Emerging technologies and their interfaces with inclusion, security and human ‎rights (NRIs)

Brief Description/Objective

This session will bring perspectives of communities gathered around the national, regional and youth IGF processes (NIRs). Delegated representatives of the NRIs will provide concrete cases of existing practices, challenges and already implemented or under implementation action plans and activities in the areas agreed by the NRIs.

The session will illustrate existing challenges across developed and developing countries, as well as vulnerable groups through concrete cases of practices.

Given the complexity of the topic, as well as the strong commitment of the NRIs to fully contribute to this process, the IGF Secretariat will facilitate an open, consultative process across all NRIs to gather their inputs beforehand and offer a consolidated version of existing practices on the topic several weeks before the meeting as a core input document to the session.

The session will target the impact of the newly emerging technologies on various countries and regions, and related implications these have on inclusion, security and human rights. Concrete case-studies will be presented and actions and activities identified that are affecting change at the national levels.

As per the NRIs Session Guidelines, the broader objectives of having the NRIs integrated in the IGF through their main session are: 

• To contribute to the quality and comprehensiveness of the global IGF event by bringing the local, national and regional perspectives, challenges, and good practices to the overall discussion;
• To showcase the diversity among NRI discussions in different countries and regions across the world, existing on  matters related to Internet Governance;
• Through joint work on a selected topic, developed by consensus, over one IGF cycle, the NRIs will continue building a firmer sense of the NRI community

Agenda

This session will open with a brief and high-level presentation on the overall NRIs landscape, presented by the IGF Secretariat.

The two co-moderators will then open the floor for the key NRIs participants to feed in with 90-seconds long concrete cases of existing practices in the NRIs communities. Depending on the final agreed number of participating NRIs, an introductory could include up to 10 NRIs speakers that would come from all five UN regional groups, and bring perspectives of least developed countries (LDCs), landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), small island developing states (SIDS), transitional economies and developed countries. It is suggested that at least one speaker is remote.

This section will be in the form of NRIs-to-NRIs exchanges for up to 30-45 minutes max (2.5 min per speaker).

The rest of the session will be open to everyone, prioritising the inputs coming from the NRIs that did not speak in the first section, to engage in the discussion. All interventions will be limited to 90 seconds.

Final time allocation will be confirmed when all NRIs submit inputs for the mentioned output document.

During the session, on the background screen, there will be a slide show visual presentation of all NRIs meetings hosted by the IGF 2019 meeting. 

Policy Questions

The session will address four (4) guiding policy questions to which concrete inputs will be addressed from the perspective of the NRIs discussions: 

1. How can (existing, new and emerging) digital technologies, support engagement of vulnerable groups at the national and regional levels? 

2. How to ensure safe and secure online conditions for utilization of digital technologies? Can we trust these? 

3. Are emerging digital technologies posing risks to human rights? How to prevent and tackle harmful consequences?

4. How can we suggest policy options to enhance access to the least developed countries to emerging technologies?

Co-Moderators

• Ms. Marilyn Cade, mCade ICT Strategies
• Ms. Anja Gengo, IGF Secretariat

Speakers

Session speakers to be announced

Plan for in-room participant engagement/interaction ‎

Due to the funding limitations, many of the NRIs that are committed to actively participate may not attend the meeting in person, and therefore are planning to use the online participation tools to participate and engage remotely.

The NRIs as the facilitators and organizers of this session will equally prioritize the onsite and online present NRIs. This reflects the remote NRIs as speakers as the first priority, followed by interventions coming from the floor, and remotely from others joining the session.  The further development of the program will take into account the challenge of full incorporation of participation from remotely participating NRIs, including a designation of time slots, and back up slots, and also receiving written comments to be read by the online moderators, should technology fail us.

Remote Moderators:

• Ms. Lianna Galstyan, Armenia IGF/SEEDIG

Co-Rapporteurs:

• Mr. Tracy Hackshaw, Trinidad and Tobago IGF
• TBC, Nigeria IGF 

Desired results/output and possible next steps for the work

Taking into account the above-indicated session objectives, in addition, this session will aim for:

• Provide an overview of commonalities and differences between different national, sub-regional,  regional and youth IGF Initiatives practices
• Deepen the understanding about the global status of the topic and provide recommendations for improvements
• Advancing the visibility of work at the national/subregional and regional levels that turns dialogue into action regarding IG processes and issues;
• Integrating more awareness of the work at the local levels (national, subregional and regional and youth initiatives) into overall IGF community while respecting the bottom-up dynamic nature of the NRIs.

More specifically, this session will illustrate through concrete examples the digital divide that exists across developing and developed countries, as well as various vulnerable groups on the presence and utilization of emerging digital technologies and implications these bring in regard to inclusion, security and human ‎rights.

The consolidated output document of NRIs perspectives expressed through concrete, tangible, implementable practices will aim at bringing visibility to the local levels regarding challenges they face and provide an exchange platform of good and bad practices for wider IG(F) ecosystem. An additional benefit could be that this topic will awaken the interest of the MAG to continue exploring deeper this important topic through intersessional work of the 2020 IGF process.