hear about and I don't think it's necessarily a lot of parallels being drawn between the actual dangers to people and the way that the Internet is used to ensure those dangers.
>> MODERATOR: Would you like to talk about international again and I can add something on sanctions.
>> I agree that in terms of it being not acceptable. I think the problem is the legal Human Rights position, the follow through in the international community is incredibly lacking. The purpose of the coalition is not to attract Internet shutdowns. It's to prevent it from happening at any point in time. Any Internet shut down as you mentioned is impunity for violence for targeting and very often in fact the claims made to the shut downs to claim violence, actually it's opposite reason. They're actually conducting problematic things. I think the challenge is as we have discussed and taking the shut down acceptable from the Freedom Online Coalition, from the Human Rights council, we don't see enough consequences and being very honest, even like‑minded states, whether in the west or across, the colleagues in the majority, there needs to be much stronger position taken on this, which means there should be consequences or discussions around digital public goods, around people's participation in the Internet governance ecosystem if they are consistent with shut downs, not just in terms of numbers but in terms of intense active effect. I would say sometimes the best prevention of shut down has been international media attention, domestic challenges, not enough in multilateral processes and sometimes we need to see the process that happen. I'm worried in the social context, (?) And therefore the ‑‑ I would be happy to share more data on that. We need to go to actual action, literally a consistent programme of action, if it means something very specific but a clear political action plan from strong states taking positions on this, saying there will be consequences if you shut down the Internet and it is not acceptable. I want to note that the tracking of violence and impunity have initially been made but there's much more even in the UN system, they are now trying to do their best with the very limited set of resources and no actual mandated track to shut downs.
>> I would like to give you all some answers from my government's perspectives. Sanctions are part of the diplomatic tool box but they are a rather complex instrument, and it's certainly not the first thing that we are going to use. But for example, the German government is both part of the Freedom Online Coalition that Aman mentioned and also of the declaration of the future of the Internet and both initiative alliances contain this commitment to go against Internet shutdowns in the diplomatic relations with countries who use this instrument and I can assure you that I am not timid about speaking about that with partners, with my interlockers about this issue. But what I wanted to add to this is that what we also have to understand is that, you know, the need ‑‑ there is a need to have an understanding as Internet shutdown is not an isolated event but we would like to integrate it in our early crisis warning in the forecasting procedures that we use to take informations that we get from organisations like Freedom House, for example, on Internet shutdowns as a crisis indicator for a specific country or region so that we can step in earlier with the diplomatic measures and not only after the social upheaval, the riots, or civil war, whatever has happened. So this is also something that I'm working on to kind of bring these informations to the people who should hear it. But now to ‑‑
>> I thought I was next.
>> Go ahead.
>> OK.
>> So I do want to contribute something very important to the discussion which I think has been overlooked and it really relates to this business of why aren't governments who shut down things sanctioned, and that is to put it bluntly, there is no such thing as international law. There is international anarchy. Governments are sovereign, and there's no world government that can impose sanctions upon them, although powerful governments try, such as the United States, and how is this relevant to ICANN and to the so‑called public core of the Internet?
Well, what we've done in order to get global governance of the public core, we have removed that whole governance problem from nation states, and we've put it in the private sector, and that's extremely important to understand. This is how we have internationalised governance of the domain name system. So it is a multistakeholder organisation, everybody likes that term so he's probably trying to mic ICANN look good but the point is multistakeholderism is not the key characteristic of ICANN. The key characteristic is it is a private corporation that has multistakeholder participation, and that gives the ability to things like Ukraine, sorry, we're not going to remove from the root. We're not going to participate in US sanctions on countries that the US doesn't like or we're not going to make the Iranians succumb to their political agenda so it's really important to understand the role of private sector governance in this kind of protecting the Internet against subordination to military and political.
>> Thank you. David, let's take the other question and I'll give you a possibility to answer.
>> Thank you. I am (?). So I wanted to ask the panel about how can we actually approach conflict so that we leave no one behind?
So we talked a lot about Ukraine, but Afghanistan, I have not heard a lot about Afghanistan and the situation that is going on there. And Sudan is in conflict as well. And Afghanistan the digital transformation project that was funded by world bank total ban. Taliban is a sanctioned entity, and if they become government then there will be a lot of problems providing Internet access to them. So how can we actually come up with an approach that we have a more inclusive approach that we do not leave anybody behind because they are struggling, and they have nowhere to go to, and then another thing that I just wanted to mention, and a lot of the times in various countries, the Internet service providers are owned by the military. So if you want to like divide this and kind of like maybe sanction the military later on, then it will be a very, very difficult task to do, so I suggest ‑‑ and also another point. And that's the last one. Using sanctions, and I think we need to come up with better mechanisms for resolving conflicts, especially when it comes to Internet governance. Sanctions just cannot be so targeted on the Internet. I have done some research on that, especially at the infrastructure layer. We need to have measures so that they can be ‑‑ they can function and they can operate. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Let's take the other two questions and then close and give the panelists an opportunity to answer. Please be brief.
>> From the national democratic institute. I guess it's an extension on looking at the role of the social media networks and platforms, I'd be curious to hear from the panel but we've developed guidance around crisis management. A key component is I think actually working with different stakeholders, Civil Society working with a metaor a X in terms of that aspect of dealing with critical situations and for better or worse, these platforms have become a component of the infrastructure. People are going to be out. They're not going to a web site anymore to report something or to follow the news or to communicate with someone about a critical issue, so I think we have to consider the specific role of the platforms and those specific elements of the private sector and thesis considerations, so I'd be curious on your perspective there.
>> I am shanital, with the freedom of expression organisation and we've also been looking into many of these issues and where the gaps are and one of the things I will be curious to hear your perspectives on is with in international humanitarian law with the gap of international law, it seems very much more clear when it comes in terms of involving tactical force and physical force but many of the methods of warfare involve again the cyberspace, use of warfare and Internet shut downs and there seems to be much less clarity around whether the rules of extinction apply around proportionality and humanity principles can apply in this context. So on the process to further clarify also how these roles should be applied also to by digital companies and states. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: We'll start with David and then you pick the questions you would like to answer.
>> Thank you. We're just about out of time so I really wanted to thank Dr. Muller for very eloquently stating what I was trying to get across about how the governance model at ICANN really shines during those times of conflict.
>> I want to first to give a brief answer, first talking about the conflict at least from our perspective, so we are working on more than one countries and we take care of all the countries we're working in. We are not focusing on specifically one or the other country. So this is something that we are working on. We opened a delegation for cyberspace in Luxembourg and researching everything in this respect to understand if we are able to develop the knowledge and capabilities that can be deployed in comfort territories and provide connectivity to population that is no more able to have this connectivity or to safe guard the information that they are transferring because privacy is very important for the bashes for the IRC. So we start working on R & D the last year, and about the sanctions that are not the right method, I'm not saying that I will disagree, I mean, we are neutral, but we ‑‑ what they say is among the recommendasions that we are delivering next week, one of the recommendasions for the tech companies to understand that they have this major role in managing the structure and the digital solution on top of that and what we recommend is to understand if they are not under and they are to consider to keep up the fundamental function and maintenance of the nature of the communication. So this is something that we strongly try to with the tech companies, so we reach out to them, and we would like to stress the fact that we are working also with them in this regard. Apropos of the of the presentation of Article 19. So I should already consider some of the points that you raised in the way that even with the recommendasion to follow IHL, that we're going to publish next week, so for the states is to respect IHL already foreseen the infrastructure of civilian, of taking down them, keeping up, and not targeting civilian objects that are fundamental for the operation of the ICFC and the civilians. So we think they are already covering this aspect, even though there is not a common understanding about the data, if data is there, we think it is in terms of international low. Some other states do not go in this direction, so where we try to go is including data in this respect so if data could be considered by all the states as an object to be protected, we're going to reach out to with respect to shut down and other, let's say new topics that are not the classic operation of cyberdisruption but information that can cause harm to civilians or accessing those kind of developments. So the work that we are doing is that we try to convince states to recognise data as an object to be (?).
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. So briefly, we have to wrap up.
>> NELE LEOSK: I would just like to respond and maybe have a little bit of a positive note at the end, but starting with negative, it is not only what you mentioned, it is not only the issue of the conflicts. The digital divide is increasing, not decreasing and in 12% of SDGs, we have gone backwards, not forwards. But regardless of everything, I do believe that digital is actually one of those areas where we can cooperate with almost every country because it brings so many similar issues but also similar solutions, so from Estonia side, we cooperate with almost every country with different partnerships, with UN, EU, different banks and so forth, including Afghanistan, but we have some digitalisation initiatives are coming, going, gone, so on a more positive note.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. So time is out. We have to conclude this session. I thank you very much, people on the panel for your contributions. It was very interesting and also for your questions. Some of which we'll also have to take home to think about it more thoroughly, and I hope to see you again outside of this room. Thank you.
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