The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Paris, France, from 12 to 14 November 2018. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being with us for the Prevention of Youth Violence Through ICT. This is put on through the communication sector and others in the frame of a project we are implementing in the northern countries of Central America, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. A region that is facing delicate and extreme situation of violence that particularly is affecting youth as victims and as perpetrators. From UNESCO we have been working on this to help preventing violence, building case, and at the same time, supporting government to produce and implement better policies for the prevention of violence using technology and involving youth. Understanding that the situation of violence that is happen little in Latin America as a region, particularly these three countries is not going to have a solution just using Internet and technology, but we are committed and we consider that technology can open some opportunities for the region to prevent more violence and to help our youth to build citizenship and new opportunities. In that frame, we organize this session in trying to discuss with our speakers, how effectively the ICTs can help us prevent violence and change experiences from a different part of the world in a south, south thinking of initiatives to be exchanged from Latin America and other regions. And also trying to find new recommendations and opportunities for policies to find out how we can include Internet ICT tools in a frame of protecting human rights, freedom of expression and privacy. That is why we have this very interesting session with our speakers today. I'm going to introduce them very quickly. The methodology we will make them some specific questions to know a bit more of their experiences, the situation happening in the region, their proposals for policymaking and at the end, we will have 30, 45 minutes of discussion with our offline and online audience that is being with us this morning. I will begin with Adriana Nolasco and Sara Fratti, a member of the youth and women chapter, Kaaby Nour from a youth organization and member of the Met‑Med project in the Arab region. Ms. Divina Frau‑Meigs from the University of France and good expert in the issues in Europe, and Ms. Juliana Nolasco from Google in Brazil. Thank you for sharing this hour with our audience and us in UNESCO.
I would like to start by having the discussion, particularly with Adriana, who has a lot of experience in working at the Igarape, that you can briefly give us a context of the situation of the violence that is affecting the region at this moment, somehow, sometimes not reflected that way in the global agenda on the kind of sometimes extreme violence that is happening in the region and in particular it is affecting youth.
>> ADRIANA ABDENUR: Thank you, Andres and UNESCO and the international forum. I chair the organization in Igarape which is a think tank in Rio de Janeiro. We are happy to be here with UNESCO.
Particularly, in Latin America, we have lived and still live in a paradox. We are the region in the world with the highest rate of murder and violent crime, even though, Latin America concentrates 38% of the world's population, it has 33% of the world's murders. So it is a very high concentration, if you look at the global picture.
Some of the countries in the region, including my own, native Brazil, are among the very highest cases. Brazil, Colombia Mexico, Venezuela alone account for half the murders. Out of 20 countries with the highest murder rates, 17 are in Latin America. 43 of the top 50 cities with highest murder rates in the world are in Latin America. These are very, very depressing statistics, but they're also tragedies because they have affected the individual and collective lives of most of us. So the paradox is, if our lives are so deeply effected whether by concrete cases of murder and other violent crime and we live in a culture of fear in light of this, why is the topic not on the agenda, not only of the international community as Andres has put it, but also national policy agendas. I'm not suffering conclusions here. I think it is a complex political and social problem, but it helps us to understand why the issue is so invisible on the world's stage as well as regionally.
At Igarape, we recently released an analysis of the overall landscape of violence in Latin America. I won't go into much detail. It is called Shining light on the violence in Latin America. One of the things we found is the distribution, the geographic and special distribution of the patterns of violence are not homogenous throughout the region. We speak of pockets of different types of risk of violent crime concentrate. For the most part these are cities, but not necessarily. Organized crime in the Amazon have generated hot spots of violence that are not easily accountable for the drivers that we used to look at in past decades.
So urbanization is among the main factors, but what we have to keep in mind is the dynamics and patterns of violence vary across time. This is not a static situation. The issue with inequality is also key to understanding not only the drivers but how to tackle, including from a digital and ICT perspective.
We know that in addition to deep socioeconomic inequality, we had in the last 10 years the classes that took on a fragile classification because most was due to consumption and access to small credit. This does not hold water when we hit the time of crisis, as has happened in Brazil. This has deep political repercussions, we had a far right government with military background elected back into power in Brazil, and it is not the only country in which discourses of discrimination and hate are becoming normalized and helping to drive new patterns of violence, including against vulnerable groups and exacerbating existing patterns of violence
Other problems of course involve weak institutions, corruptions includes of police. We know some of the manifestations in cyber space take the shape, for instance, of the selling of narcotics, money laundering, extortion, recruitment of youth for illegal crime in organizations. Use of the deep web cross cutting all of these. Threats, increasing for youth bullying and electronic violence as we have seen in the case of Brazil.
In Brazil, I will not go into much detail. If you want examined I can go into them. There are arrangement it is that involve government and Civil Society off in partnership with the private sector. I can provide examples, but to finish, I want to say this is absolutely essential part of the solution, which is deeply political and cannot rely on ICTs alone, unfortunately. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Adriana, for giving us a regional context on the situation. And raising an important point in understanding the situation of violence, not only a solution with ICT, but a component for the better policies on the topic.
I would liability to ask Sara, from her experience in Guatemala to share with us, how is the situation in your region affecting youth and how the ICTs have been playing a role in youth violence.
>> SARA FRATTI: Well, first, I have to thank UNESCO for this opportunity to bring up different voices to these questions. I think we have to take a step back first. We know that violence is a big issue in our countries. But we cannot think that ICTs and technology and Internet are going to change our lives or help prevent violence. Because the digital gap in our countries, especially the north territory angle are really big. Especially within young woman, young indigenous communities. All ‑‑ I have ‑‑ I have an example of this, because last year, we were ‑‑ I was coordinating a project called (speaking non‑English language). The Internet Bill of Rights for Guatemala, coordinated by the one foundation, we were discussing around the digital rights issue in Guatemala. We had different ‑‑ even different points of the country, to talk and listen to the young people, woman, L.G.B.T. communities, in order to listen to what they have to say about Internet.
In one event, it was like around 10 or 15 minutes from my house and a little guy from this school, which is a red son in Guatemala told us about his first time accessing to the Internet was last year. I was really shocked because it was really close to my home. That story changed my life, like how we dress different issues like in this intellectual and high level ecosystem that Internet going on. And I really think that we have to lower this discussion, but lower with the key people that are really affected by these issues. Especially youth, indigenous communities, woman, L.G.B.T. communities. Currently gangs are recruiting different youth in Latin America, via social media. They're recruiting through Facebook, Twitter, dating apps in order to have, for example, helping different issues related to extortion, as you say before, for example.
Things related to slave and sexual traffic. Also, we have this thing called Siccario which are basically paid killers. They are being paid around $10, approximately, to kill someone that doesn't pay the extortion. And gangs and different criminal organizations are conducting different people ‑‑ especially young people through the Internet and social media.
It is really hard, because I think the violence itself is focused in some countries, especially areas that are ‑‑ that have really high inequalities that the government has not working on this issue. And also, I think that at some point, criminal organizations are just adapting to the technology, because we have to be clear that technology hasn't made our lives easy in a good way or bad way also, but they're just adapting. Obviously Internet and social media is probably an easier way to contact or hire people to drug deal for example, or just to have all of these issues related to the sicariato, the paid killers. I think probably we have all of this lack of education at this point. We have to address that before we can develop capacities related to digital technologies, for example. We have a really big rate of poverty in our country, also.
I know it is 2018 at this point, and we are taking for granted that most of the people are able to read and write. But countries mainly in the north territory angle, there are a lot of people that they don't have these capacities. Yeah, that's it. Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Sara, for raising a point that it is quite important on how criminality and sometimes gangs in this region are using online tools for criminal act, including extortion in the frame of the project that we're running in the region with participation of the University of canyon in El Salvador, we did research on this topic, in particular, on how criminal gangs are using online to recruit people.
I would like to go to the other side of the globe and go to the Arab countries and to share some experiences of how is the situation going on in those countries. That is why Kaaby Nour your experience could be helpful to share the similarities but a lot of differences of what is going on in Latin America and similar and difference in your own region.
>> KAABY NOUR: Thank you Andres and UNESCO to allow me to be among the interesting panelists. First, as we talk about the Arab countries, we need to assume and distinguish between Arab countries as a whole and the differences that exist within Arab countries, whether from countries that are in the union or gulf countries. There are lots of differences between the context and the issues of young people.
Of course there are similarities, but we need to take into consideration the differences between the countries. There was a study made by UNESCO about the project, about the participation of young people in the platforms, of the countries of south and Mediterranean that the use of Internet by the young people in these countries is intuitive, and mostly around social media rather than platforms as a whole.
Basically, they're looking for opportunities rather to express themselves in exchange on the online platforms. All of the projects that were developed within Tunisia or Arab countries are targeting youth participation online. I want it make the link of youth participation and violence. There is a lack of participation in general. According to the same study, we are seeing that the young people are more likely to join ole ‑‑ local organization than national or original organization. The local organizations are more likely to understand, address the issues or concerns and understand the specificity of the needs in local country.
Internet in Arab countries is promoting youth participation in a different way. We have seen through lots of countries such as Tunisia where revolution happened. Cyber activism contributed a lot to these resolutions. Let's say a common effort between lots of community weather Civil Society organization and also online bloggers, open source community which played an important role in promoting such type of messages. In Arab countries we are talking about different situations and violence that is terrorism.
If we want to understand how to approach young people through ICT, we can divide into four component. The first is communication component, using social media or disseminate some messages, whether ethical or religious messages, whether through Internet or social media, specifically.
And second is for recruiting. It is created first for finding the potential people to join the movements and approaching them as Facebook as it is the main platform used by youth.
The third is to intimidate people. Once there is an attack the social media is used to target a larger group that were targeted by the terrorist attack. It is a way to intimidate larger groups and have more impact than what we are witnessing. The fourth thing is to communicate about their action. Which is more likely to give them notoriety in the Internet community and influence the public opinion in a direct way.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you Kaaby Nour for raising up the youth participation and digital tools. I think that is something from your experience in the net med project that is useful and we should try to do in different regions, particularly Latin America and raising the issue of how criminal acts can happen online. You mentioned the communication of criminal acts and includement.
I would like to ask Divina Frau‑Meigs, from your experience working with, and knowing how the situation is evolving in Europe, what are your thoughts on this issue?
>> DIVINA FRAU‑MEIGS: Thank you for having me here and including me in this session. Because of course, the issues of youth and violence are close to my heart. I will be speaking from a perspective of research and from UNESCO chair called (speaking non‑English language). Translate, becoming. The same title of Michelle Obama's book, I'm proud of myself. I will speak from the perspective of research because we can learn a lot. There are actions in Tunisia, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, cypress. Areas where there are conflicts.
What to say about research. I think having research helps the invisibility problem. If you have publications and the capacity to enlarge knowledge to decision‑makings, journalists, et cetera, you may be able to turn this into something more of a concrete reality.
As you were talking, I was telling myself, what do we know from the research? We do for UNESCO, we have two or three colleague's research on the literature of social violence and social media. It is in English and fresh on the website. We can see that there is a convergence. As we did the search until 2016, the Latin America was not appearing on the map of research. We had a lot of research coming from Europe, northern America, the Arab world. Rather it was absolute in a sense, but dealing with the violence and military regimes in the '80s and '90s. We had a hard time finding elements we have today. At that point, it is a gap, and can be facilitated by comparison and extending research platforms. What we found on the research today is based on a lot of extremist religions and extreme lift politics.
There are two dynamics to this extremism. One being the region and the other being the extreme right, association, et cetera.
I want to share a few results with you. It I think it will give ideas and ways to go. I will try to be quick. Kaaby Nour gave some examples all right. As a researcher we shouldn't, but I will do. Researchers are early adopters, they're there before police and parents and teachers. That is what we estimate. They use it for propaganda and recruiting, training. It uses the networks, if it escapes national perceptions, it uses inscription, the facilities of the Internet for anonymity. In fact, it turns out in our research that a lot of the extremist groups have an innovative by use. If you want to use an ICT to fight the negative ICT, you have to know the signs.
They're particularly dangerous because they are on the media. If you do something on YouTube, it is part of chat rooms, websites, it is moved from the blue net, to Dark Web. Most people stay on the blue net. You underestimate the power of darkness. They have done good high‑quality production miscellaneous annual. Which will touching young people because they are extensive in that.
It is not just one video being killed somewhere. It is a lot of videos. And they use different narratives. I insist on the narrative, because that is connected to all of us. It is how we human can use words to hurts and love each other. They use narratives of brutality, narratives of mercy, narratives of victimhood, narratives of war, narratives of belonging, nostalgia and utopianism. That touches young people who are looking for a vision in their life. They're providing narrative it is to ‑‑ narratives that the real world is not providing any more. That is the responsibility of adults.
Internet doesn't radicalize on its own. It takes offline people to create the problems. The peoples have to be resolved offline. This is where we live together. Recruitment online and offline meet and converge. That is where you have to be careful. You can be violent in your heads, but the actual acting out, going out there, killing, and killing one's self‑in the process, which is incredible detrimental in the image of youth. That is possible this is what we have to look after. Social media we will have radicalization and amplify it, but not the ones we think about. We accuse Twitter and Facebook, et cetera, think about private one‑to‑one messaging, that is where it is happening, being organized and that is where you go to a square and blow yourself up.
The other elements of facilitation to take into account, is the solutions, especially for media literacy, which I will talk about in a minute. How does it get facilitated, echo chambers, people meeting among each other, lack of diversity, point of views. Being embedded and comforted in your own belief, even when it is a terrible belief. Anonymity, fake news, it is bigger and bigger, and social isolation. We all underestimate how those living in violence are in fact isolated, even in a gang.
If you shoot a helpless, figure out a solution. The solutions are ‑‑ I am trying to find my slide about that. Appear, I will deliver them to you fast, and we will go back for sake of conversation. Digital media. It is the longest filter. Politicians are reluctant to go for it. There is good practices, no general policy you don't sad voice on that. You have to put it on top of agenda, education, and participation. Producing counternarratives to what young people are hearing. Research proves it doesn't work well, but we don't have to quit. New engagement models, young people want to engage with something to fight for. They want to fight for an alternative, like the future of the country. The other elements that are crucial for the solutions are critical engagement, once more about engaging critically, knowing when you are able to criticize the party, the gang, whatever without being killed. More and more we see it and I think that is what UNESCO is speaking of. You can't ask schools or educate to do it on its own. But we have to get these different entities to speak to each other.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Divina Frau‑Meigs for the different concepts and centers. A lot of pattern in the different interventions. It seems criminal actions are more effective online, than the actions for preventing online and violence.
In that sense, I ask Juliana, working for Google, how realistic do you think there is in the short term to thinking, using ICT as a tool to prevent violence. Some of the experience you can share with us.
>> JULIANA NOLASCO: Good morning. I'm proud to share the panel with these people. I am always the last one to speak, I change the whole presentation to reflect point it is discussed here. I try to bring some examples. As they said Internet is not alone. Kaaby Nour talked about the capacity and Divina talked about counter negatives.
We want to talk about how at Google we're dealing with the issues, the products and enhance beauty and the power in the field to produce current narratives. At Google, we believe the Internet has enhanced the capacity to learn things and be heart. Delay have been producing content like never before, music, videos, text, however there have always been limits for that. We understand that sometimes there is content that someone might find offensive or controversial. We are admitted to changing that around we care. We have been developing content policies that draw responsible lines about what content we do and do not allow on our platforms. Prohibition on issues, (?) and I would love to bring a great example we have been working with.
We have two practicals at Google that deals with the counter speech issue. We believe good speech can draw out and be more powerful for the bad speak. We haven't amazing project that we have at YouTube, that encourages youth and creators to produce good narratives, to produce counterspeech. It is a worldwide program. In Brazil, we have two amazing ambassadors. We have role models. We have Middilo (sp) and Natalie. We're enhancing their power to produce narratives and power to produce good income and impact. We have the safer lab that is working with a thousand teens and young documents in Brazil. This project tries to empower and protect youth through current narratives. We have a guy that is a poet, leaves from the Columbo. He doesn't have access to the Internet. Every day, he takes the boat, a 30‑minute ride to get to the state. And then he goes there to use the Internet and do research on the type of poetry that approximate ‑‑ that brings empathy. He's doing an empathy exercise through art. Through the safer life program he started working with youngsters in public schools so they could do their own poems trying to bring a different situation to what they have been facing. Safer lab is working now with a hundred group of youngsters and we are going to refine some projects. They're online and offline. The idea is that those who doesn't have access to Internet, as Sara said, this should be a Latin America situation, and we have a huge bridge in the region. We could enhance capacity online and offline to prevent hate speech. I want to share the insurances we have been promoting in Brazil. We believe all the capacity‑building process, it passes through the way that youngsters ‑‑ that youth understanding about the Internet. We have been working with the coach in Brazil to create content for literacy public programs. Finally, we take online safety very seriously. We build safety trolls for the type of ‑‑ so we have safe surge that helps people write content they prefer not to see or would rather members of the family did not see. Finally, I want to share the misdemeanor that we can take teaches how to be online citizens. They can share with care, not to fall for fake content and how to be responsible about the context they access as well. We believe we should empower our youth to be successful online. That is all for now.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. You are always the last one. This time you will be the first one.
>> Okay.
>> MODERATOR: Share with us some of from doing to this? I know with Civil Society ... let's try to think how it engage with policies. From the point of view ‑‑ what kind of recommendations do you think we should have for governments to include? What kind of recommendations we can do for policies.
>> So we believe it takes ‑‑ as I said, there is no silver bullet and it takes a multistakeholder approach for that. An example of that is that we have been working with an organization in Brazil that is called safer net. And we have organized ‑‑ because we believe a lot in capacity bell, that can change the way that ‑‑ capacity building and that can change the way we see Internet in the present and future. We have been working with safer net and secretaries of education in Brazil and we're producing content that deals with online child safety and good ways in which people can protect themselves on the Internet and we organized some training so public ‑‑ teachers from the public system in Brazil could teach online safety on the classroom. So this is one type of idea. We ‑‑ we have a lot of content that we can work with the minister of education, secretaries of education with public policies, so together, with NGO and S companies and with the government, we can help on this capacity building processes.
>> MODERATOR: In the same line, Divina Frau‑Meigs you recommend some of your recommendations, it would be interesting to hear from it you. How we can think on doing some of the recommendations in a frame of respecting human rights of youth, particularly freedom of expression and privacy, how we're able to develop better policies than of course ‑‑ and of course, respect human rights.
>> DIVINA FRAU‑MEIGS: Yes, I think it is certainly part of having a certain definition of literacy. It is about human rights. For me five principles that are part of media information literacy. It is article 12 on privacy. Article 19 on freedom of expression. Article 26 on the education. 27 on participation and 1 on dignity. I think these are the main ones we can use and teach children. We can't hope to teach all of them. But if we are already focused on this, it will give them self‑respect, which is one of the problems with lots of young people. They don't have self‑respect. The research and the project we did including cypress, Palestine, Morocco, Portugal, we made the children from divided communities speak to each other. They hadn't spoken to each other for years, because the parents were not allowing them to speak and some cases country is divided by war. It is physically visible. Sometimes a mental war. You can have symbolic types of violence. What we realize is that to empower young people and enable them to speak out and create videos, et cetera, they have to believe they have something to say and to do. And so a lot of the teaching is about not inheriting the violence from the adults, which is hard. This is where ICTs are useful, you can create communities online that don't create (?) and the child can be somebody else, somebody different that loves peace or fearful or who would like integration.
By having the kids meet in other countries, it is not about separating them from their culture, but often taking them to a time where their culture was peaceful and great culture before the conflict, which they don't have. No pride.
In Palestine, it was shocking. Young people training how to shoot at their art treasuries. They shoot at statues that are three hundred, 3,000 years old. When this happens, you know there is a real problem.
It is about telling them you have an environment that is a great environment. Cherish that and you cherish yourself. You can combine this with environmental issues. You're worried about global warming, et cetera, et cetera. Take them out of the frame of they killed my family so I have to kill back. There is a duty of vengeance, revenge, et cetera. That is what we have to educate for that kind of peace. You have to use the technology to get them out of the real life situations so they can express that. In cypress, what is interesting is we hadn't talked about these things tried to make them see things differently. The video they produced at the end is a video about ‑‑ two young friends, boy and girl, a partition, 50, 60 years back. The girl loses a medallion. The boy keeps it. They're 50 or 60 years old now, on the day they reopen the buffer zone, they meet and he gives her back her medallion. What the kids were saying is we are fed up with your nonsensical Goddamn violence and we can keep treasures for a long time and share them. That is what I want to keep as a message for us. When you let them speak for themselves they don't go for war! Okay. And we shouldn't crush that in them.
So as a result of that, we're proposing the creation of smiles. Synergies for media information literacy in education, centers in each country, we're developing one in Tunisia, going to do one in Palestine, that one is enacted and signed. One in Jordan and hopefully Latin America. Smiles are about smiling, telling children there is hope. We can't deny you the hope of your own expression and emancipation. We will help you, with others, from outside also. Because inside, you are in a very toxic situation. And we have to get you out, also. You have to breathe something different. Different air. Thinking about the children of far at, how do you reunite. The law says it is over, how do you get the children to speak to each other when trained to think the other side is the enemy. This is a huge task. You have to have centers that are safe havens, where people from different perspectives can come, talk, change and look for solutions. Smiles have to be places for multistakeholders, places for debate and there is research, research is involved because they have always put different words on the situation or sometimes just help put a word on it. You need to have different sectors involved. Private sector, public sector, et cetera. I admire the work of Google. I tell Google ‑‑ the way you are doing it, you have to be careful. It is like asking Coca‑Cola teach kids about sugar. If you are not involved clearly in a multistakeholder approach, everything you do from the perspective of research is suspicious. From the perspective the community ‑‑ that is a big community, that is global alliance for partnerships, you will be suspicious. We are fed up, the researchers, the community of teachers, et cetera, to develop frameworks of competencies, frameworks of how to go about policy, how to go about teacher training, how to go about creating ambassadors among young people. And Google arriving saying, we're doing it. And so it can't be evaluated. We don't ‑‑ Google says it works ‑‑ when I say Google, I'm thinking of an example, there are lots of groups that are well meaning, don't get me wrong. It makes it hard. Because then you think you are not independent, research is not independent, money is not independent. So it is going to be suspicious. That pushes us down. We are fighting discrimination to give credibility to research on media literacy. To ask for evaluation. For instance, the high level of expertise on the fake news, the European one. We asked for male competence to be part of Pisa, to be evaluated from the community so teachers can empower themselves and say this is it, we can prove it. Today, the competency is critical thinking, tomorrow it will be on conflict resolution. I never hear those competency mentioned by private sector. They go on hands‑on approaches. They're operational approaches. Fine, that is not how you transmit values. The way we try in our community to frame competencies. We say they're like a butterfly. Four wings. One wing is operation, the one‑fourth that is done by the private sector. One forth of what is needed in a competence. Being skilled, important. Then knowledge, what are you doing, transmitting, how are you building it, what are you involved in, do you want to inherit it, et cetera. Knowledge. Then there are values and ethics. And I'm forgetting the fourth one because I'm a little troubled right now. But there are four arms of competencies that are important to understand that we have developed with the Council of Europe with institutions that are attached to the human rights. This is what I wanted to finish upon to answer your question. It is really the butterfly of competencies, having one only, the skills only makes not the butterfly fly and we want the butterfly to fly.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you.
>> (?)
>> MODERATOR: At the end, maybe, interventions. And Kaaby Nour tell us of your experience and how to empower youth as change‑makers.
>> KAABY NOUR: Yes. As I said, youth violence is a consequence of unresolved youth issues, it is from political exclusions. Our response to end or reduce violence among youth is to have this multisectoral and multistakeholder approach. We talked about the importance of Internet for youth participation. Promoting youth participation could not be done if there is no access to Internet. I mean the youth participation is promoted as access. And we need to also do it especially in Arab countries.
Second, it is important to develop the information, but it is important to coordinate with other projects, grassroots projects that are dealing with particular issues of young people to integrate them better in the life and make them real change makers. The second ‑‑ third recommendation is to enable all of the young people to have the analytical skills through providing them with tools and resources through all of the platforms that are developed for young people. So they have this critical thinking to analyze better the information that are available on the Internet. And we need to sensitize them to more ethical issues and moral and judicial issues and take into consideration while developing all these practicals the diversities that are among youth and their issues.
Then we are noticing that in each of our respective countries, there are a group of potential change makers. It is important to allow the networking between all of the change makers. Because we are going to build on the respective experiences. The exchange can be an online exchange but we need also to take the offline component of each project as a core element of the success of each project. Finally, to end with, because I don't know ‑‑ we don't have enough time. We need to be able, as international organization but also as national organization invest in projects to evaluate the efficiency of our projects. Because now, this question of fighting or fighting against violence against youth is a trend. In Arab countries, it is not called like this, it is called countering violence extremism. It is a trend. And it is a way to survive as institutions. We're applying for projects and funds on these issues. But to what extent are the projects efficient enough and do the project really take into the consideration the issues of young people. As institution, we need to also have this critical thinking about our intervention and to what extent are we coordinating with other organization to really have an impact on the young people, whether on the short, medium or long‑term. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Divina Frau‑Meigs, great. Sara, please share with us some of your recommendations to include ICTs, particularly in the frame of respect to human rights.
>> SARA FRATTI: I have three recommendations. The first one is listen to the young people. Create safe spaces in order to young people can share their voices on how to tackle and prevent violence and using technology to create local content, content in their own language, for example, especially in the youth communities, how they're using technology to promote art, for example, or just to map the points of violence in their communities for example.
The second one is to develop policies on laws with the multistakeholder approach. This is basic. We don't ‑‑ in ‑‑ we don't want to ban all the technology, because the criminal organizations are using technology and Internet to recruit young people. We need to address the problems behind this recruitment processes. Also, I think we have to ‑‑ the other one is to focus on the human rights and policies and regulations have to have a genders perspective, and we need to understand and make understand the how we're using technology. I am saying we ‑‑ I am talking about the youth people also. I'm not getting any younger at this point of my life. But I know that a lot of young people over there have a lot of things to say related to how they're using technology. Because I'm clearly not using technology as ‑‑ for example, indigenous woman of 15 years old in Guatemala, clearly she's using technology in another way. Using probably technology in order to help her family to get something to eat at the end of the day, for example.
Or she's probably looking for work or something. We need to understand how technology is changing our lives for better or bad, but we need to have, like the human rights perspective just in order to understand that just, for example, building ‑‑ putting like (?) around a red zone is not the solution, because this is going to be reinforcing all of the stereotypes and inequities related to violence in our countries, in Latin America. And those are like my reflections, and recommendations for policymakers. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Sara. Adriana, maybe perhaps from your experience in Brazil, can you share some strategies used in your country using ICTs for preventing violence?
>> ADRIANA ABDENUR: In Brazil, we see a complex ecology of different actors involved. We have a report from Igarape Institute with a typology and platforms whether they were initiated by citizens or in governments sometimes with the private sector. I would like to add 3 recommends to those noted by my colleagues. The first has to do with research. I would like to reinforce the call for more research but a caveat. We cannot import concludes from other regions into Latin America. The drivers in Latin America and violence are different. To cite two differences here from this discussion, the ways that the maras and other organized crime networks in Brazil and other places in Latin America recruit and go about disseminating differ from terrorist organizations in other parts of the world. Also, we have had of importation of policy recommendations based on that research. We clearly need local and Latin America research including by Latin Americans. It may be in contrast to youth, especially in Tunisia, they're driven by drug policy, arms policy and therefore, those need to be tackled. ICTs will not resolve the problems based on participation alone.
The second recommendation is that the best practices from that evidence‑based research then be incorporated into planning for national security state level security, municipal, so forth. You cannot have a patchwork approach alone. You need to embed the use of ICTs for violence prevention within broader approaches that also take into account what goes on in, quote/unquote, real life. We need to understand what is going on in cyber space, but also how that articulated with the real life and design resolutions accordingly. Third and most importantly, we need to protect democracy and prevent the capture of ICTs for authoritarian purposes. At this particular time this is absolutely crucial, because we see a wave of conservatism coming into the region, not affecting all of the countries, there is a history already ‑‑ not including Latin America, of companies using technology for surveillance and criminalize activists and others, mostly youth! So we need to prevent the broad political call. Without this, all of the other recommendations do not hold. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Great. Thank you. As we are talking, this part of the session about policy, we invited to the session to the director of the institute of youth of El Salvador to exchange some of her experiences. She's not able to come, but she want us to share some thoughts from the policy perspective.
Sorry. The audio is not working. We have her ‑‑ the audio in the UNESCO channel in YouTube. You can find it there. They have been a great partner with UNESCO on working on this project battling youth violence.
We are running out of time. But Juliana, you wanted to do (?)
>> JULIANA NOLASCO: Thank you so much. One minute. This is why we come. We come to build dialogue and learn new things. We know we don't have all the answers and all the necessary content to deal, to tackle with the misinformation and deal with the literacy programs. This is why we need to work in partnership with NGO. Bring here three experience, amazing experience we had in Brazil. The first of one ‑‑ the first of them is that we are sponsoring four different think tanks to produce research on literacy and the phenomenon in Brazil to understand from a science basis what is happening in the country.
They probably will get it done by next year, so I can share the results with you and they can share the results with you.
We have also sponsored a project with LUPA, a fact‑checking agency in Brazil, so they can develop their own literacy programs and public schools in Rio de Janeiro. They have didn't three different workshops and all the content produced is online for anyone that wants to use it.
We have also sponsored a school of journalism for (?). So they work on the vast Ella. They are working to sponsor the professors' own literacy media programs. Why is that? It we know it is challenging to get to them in Brazil. What content is legitimate to use? They're doing like different workshops and training with the school of journalism and then going to build their own literacy programs and noise, we rent their practicals. Finally, we work with I think tank that works toward freedom of expression in Brazil and worked with Nova Scolla which is an organization and NGO that works with the educational system in Brazil. They build literacy program during the elections in Brazil. And trained one million professors through online training. That's it. We believe we need to work in partnerships. I would love to talk to you later on, to understand. Miles, sounds like amazing project, and what to do to advance our media literacy as well.
>> Can I add the last wing of the butterfly? It is the word "attitude." It is about skills, attitudes, knowledge, and values.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you. We just have 15 more minutes. We would like to open the floor to the audience to kidnap comments, questions from you to reach this discussion. Anyone?
Yes, can you introduce yourself.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Farad Hahn, from University of Finland and YCIG. I work on digital literacy as well. The question is regarding digital literacy as Divina Frau‑Meigs, right? With all the private sector institutions, I want to have your comment on the digital literacy, when we talk about digital literacy and media literacy. It is a field emerging and every day there is a new challenge. This is not only for the youth ‑‑ we can call students and also the teachers. In order to cope with that, teachers also need skills, obviously, majority of teachers we see, if we talk about the interglobal perspective, there is a lack of digital literacy among the teachers. When you talk about the values and the community engagement, how is this possible to be implemented practically when you talk about the OICDP and the performance of the schools measured on different skills although there is a skill of digital literacy. How can it be practically implemented within the community and societies to improve among the teachers. I see it as a top‑down approach.
So if the teachers are more aware of the problems, what are the challenges in today's time additionally, putting this question into perspective of teaching and learning process. So this is also ‑‑ when I did my research, it is also a problem that the content that is provided or delivered in the teaching and learning process, even in the classroom has also sometime political or economic agenda behind that. How the institutions are going to tackle that thing, the content they're showing or trying to provide to the children or to student ‑‑ (audio disruption)
Sorry. I thought that was me. How that can be addressed in the countries. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you for taking questions. You hit it on the nail. That is when media literacy is very rich in good practices and resources, produced by a ton of different groups and people. But rarely from the school and validated by the schools. This is what is lacking. Because it doesn't give legitimacy to the teachers to use them, or when they do it, do it from the bottom up, do it among themselves, they don't dare spread it. They keep it. That is problematic, because you can never reach a national level, which is what we need. We have a lot of these things. They never reach the national level, which is to say they continue enforcing social injustice in the territories. The territories that are rich with resources and methodologists, et cetera, are going to be rich in that and those that are not will continue to be poor.
It is imperative that it becomes part of national policy. And it is not happening. Partly because of a positioning of media information literacy, traditionally. The community has said it is transversal. Because the idea was to it try to get there. If it is transversal to the native language. Transversal to history, geography. In many, that is how it is stored, in the native language and history, geography sections. That never allows you to evaluate male, it is allowing French, history, not male. We have to make it into one discipline that is part of a core, basic curricula. Then you have resistance from all France. Trade unions, no way. Teachers, too much time. Parents, that's ‑‑ they already have too much technology at home. Politicians, oh, my God, you're giving them tools to criticize us!?
Everybody agrees mail is the solution. When it comes to the implementation, everybody agrees to stop it. Right. So if we don't have a frank transparent dialogue of what it is about and how to go about it, it will be difficult. Some countries are trying. They said, in fact, we have to change the core literacy. It is not about mail, it is about multiliteracies. It is about all of the things we know is necessary to be a 21st Century citizen. It is about voting literacy, climate literacy, about L.G.B.T. or whatever literacy. Knowing all the different things that are necessary to be together in the 21st Century but not necessarily based on learning to read and write. That is painful to hear.
The time lag between switching from the 19th century literacy to 21st Century literacy will be a trying time. We'll make mistakes. It will be muddy and murky. We're not settled about what the skills are. It is about trying and offering an alternative. The countries doing that in case you want to look at upon I believe it is good to look at other examples, even if localized, we agree to that. It is Sweden and Finland. Small countries where it is easy, in if a way, to go for these things. Big countries like Brazil or France! Whoo it is hard. What is sure for me, if it doesn't happen in schools, it will happen there, tell happen in the digital world. I understand Google and GFAMs, they're not getting the workers they need now because school is about training people to be workers in the 21st Century.
If you are not offering it ‑‑ over the 18 years, you will have one month training, and you can be a good entrepreneur online. So we have to be responsible ‑‑ this is not against the GFAMs, but it is about how to continue our national culture, how we transfer a lot of the values that we have accumulated from the past into the 21st Century as a collective over the 18 years or 16 or 13 whatever of the compulsory education. Ask Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't want to train people for 13 years. It is extremely costly. It is not their mission!
So we are being irresponsible when we let these things happen and we don't try to see how to bring them back into a fold that creates a global vision of communication, and needs to change because it is obsolete. I don't know if I answered your question but this is where I am standing in my thinking at the moment and hitting my head against the wall saying why can't we get through this.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. There is another question or comment in the back? Yes, ma'am.
>> AUDIENCE: As a part of the UNESCO group on nonviolence. The winner was a Chilean. And when he went back to the country, he asked for a UNESCO chair on tolerance and nonviolence that would sit up at the (speaking non‑English language). That means the university which train the teachers. So that was a very wonderful outcome. And I think it goes in the way you were talking about to expand the it in South America. How to teach teachers against violence and ... so that's my ...
Contribution.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Someone else has a comment or question? Sorry. Please.
>> AUDIENCE: (?)
>> MODERATOR: Of course you should.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. Is that all right?
Thank you very much I am the former ambassador of Honduras and former president of the executive board of UNESCO. And I want to congratulate you, first of all, all of you. Because this problem it's a very painful problem. And especially as the Brazilian lady said, cultures in Latin America are different. And in the past, the only thing I wanted to say is that I am happy to see that interest is taken care of this project.
In 2008, we had this project, too. My concern is sometimes in UNESCO we have fantastic documents, fantastic research and we forget about them. And maybe if we consult them, it will help us to have a better understanding and use what has been done and the money invested.
I remember the director general invested a lot of.
Invested a lot of money in the Japanese projects. I remember the project was working well, but the political leaders stopped the project. And it was the (speaking non‑English language) which was very successful in Brazil. And it was successful in my country, but it had to be stopped. And because also, I think that as a point of view to approach this problem as a very, very relation with the illiteracy with fight illiteracy. Because as the lady said, the narratives, the narratives and the counternarratives. Narratives, why? Because most are illiterate and found ways if they listen, they are current ‑‑ able to counter what someone else said. And you are a specialist, and I am not in making the policies. Of course, you do a lot. You are doing a lot. Thank you for this. Thank you to everyone, UNESCO and others. It has to be a political commitment. Maybe you can improve this political commitment, which is the hardest part. Thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much to the speakers for being with us, for you, for sharing. We hope this conversation continues. There is a lot of things to continue doing. Of course, from the side of UNESCO and in particular, from our office in our regional office, we will continue to try to put this topic on the agenda. I want to thank our Rapporteur from communication and information center and our online moderator, Pierro, for their help. Thank you very much.