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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>> SECRETARIAT CHENGETAI MASANGO: I want to echo what Lynn said. We'll keep it in the forefront of our minds.
Now we have the last section of this closing session, and we're now to the reflections, closing reflections. First of all, I'd like to invite Ms. Minister Mahjoubi. Thank you.
>> MINISTER MAHJOUBI: Good afternoon and good evening, thank you for coming to Paris for the past few days and for having taking part in discussions and exchanges here. I'm greatly honored to be here with you today to close the first Paris version of this Internet Governance Forum. I'm glad you took part in a memorable event yesterday, which was the new life that all of us breathed into the idea of what Internet Governance could be like. A new perspective on Internet Governance that is just, that is effective, and that inspires trust in citizens.
This is an ambition that President Macron mentioned during his remarks here on Monday before 4,000 people. We heard the same kind of reasoning here and elsewhere, and we're discussing them with you. Some of you spoke about them during the past few days.
We have been struggling tirelessly because we know that decisions made today will be determining ones for tomorrow for the future. We are firmly convinced inaction on the part of governments is not an option given the challenges that our society faced today and given that the world has reached the mature stage.
We must aim at two major goals mentioned by the president of the republic on Internet Governance. The first is intelligent Internet Governance. The second is a very important topic multi‑openness and multi‑lateralism. I'll talk about it later on.
The president mentioned France supports an innovative take on regulation. That's what we support is not old‑fashioned regulations in accordance with the old formulas. It's not about control or limitations.
It's also not about laissez faire. It's not about blind discrimination. It doesn't want to get in the way of an open and free Internet. France's regulation is a new kind of regulation based on clear goals and values. It is a European point of view that we need to build together.
This is why France has signed the contract for the web suggested by Tim. France was the first country to join this initiative during the Lisbon web summit. It's the goal for the tech for good initiative we launched six months ago and brought together all the actor of the digital world to work for the common good. To achieve these goals, we need to regulate because of regulations and these common interests are our responsibility to our people, our citizens, so we need to regulate intelligently.
We are based on the accountability of the actors as well as the involvement of regulators. It's based on increased transparency which, of course, was lacking today as well as innovation in the tools that we're using in order to make sure they can help us achieve the goals we set. It brings together all the stakeholders, especially Civil Society in order to define these goals. This regulation is supported by a majority of stakeholders in Europe and around the world, but this regulation is a decision to take responsibility because laissez faire was the path we took until now, and it's clearly shown its limitations.
So we need to do more due to this lack of regulation as well as excessive regulation. This can lead to an overenthusiastic or overinterpretation of the rules, and that also is not a good solution when it comes to innovation and democracy. Therefore, we must come together and try to find a middle ground, and one of the priorities mentioned by the French president was fighting hate speech, racist speech, anti‑Semitic speech and other types of speech.
So we need to regulate our networks but at the same time we need to differentiate between different kinds of content. France supports net neutrality, but that doesn't prevent us from wanting to have a voice when it comes to what content is produced and is placed on the net.
The importance of this topic, we must rethink multi‑lateralism as applied to this field. This is the goal of regulation. We need to have the resources to actually achieve the goals and regulation. The IGF is also based on bringing together the entire community. It is this collaboration that is at the very heart of the IGF and at the heart of the Internet. This fear of the Internet itself.
Civil Society and the private sector must come together and ensure that regulation that is taking shape now is aligned with technical progress and our technological capabilities as well as all of the causes and all of the goals of the actors of the digital revolution. So this multi‑lateral aspect of the IGF is something that France supports more than ever in order to find the solution to the structural challenges that we face today.
At the opening ceremony, we launched the Paris Call to action for cybersecurity in order to increase international cooperation and take collective action to prevent destabilizing attacks. With this in mind yesterday I signed the initiative for a sustainable democracy which ought to allow for sustainable innovation toward citizen participation in the modernization of our democracies in their everyday functioning.
If we want to set rules and do this collectively, then states, which are the only sovereign entities, must be able to all come to the table and adopt them. This means that together with the discussions held by various stakeholders, we need to strengthen the multi‑‑lateral aspect of the IGF. This is the goal of the French president's proposal.
This need for multi‑lateralism, it is not a French or European point of view. This is an overall vision that is shared by many countries throughout the world that currently have been stripped of part of their sovereignty from the digital world and face pressure from their people because today the Internet is a reality, and it affects lives of citizens throughout the world. As governments we must be able to hear, to listen to our people and together with their involvement we must able to build this future together.
Last June we held conferences to bring together all of the stakeholders in the digital world, and that ‑‑ we have these stock‑taking meetings because we wanted to come together as a vice ‑‑ voice on the European national and international level, and this has allowed us to establish a French agenda.
In the next few months as mentioned by the French president, we'll be building together this European roadmap over the next few months with a new commission. We also need to build a new global agenda, which we will be upholding here at the IGF and which we'll be able to help us address all the challenges that we're facing.
Now, there are many opportunities for discussion in the future for the G-7, G‑20 and next year's IGF. I'd like to warmly thank our German colleagues hosting next year's IGF. This reinvented IGF, a more involved IGF and even more multi‑lateral IGF. Even more essential IGF.
And if you were to take home one message from my speech, it is that the importance of IGF for us and the fact that we want to work together with IGF in order to make decisions and to do this we need to take on our responsibility as actors. We have a great deal of work in front of us as well the opportunity to shape the world before us as many of you have been hoping for for decades. Thank you.
( Applause )
>> SECRETARIAT CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, minister. We'll now go to the community representatives selected by the MAG to say a few words. The first speaker is Miss Noha Ashraf Abdel Baky from the Digital Grassroots.org and Youth Capacity Building Volunteer Program.
>> NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Noha Ashraf Abdel Baky, and I'm Egyptian, and I'm an Ambassador for the Internet Society for the IGF and the founding of digital grassroots which is a youth initiative for Internet Governance.
I'm honored to be here speaking on behalf of the youth during the closing ceremony of the IGF 2018. Internet of Trust, which is today's ‑‑ this year's theme means Internet that includes young people, women, the disabled, and other vulnerable groups. And often young women in particular face challenges with Internet Governance, which is male‑dominated, and therefore we need more than ever to create online and offline spaces that are safe and open for an inclusive dialogue between young people and other stakeholders.
Digital Grassroots is a youth‑led initiative, and it was launched during the IGF 2017 in Geneva through IGF youth fellows and by ten different countries with young people. Now we have young people coming from over 40 countries that speak in English and French and talk about the principles of Internet citizenship, and we also provided recommendations on how to contribute to and participate in on a local level as well as in other spheres in the Internet community.
In addition, thanks to cooperation with various other actors, such as the Internet Society and the private sector as well as the Civil Society, we have held events in various countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, South Africa and Namibia to promote our vision. The co‑founders and ambassadors took part in national and regional forums that address Internet Governance as well as agreements on Internet Governance and other related events.
We also hope that the concrete implementation of this vision will take place, and that youth participation in IGF will be effects. Young people can provide creative and innovative solutions. As young people, we have come together to express our concerns with regard to the small number of workshops dedicated to this topic.
To express our concerns with regard to the install number of workshops on the topic of youth and gender 2018 as well as the low number of participants in these workshops. We sent a petition to the IGF community to increase participation of young people in the IGF, and everyone ‑‑ we asked everyone to sign this petition in order to better take into account our concerns.
The incorporation of youth expertise in the first stages of preparation for the IGF, especially whether it comes to the design and selection of workshops, we're also concerned by the lack of the absence of Internet Society, for example, on the program and for the IGF in Berlin, we hope to see a higher number of scholarships offered to young people in the panel.
And to conclude, I'd like to cite one of my colleagues who has said that the 13th IGF has reached the add less cents years. It shows that young people are, indeed, very important actors when it comes to reform and reshaping of the IGF so that they become a multi‑lateral platform for dialogue that is accessible to everyone and especially to young people. Thank you for your attention.
( Applause )
>> SECRETARIAT CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Miss Lise Fuhr, director of the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association, ETNO.
>> LISE FUHR: You're excellencies, stakeholder representatives, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, bon jour. Unfortunately, my French is not good enough, so I'll speak in English.
I'm the director general of European telecommunications network operators association. I'm representing here today the private sector as a member of ICC business action to support the information society or basis which many know is the global business focal point for constructive engagement on IGF. We came to Paris this year for the 13th Internet Governance Forum under the theme Internet of Trust.
Discussions over the last three days have underscored strong private sector commitment to build trust in both the Internet and in information and communication technologies. Business takes this responsibility seriously.
Not only because it's a sound business case to ensure uses of ICTs, feel secure when using them, but also to strengthen and broaden the multi‑stakeholder participation. Inputs from multiple stakeholders cultivate a varied understanding of the issues at hand and ignite a desire to address them collaboratively.
This approach circles around too promote trust among the full range of stakeholders represented here today at IGF. Businesses come to IGF here because we believe in the value of this multi‑stakeholder model of Internet Governance. Gathering at the forum this year, all stakeholders can be assured of an open, frank, and informed conversation, which is invaluable for all of our considerations on how to establish the trusted policy frameworks for ICT, and also how to make sure policy environments are conducive to continued and sustainable investments in ICTs and innovation.
To create an enabled environment, we have three fundamental pillars. Firstly, we must ensure all interoperable and seamless ICT systems by ensuring infrastructure applications and services are all in place with full support for user engagement. Secondly, we need to ensure holistic policy approaches by considering the full range of policy issues and options including economic, societal and cultural, technical and governance‑related issues. Finally, we must encourage the participation of all relevant stakeholders in policy‑making processes.
Each stakeholder community will leave the IGF today with a better understanding of all the needs and the ideas of others. This open environment and participation of all stakeholders including businesses, including Civil Society, and including technical community as a best way to provide governments with a 360 degrees information that develops a Fuller understanding of the issues and appropriate policy options they should consider.
So it's essential to preserve the IGF's fundamental character as an all‑inclusive, multi‑stakeholder mechanism for participation.
The IGF has served successfully as a laboratory for the exchange, discussion and dissemination of best practices, technical expertise, and capacity building initiatives among all stakeholders. It's this flexibility, transparency and conclusiveness of the stakeholder model that enabled the Internet to flourish as a platform for innovation and economic development that we have come to know. It has also advanced it to expand connectivity and inclusiveness. So it is imperative that this model is retained going forward.
We do not come here to negotiate, but you would be wrong to believe that our discussions in this forum do not result in actions and projects. Businesses come to build partnerships with Civil Society, with governments, and also across industries. Just one example is Microsoft's air band initiative.
This global initiative is helping to bridge digital divides by providing TV white space devices and other low‑cost wireless technologies contributing affordable broadband access to rule communities all around the world. From the U.S. countries to Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. This project was sparked at the 2011 IGF meeting in Nairobi where an early demo and a discussion led to our first trial in a remote village in Nanyuki also in Kenya.
Today the initiative has seen partnership with local communities, technology providers and governments in commercial deployments and pilots connecting the unconnected in over 36 countries around the world. Another example is Telephonica's Internet for all, which was inspired by the intercessional work on connecting the next billion within IGF.
It aims to expand connectivity in remote areas. Our projects are unique, but the roots are not. There are multitudes of projects that had her beginning at an IGF. We urge you to share them widely. Only by capturing and promoting the discussions we have here, we can illustrate and communicate tangible IGF results.
In this regard private sector members on the MAG have also put forward a number of proposals on how to improve the marketing and advertising of the existing IGF work. And the IGF does not end here. We need to ensure that the IGF's circle and the work undertaken throughout the year leading up to all these discussions is both clear and accessible to all who wish to contribute.
With this in mind, the private sector is leading an initiative in the MAG to visualize and promote the IGF program framework. We are seeking your views and input on how to make the most of this.
Ladies and gentlemen, the business community is your committed partner to build trust in and by way of the multi‑stakeholder model. This is the true nature of IGF, which we value. We look forward to building on our work here to build a conclusive, sustainability build and people‑centric Internet as a means to maintain the vision and the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and its 17 sustainable development goals. Thank you.
( Applause )
>> SECRETARIAT CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much. I'll call upon the next speaker for the technical community, Mr. Sumon Ahmed Sabir, CTO of Fiber@Home.
>> SUMON AHMED SABIR: Good evening, everyone. Thank you very much for the technical community for the opportunity to talk here on behalf of the committee and MAG, and it's my pleasure to work with you for the last three years. I must mention that IGF and the MAG is not the natural place for the technical community, and the level of rich, in‑depth into the discussion, sometimes it takes the community to ( indiscernible ) but I must mention that's planning for IGF and bringing problems, discussing issues, and with that, we also produce a very good document in terms of PPF and we're currently works on ROT, Big Data, and IOBBTF. With that, there's a pat on the back desiring the plan for the IGF program, we need to do a lot of balance.
Sometimes we do not find technical contents for us. Sometimes the discussion outputs aren't meeting it, but we're always willing to do a compromise. A good compromise with the other community is that the community will find out the value out of the discussion. And we're seeing more pressure and demand on the IGF for a tangible outcome.
You can recall that speech from the secretary‑general and from the president of France. There's real pressure on IGF to come up with some sort of solutions, but as a product, I must mention that there are some practical issues we can solve technically very quickly, but there are some issues that are not practical and either we need to learn how to live with it or we'll have to find other ways to solve this issue. That occurs more and more with other communities.
In IGF we as a technical community see that we should bring the technical issue and we should place it to the other member in a simpler and not language in an understandable manner so we understand each other. On the other hand, we need to understand the views of the other communes.
So particularly the way we see after a discussion with the IGF, we find it more complicated, but we get a better solution in the IGF. And we can apply for technical solutions and find solutions to all of it, but I think we need to be more passionate and need to understand each other and be willing to gain trust. If you can really build the trust, we can resolve many of the problems easily. Thank you very much once again.
I really enjoyed working with MAG and the IGF. I wish a bright future for Internet Governance. Thank you very much.
( Applause )
>> SECRETARIAT CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Mr. Moze Chakchouk, Assistant director general for communications and information of UNESCO.
>> MOEZ CHAKCHOUK: Thank you, your excellency. Distinguished guests and friends and colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, it is an honor for me to take part once again in the IGF and to take part in the 2018 edition of the Internet Governance Forum. I missed the last three, but I'm taking part in the one held in France. It's an honor for me.
The discussions over these three days approached essential issues linked to Internet Governance but to find common responses in order to guarantee peace and an Internet of Trust. That's the theme of this year's forum. The discussions we held showed that when we speak and when we talk about universal access to the Internet and Internet Governance, we have to go well beyond the matters of connectivity and infrastructure. We have to adopt a global approach. We have to take act of the human dimension.
We have to adopt an approach that is equal to the challenges of digital competence and linguistic diversity. We have to carry out policies that are favorable to the development and to the expansion for the Internet. For the UNESCO, the Internet Governance represents a major event by way of follow‑up to the world summit on the information society and to extend our horizons on Internet Governance.
Therefore, we're delighted for having hosted you at our headquarters, a central exchange of information in the laboratory for ideas, which makes Internet Governance a priority in its agenda and its actions. Through our work on row motion of language diversity on the Internet, the increased accessibility for the handicapped and indigenous populations as well as our work on gender equality, UNESCO has, in fact, been endeavoring to meet the challenges of universal access.
UNESCO's work is closely linked to our continued reflection on the role of artificial intelligence and the Poe motion of knowledge‑based societies and good governance. In this respect directly following on the IGF, UNESCO is organizing tomorrow in partnership with the Internet Society an open debate on artificial intelligence.
It will be devoted to the study of technological, ethical, political and social and legal implications of the development of AI applications. Of course, I have the pleasure of inviting into these discussions even online, which promise to be very enriching for us and the entire community.
Ladies and gentlemen, a lot remain to be done to create an online environment where human rights are fully upheld and where the Internet is really accessible to all. The principles of Internet universality that is an Internet based on human rights, one that's open and accessible to all, and one that is fed by the participation of many stakeholders should guide us in this work.
The Internet should continue to benefit all of our societies and their individuals. It should help to maintain trust between the different stakeholders who have contributed and who continue to contribute to the development of the Internet worldwide. The IGF has underscored the fact that Internet Governance still raises many issues. We have to keep the issues in mind and continue our inclusive dialogues and continue our collective efforts to find sustainable responses to the challenges raised by Internet Governance.
Ladies and gentlemen, I could not conclude my presentation without thanking all of the participants, the speakers, and the organizers of the IGF. I would also like to express my gratitude to France for having hosted this year's IGF. In particular, I would like to thank Ambassador and my dear friend David Martinon and this team that worked very hard to make this event a success.
I was delighted to meet them this year, and the coordinator of the organizing committee there. There's the continued commitment by the French government to make sure that information technologies and more broadly the digital transformation at the heart of a sustainable work. I'd like to thank Lynn St. Amour, the chair of the group and her team as well as all the contributors who created an interactive ‑‑ sorry. An inclusive and transparent process and who were prepared for this very fruitful event.
I would also like to thank UNESCO as a whole and all the other teams who worked with UNESCO in partnership with the French government. Finally, I would like to thank all the participants who really believed in the importance of this dialogue, who thought that the community was faltering to a certain extent but have come to see we have to continue for our successful cooperation between the French government and the ‑‑ and AG, the second of the IGF and UNESCO is a very strong symbol of what can be achieved at the international level when we all work together for better Internet Governance.
On behalf of UNESCO and the director general, I'd like to reconfirm our strong commitment to the IGF and thank you all for your discussions this past few days. Thank you very much for your kind attention.
( Applause )
>> SECRETARIAT CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much. I'll call the IGF MAG chair, miss Lynn St. Amour.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: I will work to keep my remarks quite short. In addition to the thanks at the beginning of the session, I'd like to add my sincere thanks to the outgoing MAG for all their support and efforts over the past year. In addition to overseeing the program activities of the annual meeting and all the intercessional activities, again, such as the best practice forums, Dynamic Coalitions and the connecting and enables the next billions major policy initiative, we actually have had considerable efforts put into a number of strategic and operational issues largely through 5 MAG working groups.
A working group on IGF improvements, a working group on multi‑year strategic work plan, a working group on fund‑raising, a working group on comes and outreach and finally a work group on ‑‑ a working group on workshop violation and selection process. They're all open to the community. They're led by the MAG, but they're open to the community.
So this is actually where a lot of comments we've heard today will go to be advanced within either MAG work directly or in any new working groups that the MAG should decide to move forward with. None of this would have been possible without the support of the IGF secretariat, which is a very lean and we've heard many times too lean but exceptionally competent and dedicated secretariat.
I'd like to thank check tie, he will Nora and an la and a few dedicated consultants as well for all the work they support over the year. Let's give both the MAG and the secretariat ‑‑
( Applause )
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: In year as well we had strong support from staff in the department of economic and social affairs, and for that we give our thanks. We couldn't have made the progress in my areas this year without the efforts in particular and they're here in the audience with us still.
Excitingly, and I believe for the first time ever ‑‑ it may not be true, but for the first time ever we have a new MAG announced and ready to start work tomorrow. You may not know the current MAG and current chair stand down at the end of the every IGF. So in the past it's actually left quite a gap, nearly four months in the last few years. This is such a big benefit to the community and to the MAG for all the work we actually need to do.
For that I'd like to thank the secretary‑general, the secretary‑general's office, specifically Fabrizio was key in making this happen. I would say it was none too early, given the challenges and opportunities we've actually heard here both from the secretary‑general himself, from President Macron and all the aspirations in the community.
There's certainly no shortage of work to be done. As a community we have to examine what's appropriate respecting our mandate, what's possible with then resources we can actually pull together and as a community‑led effort then prioritize and look to the community to help us support and resource those efforts. There are many other challenges that we've kind of brought along from past years.
We have still a strong desire to increase the participation of senior policy makers in governments. We heard reference to that a number of times over the last week and from the private sector as well. That gets to the heart, I think, of the benefit of the IGF but also the places where so many of what we talk about here can dually be advanced.
So we're going to need to think careful by about how we engage that across the community. I would ask everybody to stay tuned. We will work to start the induction efforts for the new MAG next week, not tomorrow. Many people will be on planes, but next week and there's not a lot of time to lose. Again, welcome the incoming MAG, the list is actually published on the IGF website.
Luckily, we have about two‑thirds of the MAG returning this year, so we have a strong core of people who are already deeply engaged in the effort and look forward to a lot of new energy and enthusiasm for the new members. I just would like to again I mentioned at the top of the hour, thank UNESCO for their support here, for as they said for a lot of the efforts to host us here.
Then, of course, to Ambassador Martinon, the organizing team, Pierre Bonis, we couldn't have done it without their efforts and all the volunteers. Mostly, though, we couldn't do it without the community. We couldn't do it without the community participating day in day out in every effort, whether through a regional youth initiative or the working groups or BPS, it's critically important to stay engaged and let us know what's working or not. I want to thank everyone for their efforts and compassion and commitment and look forward to a very exciting 2019. Thank you.
( Applause )
>> SECRETARIAT CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, Lynn. Our next speaker is Ambassador David Martinon, the co‑chair from the host country. You have the floor.
>> DAVID MARTINON: Thank you, Chengetai. In fact, this will be my last speech as digital Ambassador, because tomorrow I'll be handing the keys of my office over to my friend who was fool hearted enough to accept my job. Good luck to you, and thank you for your work over the IGF.
I haven't prepared very much in terms of closing remarks, and since the minister has already spoken, I will speak on a more personal note. My first IGF was five years ago, 2013, in Indonesia. It was in Bali, but for my wife it was better than I said Indonesia. Anyway, this was just a few weeks after Moze, who was still a cyber dissident from Tunisia. You can imagine the pressure on our shoulders from Civil Society. We as representatives of states.
Then in Ottawa last February, Lynn told me that it would be a good idea if France were to host the IGF of 2018. I came back to Paris. I made that proposal because IGF is a perennial institution. This is its 13th edition. It's a U.N. institution, and France is deeply attached to the United Nations. France considers the United Nations system can be a place where Internet Governance is discussed. That the IGF has a very specific characteristic that is ‑‑ it's universality, which we don't necessarily find in other institutions. So I made that proposal.
It was accepted. So we began preparing for the 2018 IGF with peer area, Lynn, the secretariat so that we could meet here for these three days in Paris. What I would like to say before I leave you is that I'm sure you can attest to my commitment to the IGF. We need the IGF.
We need the IGF to become even more prominent, to shoulder even more responsibilities. Therefore, it will be necessary for the IGF to change, to continue its development that is what its Veneman date ‑‑ referendum expects it to do.
It was renewed in December 2015 in New York and it invites the IGF to prepare recommendations on a certain number of subjects. The IGF is very good at identifying new subjects involving digital technology. The IGF that is this community understood before the rest of the world did what the major issues for debate would be.
Some subjects have disappeared. Others will reappear. What we know with certainty is as the president of the republics of the day before yesterday states will have to prepare regulations. The objective is for those regulations to be as intelligent and appropriate as possible in order to avoid the excesses of the minister have. The regulations must be up‑to‑date, and they must take account of the latest developments in the digital world.
As far as the developments go, it's you that the technical community, the users community and the entrepreneurs who have mastery over those developments. In order for there not to be a gap between the regulations and the development of the digital community, it's important for the community to expense itself and deliver its opinions, and those opinions must be made in writing. They must be transmissible.
France from day one from the summit on the information society has affirmed and re‑affirmed its attachment to the multi‑stakeholder model. We think the time has come for this community to invent the grammar of that model in order for it to be fully effective. If you want, if we want your recommendations, your opinions to be heated, it's important to think over the process for elaborating, for drafting this content.
It's important to invent this grammar for the multi‑stakeholder model. How to best represent all the stakeholders, and how to organize consultations that are clear, transparent, and as effective as possible. How to see to it that these written opinions are easily communicated and known to all so that each decision maker and some people have regretted there weren't enough here. Each decision maker can take these opinions and use them.
I would like to make one last recommendation before we leaving to you, the community. Take up those subjects. Go farther than the previous editions have. Continue to build on what our Swiss friends did with the Geneva messages. Take power, invent your own rules. Today the multi‑stakeholder model is an idea which deserves to be further fleshed out and prosper. That is why we are so committed to that model.
That we negotiated with others in particularly with the private sector, the Paris Call. The president of the republic referred to it, because in fact we're convinced that especially when it comes to the stability of cyberspace and cybersecurity, we have to reach a certain number of goals and ban certain practices. The only way to achieve that today given the situation of the multi‑lateral dialogue is to engage a dialogue with private stakeholders so that we can co‑construct and co‑draft these standards.
The Paris Call two days after it was launched has already proven a great success. More than 54 states signed up on it and more than 200 hundred communities have and more than 100 Civil Society organizers have. I've rarely seen such a strong start‑up for my multi‑stakeholder initiative. Endorse it and analyze it, and I advise the IGF to continue its work on this Paris Call.
The Paris Call is a call to find new ideas and to begin cooperation arrangements to make it possible to fight against reverse hacking or proliferation of cyber weapons or proliferation of fake news during democratic elections. It's an appeal.
Use it. In the debate I heard that you would like the companies and the states to be ‑‑ to show greater presence in the IGFs. I'm convinced that this is necessary. To that end, concrete, pragmatic measures need to be taken. I’ll discuss this with you Fabrizio afterwards if you want.
Everybody has a role to play. I'll contribute you to participate. I'll stop here. I'd like to thank all that participated and worked on this.
I am so deeply attached to this that my next mission and my next position will be to convince Afghan Civil Society, so courageous and some made it all the way to Paris to take part in the IGF, to convince afghan Civil Society to organize and host the next IGF so that we can all meet again in Kabul. In the near future.
( Applause )
>> SECRETARIAT CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, Ambassador. And Afghanistan does have a very strong and vibrant national IGF.
I'd like to call for our speaker from our next host country, which is Dr. Daniela Bronstrup, deputy director general from the ministry of the economy from Germany. Thank you.
>> DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Thank you chair, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen and dear colleagues. This was an outstanding IGF and so many from all over the world and different stakeholders groups and you are not the excellent program. Thanks to France, thanks to the United Nations, and thanks to the MAG for organizing this IGF in such a few months. This was great. This deserves praise and recognition, congratulations.
You set the bar very high next year in Germany. The next IGF will take place next November in Berlin. What has been achieved here is an incentive to reach the same level and meet your expectations that you shared with us right now. We promise to take the example from France and Switzerland and let ourselves be inspired from here. We are looking very much forward to working with all of you because this is what IGF is all about.
It's a multi‑stakeholder forum. Youth and us and those out there not yet part of the community feel altogether when the IGF is. We are the multi‑stakeholders fighting for an open, secure, reliable, and truly global Internet free from censorship, discrimination and propaganda. We will do our best next year to get all key stakeholders from all region of the world to Berlin, especially also from the global itself. Ladies and gentlemen, Germany is honored to host the IGF 2019.
We applaud it because we deeply belief in the IGF and the multi‑stake hold approach. For us the IGF is the most important international dialogue platform on the future of the Internet. I'm very happy and honored representing the German government today to kindly invite all of you to Berlin in 2019. Berlin is a very good place to host the IGF.
Those of you who have been there already will know that, and all the others, I'm sure, will see next year. Berlin is an open and vibrant city as people from everywhere in the world come with different perspectives, different experiences and knowledge. The city has a very strong start‑up community and an ever‑growing creative scene.
Every day Berlin is attracting new talents, new ideas, new investments, and we believe Berlin is and remains a place for visions. In November 2019 it's you and us. The IGF multi‑stakeholder community will use the spirit of the city to give birth to new ideas on how to tackle most pressing issues on the Internet.
See you all next year in Berlin. Our website is going online as well as our Twitter account right now. Please visit www.IGF2019.Berlin. Now, please enjoy the world release of our IGF 2019 movie. That should start now.
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>> The country has to call the owner of the Internet, who should he or she call? There's nobody. It doesn't mean that there are no rules.
>> We have a social problem that is associated with the use of these media, and we have to educate people
>> Offline human rights and fundamental rights should be the same in the online world.
>> We need to remember that technology should not take away our humanity.
>> 20 years ago the Internet was small and it was a technical issues with some political implications. Today it's a political issue with a technical component.
>> Artificial intelligence is a super powerful technology.
>> Net neutrality and Big Data and the Internet are incredibly important.
>> I do feel we're in a debt to society. The Internet Governance Forum will help to sustain the Internet and make it stronger.
>> Everyone has a stake in a topic that's being under discussion and can have an equal opportunity.
>> Let's keep working together to transform the Internet and get it in a safe democratic space.
>> Berlin is really a vibrant place, specifically the tech community and the digital community.
>> In Deutschland ( Speaking in non‑English language ).
>> DANIELA BRONSTRUP: So welcome to Berlin. Many thanks.
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>> SECRETARIAT CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much. Our final speaker representing the United Nations secretary‑general is Mr. Fabrizio Hochschild, Assistant secretary‑general in the executive office of the secretary‑general.
>> FABRIZIO HOCHSCHILD: Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues and friends joining us online around the world with the last minute of this intelligence policy journey that unfolded over the past 48 hours under the central theme of the Internet of Trust. I must thank you, especially those in the room for your incredible patience. I wish I would say it would be awarded by drinks afterwards, but resources are lacking. I'm coming back to resources.
At the outset, I have to thank President Macron with setting us out on this journey. I have to thank France not only for their initiative and intellectual provided by President Macron's speech but by the Paris Call, but also for their incredible generosity as hosts. We were honored not only by President Macron, but also by his excellency the foreign minister, and by Minister Mahjoubi and by an end friend to many of us, David Martinon, who we wish very well in Kabul and hopefully we will be able to join him there at some point.
I'd like to welcome the new Ambassador as well.
I'd like to thank the dedicated team that worked with them. Of course, I'd also like to thank my colleagues and friends at UNESCO and in particular the director general who also provided stimulating remarks at the beginning of the session as well as offering us her facilities and support throughout.
Above all, I think those who deserve the most thanks are, of course, you, the participants. There were over 2,000 on site and many more online in 140 countries. They're representing all stakeholders. 43% of the participants here in Paris were women. Let's hope we can do better in Germany, frankly. You know, this is 2018.
We should have gender parity, and that is, of course, one of the recurring criticisms of the tech community, is that lack of parity, and I must confess that I'm part of it.
You know, if we look at the podium, I'm the wrong gender. Collectively, you all represent the IGF's multi‑‑stakeholder model, and I would like to caution something that came up in the comments that sort of opposed multi‑lateralism with multi‑stakeholder. I mean, multi‑lateralism increasingly is multi‑stakeholder in its approach, and I think there's some wonderful examples of that including the Paris climate agreement, which was very much part of a multi‑stakeholder approach or the 2030 agenda, which is a multi‑stakeholder and multi‑lateral endeavor.
You are the core of this approach, and a big thanks to you. We salute you and bow to you and admire you. The statistics are quite impressive, but what matters even more is the dynamics, the full rooms, the buzz in the corridors, and I regret that one room was too full as one of the commentators said.
From those rich discussions, I picked up on three key issues. I also picked up a cold, as you can tell. One was on trust. The other was on data. The third was on ethics.
Trust is in the title of this IGF. A global deficit of trust between countries and within countries as well as towards multi‑lateral organizations is a theme frequently elaborated on by the U.N. secretary‑general. I think a theme of distrust towards government was also a theme of many of those that took the floor before as well as trust towards the U.N.
Over the last three days, you managed to dive deep into these question of digital trust. You moved from an abstract notion to identifying ways and means of how to improve truce. Trust increases with more awareness of how technology functions. Trust improves with transparency. Trust depends on accountability of industry, governments, and also of us individual users.
Trust is also about ethics as the sessions are not artificial intelligence very clearly identified. Society, including a digital one, cannot function without a basis of trust. I would like to encourage both you and the U.N. panel on digital cooperation to look further into concrete ways of securing increased trust. The critical relevance of data was also reflected in the discussions today.
Society's worldwide, and I think Ambassador Martinon alluded to this are in search of right policy balance around data. How do we ensure that data fuels innovation and economic dynamics while protecting the public and individual interests? How do we ensure that data is not abused whether for commercial interests or for the violation of human rights?
As was indicated and there was some very moving examples from the MENA region where data was abused precisely for that end. As was indicated in the few sessions that I attended, data is a cross‑cutting and interdisciplinary issues and a standardized issue but data matters for the security of modern society and for human rights.
Data is behind privacy, and data is also about trade. All of us in multi‑lateral and multi‑stakeholder communities have to deal with the challenge how to address data in a more comprehensive and sophisticated way.
In addition to trust and data, many focused on ethics and AI. Ette ethics is the most important. Many discussions at this IGF addressed ethics by design, can we program machines to be ethical? If yes, what should the rules and principles be?
Many issues remain open, but there's a clear need for guidelines in relation to autonomous weapons. The secretary‑general called for a ban on lethal autonomous weapons. We need guidelines for driverless cared or the thousands of apps powered by AI for face recognition software and so on. Perhaps for some of the future IGFs, we need more philosophers in the room to help us with these questions, and I would like to reiterate the call that Lynn also echoed from the secretary‑general that the IGF should not only be multi‑stakeholder but also multi‑disciplinary ‑‑ a multi‑disciplinary forum.
We can't operate in silos to do justice to the formidable challenges that new technologies including in the Internet are producing. The enter Internet Governance Forum is in transition like many of our institutions that adjust to digital developments.
Both the secretary‑general and President Macron placed high expectations on the IGF, as was indicated in the opening statements, change is needed precisely to safeguard the public call to ensure ‑‑ of the Internet to ensure it's free and open with diverse content but also safe and trustworthy. We have to safeguard that the Internet as one speaker put it on the very first day, produces magic in terms of its connections, but while magic.
Not some of the black magic we see now, and it serves really truly to connect humidity knit and not divide humanity. Too further good rather than ferment evil. The multiple efforts to strengthen the IGF have to enable it to rise to contribute to the challenge of finding the wisest way to do these. I would say I found in some of the statements the postulation of a forced dichotomy between freedom and liberty on one hand and regulation on the other.
I think that's a false dichotomy. The absence of the rule of law is not freedom. The absence of the rule of law is the rule of the mightiest, is the rule of tyranny, whether by private companies no disrespect or by autocratic leaders. There I'd like to quote since we're in Paris a very distinguished one of many very distinguished French thinkers, who was a political activist and priest in 1848, which was also in the midst of an industrial revolution and societal discord.
He said the following. Between the rich and the poor, the weak and the strong and the master and the servant it is liberty which restricts and rule of law which sets us free.
The rule of law, obviously, understood as intelligent rule of law and in conformity with international standards is essentially a liberating element. The absence of it is what allows for abuse.
Many such abuses were mentioned by some of our participants from Azerbaijan and Egypt. So I think we have to listen carefully to the idea that if we want to safeguard the key, what we appreciate so much about the Internet, it's probably better done through some form.
I'm not ‑‑ it's not for me to say in what form, but some form of policy frameworks that maintain it from abuse.
The IGF will have to play an important role in strengthening digital cooperation mechanisms considered by the U.N. SG's high‑level panel and the intersection between the secretary‑general's high‑level panel and the IGF is very important.
I invite all of us to contribute to the panel's discussions in particular with proposals that should link the IGF's strengths and the need for more efficient digital cooperation mechanisms. There's a lot of need and space for innovative and effective solutions.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, there were more than 170 sessions held this past week ranging from main sessions, open forums, workshops to lightning sessions and other informal gatherings and inside events. We have to really recognize and applaud the outstanding preparatory work done by every member of the 2018 MAG under guidance of the very able and distinguished guidance of Miss Lynn St. Amour, who I think brings credit to the name of the wine rather than the other way around.
We also must thank all the U.N. staff for the conference services, security, and news coverage, communication outreach, remote participation and technical infrastructure.
The national, regional and youth IGF initiatives should also be recognized as they're further expanding the importance and inclusive multi‑stakeholder dialogue to new countries and regions. We now have more than 110 national and regional initiatives around the world, and around 50 were present with us this week to highlight their achievements. A big thanks to all national and regional initiatives including those who could not join us in person.
Leading up to the 14th Internet Governance Forum next year, innovations and programming and intercessional activities will be implemented in a manner based on feedback from the multi‑stakeholder community and in line with the new mandate that calls for greater participation from stakeholders from developing currents and improved working modalities with greater focus on outcomes.
Finally -- and this is a key point -- I'd like to take this opportunity to really thank the many donors for their financial contributions to the United Nations IGF trust fund. I really applaud the U.K. for standing up and saying they'll pledge more. I have to say, I was very impressed by the list of donors and the fact that so many private sector donors are on that list. I think it's truly exemplary in the contributions with the mixture of governments and the private sector. Let's be frank. We need to do more.
I was trying to think of an analogy, and this probably isn't a good one. We have some resources but the IGF is essentially a volunteer body. I mean, the MAG are not paid. They do all the organization, the U.N. staff involved do it after hours. They're in no U.N. staff exclusively dedicated to this.
And, you know, if we want the IGF to run like a Ferrari in terms of meeting some of the challenges set out, there has to be fuel in the tank, and at the moment I think the fuel probably also keeps it at a relatively low speed to go the distance, but I think it will need a big injection of resources if it's realistically living up to some of the challenges in helping to come to terms with challenges. I have to say as a newcomer to this, it's my second IGF, I think given the resource constraints, it's absolutely incredible what you have achieved thus far and what you've ‑‑ the network you've created across the globe. I share the belief we need to go to the next level, but I think we will not succeed without a major injection not just of ideas but the sort of resources to put those ideas into action.
I have to say, I thank you Germany for taking on the challenge next year for helping to make sure we do better in terms of representation. I think it's very exciting that we'll be in Germany. I also share the view that hopefully we can rotate better around the continents. So I wish you now after that rather lengthy concludes address a very safe trip home. Hopefully you'll carry with you much inspiration from these days and much well‑being after being in this incredible city with such gracious hosts, and I wish you safety online and offline and all the very best. Thank you.
( Applause )
>> SECRETARIAT CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, Assistant secretary‑general. I'd just like to close with reminding you all there's a reception upstairs by our next hosts. Also, I'd also like the scribes being thanked. Thank you for your hard work for making it very clear.
And thank you all for sticking it out until the very end. Very much appreciated. See you during the intercessionals or next year in Berlin. Thank you.