The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> We all live in a digital world. We need it to be open and safe. We all want to trust.
>> And to be trusted.
>> We all despise control.
>> And desire freedom.
>> We are all united.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: You are muted, Minda.
>> Hello. Can you hear me Claudia?
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: We can hear you.
>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Welcome. My name is Michael Oghia. I am the director of internal relations and a steering committee member, RPC. This workshop is co‑organized by us at the IRPC and the Digital Constitutionalism Network. And it is a pleasure to be here and to welcome you. So this year marks the 10th anniversary of our charter, our being the IRPC's charter of Human Rights and principles for the Internet. Over the past decades the 21 Articles have been distilled in to 10 broad Articles. They have been used by different stakeholder groups all over the globe in their efforts to promote Human Rights in the online environment and inspired and have inspired, rather, other Human Rights documents, specifically within the ICT sector. The IGF has been for so many years a crucial space for Civil Society to come together and advocate for Human Rights respecting policy, and technology, in part because for so long few alternatives existed.
Where are we now however? In a time where the rate of technological development is pushing the boundaries of the possible but also legal and ethical. What concrete impacts of our advocacy within the IGF on the Internet have emerged? Importantly how are the COVID‑19 era impact Human Rights online going forward as well.
Within this scope we will explore how digital Human Rights documents over inspired by the work of the IGF community, can support the UN roadmap for digital cooperation, support the promotion of Human Rights online and help achieve the sustainable development goals. It will focus on selecting the documents and analyzing how they emerged and translated existing Human Rights law and norms to the online environment, and they will reflect on their relevance, achievements and main challenges.
My ‑‑ so I am just going to be the Emcee of the session making sure that everyone in the room can contribute to the discussion as much as possible. And we have a wonderful Moderators online who will be guiding us through the discussion along with some wonderful speakers. So with that said, I'm going to go ahead and introduce our Moderator for part 1, Claudia Padovani, from the University of Padova. Claudia, the floor is yours.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: Thank you, Michael. Thank you so much. It is a great pleasure to be here with you all in order to moderate the first session of this event this morning. So the session is titled IGF Led Human Rights, how they come out with concrete impact and relevance in the current COVID‑19 era.
This will be a Round Table. We will have time for questions and answers. So you are very welcome to use the chat space to insert your comments or questions as we move on with our speakers.
Unfortunately we received notice this morning that two of the speakers will not be with us. So with us this morning are indeed Marianne Franklin from Goldsmith University in London and also with us is Edetaen Ojo. I see you are both in the virtual room. Thank you so much for having accepted this invitation. And we will move on in two minutes.
With us also is Parminder Jeet Singh from the Just Net Coalition and IT for Change. He will talk about the daily declaration, but unfortunately for personal reasons, he cannot join the session this morning. And also unfortunately, Rikke Frank Jorgensen from the Danish Institute of Human Rights cannot be with us.
So we were wondering if Wolfgang is maybe in the room. If he is, we invite him informally to share with us a few comments from the Council of Europe experience. But with that said, we have more time for our wonderful speakers. So they were invited to comment on a number of questions that will be posed. Maybe you can take two and a half minutes to answer each question. I think with that, we can certainly start.
So the first question for our speakers which is about learning how these meaningful documents have come about. So what was the context atmosphere and the background and also kind of actors that have garnered together to elaborate such documents. And, of course, also where do these documents sit in the long tradition of international Human Rights documents. So Marianne Franklin, maybe you can go first. You have the floor. Thank you.
>> MARIANNE FRANKLIN: Thank you very much, Claudia. First of all, may I wish everyone a happy and ‑‑ happy International Human Rights Day. This is the 10th of December and we are in International Human Rights day.
So the charter of Human Rights and principles for the Internet which I hold up in its English booklet edition got off the ground in 2009 drafting process took up to two years. It was a successful attempt within the Internet Governance Forum space to get all sectors, tech community, corporate representatives, academics, lawyers, Governmental representatives and very much unfortunately Civil Society Organizations to translate and interpret existing international Human Rights documents so that they spoke and resonated with the emergence of our digital lines. Ten years ago this was not an obvious proposition.
The charter is modeled on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It collates, curates and revises these essential documents which go right down to the fourth generation of rights at the UN organization heads put together and Member States have endorsed. And in that respect it is a bridging document. It is a ‑‑ it is a vehicle. So it is a backbone. It is a point of reference. And it is a point of account and it is a source of accountability.
So it has been going ten years. It has to a large extent helped address the disconnect at the time and mutual suspicion about where Human Rights advocacy and technical ‑‑ technological advances through Internet technologies, where they are dually connected. There are many schools of thought, I think they are not connected. But the charter is with the documents, the guide to the Human Rights Council of Europe that show how this connection is already in law and just needs to be teased out of the woodwork, so to speak. Put in to relief and made speak to those who have to deal with the legal, technical and cultural consequences of our online and offline digital lives that are now totally interconnected. Thank you.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: Thank you. Thank you for the very clear, concise and also for highlighting how these documents can be bridging tools. So the same question is posed to Edetaen. You can hear us and you have the floor. You have to unmute yourself. We can't hear you.
>> EDETAEN OJO: Thank you. I hope you can hear me now.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: Yes. Very good.
>> EDETAEN OJO: Thank you. It emerged against the background where we were seeing a rash of laws and policies from many different countries seeking to govern various aspects of the Internet and Internet activities. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these laws were not Human Rights respecting and seem to take a punitive approach towards everything. So we thought that it was a good idea to put in place a set of principles that would guide law and policy making around the Internet, in a manner that would be Human Rights respecting. And also to guide advocacy by Civil Society and other stakeholders.
So the Declaration emerged from this idea that was discussed by a handful of Internet rights advocates at the sidelines of the African Internet Governance Forum which we call the African IGF that took place in Nairobi in Kenya in 2013. So the idea was to provide guidance for advocates, policymakers through a Pan‑African initiative that would promote Human Rights standards and principles in the formulation and implementation of policies, both at a national level but across the continent.
So in February of 2014, a larger meeting was convened in Johannesberg and Anriette played a key role in facilitating that meeting which discussed that idea. We were able to reach agreement on some of the key elements of the document and to agree on a process for developing those principles.
At that meeting we also agreed on the name of the document. We decided to call it the African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms. And I was charged with leading a small drafting group to produce a first draft of the Declaration. And essentially this process entailed the principles and standards to be contained in the Declaration from a variety of documents that were already in existence that had been approved through various processes. And therefore, these principles, these standards were not in dispute. They were not controversial because they already existed in different contexts and different instruments. We were merely pulling them together and in some cases where they were not specifically on the Internet or digital issues, applying those same principles that had been established.
So from ‑‑ (cutting out). The development of the text then was then followed by comments from organizations that were represented at the Johannesberg meeting which were slightly over 13 organizations, principally from Civil Society but also from other stakeholder groups. We had wanted Government to participate but unfortunately apart from PAD, which is a regional body there was really no participation from Government entities.
The comments from participants were then followed by comments from a variety of experts, from Africa and beyond. And then we had an online public consultation process. And then advocacy meetings with individuals and organizations from different African and international stakeholder groups, including bodies like UNESCO, the UN, Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression who was at that time David Kaye and so on and so forth. That's how the process was unfolded. Now the Declaration builds on when established African Human Rights documents including documents like the African (cutting out) ‑‑
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: Unfortunately, this connection is not very stable. So we hope that Edetaen will come back. But I'm afraid we can't hear him anymore. Hmmm. So maybe as we wait for Edetaen to get back with us, maybe we can move to our second question to Marianne. And the second question really is about what happens with the document like this after it emerges. So, of course, it is very difficult to talk about impact, even more to attempt measuring impact. But certainly as we follow the life of documents that have been there for such a long time and have been integrated and updated it is crucial also to consider what has been their relevance and maybe strengthening the community around not just the IGF space, but also beyond. So how do you see the life of the document these days? Marianne, you have the floor.
>> MARIANNE FRANKLIN: Thank you. I would like to bring in to the discussion a guide to Human Rights from the Council of Europe because that was one of the first developments of the charter of Human Rights and principles for the Internet. And so we have, in fact, three documents. The charter of Human Rights and principles for the Internet, the guide to Human Rights for Internet users from the Council of Europe which was released in 2014. And, of course, the Brazilian Human Rights framework, extremely important work. And all three helped each other and piggybacked in a productive of each other.
The main that the charter is being disseminated is in the booklet form. This is the chart of Human Rights and principles for the Internet. It speaks to existing and emerging international Human Rights standards as they are articulated online and on the online/offline nexus. The booklet form has helped to disseminate the charter and very much in hard copy which has been very successful. It is now in 12 languages, 11 official house style. One through our Russian colleague. And two on the way. It has been in political institutions and New Zealand Green Party used for the backbone of launching of digital policy. And Spanish has been introduced. We see as an educational setting Syracuse law school and our Italian colleagues in two Universities in Italy and at Dublin University in Ireland and in the UK.
The Internet Governance space charter is spoken to and referred to in various ways implicitly and explicitly at EuroDIG, European Dialogue Internet Governance meetings. The NETmundial, the charter was given, it was flagged or tagged as we now say. The Fundamental Rights Agency has considered the charter in light of other Human Rights standards for the online space. The Council of Europe is a very important partner because the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition is an official observer at the Council of Europe's Steering Committee on the information society and media or media and information society.
At the UN, UNESCO, Human Rights Council through Special Rapporteurs has been extremely important, just five more seconds, extremely important to helping the writing and the dissemination of the charter to keep close to the authoritative sources, namely the Special Rapporteurs on the right of freedom of expression and the new Special Rapporteurs in all ‑‑ Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy. And at the municipal level, which we will hear about from our colleagues at Amsterdam, the charter has been helpful there and very pleased to have been part of that launch of the Digital Cities Coalition. So that's it for now. I will find a copy of the Council of Europe guide and show you it on the screen. Thank you.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: Thank you for mentioning all these different spaces and different levels. Also thanks for mentioning University activities that we've done with students. I can anticipate in my upcoming course we will again be looking at the charter and maybe developing some new ideas. So more to come on that space. I wonder if Edetaen managed to get back to us. Can you hear?
>> EDETAEN OJO: Yes. I'm back on. I'm back on. Apologies.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: The connection was a bit unstable. You were interrupted when you were highlighting the Human Rights standards. You can take it from there and go in to the second question which is more about what has been the effectiveness and how it has been picked up by other actors and spaces. Thank you.
>> EDETAEN OJO: Thank you. Thank you so much. And apologies for the interruption. So as I was saying previously, the Declaration sought to build on established Human Rights standards and principles, taking as a source, Human Rights instruments on the African continent, principally the African charter on human and people's rights adopted in 1981, the Declaration of 1991 which led to world press freedom that's now celebrated on the 3rd of May around the world.
And the 10th anniversary document of the Windhoek Declaration, which is the African charter on broadcasting. And a major Human Rights document on freedom of expression, adopted by the African Commission on human and people's rights in 2002 which is a Declaration of Principles, freedom of expression in Africa which was recently updated after a revision in 2019. And then we also had the African platform on access to Information Declaration that was adopted in 2011.
So all of these had already been established in various ways freedom of expression around offline and online. And this Declaration sought to build on all of those. So in terms of the second question, we adopted a variety of strategies in trying to disseminate this. One of the things that we agreed on early on, this was not an official document of any regional body or any country. So we decided, we needed to get endorsements from those sort of regional bodies as well as national Governments in order to enhance the status of the Declaration, and give it the profile that we thought would be useful in its achieving the objective. We got endorsements from UNESCO, from the U.S. Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, and then we went about launching the Declaration at a national level and through that process we got a number of national Governments to endorse it.
The Declaration was first launched on the 9th IGF which took place in Istanbul in 2014. And then we also relaunched it at the African conference in South Africa the same year. That's an annual gathering of media stakeholders and other information activists. And we thought it was a great opportunity to present a document to stakeholders within the African continent.
And then again at the 10th IGF that took place in Brazil in 2015. So it has been launched at the national level in many different countries, in Sub‑Saharan African as well as the West African IGF. It was presented to the global freedom of expression community at the general conference of international freedom of expression which is an exchange.
And they had that conference in Trinidad and Tobago in 2015. And this was presented to them. And again endorsed. And it has been presented and discussed at a number of additions of world press freedom celebrations convened by UNESCO in different countries around the world.
It was originally produced in English but has been translated in to three other languages, Portuguese, Arabic and French. Also distributed mainly online but also hard copies have been distributed at different events around the world. The African Commission adopted a Resolution in 2016 which also endorsed the Declaration and mandated a Special Rapporteur to use it to elaborate, update the Declaration of Principles that I referred to earlier.
So these are the various ways that we've sought to disseminate these and increase the profile and status so that people find it much more valuable for their advocacy and implementation activities. And just to close, one final example of that was that it inspired development of a deal on digital rights and Internet freedom in Nigeria which was passed by the National Assembly. Unfortunately the current President did not assent to it. So it has not become law. But we are still engaged in that process. Thank you very much.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: Thank you. Also for such a detailed account and for giving the sense of how far these documents can travel, if they are supported. That's extremely interesting. But then, of course, we come to the last question, and I here invite short comments so that we can also take some time for question and answer. And the last question is about how relevant these documents are in the current times.
So on the one side of ‑‑ we have all been affected by the pandemic. And we have seen how in many cases fundamental rights have been somehow marginalized and put aside or concerns are not as much at the center or stage due to other priorities.
So what could be the role of these documents? And also I guess we have a question that is often posed by talking to young people, to what extent you think these documents are understood and appreciated, maybe then outside the communities of those who are directly involved. Marianne, you have the floor. Thank you for the three minutes' answer.
>> MARIANNE FRANKLIN: Thank you. So we have three documents. I think ‑‑ I think the issues are even more relevant. I think we are International Human Rights Day. We have issues around media freedoms. We have a man in jail waiting for a court order as to whether he will be extradited. We had a Moroccan who abandoned prison because the authorities didn't like what he had to say. Constantly abused, undermined and hollowed out and ignored. All these documents that I have had the privilege to be close to or be privy to the discussions have put Human Rights standards and law as these pertain to the online environment. And that means new conversations. So the bridging has been done. But the crossing of the bridge is yet to happen.
People are still standing on each end of the bridge. And it is not enough meeting in the middle. It is not enough thinking about the bridge itself as a means to preserve humanity and an Internet that's human‑centered and not human corrosive.
My last point I want to say are these still relevant. And it is yes, yes, yes. The pandemic has revealed the issues, our colleagues and friends on the African continent is that Human Rights, Human Rights, no matter how much human and machine are close together, need to be defended and enforced and enjoyed online because that's where we live those lives. Too much online surveillance has been put in place under the cover of COVID. I feel more important than ever these documents need to be in our schools, taken to our managements and taken to our hospitals and procurement Committee. People ‑‑ students now understand the premise. In the years I have been putting this on the curriculum, students understand the premise. They find the documents hard to read because it is legal language. We need to fight them to keep their place at the table. Thank you very much.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: Thank you very much, Marianne. So again I'm giving the floor to Edetaen for the last remarks. And in the meantime, I'm inviting all those participating, if you have comments or questions just use the chat space because we do have some time for question and answer at the end of these interventions. So the time ‑‑ you may want to address this last question. What is the relevance of the document in the current times? And if its circulation and reception has been affected by the pandemic?
>> EDETAEN OJO: Thanks. The short answer is the Declaration is still very relevant. Because the principles contained in it have really not changed. Of course, there have been some discussions within the coalition about the need to update it, to capture some issues, which have emerged in the last few years since the Declaration was developed and adopted. But principally, the principles have been relevant and valid. What has evolved over the years is the application of the principles. And I think within that framework one may say there are some gaps, that we did not anticipate at the time the principles were developed because those issues have taken on prominence in the last few years. The Declaration was developed, so it has sort to place some emphasis on some issues that are particularly relevant for the African continent. One of those key issues at that time was access and affordability. And I think that remains even equally relevant today. But maybe not as bad as the situation was way back then.
However, the beginning of the COVID‑19 pandemic, the coalition came up with a position paper titled the Impact of COVID‑19 on Digital Rights in Africa. And the whole idea was to look at certain principles within the Declaration and do some analysis on how they have been impacted by COVID‑19 and the response of various Governments on the continent to the pandemic.
We selected five principles which were around freedom of expression, access and affordability, privacy, personal data protection, the right to information and gender, as well as marginalized groups and groups at risk.
And the analysis or recommendations around these areas were really hinged on these principles and their application in a variety of sectors.
So I think I would insist that the rights and principles in ‑‑ of the Internet remain constant. Those have not really changed. And it is really in the application that we are seeing an evolution that I think we need to respond to in the current age. So if we don't get around to ‑‑ (cutting out) ‑‑ updating the Declaration, essentially we will be looking at how they apply to the current environment. And perhaps try to be more futuristic, forward looking in developing the application of the principles because there is a question to be asked about how often are we going to be updating and revising this. Just to say short answer, the document remains very relevant today and the principles are still quite valid. Thank you.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: Thank you very much. If I may invite you to share in the chat the link to this document and analysis on the five principles that you just mentioned because I think that would be very relevant.
And I see that we have one hand up. And then I'm inviting Dennis Redeker who is also one of the Moderators here to let us know if there is any question or comment in the chat space or if anyone else would like to take the floor. So with that, maybe Anriette Esterhuysen you have the floor.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you, Claudia. Thank you, Edetaen, for doing such an incredible job as you always do with your attention to detail.
Apologies for that link to the COVID paper not working. I will post the correct link. I just wanted to really I think Edetaen to some extent underplayed how successful it has been. And I think maybe that's because he is too modest. But I think what we really managed to do with the Declaration is to get Resolutions passed by the African Commission on human and people's rights.
And I think those Resolutions, once they have been passed, including the new Declaration on freedom of expression that Edetaen mentioned, that means that when countries are being reviewed, in terms of their observance and promotion of Human Rights, we can put these things on the table. I think in that sense it has been successful. Edetaen's organization has actually also undertaken strategic litigation inspired by the Declaration.
I agree with everything he said about whether it is still valuable or not. What is disturbing for me is I think we on the one hand having increased awareness of Human Rights, and the power of the Internet as a platform for strengthening those, in some instances I think we've also increased awareness of the need to repress the Internet as a tool for Human Rights. And the incidence of Internet shutdowns, for example, in Africa is far greater now than it was when we started this work.
And I think there is a challenge here for us in our advocacy, how do we actually counter this. How do we stop the Internet from being shut down or social media platforms being silenced during elections. So I think there is a real challenge there. And I think the other challenge that I find and maybe I will come back to that in my closing remarks is that I think, you know, this bridge, there are many bridges that need to be crossed. And I think one of the bridges is that there is a disconnect between advocacy for social justice, and advocacy for Human Rights in our space.
And it is a very, very sort of bridge. And I think as a movement that believes ultimately in both and I do sincerely believe that the Human Rights advocates share about social justice and social justice advocates also care about Human Rights, I think we have to find a way of bridging this divide and developing a common project in our advocacy and Internet Governance or we simply will not be effective.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: Thank you very much. Thank you also because you are actually pointing to one of my own concerns, and actually I do have a question unless we do have from the chat Dennis. We have comments or questions yet?
>> DENNIS REDEKER: So far we don't have a comment or a question yet. So I invite everyone to think about your questions now for the Q and A that starts now. Otherwise I will hand back the floor to you, Claudia.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: Yes. We still have five minutes before the end of this session. We wait for anyone else to maybe pose a question, I think it would have been very interesting to hear from Parminder Jeet Singh and the experience of the Just Net Coalition, not only engaging constituencies in the development of the document but keeping the document as an open space, precisely to bridge with those other movements that are calling and blaming for social justice and environmental justice and for issues.
So I do have a question here for Marianne and Edetaen also, related to how you see, what are the challenges building those bridges. Where do you see the challenge? Is it a matter of resources? Of space of? Languages, not having enough occasions to meet or what have been in the past maybe some spaces that we have allowed that bridge to be made and maybe we have those ‑‑ I'm just thinking about the social Forum but similar. So Mary Ann and Edetaen, in one minute answer each. And then I see that Michael has his hand up.
>> MARIANNE FRANKLIN: Thank you. Yes. There is the oral transcript, the transcript of conversations, there are the written evidence. It is about constantly reminding people of the connections that Anriette brought up as well. Human Rights and social justice are indispensably connected. Arguments about Human Rights are premised on an assumption that we are striving more better, more just world. People disagree how to get there. The shape of the bridge and style of materials used. Those bridges have to be crossed all the time so no one can ever let up. It is always a base one conversation, right up to conversations with people you have been working with for years. And reminding ourselves of fundamental terms and how much they matter. That's all for now.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: Thank you. In one minute to speak to this issue, Edetaen?
>> EDETAEN OJO: Yes. So I think that the challenges are quite many. But just to simply say that one of the challenges we are confronting is the reality of terrorism at the moment which a lot of Governments hide under to violate rights to restrict access to the Internet to shut down the Internet and so on. It is very difficult for ordinary people to understand that that response may not be the right response on the time, because sometimes really shutting down the Internet or restricting access to the digital space does not address the fundamental question but often used as the excuse. And people feel like they have to make a choice between the exercise and enjoyment of their rights. And the security that Government claims to be providing.
So that's often a very difficult challenge because people then say oh, but yeah, how else can we deal with the problem of terrorism. On the African continent also I think the problem of literacy and ignorance is quite stuck. Also makes advocacy extremely difficult because when people don't have an appreciation of the Human Rights standards and principles, then it is difficult to really make them understand that these are rights that they have and should be entitled to enjoy and exercise. There is the issue of access, sometimes linked to poverty. But also the absence of infrastructure, to support meaningful access.
So I mean we could go on and on about all of the challenges that confront this issue. But I think that I'm hopeful that with time we would overcome many of these challenges. Thank you.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: Thank you very much for pointing to concrete specific challenges. And as anticipated now I give the floor back to Michael. I wonder if you had a question or just resuming your role as an Emcee.
>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you. I have been told I need to speak closer to the mic. Sorry for everyone in the room. But I just wanted to invite anyone from the room as well just to ‑‑ if you have a question, if you have a comment that you would like to share, please you can come up to the mic over here and ask your question really trying to take advantage of the hybrid approach as much as we can. If no one has a question at any time, then Claudia, we can give it back to you if you have any closing remarks for this section. Or I can also close out the section and then hand off to Dennis.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: Please. I think I would just like to thank all the speakers. But, of course, we have more coming up. So certainly we can move on to the next. Thank you, Michael.
>> MICHAEL OGHIA: My pleasure. I just want to say as a quick note to close this section, you know, we ‑‑ anybody that's ‑‑ that's fighting for whether it is social justice, environmental rights, Human Rights, it's especially within the rise in authoritarianism and isolationism. I used to work, for instance, in the media development. You are looking at media freedom, year and year, media freedom around the world seems to be getting worse. It is easy to get sucked up in to the narrative. We are always losing the battles. If you look at the legal system, a lot of things that have happened around the world, there are developments and wins and wins don't necessarily get the same press that the losses do. It is a good reminder to stay resilient and continue to network with like‑minded people who are also striving to create a more fairer and just and rights respecting world.
And with that said, I think that is a good chance now to hand the floor over to our next Moderator for session 2, section 2, which is Dennis Redeker. Dennis, wonderful human. Over to you.
>> DENNIS REDEKER: Thank you so much. And thank you for also bringing in the room in Katowice so important to live this hybrid environment. The second session is focused on not the global transnational and international charter and documents but we are going to look at national initiatives that sometimes relate to these, that are sometimes right on these. But are very much important as well to bring in to the digital environment human rights considerations. Originally we have two speakers for this section, what is part of the section for this Round Table.
I see already Ana Neves being here. It is wonderful to have you. I'm not sure about Carlos. Are you here? Or in the room in Poland? I can't see that. So we are now starting off only with one person at the Round Table. But this should not be ‑‑
>> MARIANNE FRANKLIN: Sean, Sean perhaps you could speak for the Just Net Coalition. I don't know if this is appropriate. Sean is there. I have just heard from Parminder. Hi.
>> Sean: Yes. I just e‑mailed Parminder myself to see where he was. I am not prepared at this point. I can talk about the coalition and its objectives. How it works. Why it sees itself as necessary. I think in this context I think that Parminder is the one that would have to comment directly.
>> DENNIS REDEKER: We have this Round Table on national initiatives and the Just Net is not a national initiative. We see whether we have one or two speakers for this part. Otherwise we have a little bit more time in the Q and A and maybe you want to come in with some comment and maybe anyone else is in the room. Wolfgang is joining the room. We want to focus on national initiatives.
With that I want to introduce my only speaker in the Round Table Ana Neves who is an advisor to science of Portugal. And also a member of the Commission of Science, Technology and High Education in Portugal. She is an IGF veteran. She covered the Internet Governance on behalf of the Government of Portugal from 2009 to 2019. And today she will present the case of the Portuguese charter of Human Rights in the digital era. Welcome, Ana. Good to have you.
>> ANA NEVES: Thank you very much. Good morning to you all. I'm a member of the CSTD where the Resolution of ‑‑ on the WSIS is discussed. And so I'm a member of the role on behalf of Western Europe and other countries. And so it's very interesting to be back to the IGF and to be a part of this multi‑stakeholder approach and, et cetera, et cetera.
So...
>> DENNIS REDEKER: Very good to have you back. Yes. Now I'd like to talk about the Portuguese charter. My first question relates to ‑‑ it is a new charter on the block so to say. We have heard of some other charters. It is relatively new. So my first question would be how did it come about? How did the charter emerge in this environment?
>> ANA NEVES: Portugal held the presidency in the first half of this year, from January to June. During which the Lisbon Declaration on digital rights was approved in June 2021 as the kickstart for the future possible EU charter on digital rights to strengthen the human dimension in the digital ecosystem. So in preparing this debate at the European Union's level, Portugal approved in April this year the first charter of digital rights, which were signed in to law by the Portugal's President in May putting in line the Portuguese and European agendas on the joint commitment to the ethical dimension in the digital era, along with the vice partnerships with other countries and continents that share European principles and values. This is the context.
Why a Portuguese charter and how did it come about? So we were trying to do some work on this at the EU level. And then we did ours at a national level.
>> DENNIS REDEKER: Can you tell me a little bit because we have a little bit more time obviously because the second speaker is not present? Can you tell us a little bit more about the process about which you have developed this? Is this a process run by the ministry involving broader parts of the population, how was this ‑‑
>> ANA NEVES: No. It was a movement from the Portuguese Parliament together with the Government. And so it was a very interesting process. It was actually topdown. But it embeds on what people are asking. And so it was a very inclusive movement. And we are still doing something about it. But I will explain more about it in the second question that I think you have for me in explaining a little more on this charter. So it was really a topdown approach but with the inclusiveness of citizens.
And then we had the Government involved, of course. And at the end it is a law. It is the highest deployment that you can have in Portugal.
>> DENNIS REDEKER: Thank you for sharing that.
>> ANA NEVES: Approved by the Parliament and endorsed by the President of the Republic.
>> DENNIS REDEKER: Thank you. I would be interested in how you think the charter can make a difference in a national digital environment.
>> ANA NEVES: Yes, so here I would like to share with you some of the provisions that are in the charter. And that ‑‑ and raise some questions, but it was interesting because it was always on the freedom component.
So the charter establishes a set of innovative standards, regulating the digital, national environment, such as the rights and duty that apply both to relations between the states and citizens and relations between private individuals. It includes the need to coordinate the provisions of the charter with other legislation already approved or about to be approved as a result of various European initiatives, regulating the digital environment. Notably the General Data Protection Regulation, the law on electronic communication, e‑privacy, the ongoing transposition of directive on copyrights in a digital single market, proposal for European regulation for rules with Artificial Intelligence and the proposal for the Digital Services Act as well as the set of principles to promote and uphold European Union values in the digital space.
The charter creates the social tariff for Internet access services. It includes the prohibition of intentional interruption of Internet access which can only occur in statutory situations subject to special law. It includes the right to Net Neutrality ensuring the absence of discrimination regarding the transmission and reception of content via the internet. The provision of a right to a digital will, meaning this right covers the possibility for people to dispose of their content and personal data on digital platforms after their death.
Despite a significant number of ongoing European initiatives in the context of online content regulation this charter defines this information as any demonstrably false or misleading narrative creating, presenting and disseminated for economic advantage or deliberately deceiving the public and is likely to cause public harm, including a threat to Democratic political processes, public making processes and public goods.
Closely related to this information, the charter establishes that the state should create fact checking structures by registered media companies and quality seals by trustworthy entities in doubt with public utility status causing a lot of discussion. So this part caused a lot of discussion. And it is still ongoing.
The protection of platform users is also strengthened in the charter by establishing the obligation to provide clear and simple information on conditions of service provision when using platforms that enable information and communication flows. The charter also pays particular attention to the protection of minors. As far the means granted to individuals to protect their rights and legal situations under the charter besides the recognition of the possibility to resort to material means of enforcement of rights and legal situations, the right to resource to popular action is also established, which means that anyone can again put again go to the court and without any payment.
Finally, we note that non‑profit legal persons dedicated to defending the provisions of the charter, under the terms of the legislation applicable to culture entities. But due to its broad scope only further regulation and implementation of this role will clarify and many doubts raised by it.
So it is very good because we are having a very good discussion. It is always about freedom and the right to inform and the right ‑‑ and what this ‑‑ these fact checking structures means.
So here we are having a lot of discussion. And so ‑‑ and there will be some regulation to implement that. So the charter enters in to force on the 16th ‑‑ on the 18th of July this year.
So I hope I covered ‑‑
>> DENNIS REDEKER: This is absolutely comprehensive. Thank you so much.
>> ANA NEVES: I had some more time.
>> DENNIS REDEKER: This is great. I saw some questions in the Q and A. You pointed at the mechanisms by which this actually has impact. It is a law in Portugal. And it helps also with the ‑‑ with transposing EU regulations in to Portuguese, in to the Portuguese environment. And you told us also a little bit about ‑‑
>> ANA NEVES: To try to influence European Union as well.
>> DENNIS REDEKER: Exactly. I want to ask everyone who is sitting in the room in Poland, pose your questions in the chat. We are going to start with the Q and A in a second.
I would just before handing it over to the online Moderator ask one last question which you just alluded, what is the impact on the EU discourse? Portugal made this step in a way in the presidency in order to influence the EU discussion. How do you see this being successful or how do you see this progressing in the future?
>> ANA NEVES: I already mentioned that during the presidency of the Council of the European Union we make the Lisbon Declaration which was approved by the Council. And so it is the Lisbon Declaration on digital rights. And this was approved by the Council of the European Union in June. And it is foreseen to be like a kickstart for the future, possible EU charter on digital rights. But you know that nowadays. It is a bit difficult to discuss these rights in the EU's environment. But we have to push for it.
And when we ‑‑ we propose this Lisbon Declaration on digital rights, there was a very good discussion. It was possible to have it endorsed by all the Member States. But its annex about fundamental rights was not possible to be endorsed by all the Member States. But it is a process. It is a process. And with this Lisbon Declaration on digital rights, we affirmed the commitment of you in respecting Human Rights and fundamental freedoms in areas of new technology, data and digital service flows and use of personal data. And in the context of digital transition, that we are aware, might aggravate existing inequalities. We seized the opportunity to launch a Declaration on digital rights. And now we are discussing at EU's level the principles and the values of the world.
>> DENNIS REDEKER: Thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. So obviously the Lisbon charter was important. So starting with the Q and A now, I'm looking actually to Jacob who is there, the master of online Q and A for now. Have you had any questions? Otherwise we do have a hand up from Marianne who is very eager to say something. Jacob.
>> JACOB ODAME‑BAIDEN: Yes. Hello.
>> DENNIS REDEKER: Hi Jacob. We have two hands up here by Marianne. Three hands now. But I want to quickly give it to you for the online questions, if there are any.
>> JACOB ODAME‑BAIDEN: Sorry. I don't see any questions in the chat yet. So I think we can take those who have raised their hand now.
>> DENNIS REDEKER: Thank you so much.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: I'm sorry. If we have Marianne, Anriette and Wolfgang, and Sean is willing to say something about the Just Net Coalition. So we can actually have those comments that we didn't have before. Thank you.
>> DENNIS REDEKER: Absolutely, but I'd like to ask all speakers to limit how long they speak to about one minute.
>> MARIANNE FRANKLIN: Thank you. I just want to put on the table the ‑‑ straight from the booklet. It passed in to law 2014. The Micro Seville sets forth a comprehensive Bill of Rights for the Internet. It was based on a very broad national Civil Society consultation framework. And that's why the Micro Seville is so important. It also became law in 2014. The final version protects rights such as Net Neutrality and privacy and takes a strong stance against surveillance online and protects freedom of expression, have to take down content only when served with a court order.
It translates the principles of the Brazilian constitution to the online world. It can serve as an example of countries to take seriously the importance of the net facilitating development. So it is now in English and this is very important for others who don't speak Portuguese to get a sense of the actual law, one of the first laws based on Human Rights law and principles. I can't speak much more than that. Except it was a very inspiring process. And remains so.
>> DENNIS REDEKER: Thank you so much. This is very important. The other speaker on this panel is not able to make it, would have talked about Micro Seville. We have more time for Portuguese, very important document, but thank you very much to feeding this back in. Next on my list of speakers would be Anriette Esterhuysen.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks. Just to share a bit, you know, just general with APC, which is a membership organization, what we've seen and I think this is how the IRP charter and African Declaration can operate, it gets at a national level, Civil Society, particularly like cross‑sectorial Civil Society involved. And we've seen an increase in people using the universal periodic review process of the Human Rights Council. So it took a little bit of advocacy. And it was a good example of national advocacy connected with global advocacy. It was what we did in Geneva was to make the Human Rights Council aware and the Resolution was very important. People use something like the African Declaration to submit reports in to the universal periodic review process. So that's been very ‑‑ and we see that in APC members all over the world.
And then the other thing and I think Ana really illustrated this is legislation, using this as a submission on draft legislation. And quickly about South Africa, we considered doing a Micro Seville but in the end we are applying the constitution to new legislation. Sometimes it goes up. Sometimes it goes down. But we have a new cybercrimes act that's actually just been signed in to affect by the President. And that cybercrimes act is very influenced by this Human Rights perspective.
And we are actually quite happy with how it deals with criminalizing nonconsensual sharing of intimate images. It does criminalize certain types of malicious use of social media. But we feel the definitions are specific enough to be quite effective.
So that's an example. But none of this would have happened if we didn't have these tools like the IRP charter, like the African charter, because it just makes it simpler than working directly with Human Rights law. You have to work with Human Rights law. But this makes it easier to get there.
>> DENNIS REDEKER: Thank you for sharing that insight in to the work of APC and their work in South Africa. Next on the list we have Wolfgang Benedek, talked about the Council of Europe guide in a very quick one minute contribution. Thank you.
>> WOLFGANG BENEDEK: Explained that this guide was kind of initiated by our charter of the coalition. But the guide had a much more restrictive approach with regard to the rights covered. So it is focused on the main rights, like freedom of expression and data protection and so on. It had an educative perspective. It was translated in to many languages. So in that sense it was ‑‑ have a different approach.
What I realized when I looked at it again was that we were focusing on blocking and filtering, but what was not so much there was Ana just mentioned, like the issue of disinformation, hate speech, et cetera. This is something which we brought up in our second edition of the book, some of you might have seen which I did together with Idias, which is on freedom of expression on the Internet and it came out last year.
That was an update to this new development. What I sometimes realize there are new efforts for such list of rights, documents, which do not take sufficiently existing materials in to account. For example, in Germany, they started with a kind of charter of digital rights. And not a feeling that they had looked at what has been done before properly. I don't know if you mentioned the Italian effort a couple of years ago. That was one of the first ones in the Italian Parliament. So we have this national efforts. And regional ones and universal ones, maybe about 50 different tools in the meantime.
And I think Mateus has written an Article on some kind of a comparison some time ago. But what I miss a bit is that they inform each other properly and that they are taking care of when you do new and renewed efforts. And certainly now the issue is as we both discussed repeatedly now, in the IGF, to update these two new challenges. Thank you.
>> DENNIS REDEKER: Thank you very much for that comment. If I may quickly ADD some advertisement for the work of the digital constitution of network. I have seen in the chat, you just mentioned there are so many documents. We have not Portuguese which is not included yet but there is a big database of more than 200 documents. Some of the guiding documents published by the Council of Europe and UNESCO and other international organizations that is I think ‑‑ that was a link just posted somewhere in the chat where you can go and check out where the document you have been working on is included. Hopefully so. If not, do tell the members of the digital constitution network that cohost this workshop. One document that's in there is the daily Declaration and I would like to hand it over to Sean.
>> Sean: I will be brief. I have no idea what Parminder was going to say. And I can't speak on behalf of the Just Net Coalition, but I can speak from my experience of the Just Net Coalition and being an active member in it. And I think the starting point of the Just Net Coalition is that, first of all, the freedom of expression data protection, this kind of thing, these issues, these Human Rights is extremely important. But it is important to exercise the other side of Human Rights. And political rights, economic and social rights. And that sometimes they don't get the same level of attention in the bigger picture, in the processes that are going on here.
The Just Net Coalition began with that proposal and then after the daily Declaration it produced the digital Just Net Digital Justice manifesto. Now that was ‑‑ I put a link to it there, that was a pretty well consultative process in producing it. I think it is a pretty sound document. But to be honest with you as you yourself mentioned there, Dennis, there are hundreds of Declarations. There are so many, they just keep reproducing.
Now in this session we've talked about some of the important, well grounded ones that are actually being used and these are vital. They should go on. But working on Declarations is not going to get us all that far. So Just Net at the moment has moved in to loosely Justice 2.0. And this is a project, it is a funded program and an initiative. And what it is doing is bringing together actors in the economic and social rights area, international NGOs and putting them together with experts in the areas that we're talking about here, in terms of the Internet, in terms of AI, in terms of AI governance, all of these issues, because these sectors such as agriculture, health or trade, and labor, media, they know that the world is changing.
In fact, the rug is being pulled from underneath their feet a lot of the time and yet it is very difficult for in some of these sectors for them to appreciate what is really going on in the Internet and AI governance world. I'm in my apartment in snowy Katowice. I haven't made it up there today. It is so complicated to work out what the hell is going on and who is what and how do you influence and what buttons do you press.
So for these sectors what they really need is some kind of trustworthy interlocutor but to develop their own principles. And the idea of the JNC 2.0 is these sectors are, each of them working on what are the core principles that they think would apply within their own area around things like data ownership, all the key issues that are coming up, data commons, all of this stuff.
And then towards the end of the program later in the year, to get them together. And actually there was a session on Monday that I was involved in myself, where for the first time I met a number of the actors as well in that activity. But later in the year to get them together to produce very much a ground up set of principles. So hopefully it wouldn't be yet another set of these things. But it will be one that would have the backing as well of some key international NGOs who would have worked collectively on and not come to a full consensus. But will have come to a much deeper understanding than they began with the potential of the buttons that you do have to press. But also on the principles that really are going to have to underline this whole process if it is to move forward. So it is only a first step, but I think it is a useful step. And that's the main focus of the Just Net Coalition at the moment. Thanks very much.
>> DENNIS REDEKER: Thank you so much for sharing. This is a great insight and speaks to many questions of the charters out there. I have a hand up from Claudia. And we are at the end of this Q and A. And not so many questions actually for Ana, but I think she also talked already comprehensively about the very interesting Portuguese example that is set, put in to law. Claudia.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: It is a very brief comment and follow‑ up to what Dennis was saying because I think it is relevant to what Sean just describes in terms of upcoming. I think the collection of documents that sits in the website of the Digital Constitutionalism network may actually be an interesting resource, even for developing this kind of dialogue and the conversation between different groups. Also because of the documents have been coded according to themes and topics. And so different constituencies. It is just a point for Sean and we look forward to following closely the process. Extremely interesting. Thank you so much. I need to move on to the next session.
>> DENNIS REDEKER: Yeah.
>> JACOB ODAME‑BAIDEN: Thank you. Thank you very much. So I think so far we have looked at this IGF led Human Rights documents. We have looked at how they came up and impact. We have seen examples from. All these digital Human Rights frameworks in the national context. But this session we are going to basically look at the future, the digital rights future. We are going to look at it from, you know, local initiatives, what can basically be done to ensure that we are able to advance our local initiatives, concerning Human Rights online. And at this session my confirmed speakers are Aik from the Coalition for Digital Rights. And then we have Raashi who is an IRPC Steering Committee member and represents the youth constituency.
So basically I have two questions, but I will lump them to one. So one is that how do IGF led documents support local initiatives and their commitment to advance Human Rights online? And then linking that to what else can be done to support local initiatives and help advance digital rights, digital Human Rights?
So in fact, any of my speakers can look at this briefly and then share your thoughts based on the work that you are doing on the ground. So Aik or Raashi, you have the floor.
>> RAASHI SAXENA: Thanks. I wanted to check if you can hear me.
>> JACOB ODAME‑BAIDEN: Yes.
>> RAASHI SAXENA: Perfect. I hope that everyone is doing well. It is a very, very difficult question to consolidate in to two minutes. I'm going to try to be as ‑‑ I'm going to try to give my perspective. I think the IGF is a document, a great educational perspective. I do come from the Global South where I still see that the legislation is lagging behind on a lot of aspects. And I come from India where we have a strong implementation issue. So I think the IGF documents has made a lot of people aware about how your Human Rights can actually be translated in to just words. A lot of aspects are allowed or seen as okay without taking your personal consent.
So I think one of the big things that are missing in our digital lives is to ensure the same degree that we enjoy in our real life interactions. But the problem from a technical standpoint, we don't have a technical language to define what we want to protect. So we lack taxonomy related to it. Even if you look at GDPR it is a great example of legislation. It doesn't implement any details unless you hire really expensive consultancy and review your code and declare them as compliant. People ‑‑ big tech companies are okay with paying those millions and millions of fines without complying.
So we lack the technical language that we are unable to engage with who are the front liners of the domain which is the technologists. You need people to understand, you know ‑‑ understand because we need to make sure that we have a commonly accepted definition of, you know, universal digital rights because we can all have these conversations with Global North and Global South. But if you don't have a commonly understandable definition that you can understand and embrace then we are always going to be a part of the problem than the solution. So some of the things that I have done locally or rather I'm doing with the IO Foundation we define something called the universal ‑‑ the UDDR. So it is the Universal Declaration of Digital Rights where we think that we need to start engaging citizens and, you know, helping frontline workers in the sense technologists as a next generation of Human Rights defenders.
So we look at proposing three elements of this. We look forward to promoting a data centric approach to digital rights which consists of a legal document, a technical standard. And we will call a digital rights software development kit. I'm happy to go more in to details but I'm not sure if I'm running out of time or not.
>> JACOB ODAME‑BAIDEN: Thank you very much. I think you shared your perspective given the time that we have. So I will turn to Aik.
>> AIK VAN EEMEREN: That's the thing with Dutch names. I had everyone. In two minutes, that's always complicated, but I think the best part to mention, I don't know if Marianne Franklin remembers, I think that Minda does, a few years ago at Moss fest, when a group of people from several cities came together during ‑‑ in a small room next to the Moss fest event in London, everyone had these wild ideas, like cities, we can make change and we can do stuff. And then suddenly a lot of people have been thinking about these topics for years and years and had frameworks and well thought through concepts. I think that's bottom line it. We can share a lot of links on all the documents who are there. But in the end it is about meeting people ‑‑ you just met. But you think okay, I can trust them because they have well thought this through. We can copy/paste and translate it to our view or our local issues.
So that's bottom line it. Since then, we formed a series coalition for digital rights. If you read the Portuguese charter, I'm pretty impressed with sort of similar. Different set of numbers and principles, but in the end it is the same charter but different and tailored to problems in cities.
And I think the main focus we had in the last few years is not ‑‑ is not only working or specifying the charter. It is more about what can we do. I would like to give you a few examples because that's ‑‑ it is sort of this butterfly effect. You have no idea what's actually happening the moment you start one of these sessions. One of those principles of the charter in the end could result in a lot of different projects within the series coalition. I'm putting some in the chat.
An example last week we ‑‑ I'm not talking only about the whole series coalition but, for example, in Amsterdam, every censor you have to register. Together with Helsinki, many worked an AI registry. Every algorithm in our sphere, in the near future, hopefully in public space has to be registered. Those are really concrete examples where the charter in the end led to. It is not only a local perspective. It is real people's lives problems and solutions and turning for big as well.
One example is an AI procurement document, we wrote every algorithm, we procured has to align with the checked one. Probably will be adopted by the European Commission. So in the end, bridging very abstract principles to concrete solutions leads to well, simple examples which are being copy/pasted and improved by other cities and in this case European as well.
Now I'm getting some ‑‑ because of time some examples from my city. But the coalition is now 55 cities worldwide working on this together with weekly workshops and meetings, webinars among these cities.
So before you think it is only about the charter it is about the moral support you can give knowing that there are more and more people working on this. And that's the last example I would like to give. Two months ago 13 deputy mayors from major cities in Europe came together during COVID discussing what should be the topics to focus on. The charter gave people confidence to deliver on. Give support to these politicians at our level. So we have got issues here. And we should tackle this. And it is definitely larger than cities. But this is what we can do at our skill. It helps giving that back again. And that's what happens.
The last thing I would like to share is that we ‑‑ we went to a more detailed framework and it is the 0.7 version. So please contribute. Because today it is the ‑‑ the Human Rights day. So today we ‑‑ 12 o'clock we will send some content. This is the preview. But if you translate this to more policy framework, translate in to more policy framework what are the things that we have to do. That's it.
>> JACOB ODAME‑BAIDEN: Thank you very much. I think you really shared a lot of perspectives. Thank you for sharing the documents. Thank you, Raashi, as well. Because of time, but I would give about two minutes to Claudia to share her brief presentation.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: I realized that we are very late. Sarah from the University of Pado, maybe in just one minute to say something about the experience they have had with the charter of human rights and principles. Very, very briefly.
>> Yes. Thank you very much for the invitation. My name is Sarah. And together with my colleagues Delar we created an advocacy campaign with the goal of spreading the knowledge of the charter of Human Rights and principles of the Internet. To create the skeleton of the project we took in to consideration the ten most essential Internet rights. And we tried to reach a broader population of educating the public about their rights on the Internet.
Our campaign consisted of a public Instagram page that created and traded. The posts are drawings of pictures that reflect their principle. And under each and every one of them we wrote short descriptions of the principle itself.
We chose to use Instagram because it allows us to reach a lot of people and pretty much free. And also we find it powerful to use the social media to warn people about their Internet safety.
Because we are such a diverse group, ourselves, I'm from Italy. Delar is from Germany and Hebrew is Turkish, we decided to translate the description of principles in the languages we speak, Italian, Spanish, English, Turkish and German. We wanted to spread the message of ten principles to as many people as we possibly could.
So we decided to be language inclusive. And to maintain a fresh and easy way of writing the captions. And we also ‑‑ that's also why the feed of our Instagram looks as static as possible because we want to attract as many young people as we possibly can. The target of the population as I said are young people because we think that we need to be educated on what our rights are on the Internet. So this project is a young take on such an important matter. Made specifically for young people by young people. I will share the link to the Instagram page on the chat. And I hope everything is clear.
>> CLAUDIA PADOVANI: Thank you. We already have the link. So we give back the floor to Minda to close the session, I think you are the last speaker. Thank you so much.
>> MINDA MOREIRA: Thank you. I would like to hear from Anriette first. So I would like ‑‑ I don't have much to add. Just organizing this session and sharing the coalition. And you have said so much and a lot of the things that I would like to share with you. So I would like to go straight to Anriette. Thank you very much.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Minda, and everyone else. I think we ‑‑ Minda asked me to reflect on what this all means and how the IGF ecosystem fits to this and the other way around. I think we have seen this firstly, we should celebrate, this IGF centered process has grown and has had a ripple effect at a sectorial level, national level and regional level. I think sometimes we are criticized as Civil Society or as rights advocates for developing new charters, new documents. But I think that's part of the movement molding process. And it is an expression of the kind of bottom‑up character of what we believe when we still believe and I hope some of us still believe that this kind of bottom‑up processes and Internet Governance do have some power. I think the challenges are how do we connect it. How do we come together. And how do we bring that distributed advocacy and analysis and action and partnership, particularly when we start looking at policy frameworks.
Listening to Aik and talking about that and I think several people made that emphasis, that we need to link the rights frameworks to policy frameworks, in order to have impact and that creates monitoring frameworks as well.
So and I see all of that emerging. So Minda, I think really for me the challenge here is as we said earlier, how do we build bridges between the social justice approach and the Human Rights approach. How do we find that commonality which I think most of us believe is at the center of our work. And there are political tensions, yes, and conceptual tensions but can we work through them. And can we use the IGF Dynamic Coalition on Internet rights and principles as a space to share our learning and share our progress and have critical debate as well. I believe we can.
And I hope that the Just Net Coalition with its new initiative which is looking at issues against sectorial Civil Society lenses that it will be part of this process.
So I don't think it is easy. And I sense at this IGF and broadly as well in social and political movements cynicism about the multi‑stakeholder approach. I think cynicism is only useful if it allows you to be critical and analytical and based on that reconstruct. And I urge people not to give up on this IGF space. Flawed as it is, it does bring us together and I do believe if we use it effectively we can still achieve meaningful practices, partnerships across stakeholder groups, like the work we heard of with mayors in the city's network as well as maintain really a Civil Society critical thinking rights and social justice based approach. Back to you, Minda.
>> MINDA MOREIRA: Thank you. Thank you very much, everyone, for joining this session today. It was really, really inspiring. I know that we are running over time. So I will just ‑‑ I would like to say that cochairing this coalition over the last four years has been really inspiring for me to see the work that the IGF community has been doing and many other initiatives to raise awareness and to support Human Rights online. I would like to thank everyone that joined us today, especially our speakers and Moderators, Emcee, and Rapporteur. And everyone that joined in the discussion as well as participants.
And I hope to see you again soon, and that we have all the chance to collaborate and to work together. Because I think that the only way we can make a difference is by joining forces. And this is very important ‑‑ was a very important session to show that there is so much being done, and sometimes you just need to start connecting the dots, rather than to start from scratch every time you want to do something. So I am really happy that the digital network has resource pages where you can all go, we can all see what has been done. And we can all see what is lacking. So I look forward to working with you all. Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you.