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.
***
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Good afternoon. We are here for the main session on the Dynamic Coalitions. I am Markus Kummer. I am the co‑facilitator for the Dynamic Coalition coordination group, together with my colleague, Jutta Croll, who will be the co‑moderator of this session.
Let me start by saying a few words about the Dynamic Coalitions. They are as old as the IGF. They started at the very first IGF meeting in Athens, back in 2006. And the reason then was, you may well ask, it sounds funny name, Dynamic Coalition. Why are they called that way? The reason is very simple. There were those who wanted the IGF to be a year round exercise and others who didn't like that and then someone had the brilliant idea, well, maybe some Dynamic Coalitions might emerge of people who work on the same issue, who coalesce around the same issue and want to work together between the annual sessions.
So, instead of having working groups, that sounded like more a formal structure, they called themselves Dynamic Coalitions and they have been with us since Athens. By now we have 28 of them. In the past few years, we tried to organize a session where each Dynamic Coalition tried to showcase a bit of work they have been doing over the year. Whereas, this year, we take a slightly different approach, and my colleague, Jutta will explain the concept of this session. But the aim is, we want to show that the Dynamic Coalition collectively can contribute to the main themes of the IGF. And with that, I hand over to Jutta, who will introduce the concept of the session, please, Jutta.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you, Markus, for giving me the floor.
Yes, Markus has already mentioned that we now have 28 Dynamic Coalitions, and what they all have in common is threefold. First, they are all addressing in one or another way human rights issues, trying to ensure that people can enjoy and exercise their rights appropriately, also in the digital environment. And to be clear in this regard, we are not talking about a specific set of human or digital rights, but of the United Nations universal declaration of rights.
Second, all Dynamic Coalitions are working towards achieving the SDGs and to accelerate the process, which is the topic of this session. In a stocktaking exercise, Dynamic Coalitions have elaborated each for their work, how it's related to the SDGs, to what SDGs it's related, and will also be showcased within the next 90 minutes.
And third, and most important, Dynamic Coalitions have a huge outreach into their respective communities. Dynamic Coalitions build a network of people and organizations that address and engage much more the community beyond the internet governance ecosystem.
Please let me quote what Under‑Secretary‑General for Economic and Social affairs, Mr. Junhua Li, has said in setting the agenda for the IGF 2023 on day 0, he encouraged all of us to accelerate digital applications for the SDGs to enhance infrastructure and digital capabilities to bridge digital gaps and divides, and to strengthen digital cooperation across all countries. And bearing that in mind, we suggest to make this session a starting point to unleash the potential of the Dynamic Coalitions network and their communities to achieve the SDGs. And with that, I am handing over to Markus to ask the first question to one of our panelists.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. We are in a very big hole. I would very much encourage you to come forward a bit. That would look a little bit more engaging when you sit together, not so far away, with that, we introduce the panelists and give them their questions. We have five panelists here in the room and one online. The first one is Lisa Petrides from open education resources. So, I would like to ask you three questions. How do we safeguard human rights in the digital age, and how do we accelerate the SDGs.
Second question, do we need an awareness campaign, and if so, where should it start?
And lastly, what role for the Open Educational Resources in all this. Please, Lisa.
>> LISA PETRIDES: Great. Thank you very much, Markus. And thank you very much for the invitation to be here today.
I want to just say briefly that the OER or the Open Educational Resources Dynamic Coalition is a newbie to the Dynamic Coalition family. Only in, I think, January of this year have we joined.
Now, the OER Dynamic Coalition has been around for over almost four years now. We were started by UNESCO, who passed a recommendation on the use of Open Educational Resources and I will tell you what that is.
Back in November of 2019 a Dynamic Coalition was created to really propel forward this work around the implementation of the Dynamic Coalition within the OER recommendation. So ‑‑ and, basically, an ‑‑ UNESCO is a normative legal document signed by 193 countries. What it means is that this has to be built into the language of Member State governments when they are talking about something as important as education, which is very exciting.
Our Dynamic Coalition has over 500 members, and it's very active in ‑‑ its kickoff was the ‑‑ I'm sorry, the week before the pandemic started. So, most of the original work has been through Zoom and it's only in this last year, of course, that we have been out and about.
So, the Dynamic Coalition has really five components. It's about capacity building for all the key stakeholders. It's about developing supportive policy. It's about inclusive and equitable access to quality, multilingual open formats of educational resources, including persons with disabilities. It's about nurturing sustainable models for OER at the national and the regional institutional level. And overall, this Dynamic Coalition really has as its charge to facilitate international cooperation around the Member States.
So, to answer your question very specifically, I'm going to, since I'm first here, I'm going to start with the premise that education is a human right. So, when you ask about how do we ensure awareness about human rights, well, that means access to knowledge. And that means knowledge that is contextualized, shared, transparent, that it's openly licensed, openly accessible, because the free flow of information knowledge is really key.
So, many of you are here because you are working on such important issues around access to the Internet and devices. But it's what flows through these devices that is really critically important.
So, OER, as I said, is about education content that's freely available and openly licensed and its purpose is to be adopted and adapted to local context and that includes the localization of language, of culture, and it must be portable and interoperable with other platforms and libraries.
It also has to be well described, pedagogically sound and transformational. When we talk about the acceleration. SDGs, for example, we have the academy which has created terrific content around the SDGs. I'm not sure if you are familiar with it. And it's around climate action, environmental issues, many things.
But the point is, with openly licensed content, this is how we ‑‑ this is the capacity‑building component that we really need to achieve to be able to educate people not just about what the SDGs are, but what are the actions, what's the education, what is it that we need to know in order to really address and make forward movement around the SDGs.
I want to just emphasize how important the whole and open piece is of this. We have so many examples from the past. Some of you may have heard of the World Bank's knowledge management system of resources many years ago that was not opened. It's gone. Those resources you can't find now, right?
So, when we are talking about openly licensed content and OER, something that is portable, that it lives on, that it's dynamic, that it's not locked down in one system so that when that system is gone, that the content goes with it. So, the OER is really about being necessarily distributed. And I think this is really key when we are talking about the SDGs and the acceleration of them.
So, we really need open. I haven't heard that word enough this week. We are talking about open education, we are talking about open data, open science, open access. Nonproprietary, noncontrolled environments that are freely available and accessible.
So, we really need thriving, living content where learners see themselves in the content, inclusive of all voices, traditionally marginalized voices, and that's accessible. This is the role that OER play in regard to human rights in the acceleration of SDGs.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Think so much, Lisa, for explaining what the open and Open Educational Resources means and how relevant it is.
My question now goes to Muhammad Shabbir, who is representing the Dynamic Coalition on accessibility and disability. And, Muhammad, I think this is one of those who have been early established in the IGF, one Dynamic Coalition. And as far as I know, you have been working even when we had only the eight millennium development goals that was adopted in 2000. Before later then we had the SDGs.
Could you tell us how does having access to the Internet compensate disabilities, and how can's achieve a broad and wide ranging understanding of accessibilities?
>> MUHAMMAD SHABBIR: Yes. Thank you very much for the opportunity and the question.
As you mentioned, that the Dynamic Coalition on accessibility and disability of which I co‑coordinate is one of the earliest Dynamic Coalitions in the IGF system.
The purpose of the Dynamic Coalition on accessibility and disability is to first make the Internet Governance Forum and its online and physical spaces accessible, give some recommendations. We also had a paper on the accessibility of offline and online events as well.
This year, we tried to, sort of, rejuvenate with a renewed vision of accessibility towards persons with disabilities and the digital spaces.
So, the second purpose of Dynamic Coalition in general is to make the digital spaces accessible for people with disabilities. With that purpose in mind, the Dynamic Coalition on accessibility and disability on the principle of nothing about us without us started our project is bringing, actually, persons with disabilities to these forums. We have more often than not noted in earlier IGFs as well, that we need to bring more people with disabilities. But that, as we all know, requires more resources in terms of finances and in terms of efforts as well.
So, this year had three fellows from different regions. One from Africa, one from Asia Pacific, and one from Europe, actually, provided resources to them to ‑‑ with the fellowships, with the generous funds of the support of Google and Vint Cerf to, actually, enable them, along with their accessibility requirements and accommodations, to come to Kyoto, participate in IGF activities, and then enjoy and contribute into the discussions that are actually going on.
We not just facilitated these people, but also facilitated local people with disabilities, and on the session that we had on 9th October in the IGF, we had two persons with disabilities from Japan itself to participate and contribute in our discussions.
With that, I would come down to the questions that we are talking about here connecting the disconnected. And when we talk about the disconnected, more often than not, it's the discussion about 2.7 billion or whatever the number we have in our files of the disconnected from the Internet.
But Dynamic Coalition on accessibility and disability has a different purpose. It represents 1.3 billion persons with disabilities. That is transgender, transcultural boundaries, and trans geographic boundaries. You may have, as I often have been seeing, access to state‑of‑the‑art technology. You may have the device, the state‑of‑the‑art device in your hands with hi‑fi Internet connectivity available to that device. But, because as it was mentioned, what flows into this device was not made accessible for certain kind of users, those who access those devices with a different manner in some sort of ‑‑ with the help of screen readers or with the help of some audiovisual devices or with the help of some one handed devices. Because those devices, those softwares, those platforms were not made in that sense, that these technologies could interact with that kind of content. The person may remain unable to access those kind of contents. The best example of that would be some of the information that was placed on the IGF website itself of 2023.
So, in that sense, when Dynamic Coalition on accessibility and disability aims to bring persons with disabilities into this discussion, it aims to reach those discussions through the participation of actual persons with disabilities to the forum and to contribute to the discussions.
With regards to accelerating the SDGs and connecting them with the MDGs that we had since 2000, unfortunately, unfortunately, MDGs did not have any specific key indicators to address issues related to persons with disabilities. But fortunately, we do have those indicators in the SDGs and there are a number of SDGs and every SDG has specific indicators that address to the needs and requirements of persons with disabilities such as education, employment and smart cities, access to different resources, et cetera, et cetera.
So, we do have these indicators out there. We do have SDGs that lay at the top. And then we have persons with disabilities interacting with these initiatives.
But when it comes to the implementation of those indicators, we, sort of, fell a little bit behind in that context. A survey which was done about 1 million websites back in 2022 indicates that about 97% of the home pages of the websites were or had some accessibility‑related problems.
So, with this kind of stats staring us in the faces, we have to say that there is a long way to cover if we want to actually bridge the divide between the digital haves and have nots. And when I say haves and have nots, I do not just mean the divide between Global North and Global South. But this divide could very well be existing within the Global North itself, where we have state‑of‑the‑art technologies, but due to the accessibility barriers that may come in the way of users interacting with the digital accessibilities and these environments, may interact with the barriers and may face those barriers. Due to those barriers, they may remain unable to participate in online spaces, and due to that, they may remain unable to participate in the acceleration of SDGs and other processes.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, Muhammad, for that and for your input into. May I also recall at the micro level in the IGF, it's thanks to the DCAT that we have made big progress on accessibility for participants at IGF meetings. Once again, thank you for your excellent work and your hard work in this important issue.
May we turn down to our remote participate, our old friend, Alejandro Pisanty who is currently in Washington, D.C., he represents the coalition for Core Internet Values. Can we make him access and show him on the screen and give him sound access that we can hear him? Alejandro, can you hear us?
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: I hear you very well, and I hope you can hear me.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Excellent. Good to see you indeed. We can hear you and see you.
We heard already on the importance of openness and openness is also very important core value of the Internet. Now, this IGF has been a lot of hype about artificial intelligence, and I would like to ask the questions, do you see a danger for the core values of the Internet through artificial intelligence or the other way around, how can AI be deployed to the benefit of the Core Internet Values? You have the floor, Alejandro.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you, Markus. Thanks, everybody. Apologies for some connection. Computes have no worth of honour and start one more time here.
Pleased to see you all. And to your question, Markus, I think it's a mutual challenge between what artificial intelligence can do and what intergovernance can tell us about artificial intelligence. We have ‑‑ we are seeing flare‑up of interest in artificial intelligence due to one small niche within the broad field of artificial intelligence, which has become very public and very transformative, which is generative artificial intelligence specifically for large language models, which is a way to access that huge database of words instead of making an obtuse query, you make your query that looks like a sentence and it plies with many sentences or what looks like a whole book.
But artificial intelligence is a much broader field. Even neural networks, deep learning and so forth, which are objective of public attention in the last decade are still a sub field within this. We see what we know of artificial intelligence, many tools for quantitatively managing things on the Internet. Actually, artificial intelligence used in many algorithms that make the Internet better, as well as for some of them that make trouble on the Internet. More on the application. People who are on cybersecurity operations, people who just run networks, people who plan network capacity, they are all using artificial intelligence for many years.
So, here we can see definitely that artificial intelligence poses a positive contribution to the growth of the Internet and to the protection of its values, like interoperability, openness, accessibility and very importantly scalability. And our more super need for security. There's also a challenge because this is an arms race between what we call the good guys and the bad guys, the people who are attacking the Internet are also using artificial intelligence, infection, to discern patterns of operation, to extract passwords from ‑‑ or even video passwords kind of security protections. And good guys concerned with keeping the Internet open and functional and reasonably secured for everybody are using artificial intelligence to detect these guys, to thwart their actions to detect how they behave.
What internet governance specifically can bring to this field is we should absorb the experience, we should extract the lessons learned from almost three decades of formal studies on internet governance and formal construction of institutions and see, for example, what the multistakeholder procedure for governing or for managing artificial intelligence could bring us. We could see that the challenges, for example, of scalability, of crossing national borders, of reducing friction, of managing and manipulating memory which we have learned to deal with in this sect and attacked differentially of internet governance are now things that are affecting us on the field of generative artificial intelligence language models and we could also see that we never established a single global government of the Internet or a single global institution for the governance of the Internet. We have a specific mechanism for the unified identifiers, like the DNS in ICANN. We have a standards in the IUTF. We have very focalized work for the working group or the network abuse working group which focus on specific problems, bring the relevant stakeholders together, and also find the funding to do these things, and the way to have teeth so that they can act upon the malicious actors to some extent. They are also adaptable to the diversity of different cultures, different, let's say, national traditions, policies, legal structures, and aware of the fact that if you try to squeeze the system too tightly, all the bad actors will act outside of the system. So, probably that's what we can see in this big picture. There's an interaction between these things, artificial intelligence can be used both to damage and to defend the core values of the Internet, and we can extract lessons from the history of internet governance and apply them to the governance of artificial intelligence in specific and differentiated fields. Thanks.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you so much, Alejandro, for introducing us to the work of the Dynamic Coalition on Core Internet Values. And I do appreciate how you explained what AI can do is beneficial, but also maybe it's not so beneficial.
Let me now go to Avri Doria, who is here for the Dynamic Coalition on Internet of Things. And also DCIOT is one of the most grown‑up Dynamic Coalitions, I think. So, you have a long standing experience in Internet of Things. But what about the people that all benefit from Internet of Things? Reflecting the last five days, I assume that the most often term I have heard is human centered.
So, my question would be, what does it mean to you and to the Dynamic Coalition of Internet of Things and what steps does the Dynamic Coalition take to ensure human‑centered, open and inclusive Internet and how does is go out to fast tracking the SDGs?
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you for the question. Yes, we have been working on the Internet of Things Dynamic Coalition for quite a while. When the Dynamic Coalition first started, it was before things were as ubiquitous as everywhere as they are now. The concern was the things are coming and we didn't know whether they would be on the Internet, of the internet, somehow different from the Internet, discussions we hear on other subjects these day.
Eventually we found what was really important was how they, the things were interacting with us, how we worked with them, how we treated them, how we used and took care of them so that people would benefit from them.
And one of the things that that, basically, happened when we started working with the Internet of Things is we decided that a set of values were necessary for best practices for the items that were part of the Internet of Things. Sort of an effort that start at the similar time as the Dynamic Coalition on core values and the Internet.
So, started looking at what were the best practices that one would need to have if an Internet of Things or things existing on our Internet were to interact with human populations, with cities, with people in general, were to be human centered, how would we do that? How could we assure that they were properly maintained so that they didn't become dangerous so that they remained beneficial? How can we control the access so that the things were not being accessed in a bad way, but only in a good way. How could we control that? How could we, basically, make sure that the number and the profusion of things that were collecting data, collected that data and that data was treated and stored properly.
So the Dynamic Coalition in the process from 2008, when we first started talking about it almost as just objects, to 2018 when the IoT good practices came out was, basically, looking at how they affected us as people, how they could be used in a human centric way.
As we started looking at those good values, we found that they were often far more true as aspirations, as intentions, as goals than they were in practice. And then we started looking with the SDGs as to how Internet of Things could actually be used to assist, to solve the goals of that. And you start going through the list of them, you know. Zero hunger. That's the things that, basically, are everywhere in agriculture and such.
Or for health, the number of objects and things that are used in health, that are planted in bodies and such to help maintain help. Clear water and sanitation. Affordable and clean energy, decent ‑‑ and decent environment, clean air, et cetera. That, basically, each of the problems that you look at in the Sustainable Development Goals is one that can be helped or hindered by the objects that we place in the world that, basically, collect data, that affect the world. Because the things don't just collect data. They initiate actions. How do we make sure that they are well controlled and only controlled in a proper and safe way?
So, basically, these values have been established, and now we start looking at the impact analysis of Internet of Things, of how do we make sure that there's proper access control? How do we make sure that an object that's been planted in our environment, that no longer has a purpose or whose purpose has become deleterious can be dealt with and such.
Those are the problems that the Dynamic Coalition takes on, talks about, tries to publish analyses on, and continue doing its work.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, Avri. For this. Internet of Things with a human face, so to speak.
It gives me pleasure now, as a digital immigrant to look towards a digital native. We have Phyo from the youth Internet coalition on Internet values with us. I would like to ask how do you see the role of young people and the Internet in fast tracking the SDGs, and also what hope and expectations does the young generation have on Internet governance for the future and what impact it can have on today's young people. Please, Phyo.
>> PHYO THIRI: First of all, thank you for having me today and it is ‑‑ I feel very proud being here, because that as a young people, I together with senior people at the high level panel. That is very good for include young people voices in the different sessions like that to hear the young people, what the challenging over in the Internet, as well as how young people are struggling over to get in this community, as well as to advocating about the SDG for moving forward to the better future of the Internet.
Of course, SDG goals are also linking with our physical voice. But as in this digital era is also becoming, since the pandemic, we have been engaging and we have been using the Internet in our daily lives, and even we have been noting that many young people are doing many jobs online and not only for them, but also for their community work.
For example, our YCIG member very actively engaging at the standing group for empowering young people to get involved in the Internet governance community. As well as we have been engaged with (?) Asia which is also the youth programme from the Asia Pacific Region for empowering the young people for about the internet governance and also supporting the young people to get aware and continue to use their participation at the internet governance community.
So, I think supporting the young peoples and representing our voices in the community is very matter to reach out to more people, because young people are burdened with some people ‑‑ not some people. Young people are born with the technology, but they are now facing lots of the issues in their era for addressing and getting involved in the Internet, in the local community, regions and the global community. We are now challenged with the Internet issues, why Internet is innovating on one hand. It is the thing that we ‑‑ the young people are very important right now to bridge the next generation and also engage, addressing the issue of the Internet moving forward for the advocating about the Internet and carbon footprint. This is also very important that sometimes we didn't note it, especially from the young people from the developing countries are not very notice about how internet is impact them. And even they don't understand that how the Internet is work and how the Internet is impacting our daily life and how the social media algorithms working or using our data or something like that.
So, we have been ‑‑ as a YCIG, we have been encouraging the young people facilitating the WSIS in 20 to engage at the Internet Governance Forum 2022. And also this year, we have been taking the power of the mentorship role at the youth programme where the young people, as a mentor to support them and to marching and embrace them with the internet governance community for their better understandings and to keep them to participate in this community.
But so far, we are facing a lots of challenges, like resources, especially related to the resources. Such as financial resources, time resources. As young people, we have ‑‑ we need to upgrade our scale because we are standing to sit here like that for talking about the issue and but through our better understanding first,.
And then also have to have ‑‑ we also have consents about finding stability through learnings or for getting access to Internet for something like the Internet in our region, like, the Internet is not affordable at all. It is getting more and more expensive. Why it is getting more and more expensive? It's very clear because of the political impact that our countries like Myanmar and Afghanistan are also very difficult to get access the Internet. The Internet is getting more and more expensive and not every young people are not very easy to get access to the Internet.
Getting access to Internet is also a part of our life to access the resources about the education. Also access the ‑‑ accessing the information about the global issue or something like that.
And also to take impact on the capacity building programme like the fellowship programme and investor programme and also to ‑‑ and also to engage with global and local and regional community. Because we have from the different time zones working together for the common good.
So, when they are not, no longer affordable to pay for the Internet, they have been left behind. That is a key why ‑‑ that is 81 of the things I would like to highlight. Young people are very actively ‑‑ very active in advocating and working on the everything work, freedom of speech and digital rights related matter.
But on one hand, the digital no longer speed. So, how impact their advocacy, they always have to consider that how they might be the impact and they might be ‑‑ one day to something that government don't like. You know, like, I know they are in the world. Lots of government are supporting to the young people. But there are also many governments oppressing over the young people's voice, and also ‑‑ and oppressing of the young people, not ‑‑ and stopping them to criminalize their cases like that. When we speak out on the online or when they speak about air environmental issues online. That is inevitable that we are facing.
And also young people need more support from the different kinds of organizations to also ‑‑ or to addressing, say, issue together for moving forward to the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as for into the common goalwide, one goal, one Internet. Thank you so much.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you for making the voices of young people heard in this session. You have been speaking about the ecological crises, as well as a very important other things. But this gives me the opportunity to refer on the one hand to the general comment number 25 that the United Nations committee for the children of the rights have adopted. And this is addresses several of the issues, especially not to criminalize the activities that young people perform on the Internet. And it's not a coincidence that after number 25, general comment number 26 on environmental issues and their impact on children's rights has been adopted, right, I think only four weeks ago.
And with that said, I would like to call the Dynamic Coalition on environment that are supposed to be in the room to give their short 90‑minute intervention from the microphone right there. 90‑second. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. So 90 seconds, the floor is yours.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Abdoshi, and I represent DC environment. It has been such an insightful discussion, but I want to add a point to this discussion. I believe with human rights we, also need to speak about human duties. They have to work together. At this environment, we have been working on action‑oriented policy papers, which puts focus on human duties. We talked about how unchecked urbanization is causing biodiversity laws, which is impacting our health mentally. It is time to incorporate action‑oriented duties in our discussions. We need to leverage technology, especially Internet to propagate and educate school students so that the next generation is prepared to do whatever is needed to ensure the world is livable space in the near future.
Lastly, I would like to take this opportunity to thank IGF to facilitate such important discussions at this forum. Thank you.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. And now I am given to understand there is also the Dynamic Coalition on jobs that would like to make an intervention.
>> AUDIENCE: When I release the reports I will make the intervention on digital health and jobs.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Okay. Dynamic Coalition of digital health is on my list. And it's children, Dynamic Coalition on children. Or children's rights to be precise. Please.
>> Thank you very much for giving me the floor. And thank you much, very much for your speaking on behalf of young people. I have to say it's very exciting to see so many young people engage in the processes here. I represent the Dynamic Coalition on children's rights in the digital environment and as my colleague Jutta has referred to, we are a Dynamic Coalition, built upon the principles and the content of the general comment number 25 on children's rights in relation to the digital environment.
And I think it's also really exciting and I would like to thank all my other DC speakers from other DCs to see the full potential of how we can work together to ensure from our perspective that children's rights are really understood and acknowledged within all of the work that you are doing and how we can understand and contribute to your work. And for us, it's very exciting to be part of the IGF and have the opportunity to bring the voices of children with young people and children themselves to these crucial debates about the future of the Internet. Thank you very much.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Yes, thank you, Amy.
>> Now we are calling on the Dynamic Coalition on jobs and digital health.
>> AUDIENCE: You can read the reports and then I can make my interventions.
So, good afternoon, everyone. And good morning, good evening to those who are joining online. As the organizer for the plenary of the DC session, I thank the IGF for the opportunity, support and the trust they have given us. Today release full reports, probably substantive work of the Dynamic Coalition on Internet and jobs. This is probably the world's biggest project on job creation that we do using technology. It's called project create. And thanks, Windsor for the membership, for the report that we see. Because I believe totally aligned to the theme of this session, human rights and digital age. There will be no human rights if there are no source of livelihoods. You can fight for this, basically. I think this project is very important and we have created job map for nine sectors. This is in it and we work through the year. And this is what we promised in Ethiopia on the 30th of October last year. The second report we release is urbanization, biodiversity and mental health. This is important because what we call as the mindless growth that we show up as development, which this is not and you will see in this report that urbanization is leading to loss of biodiversity, which is going to lead to mental health issues. If we do not address this, the mental health pandemic will shadow all the pandemics. I think this is an important issue given the fact that digital footprint has a carbon footprint. We have to address this. And this also is a report for that. We are releasing this report on the state of digital health 2022, which covers 58 countries. We have done it in the IGF climate and digital health which I think addresses the 3ATs what I call. The 80% of people in the world have no access to health. 80% in the world cannot afford health and 80% of the people have acute illnesses. Which means out of the 380s, we need the fourth which is artificial intelligence to address these three ATs and the last report Internet and jobs covers five countries, six continents and our focus has been as Dynamic Coalition on Internet and jobs that Internet plays an important role in job creation. This is our mandate, this is our remit and this is our work and this also shows the phenomenal groundwork that Dynamic Coalitions do in terms of thought leadership, in terms of giving direction to key things of IGF and moving the things on ground. Thank you so much. Urbanization).
Thank you for giving us the presents and I do think only I was able to flicker through that it's very important we spread that around the room to give it to more people and to give more people access. I am pretty sure we have digital copies on the Internet and probably we can give all. So, the URL and the links.
I'm not sure whether we have further Dynamic Coalitions in the room who want to take the floor for their 90 seconds. If you are so, please make your ready to go to the microphone. And otherwise, we would like to take also questions from the floor from the participants in this session. Please come forward, put your questions to the dynamic coalitions and even if it be how can I join any of the Dynamic Coalitions that have been presented here so far.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: It has been our objective to make the session as interactive as possible so we rely on you to ask questions and make comments. We can also turn to the online participants. Are there any comments online or is there any online participants who would like to intervene?
>> MEVISH VAISHNAV: Hi. There are two questions online. One is from in James from Cameroon. He says, what strategies can be employed to enhance the practical relevance of established international norms for professionals and which resources can be harnessed in their daily responsibilities.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Do we have one of the panelists who want to take this question? The question is about standards. And I know we have a Dynamic Coalition on standards. Anyone in the room who want to take the question? Yes.
>> AVRI DORIA: I can certainly add that within the Dynamic Coalition on IoT, having standards that can then be used by many to come up with a certain level of transparency, a certain level of interoperability, a certain level of expected behaviors that are acceptable to consumers are critical.
So, within the values that are promoted in good practice are indeed the development and adherence to standards. So, certainly it's of vital importance.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you, Avri. But Muhammad you want to add something in regard to standards?
>> MUHAMMAD SHABBIR: Yes, quickly. As Dynamic Coalition on accessibility and disability, we always encourage to follow the web content accessibility guidance that would be the version 2.1 right now. These are the standards to develop accessible websites, online platforms, mobile apps, et cetera, in an accessible way for the persons with disabilities to use. And Dynamic Coalition on accessibility and disability always encourages the developers to follow these standards.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you, Muhammad. We have Vint Cerf. It's an honour for us to have you here in our session and to ask us a question.
>> VINT CERF: This is a question to Shabbir, although any of you who wish to respond feel free to do so. It has to do with increasing our ability and our capacity to produce accessible interfaces to all of the applications on the Internet. My impression is that creating standards doesn't necessarily create capacity to use those standards effectively.
Some of you are familiar with the Khan Academy, which has grown over time to encompass a great many more subjects than just mathematics. But the example of that academy made me think of asking people with disabilities to help the rest of us, especially those of us who are responsible for developing software that's used online, to intuitively understand how to apply the standards to make things accessible.
What I have found, as I learn more about this problem, is that examples of things that work and things that don't work and explanations about why they work or don't work may be the most effective way of helping people, programmers, gain an intuition for how to make use of technology for accessibility. Shabbir, I am sure you would resonate with this. If you don't know how a screen reader work, then how are you going to make a web page that works well with a screen reader?
We really need to build more capacity. And I would invite those of you interested in this to think about how we can increase our capacity to do a better job.
>> MUHAMMAD SHABBIR: Yes. Thank you very much, Vint, for making this comment. Actually, this was exactly what I was thinking about, that we need to build capacities. And just to step out of our little bit broader domain that we are discussing here in the Dynamic Coalitions. To build capacities, actually, what I said in the beginning was that to have ‑‑ you have to have actual people, those who are being impacted by these technologies interacting with these kind of initiatives.
Same is the case with the development side. Now there are technologies that make, enable persons with disabilities to study these degrees software development, software engineering, computer sciences and all those technologies.
So, on one level, we have to encourage persons with disabilities to come into these feels, to join, to study these educational degrees and to work in these domains so that the other people, those who would be your coworker or colleagues, juniors, seniors, they would know of that you are there and you have the requirements.
On the other hand, the certain measures could be taken to inform the development side, different degrees. Those could include requirements and training programmes for training the persons without disabilities about the requirements and impacts of having these technologies accessible and not having these technologies accessible.
In certain cases, there are just physical requirements where people are unable to reach to the certain content, which may be available on the website, if that is not available with the screen reader.
But in certain cases, it could be a legal liability. For instance, the section 508 in the United States. And so on and so forth. There are other standards which are legally bound to be followed by the governments to make the certain platforms to a certain level accessible.
But as I said, this is a very interesting debate that we need to continue. But certainly, Vint, thank you very much for this very crucial point that you indicated that the people actually developing these technologies need to know about the standards.
For instance, some 10 years back ‑‑
>> JUTTA CROLL: Muhammad, timeout. We need a timeout to give more people to take the floor. They are already queuing. Thank you so much. But I don't want to interrupt you. But just to give Lisa also the chance to react to your input and then we have more questions. Short intervention, Lisa.
>> LISA PETRIDES: Yeah. I just want to talk about this from the educator perspective, because we are working very deeply with education systems now, and faculty within them who are creating Open Educational Resources to develop these kinds of standards that are 508 compliant. So, for example, and this doesn't solve the problem at the software development level but if you have educators who are creating resources for the first time, there are mechanisms that you can put into the authoring platforms at the very basic level so they can't put a picture without adding alt text. It starts simple in that way and, of course, gets much more complicated things.
What I want to say in our education systems is our accessibility offices have really been so much about how you make accommodations and how you get a particular book to a student in a chemistry class who is sight impaired or something like this. As opposed to thinking about what does it look like if these resources are born accessible and what does that need to look like at the creation level, at the course creation level or at the resource creation level.
So, and this also I just want to add in the issue of Universal Design for learning. This is something that I think we are really understanding in the U.S. and globally that we need to think about disability on a whole spectrum that is not necessarily device specific anymore. And that's what a lot of these accessibility offices were experts in, what's the device that gets you as opposed to what's the resource itself.
>> VINT CERF: It's Vint again. Thank you for letting me intervene one more time. I wanted to reinforce something that Shabbir said. We have two deaf Googlers that are responsible for developing one application called live transcribe, which takes sound in and transcribes it on your mobile so you can see what the other person is saying. It works in 120 languages. And it was developed by a deaf Russian engineer at Google.
The other thing is captioning for YouTube was developed by another deaf engineer. I want to reinforce the point that people with these problems also can have the skill to help us develop applications that accommodate.
And I want to reinforce the point about broad accommodation as opposed to device specific things, you are quite right about that, too,.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you for the lively debate. And I am quite happy that more than 20 years after the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines have been adopted, we can give a bit of stamina to that input.
Now, we have Alejandro raising his hand from Zoom. And then we go to mark a well from the safety and did you tell user coalition. Alejandro you have the floor.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: A quick reply to the standards. Things moving to the Internet of Things, for example, the standards issue becomes very complex. You have to distinguish between the consumer Internet of Things, which runs mostly over the open Internet. It's just more IP traffic, more TCIP traffic or UCP traffic. And the industrial Internet of Things which may choose in some segments of communication to use the open Internet, say if you're operating an autonomous vehicle or connected available and what is available is wi‑fi, then that will be what you use or, you know, your standard interpret connection. But otherwise you have lower one, you have lots of other standards taking place and it's a complex architecture. That's number one.
The expectation for artificial intelligence would be that some standards for interoperability, for example, between LLMs should arise and we will be facing these same complexity. And on the other hand, what's happening with some applications of artificial intelligence including generative LLMs is they are substituting for the lack of standards because they are just translating imperfectly with biases, you know, lots of trouble. But they are just jumping over the hurdles by doing things like Vint said or what we have seen, for example, the incredible progress in automatic translation.
And, again, these things, it's very important to keep them in mind within Core Internet Values, the IGF, our context, this multistakeholder governance making sure all stakeholder are at the table. Your system will never be better than your case studies before you start developing. So, that's the kind of thing where we can really make sure we involve all relevant stakeholders.
Final point, you may have a technical standard like, for example, for accessibility, for the weak of sight and you can still have the designers paint, pale over turquoise, letters over background, and you will still have something that people cannot read. It takes a lot of commitment and we should ask, for example, key actors like government websites to set the standard of behavior, not only the technical written standard because standard of behavior about accessibility. Thank you.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Can we now turn to (?) at the microphone.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. The name is Markelvel. I'm the policy virus for IS3C, which is a Dynamic Coalition. We have been going for the last three years. IS3C stands for Internet standards, security and safety. And the focus of our coalition is on the failure to deploy existing standards in the whole Internet ecosystem. We have a range of working groups. The first working we set up is looking at security by design. And that is just published a report which has surveyed policies worldwide relating to Internet of Things and policy provisions with regard ‑‑ and practices with regard to standards. And that will be the basis for further work to examine the whole issue of how to make Internet of Things much more secure and safe.
We have a working group which is looking at the gaps in educational curricula and vocational training relating to cybersecurity standards. And that is now developing a proposal for creating a cybersecurity hub which will bring together industry and educationalists to look at this, to start examining whether there is potential for creating a kind of repository on cybersecurity standards that educationalists can use which will meet the requirements of industry.
We have another working group which is looking at what we believe is an important driver for the takeup of standards, which is public and private sector procurement and supply chain management. The work that that working group has done so far has, I confirmed that a lot of procurement contracts do not specify cybersecurity standards, when government offices, for example, go out to purchase devices and network applications, there isn't any specific stipulation as to what their buying should include in respect to standards relating to security.
We are launching a new working group which will look at rooting and RPKI and DNS et seq., why there's not been widespread takeup of those important standards.
And also we are drawing up what we hope will be a valuable too late, which will set out the key cybersecurity standards that will be a reference point for Internet stakeholders, users, purchasers and so on in the future. So, we got a lot of work on the go and we will be launching new aspects of work, which will bring cybersecurity standards much more to the centre of awareness, what can contribute to greater security and safety online and, of course, this intersects with the whole Sustainable Development Goals agenda with regard to resilient, robust, secure infrastructure that will serve the interests of the health sector, financial sector and so on.
So, there are a whole range of SDGs which we think our work will contribute to. I hope that ‑‑ if I've got over 90 seconds, do apologize. But we are doing so much. Thank you.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you so much.
>> LISA PETRIDES: Jutta, can I make one content to that. 30 seconds. I implore in you're going to be creating cybersecurity curriculum, there are groups doing this, please do it as Open Educational Resources because so many times we are seeing the corporations go in and create their training programmes around cybersecurity but then that becomes private and commercial. We need this to be openly licensed. So, there's a community of people already working on cybersecurity. I'm sure they would welcome the kind of expertise that you are talking about.
>> AUDIENCE: Well noted. Thank you very much.
>> JUTTA CROLL: I am quite glad to see that the networking is already going on between Dynamic Coalitions.
And I wanted to recommend also that Muhammad has mentioned Section 508 in the United States. And that is exactly an example how public procurement ‑‑ or the standard had an impact on public procurement. So, probably Markus should go in contact with Muhammad to learn more about Section 508 and then see whether that approach could also be adopted to security standards and procurement.
We have another question from the floor.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I'm Laura from the national Library of Indonesia. From the library perspective, right now libraries are very focused on building awareness amongst libraries that the public access they offer give them a role, even a responsibility to help deliver the SDGs, building on their pre‑existing values base.
We are trying to get a stronger, more pervasive and more structured approach to having positive impact in terms of development and delivery of the rights. Though the enrichment of the particular one freedom of access to informations.
So, for us, for the libraries, it will be about how localized delivery of the right of the access to information through libraries is helping to deliver. As part of this, we are building awareness. Strategy planning and a sense of agency and duty. It is important to have rights and the SDGs as the structured goal and to keep our eyes on this. Thank you. That's all.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. The libraries have always been active participants and we have a Dynamic Coalition with libraries. Our rapporteur actually represents the international federation of library associations and he will ‑‑ may say a few words at the end of our session.
But we have somebody else behind the microphone here. Please, you have the floor and introduce yourself.
>> AUDIENCE: I am a Japanese (?) who wrote some of her speech due to traffic accident. I work with remote medical and studied at Osaka University, in the spirit of education. Majoring in science. My name is Akwame Aquira. I am leader for people with disabilities and leadership for (?) in Japan.
After a tragic accident, I studied at the Japanese rehabilitation association. Even here in Japan, there are many people who do not have Internet, people with disabilities in Japan have both (?) and mental disability. Also overlap with physical disability.
One side of Japanese people are elderly. Ask for your help in diverse accessibility bridging the digital divide and water and food for disability and elderly people around the world.
In particular, thank us for (?) and thank you very much.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you very much for these comments. It's very much appreciated.
We have somebody ‑‑:
>> MEVISH VAISHNAV: Yes, online someone would like to intervene. You can go.
>> JUTTA CROLL: We have one more comment from Zoom. Mevish, would you like to go ahead?
>> Benin wanted to intervene. Benin, can you please speak and raise your hand?
We have one more question from Ms. Monica Emmert, how well have the research of the DC's work been received in industry and legislative work? How can the DCs strengthen the impact and, perhaps, avoid duplication of work like charter of human rights and principles for the Internet?
>> JUTTA CROLL: I am going to start and then you will continue because you have the long‑term understanding of Dynamic Coalitions.
At this point I would say it's a bit difficult to give an answer across all the dynamic collisions. The work of some of the dynamic collisions very much related to research and it's well appreciated, like we have seen in the reports that Ragendra has already handed out. While other Dynamic Coalitions are more in the field of practice, like, for example, the Dynamic Coalition on public access and libraries which they are practicing giving people access who otherwise wouldn't have access to the Internet. But maybe Markus, you will want to add something.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Well, I think what we always say, it's very difficult to have a common denominator for all Dynamic Coalitions that are so diverse. They are diverse in scope. Some, as you have heard, work more on principles. Whereas others have very much more practical, such as the dynamic coalition on accessibility has both practical and also policy aspects. So, it's very difficult to give a common assessment. But especially the dynamic coalition on accessibility for people with disabilities has had a very direct impact and we heard from Muhammad also how they continue to have impact.
But I open the floor to the other panelists. Maybe you have concrete examples or would like to give your assessment. Anybody willing to venture forward?
But, again ‑‑ yes, Lisa.
>> LISA PETRIDES: I will try this. I know, one thing I think I have really learned, being here this week, how much the work that we do in the education system around access to knowledge is somewhat ‑‑ is somewhat disconnected from the larger conversations about governance and privacy and, you know, the issues that other people are dealing with in the Dynamic Coalitions. Yet, they seem to be very essentially related and, in fact, if the people that we work with on the ground understood that they really are part of a digital equity agenda, and it isn't just about an issue of education and access to education. If they saw the larger picture, I think it could be very useful. So, it would be interesting to try to find how we can make some of those connections, even if it's around messaging and communications. It seems that there's some real potential to have deeper, deeper impact around the SDGs if we are able to do that together.
>> We have Alejandro who would like to intervene.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you, I would like to go further with this question. Like Markus says the impact is very heterogeneous. We have to work out ways to get closer, especially to industry, by changing the messaging between the IGF and certain sectors of the industry. Some sectors of the industry are close to the IGF. They have been since the start of the IGF. Good sponsors. They send high‑level, technical informed representatives. They absorb what comes out of the IGF. We need to make this happen more. And we certainly have a much better example here of this type of collaboration and the way it carries to industry, and what we can expect if the IGF is minimized in its role and as taxation goes to things like the Global Digital Compact and the potential interest of creating a higher level, all encompassing governance incidents for everything digital. That will certainly make sure that industry goes completely into a defensive attitude and no multistakeholder message will get through to industry.
And further, one can foresee that, for example, as the GDC has already talked about, the three partite arrangement between government, industry and civil society without including the technical community, without including the technical knowledge necessary for governing or evolving the system. We can be sure that eventually the powers of the industry and government will come together and squeeze out civil society.
So, it's a paradox of and complex situation. What we have to do is document more and communicate more the IGF work to industry and make sure that they feel as an equal partner, instead of attending preventively, a lot of industries do send representatives only to listen and prepare against what they will see as an attack with regulations years down the road. Thank you.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, Alejandro. That gives me a nice segue into a final question. As we give each panelist an opportunity for some final comments. And I would like to ask them, how do you see the role of Dynamic Coalition in the new environment, and one of the big questions was the future of the IGF and the relationship to the GDC, and do you see the role of the Dynamic Coalition in implementing and follow‑up of whatever will come out of the Global Digital Compact?
Shall we start at the other end with the youth Dynamic Coalition? But can you be very, very concise? Because we are shortly going to run out of time. One minute.
>> PHYO THIRI: Thank you. I will be very concise. I think it's really important because of internet governance communities, multistakeholder, advices are coming from the bottom to the up. So, it is very important to include the young people's voices to the GDC as well as and also for shaping the futures of the Internet. They are very critical, as they are playing the key role in the shaping the Internet for the Internet for the safety to that space. Thank you.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Muhammad.
>> MUHAMMAD SHABBIR: Yes, thank you. Just quickly, a couple of points. One, there is a common misconception that if the work is done for accessibilities, it would be beneficial for persons with disabilities. It's a misconception. Any website or forum made accessible for persons with disabilities can be used and have been used by other persons and it's been reported that it was more beneficial that it would be otherwise.
Secondly, the Dynamic Coalition on accessibility and disability is ready to cooperate with any of the IGF forums, be it MSG, MAG, the Leadership Panel or the Secretariat for cooperation in making the digital environment and Internet Governance Forum accessible for people with disabilities. And the voice of people with disabilities should be heard there.
Lastly, the accessibility work is not just for people with disabilities. We all are aging. And we may at some point in our lives require these accessibility accommodations. So, it's better to start when we are in power and in a position to make things happen than to lament afterwards. Thank you.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you.
Lisa.
>> LISA PETRIDES: From ‑‑ I think I can say this on behalf of the OER Dynamic Coalition, which is we are working with Member States and governments to institute these policies around education, to not restrict access to education by, in fact, providing Open Educational Resources. So, if there are ‑‑ as a newbie, as a newer Dynamic Coalition, if there's ways that we can work with other Dynamic Coalitions, you know, to the old adage of we can go further together, I think it would be helpful to look at how the policies around the internet are in sync or not in sync.
One quick thing. You asked a question of our speaker on youth who so eloquently talked about the youth voice. And you asked her the question about how to fast track the efforts. And I am thinking that question is for all of us. You know, youth came as maybe digital natives to this but they are inheriting what we have here. So, any way that we can all think of fast tracking and not just wait for a year from now to talk about our impact. I think that's the most crucial importance.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you.
And Avri.
>> AVRI DORIA: Perhaps I'm being simplistic, but I look at GDC as an essentially top‑down set of principles. I look at Dynamic Coalitions and essentially bottom‑up set of principles. So, I think it would be problematic. I think we would continue to strive as we have done with the IGF to get acceptance. But I really do believe it would be problematic.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you.
I wonder whether our two rapporteurs would like to give a very, very short Tweet, like summing up? And introduce yourself with your name, please.
>> PRIYA SHUKLA: Thank you, Markus. I am Priya Shukla, coordinator of DC on Internet and jobs, and also the rapporteur for the DC main session.
I like to say that it was a very insightful session. However, and with many takeaways and call to action, but I will not be able to reiterate the whole discussion in just a few points. However, I will give two key takeaways here. The Internet we want should be accessible, equitable, which helps in capacity building. However, it also has to be sustainable.
And second, that Internet has to be human centered. And the call to action points that I feel should be that global organization for internet governance should be established. And second, there should be a focus on both human rights and human duties. We have never talked about human duties before.
So, I hope all the DCs will come together and not just work in silos, to bring these key takeaways and call to action points into actual practice. Thank you.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. And Stephen.
>> STEPHEN WYBER: Stephen Wyber from the ‑‑ sorry. Stephen Wyber. I am primarily here as a rapporteur, but also the Dynamic Coalition on public access in libraries.
I think the two overall points I came away with were firstly that there's a sense that Dynamic Coalitions are here to address the delivery gap between the promise of the Internet and, actually, delivering on human rights and on the SDGs. And, actually, providing the wealth and richness of understanding of what that gap is, what are we missing out on. And what is the contour, the space that we need to fill with action in order to make sure that the Internet, actually, delivers on its potential for everyone.
And then the second which came out towards the end, the idea that collectively the DCs make it possible for Internet governance to be a form of reflective practice, by which I mean that it's a space where we need to be looking critically at what's going on and we need to be understanding what is, actually, going on. And why are the links, where are the links between the way that the technology that the Internet is developing and the outcomes people are experiencing. Why is what we hope would happen not happening? What is missing and so on? And they provide this lasting space to actually do that. That's crutch down into the term reflective practice.
In terms of calls, I think everyone there, if the GDC is supposed to be providing shapo for all internet governance discussions and how do we answer the question of what should be done, then, actually, the GDC needs to bake in that bottom‑up process. It needs to leave that space for that to happen.
And then the second one, I think simply celebrating this model of having a space where all stakeholders can be there, because you can't reflect if you can't see. And you can't see if you don't have everyone, actually, present and taking part.
So, I hope that was helpful.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. And I ask now my co‑moderator, Jutta, to give her final thoughts on this session. Please.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you.
>> MEVISH VAISHNAV: I am sorry to interrupt.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Sorry. We don't have take.
>> JUTTA CROLL: My takeaway from this session is that the Internet we want can only be achieved by dialogue and collaboration. And I have heard people wanting more participation in the deliberations of the Global Digital Compact, and I do think that the dynamic collisions in this session shows that the bottom‑up approach of the Dynamic Coalitions could provide for that dialogue, for that collaboration and common deliberations. So we have to bring something forward.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: We have to combine the top‑down with the bottom up.
And with that, I thank you all for your participation. And I thank you for being with us and please ask you, invite you to join me in thanking or panelists with a round of applause. Thank you.
And that closes our session. Thank you.
(Applause)