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 all 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.
>> XIANHONG HU: Good morning, everyone. Warm greetings from Katowice to all of our online participants and speakers. I'm having a strong panel of speakers here in the room, and you can also see Anriette has warned me not to repeat inviting 500 speakers to IGF because we had a three-hour no-break session on day zero to promote indicators. Today is a follow up. I do refrain from inviting another 500 but we have 15 speakers, so really strong supporters and we cannot really miss any of you.
So first of all, I have the honor to invite UNESCO Assistant Director General Tawfik Jelassi with us online. He was with us yesterday in Katowice. Now he's in Paris but still joining us from the screen. Hi, Mr. ADG, are you all well on your trip?
>> TAWFIK JELASSI: All right. It's very late after midnight last night, but I'm okay.
>> XIANHONG HU: Oh, thank you for making time. I know you arrive in Paris very light and now join us so early. So could you please address some welcoming remarks to all of our partners and friends here of the Dynamic Coalition for ROAM.
>> TAWFIK JELASSI: Great pleasure. Good morning, everybody, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, whether you're physically in Katowice or connected online, I'm very pleased to welcome you this morning to this session, which will cover a very important topic. Obviously, the Dynamic Coalition on the Internet universality and at Katowice, the team of UNESCO has already had extensive sessions, including a three-hour session on Monday in which they participated which focused also on the Internet universality indicators and the work of UNESCO, in particular, around the ROAM framework, ROAM means human rights open accessible and multistakeholder approach to the Internet and to digital technologies. It was adopted in -- it was first launched by UNESCO in October 2020, a bit over a year ago at the 15th edition of the Internet Governance Forum. This work of UNESCO is a contribution because we believe it's very important to have a common objective by placing the Internet governance at the center of the international agenda, and we are very glad that we, UNESCO, over the last 15 years, we have been very much involved and a strong supporter of IGF and contributing with some content like the topic of this morning.
So, the ROAM principles were actually adopted by the UNESCO General Conference back in 2015, so 6 years ago to the day almost. And this echoes the relevance on a global stage of such an approach in order to inform policymakers and decision-makers about the importance of a human rights-based governance model for the Internet but also beyond for other digital technologies.
So, the concept here of Internet universality and the ROAM framework are tangible outputs of the work that you have been carrying out with the IGF community and today I would like to take this opportunity to thank all stakeholders and Members of the Internet Governance Forum community for their contributions, for their inputs, and also the national commissions for UNESCO and beyond for having adopted our Internet Universality Indicators and ROAM framework to conduct a national assessment of their digital strategy and their digital readiness. This is, obviously, a major goal of putting together this type of framework.
The Dynamic Coalition on the Internet Universality is a result of our joint work. It is an excellent Forum to share experiences, to bring to the floor best practices, and obviously to stimulate and inspire each other about how we can go forward in terms of adoption and use of the indicators and ROAM Principles. So, the Coalition clearly aims to promote such a free, open exchange among ourselves, and it does provide a multistakeholder space for dialogue and also for cooperation.
So, let me say that today to have about 34 countries from all over the world that have adopted and used the Internet Universality Indicators and the ROAM Framework to conduct a national assessment. The very first country having done that is Brazil. The very latest having completed that is Germany from a couple of months ago with a publication about the way they went about using these indicators to conduct a national assessment. Other countries are between the start and finish in using these indicators for their own national assessment; and clearly, we believe that this approach helps countries to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
There are many parties that have contributed and they want to explicitly this morning acknowledge them, in particular German and Polish national commissions for UNESCO, the Internet Society, the Council of Europe, ICANN, the Regional Center of Studies for Development, CTIC Association for Progressive Communication and African ICT Commission.
Going forward we believe that this Dynamic Coalition will continue to strengthen the synergies and partnerships among the IGF stakeholders because we do share the same goal, we do share the same purpose of how to create a humanistic and inclusive digital space that can benefit all, and we would like to push for this both at the local, regional, national levels, but also internationally.
So, we are here this morning to hear from our partners and coalition members to hear from them to seek input and recommendations going forward as far as the Internet universality indicators are concerned and the ROAM framework is concerned. Again, let's keep in mind these are important, I would say more than tools. These are important levers that frame discussions, that maybe guide national assessments, and ultimately could shape forming an inclusive humanistic digital environment.
So, in closing, I would like to invite all participants present this year at the IGF in Katowice to join our Dynamic coalition not only to contribute to the development but also to benefit from what it offers in terms of knowledge, experience, and expertise. So, let's join forces. It's only together that we can make it happen. We must work together in order to make our voice heard and in order to bring about impact on the ground. So, I'm confident that the discussions that you are about to start this morning will inform the way forward and will provide us, not only the continuous encouragement but also the inspiration to make the work of our Dynamic Coalition more meaningful and more impactful. Thank you for your kind attention and I wish you a fruitful session.
>> XIANHONG HU: Thank you so much, Mr. ADG, for your passionate message and highest support. This year with your presence, we do witness that our UNESCO Internet universality principles and ROAM indicators are really roaming to Katowice and also looking at the entire IGF. Now I wonder, are you going with us for some time or leaving soon?
>> TAWFIK JELASSI: I have to go to another event. I'm sorry, I would have liked to listen to the speakers and benefit from that; but unfortunately, I have to go to another event.
>> XIANHONG HU: Yeah. Perhaps we can take a group picture before ADG leaves in the room and then take a hybrid picture with you. So may all of our participants in the room come to the front and all the speakers on the Zoom to turn on your camera. We can take a very innovative photo on the first day. I'm sorry. Everybody in the room. You should be part. We have a photographer here. You have can take a picture of us. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Where is my agenda? Thank you, everybody, for dancing a little bit at the very beginning. Now I'm very honored to introduce the first speaker representing German Commission for UNESCO, Dr. Lutz Moller, the Deputy Secretary-General. Yes, we see you clearly. We hear you. Please, the floor is yours.
>> LUTZ MOLLER: Dear colleagues, dear friends, and in particular friends in Poland since the IGF is in Katowice. I don't have to tell you how important it is that we speak about the human rights based of the Internet ecosystem because the rapid development of the ecosystems and sometimes uncontrolled development of ecosystems is one of the key challenges that our societies globally face today. We have to ensure in these ecosystems that their development is human rights based, open, just, diverse, inclusive, participatory, empowering, and promoting human well-being. This is one of the key insights of the new German Government which has come into power yesterday. The new German Chancellor was elected on the day of yesterday and the new German Coalition Agreement is really focusing to a very great extent on a new modern development of Internet digital ecosystems for the just and well-being of our societies.
And in this context, it's really, really, really important to have the UNESCO ROAM-X principles at home and German is the fifth Member State and fifth from the Global North that completely utilized this instrument which is the only instrument available globally to appropriately measure whether national Internet policy making and implementation of such policies and practice live up to the ambition of openness, of human rights, of accessibility and multistakeholder approach. We have these UNESCO Internet universality indicators since a couple of years, and wherever they have been applied, they deliver brutally honest evidence, whether a particular UNESCO Member State's policy and practice, whether they are really human rights based, whether they are really open, whether they really allow access to all and govern by a multistakeholder participation approach.
Therefore, in Germany, the German federal foreign office supported the idea that the German coalition for UNESCO applied these indicators to German Internet policymaking, politically and financially. We worked together over the last one and a half years with one of the leading research institutes in Germany on this issue, the Likeness Institute for Media Research or Hanbredo Institute to conduct the study. Indeed, what we have found out is in Germany despite having a very high level of development in terms of freedom of the press, freedom of expression in our country, as well as to access to information, there is still a lot of need for action, and we have found out that the urgent call of the ROAM-X principles that wherever action is taken, that this is based on human rights and that also there is still room to improve our action here in Germany.
For example, there is still insufficient legal regulation in Germany on how personal rights, that is the right to privacy on online platforms, can be protected without restricting freedom of expression. Another example, there is still insufficient Internet access to jobless persons or the elderly here in Germany.
Now, none of these insights from applying the Internet Universality Indicators to Germany by itself is entirely surprising. However, the joint application of these more than 100 indicators at the same time, applying them to a country and then all of sits policymaking and in all the Internet policy really provides for the first time a very holistic and integral view, and therefore, of course, allows for much more decisive actions afterwards. Therefore, we have seen huge interest in the results of our study. We have presented them in Parliament, we have presented them in many different fora for political, administrative, and scientific stakeholders at all levels, and we have met huge interest because in such an important field as Internet policymaking, it is not sufficient to focus on one area alone, just focusing, for example, on the on the access of people with migration background, but we need an integral approach in order to have really sincere action and to really improve Internet policymaking for the benefit of our societies.
Therefore, the German Commission for UNESCO as well as that our partner the Likeness Institute for Media Research, both of us joined the Dynamic coalition on the Internet Universality indicators from the start to share our experience and to share good practice. We also offer our support to other parties and Member States to enable them to apply the Internet Universality Indicators in their countries in the future, and we look forward to working together with you on the evaluation of the IOI in the upcoming years and keep them up to date with the upcoming developments. We're looking forward to working with you and sharing our experience. In summary, our experience has been fantastic. Thank you very much for your attention.
>> XIANHONG HU: Thank you so much, Dr. Moller. I also would like to congratulate you and Germany for having conducted such an excellent report. I actually carry the German report with me throughout the IGF, you know, in Katowice. Many, many stakeholders and countries are asking for copy of your report, and also many countries are also expressing their interest by being inspired by Germany's assessment also by being convinced by the impact you have through this assessment. Thank you so much. The next speaker is Anriette Estherhuysen, and Madam is representing IGF MAG and also virtually the Chair and Former Executive Director of Association for the Progressive Communication, and why I mention this is because APC was implementing partner for UNESCO to have developed this 303 universality indicators. And so Anriette, please take the floor and yeah. I have a microphone here.
>> ANRIETTE ESTHERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Xianhong and Lutz. It's really a pleasure to speak after you because I want to refer to what you're saying. Firstly, my role is to be the project manager for the development of the indicators that was my role, and I want to say two things about the indicator development process. It was really intensive. UNESCO committed to developing these indicators in a very bottom-up consultative way, and I think that's actually one of the reasons why it's so successful. The development started with the principles, so even when it came to identifying the ROAM principles, that was done in a consultative way, and I think they are human rights based, and I think as Dr. Moller said, they're the only instrument we really have that is human rights based, but it's not just human rights based and it wasn't just developed in a mechanical sense of someone looking at material of a human rights based approach but it was developed from consultation with the stakeholders, so it's fit to purpose.
I think why I am personally so proud to have been part of this and to see you use the IGF as a platform is that I think in the whole multistakeholder approach to Internet governance, we have this very powerful tool that can help us do Internet governance better, that can increase accountability of states and of corporations that create more opportunities for the voices of excluded people and groups to influence policy and practice. But we also have this rhetoric, the multistakeholder rhetoric which often becomes so powerless in a way, it becomes so polite, that I think we often stop using the potential of the multistakeholder approach to create better governance because we're not applying it. And I'm going to quote Dr. Moller here. We're not applying it in a way that gives us that brutally honest evidence that we need to be able to confront what's not working well and then make changes to address those problems. I think the indicators do that. I think they move beyond rhetoric. They provide learning, evidence, and action. I think that you use the IGF as a platform for sharing that learning and finding new partners that want to participate in applying the indicators, and it's not only really using the IGF for what it was intended for. I think you could also be setting a precedent. I'd like, for example, to see groups that are monitoring the application of voluntary norms or the norms of the group of governmental experts on responsible behavior of states in Cyberspace to do their monitoring and learning collaboratively and bring it back to the IGF.
So, I really want to thank you for doing this because I think you've given us an example of how this multistakeholder approach can have teeth and can generate positive action going forward.
>> XIANHONG HU: Thank you, Anriette. May I follow up with you for another question. You know, at IGF the same as Internet United for UNESCO, ROAM principle is really the basis that the Internet can be united, and now looking to the future we are looking forward to implementing the UN SDGs Digital Collaboration Roadmap and creating new digital global compact so how do you think the ROAM-X principles indicator in time can be instrumental to this future initiative? Thank you.
>> ANRIETTE ESTHERHUYSEN: Thanks, Xianhong. I think firstly, when we say Internet united, I think it actually means that we know that the Internet is not united and we would like it to be. I think it's an inspirational phrase, but I think we also need to look at what is beyond and behind it.
I think the ROAM-X principles because they're human rights based, they link to established international human rights standards, they translate those into the Internet, translate the multistakeholder governance into the Internet context, I think they provide the material that we need for the global digital compact, and I think your work with Member States develops the kind of bottom-up, or let me say with Member States but at a multistakeholder level, the support that we need for a global digital compact which is supported and which has a smooth path that actually reflects these fundamental principles, because in fact, what do we want to see in the global digital compact? We want to see a reflection of the ROAM-X principles, the ROAM principles and we want to see a recognition that the Internet is a common good and should be governed as that. I think you've done the ground work that can really inform and build into the consultative process that I hope will lead into a compact that reflects these principles and that uses the IGF community, including the national and regional IGFs, and that can actually, I hope, become a very significant milestone in shifting how we look at Internet governance globally.
>> XIANHONG HU: Thank you so much for such a strategic guidance. We're definitely moving in that direction. The next speaker I'm really super pleased to introduce is Constance Bommelaer, the Area Vice President Institutional Relations Empowerment from Internet Society. Constance, are you with us?
>> CONSTANCE BOMMELAER: Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be part of this important discussion at the IGF. And I regret not to be able to be there with you in person, but this is certainly work that at the Internet Society we have been supporting since its inception. And I'd like to go on to perhaps a little bit what Anriette was saying, it's very important this initiative because it provides the digital community, the Internet community, policymakers, leaders, with tools. It's not just a list of principles and beautiful statements, buff it gives us an opportunity at the local and regional level to be able to assess progress, to monitor where things are in terms of the openness of the Internet, the respect of multistakeholder principles, the importance of having rights-based approaches, and I can say that at the Internet Society, the reason why we felt that this initiative was so close to our heart is that the principles, ROAM, are very close to the principles that we support. For instance, thinking about access, we have been investing in developing community networks, IXPs, all sorts of initiatives to provide access to people. The multistakeholder principle is, again, something that we have been promoting throughout external engagement, throughout conversations with governments, but also supporting participation of other stakeholders, Civil Society, technical community, and others as we believe that unless there is meaningful prior participation, this whole concept of multistakeholder governance is going to be an empty shell and that's also why we support capacity building and we're sending people to the IGF. We support e-learning activities. Again, unless there are these concrete steps, participation will not be meaningful and multistakeholder will be an empty concept.
So, we're very pleased to see that this initiative is now present, active, alive in different countries. We're very happy this year to be supporting some of these local assessments, and I think my colleague Dawit will say a few words about that, including in Africa but also in other regions. It's very encouraging to see that there is now a bit of a movement around the principles promoted by Internet universality, and we feel that the team at UNESCO has been doing a wonderful job really leading on this activity and really making a real value proposition to the Internet community with a concept, but also tools where very strong principles are embedded and something that people can really support and unite around. Thank you very much to the entire team and the Internet Society is thrilled to be part of this initiative. Thank you.
>> XIANHONG HU: Thank you, Constance, for Internet Society and also for your personal support. Without the Internet Society, in the ROAM when we developed the principles, we wouldn't have the openness aspect that is so strongly embedded in it. Thank you.
The next speaker that I'm going to introduce is Suada Hadzovic representing ICANN-GAC Human Rights Working Group Chair. Are you with us?
>> SUADA HADZOVIC: Yes, I am. Can you hear me?
>> XIANHONG HU: Yeah. I see and hear you perfectly. The floor is yours.
>> SUADA HADZOVIC: Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you for giving me here the opportunity to present the work of GAC Human Rights International Law Working Group and our cooperation with UNESCO. Firstly, I would like to give a brief description on the working group which I am co-chair. The ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee, GAC, represents the voice of governments and inter-governmental organizations in ICANN world stakeholder structure. So, the GAC has 179 governments as members and 38 inter-governmental organizations as observers. There are 7 working groups in GAC, and one of these working groups is the GAC Working Group on human rights and international law, and our focus is as the aspects of ICANN's policies and procedures relates to human rights and relevant international law.
So, what is our current focus or work? On November 2019, the ICANN Board approved the recommendations outlined in the final report on the COSP community working group on enhancing ICANN accountability a workstream 2, so this workstream 2 final report is seen as a big step ahead in cooperation of human rights in ICANN's various practices and with 160 recommendations from various aspects ranging from diversity to transparency, and this workstream 2 report is divided into the 8 issues.
So, at ICANN 69 meeting held in October 2020, our working group on human rights and international law agreed upon leading the implementation of a recommendation 1 of diversity and 3 human rights core value, so as we know UNESCO and ICANN have a long-standing cooperation. If we talk about the GAC specifically, UNESCO is a GAC observer and also a GAC human rights international working group member.
Finally, ICANN is a member of the Dynamic Coalition on Internet universality indicators, so logically and recently in our working group together with the GAC working group on underserved regions, started cooperation with UNESCO in work on the implementation of workstream 2 recommendations, particularly on providing a draft definition of the diversity from GAC perspective 6789.
In September UNESCO presented the report on the Internet universality indicators to our working group and underserved working group in order to exchange views and discuss whether the Internet universality indicators should be considered within the GAC workstream, and also of course we need because we need UNESCO because in the context of the workstream 2 recommendations on diversity, the ROAM-X indicators may contribute to ICANN's work on the matter to the extent that the unique package or 31 ROAM-X indicators in multistakeholder participation on the one hand broadly measures the inclusiveness of the national Internet governance in terms of involving diverse sectors, marginalized groups like women, youth, people with disabilities, and so on. And then on the other hand, it contains several ICANN syndicated indicators to measure to what extent ICANN processes and meetings are participated by diverse countries and stakeholders. Of course, very importantly we have accessibility category in the report, the ROAM-X framework has a number of indicators to assess this domain name registration and diversity of access and multilingualism in terms of both domain names and local content in certain countries. and so on and so on because we have ROAM-X framework with 79 cross-cutting indicators concerning gender, security, and legal aspects of the Internet. In this regard and last ICANN 72 meeting in October 2021, together our working group of human rights international law and observed region together with UNESCO provided draft resolution on the diversity perspective, and once uniform the tradition for the diversity elements having been finalized, we need -- between 6 and 18 months to implement these recommendations and a lot of work remains for us but we're convinced we'll do it successfully because we have a great team and UNESCO is a great member of this team. Thank you 6789.
>> XIANHONG HU: Thank you for pointing out so many indicators and we're so happy that ICANN with help with the ROAM-X work. The next is Alexandre Barbosa the head of CETIC. Hi, Alexandre you saw your email from a thousand miles away. Could you please take the floor? I can't hear you. Now I can hear you and see you. Perfect.
>> ALEXANDRE BARBOSA: Thank you. Good morning. Good morning and good afternoon, dear colleagues. It's a great pleasure to join you in this Dynamic Coalition session. This discussion is very dear to my heart because we have been in very beginning of this process, and I would like to start by acknowledging, Xianhong, the fact that the Internet universality, ROAM-X indicators, became a reference for Member States willing to assess the level of Internet development in their countries, and this means that the ROAM-X framework has achieved in a very short period of time, I would say, a really wide recognition from a broad range of stakeholders.
And part of this recognition comes from the fact that it is based on human rights principles as it was already highlighted by my previous colleagues. And the IUI has already proven to be an important tool for improving policy implementation by several Member States.
And having said that, I would like to add my voice to the Dynamic Coalition of ROAM-X to support the Internet universality project and reaffirm our willingness to enhance collaborations of national multistakeholder for advancing the human rights online in digital cooperation at the national and regional levels.
The IUI indicators are broad in scope, as all of us know, and it is also robust and relevant to measure not only the Internet development itself, but it is a fundamental framework to understand how countries are dealing with the digital transformation. In this regard, I would like to say that the framework is of high policy relevance since it constitutes an excellent tool for measuring existing gaps and ensuring that human rights and ethics on the digital environment.
It is important to highlight the multisectoral nature of the ROAM-X framework and the outcomes from the implementation of this framework may guide governments, private sector, the technical community and Civil Society to take really bold actions to foster future initiatives capable of harnessing the Internet development.
Besides this framework, it does provide an inspiring interdisciplinary reflection on how to build an inclusive Internet ecosystem, and on how to identify potential gaps of Internet development policies.
The organization that I work for, the Regional Center for Studies on Development of the Information Society and Brazilian information sector has been a unique player in phases of UNESCO technical meetings and public consultation that discuss the Internet universality concept and indicators in the ROAM-X framework, and being one of the first countries to pilot and implement the framework, so for us it is with great satisfaction that we see an increasing number of countries implementing national assessments based on the ROAM principles. For us in Latin America, it is a real privilege to be part of this and to see that Latin America played an important role in this development.
And the Dynamic Coalition of Internet universality indicators should be a platform to allow UNESCO and its partners to create a global support community to tackle challenges both by the digital transformation and the challenges in making the digital technologies a real driver to accelerate the attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The coalition as a platform, should be able to promote capacity building to Member States in their data collection and methodological efforts necessary to lead to a successful assessment and formulation of a strong and powerful recommendation to policymakers.
I have to say that I agree with Anriette that the IGF is fundamental to engage stakeholders to advance Internet universality and to promote national assessments of Internet universality indicators to an even greater number of countries. In summary, I would say that the stakeholders indicating this coalition are in the face of four great opportunities, that's my opinion, Xianhong. First, to exchange good practice and lessons learned in the implementation process of national assessment, and here I have to say that CETIC is already an active actor in sharing experience with other national teams, mainly in Latin American countries. Second, to provide technical support to countries willing to implement national assessments. Third, to raise interest from more countries and stakeholders to conduct voluntary assessments of Internet universality indicators. And last but not least, to promote capacity-building initiatives to support countries to implement recommendations generated by the national assessments. Xianhong, with that, these are my main views on the great opportunities that we have in this coalition as a platform to promote this framework. Thank you very much.
>> XIANHONG HU: Thank you. We do miss you here in Katowice and thank you for all of your valuable suggestions. It was really well taken. The last speaker from the first segment will be from Madam Dorothy Gordon, UNESCO IFAP Chair. Hi, Dorothy, you're with us from Ghana.
>> DOROTHY GORDON: Good to see you Xianhong and good to see all of my friends, both online and in the room. Good morning. Good afternoon, and good evening. IFAP, as most of you know, is the Information for All Program, and it's dedicated to an inclusive and equitable information society and to supporting Member States to get their policies right in that direction.
So, for us it was a no brainer, as they say in the U.S., that Member states of IFAP through the Council and Bureau supported the implementation of the IUIs and the ROAM-X indicators.
And why is that? Yes. We want to build an inclusive and equitable knowledge society, but to be frank, how to do that is a mystery for most. Every single country is learning by doing, and in that process, we will make mistakes and we will have to have policy corrections. And so having a tool like the Internet Universality Indicators, is actually invaluable to allow us to have those periodic checkpoints that will allow us to make the corrections that we have to make in order to achieve those goals which we all ascribe to in the context of the World Summit on Information Society and which are now reflected in so many key documents from the UN Secretary-General's Office including the Roadmap on Digital Cooperation and others.
So for me, as we move forward with these indicators, what are some of the key things that we have to look at? One, and here I will build on what Alexandre just said about the sharing of best practices and reiterate IFAP's willingness to work with Member States to extract best practice and share it among ourselves. Because we need to have evidence-based policy. Secondly, to clear up the kind of data that we have available, not only in its accuracy but also in its attention to key areas, and I'm sad to say that in many instances, we still do not collect gender disaggregated data. And so, the IUIs allow Member States and the many partners that come together within the framework of the national assessments, to actually pay greater attention to this accuracy of the information and how we can build better information and data and improve policy in such a way that, as I said before, it is evidence-based. Thirdly, let me just say that for me, this whole process is an extremely important process in terms of capacity building. We see that historically, Member States around the world, and I must congratulate my colleague from Germany for the excellent remarks and frankness. Let me reiterate Member States from all around the world, as I said, are grappling to figure out how they can build an inclusive and equitable knowledge society, but at the same time we recognize that there are many dimensions of capacity that are lacking. So for me, the IUI framework and the national assessments are extremely important capacity-building opportunities and how are we going to actually exploit those capacity-building opportunities? It is, of course, by sharing best practice. But the mere fact of bringing the different stakeholders into the room together, having a truly multistakeholder engagement is in and of itself a capacity-building exercise. And I sincerely look forward to the progress we will make as we move forward in the sense that it will build more Civil Society organizations. We need more Civil Society organizations in this space. It will strengthen UNESCO's own national commissions to have a better understanding of the issues and how they can work with the CI sector in that direction.
But also, that we will have more research and policy institutes that address these questions. So, IFAP, you know this is more than 20 years that the Information For All Program has been working on building inclusive and more equitable knowledge societies, and I'm pleased that we have this tool and that we are actively engaged in supporting that tool so that we support Member States to implement better policy and to engage better with the other stakeholders. Thank you.
>> XIANHONG HU: Thank you so much, Dorothy. We have now concluded the first segment. I'm very happy to give the floor to Madam Marielza Oliviera UNESCO Director for partnership and operational program monitoring before we start the second half to UNESCO by all the important statements by partners. The floor is yours.
>> MARIELZA OLIVEIRA: Thank you very much. Hello, everyone, from the Dynamic Coalition and to all the partners from around the world that have joined us today. This is really an incredible segment that speaks about the speaks about the ROAM framework and universality indicators. I want to highlight some of the points that came out of the conversation that we had right now, which start by saying that by Dr. Moeller mentioning how instrumental it is for us to be able to assess digital ecosystems and really see whether our national ecosystems really respond to the ambitions that we have for a human rights-based, dignity-based Internet. And this is becoming even more important as we learned that during the pandemic, 800 million more people joined the Internet. So, it's really important that this ecosystem that we are joining, that is right now counting on 4.9 billion people, really offers everyone an opportunity to access information, to you know freely express themselves with respect to privacy and all the other human rights.
So, this is the framework that allows us to do that, and you know it's really great to see that this framework is already lending itself as a major central element in other important frameworks and has the potential to even do more in future frameworks. We see, for example, our colleagues from ICANN talking about how indicators from ROAM can really contribute to measuring diversity from its own perspective, and we talk and we see how the Internet Society highlights that these principles are part of, you know, and coherent with the principles that the Internet Society looks at.
And we see how the effort of developing a report and an assessment process in itself, the process of developing these reports is a useful contribution because it starts by highlighting the gaps that we have on data, as Dorothy, you know, IFAP Chair has mentioned. It highlights and identifies the gaps that we need to, you know, to yield policy for improvement in terms of accessibility, in terms of openness, in terms of human rights elements, and the formation of a multistakeholder group actually in and of itself contributes to this dialogue.
So, you know, it's, you know, the ROAM as a process and as an outcome, you know, the report itself as an outcome, it makes major contributions. It's illuminating in itself, and it also helps us to have this kind of conversation in which we share experiences and we share ways forward in improving Internet governance, not only at the local and national levels but regionally and globally 6789.
So, the more Member States join this process, the more lessons we actually extract, the more we can share and learn on the way, not necessarily at the end of the process, and this is one of the things that I would like to offer because as a capacity development tool, you know, the ROAM, the application of the ROAM framework already, you know, on the way it is beneficial to Member States and to all of us, to all stakeholders involved. Let me offer the opportunity for us to every year, you know, at the IGF which is the place where we have this conversation the best, you know, in the scope of the dynamic coalition we can really extract the lessons learned from every process ongoing and share those and identify, you know, common approaches on capacity development and on analysis that we can take very practical matters. For example, where are we going to find the data for specific indicators? How can we peer-to-peer learn from each other and support each other's building of these reports? We have fantastic people like our CETIC center, category two center, willing to share and support our Member States. We have offers such as from Germany National Commission to do that as well, so let's take full advantage of that, you know, and produce an annual report, an annual process of lessons learned sharing in which we can really build upon and enhance the experience for all of us in improving the way that our digital ecosystems work.
So with that, let me just plea as well. We do need to improve the funding of these processes. You know, we need to actually look at how we're going to do capacity development of Member States that actually kneeled and are interested and willing to conduct these assessments, but may not necessarily have the resources for that. That we need to have a strong funding mechanism for quality assurance processes of the reports so that we all are ready to see these results and incorporate the lessons that come and recommendations that come from those reports into an aggregate view at regional levels and global levels on what we have been learning about the gaps and the ways forward on digital ecosystems human rights-based digital ecosystems. So let me put also a plea for our partners to contribute to supporting this high-level mechanism in addition to supporting the other countries that would like to have reports but they don't have necessarily, you know, the funding to do so. Thank you so much. You know, you do quite a lot, all of you, and so that's why we are here and you're invited to share your views today. Thank you very much.
>> XIANHONG HU: Thank you. Thank you Marielza for all of your excellent points. I want to reiterate the permanent invitation just Marielza said to invite all of you to IGF and future IGF to attend our annual reporting events to share the experiences and the lessons learned at a national level by using the indicators. That would be a tradition. A new IGF tradition that every year you have a ROAM-X indicator event on Day zero and we'll keep that as last night the music, is equally exciting. Yeah, you're laughing, right. You agree with me 6789.
Now, I think we are in a perfect timing to move to the second segment, really to discuss the actions and suggestions of how we improve the work of ROAM and also how we make the Dynamic Coalition more dynamic and more useful to support the global and national implementation of ROAM principle indicators.
So my dear speakers, please be frank, honest, and open. We are really here to hear from you on how we can improve our work. We're super honored to introduce the first speaker Mr. Jan Kleissen representing Council of Europe.
>> JAN KLEISSEN: Hi, good morning and good evening to all participants at the IGF. I'm sorry to not be with you at this particular IGF in person because the Council of Europe has been of course collaborating with UNESCO at a series of IGFs going all the way back to the first ones that were organized.
The Council of Europe just for a few words for those of you who may not be aware of the organization to the European Union. The Council of Europe is the oldest European organization founded in 1949 by the likes of Winston Churchill and brings together 47, 47 European countries, so far more than the 27 of the European Union and 47 European countries and we cater to some 820 million people on the European continent.
Our main task and one sentence by way of introduction, to promote human rights rule of law and democracy both online and offline, and we do that through legal cooperation. We have established some 200 treaties, the best known of which is the European Convention on Human Rights but also a whole series of important texts with regard to new technologies, the world's first data protection convention, of course, and we celebrated this year the 40th anniversary of that which has 66 parties throughout the world, all 5 continents I'm very pleased to say, and 120 countries were online with us two weeks ago to celebrate this event.
So, just a few introductory remarks. Now to come to the Dynamic Coalition on the Internet Universality Indicators. We have been following the work of UNESCO with great interest. As you know, the Council of Europe adopted in 2016 a recommendation on Internet freedom, and it came with a toolkit of indicators that can be used for measuring the level of compliance with human rights standards on the Internet, so very much also what you're doing. And we're very pleased that UNESCO refers to this particular recommendation and the toolkit as a means for verification, the assessment of your Internet Universality Indicators.
The recommendation also encourages our Member States to really undertake the national evaluation and annual reporting that has been mentioned in the previous panel. We have various bodies in the Council of Europe, and I won't go into all the details, but there is follow up and the implementation of our text is monitored, and we continue to encourage the Member States to follow the UNESCO indicators when conducting national assessment.
A few words on the word "dynamic" in the term Dynamic Coalition. I would like to address three categories of stakeholders. First of all, governments. I think we must continue to remind governments of the need to commit to develop real strategies, not just in words, but real strategies and implement them and clear roadmaps, clear plans on where they want to go, which should include evaluations and reports on Internet freedom.
It is also important that the reports on Internet freedom be made to the public, they be shared to other states so that experiences and best practices can emerge and can be discussed. Second group of stakeholders, the business community, it's very important to ensure that the protection of human rights online is actually carried out, is a reality. We have in 2018 complemented our advice to Member States by another recommendation on the roles of and responsibilities of interpret net intermediaries, a text which is addressed to governments but also business with very concrete suggestions, very concrete suggestions on what they can and what they should do.
We've taken this a step further in the Council of Europe and we're an intergovernmental organization as I mentioned initially with 47 Member States and incidentally also 5 observer states, and we have traditionally worked, since we were established with Civil Society. However, since 2017, we've also given a formal partnership to business, which allows companies to sit at the table to Internet companies and this partnership has grown to over 25 today. It includes all the big U.S. -- the big tech, if you like, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple are all with us. We have at that lot of telecoms. We also have standard setting -- standard setters, for instance, IEEE, and a whole series of associations of smaller Internet service providers. So really quite a comprehensive crowd, and they are participating -- allowed to participate in the work of the Council of Europe, sit at the table, and discuss both the nonbinding texts that we produce and the binding texts.
And then the third category of stakeholders are the NGOs, absolutely essential to make sure that constant pressure is there on governments, on businesses to comply with the recommendations, and of course even more so with the legal texts that have been agreed. And therefore, they should also -- we have them at the table at the Council of Europe. I know they participate regularly in the IGF and I cannot overstate the importance of their role in making sure that what is agreed to formally is also practically implemented.
Last but not least, of course, the cooperation between international organizations is very important. This is a wonderful example, and thank you very much for the opportunity to say a few words about our work at the Council of Europe. We work with UNESCO also in a new area of not strictly Internet freedom, but it is closely related; namely, the development of artificial intelligence, where UNESCO, of course, adopted its recommendations so recently and the Council of Europe finalized last week the elements work on the elements for a future AI treaty and negotiations on that will start next year. And we hope that within three to four years, we'll be able to deliver the world's first treaty on artificial intelligence and human rights rule of law and democracy. So, please watch this place. It is also very much linked to questions of Internet freedom, a lot of issues discussed here also have to do with the use of artificial intelligence and it would take me another half hour to set all of that out. So, you would cut me off and so I won't and I'll just indicate it here, but there are really lots of links. If you look at the elements that we have identified for the future treaty, you'll see that there are several which directly link also to the indicators for Internet freedom.
Finally, something that we haven't started work on but which I would like to highlight here is an even further new development in all the work creating virtual realities. We've all heard about the projects from Metaverse, et cetera, that will create lots of challenges and we'll see what will actually come out of all of that. But it is clear that virtual realities will be coming. We already have virtual currencies as a good reminder that this is not just theory but actual practice. I'm not sure whether Mark Zuckerberg Metaverse as described will be a reality, but that similar developments are taking place I think is undeniable, and therefore I think it's wise to start reflecting already now, and more than reflecting, to think very hard on how to make sure that our standards of freedom, human rights, human dignity are also preserved in that environment. Just some food for thought. Thank you very much for this opportunity and look very much forward to following the discussion. Thank you so much, Xianhong.
>> XIANHONG HU: Thank you. Yeah, I do enjoy all of your presentations, so many issues to be signaled by you, the Council of Europe and UNESCO has worked so closely on the ROAM principles and contributing to your Internet freedom recommendation and also, we're sharing so many Member States and we do hope to have closer collaboration from you and support from you.
The next speaker I'm going to introduce is representing the media community, Mira, are you with us?
>> MIRA MILOSEVIC: Yes, thank you so much, colleagues and excellencies, it's a pleasure to be here although virtually here today. We're so grateful to be part of this initiative for many years now, and of course for the opportunity to participate in today's discussion. The global Forum for media development that I represent here is an organization of more than 100 Civil Society organizations of 50 countries supporting freedom of expression and media freedom worldwide.
We are also a founding organization and Secretariat behind the dynamic coalition on sustainability of journalism and new media in establishing this DC two years ago, it was a really big step for our community because journalism and news media perspectives, especially those from small community, local journalism organizations, and when they come from small markets, are often missing from many current regulatory and policy conversations, despite what we see as increasing relevance and emphasis of importance of free spaces for discussion and quality information, and despite what we all call for when we speak about multistakeholder inclusion. We all know Internet actors and policymakers in the age of Internet convergence are really today directly influencing and shaping the future of journalism and news media, and all of these issues that we're discussing here today at the Internet Governance Forum directly or indirectly are affecting how digital markets are governed and the way that was just mentioned artificial intelligence, for example, will Internet production, content moderation, distribution, and ultimately consumption.
So, what we have seen from recent digital regulatory conversations around the world is that we exactly require more data, more access to data, more access to see what is really happening behind the algorithms, behind the visible architecture of Internet, and we also need more rights to do assessments and to see how different factors of Internet impact fundamental rights, and especially from our perspective, freedom of expression and access to information.
And Anriette perfectly summed it up that we need brutally honest evidence to be able to contribute to really inform policies and not just go after the latest trend. And, of course, many other colleagues have mentioned that up until now we had a number of mechanisms that were monitoring in our sector and measuring the state of rights and freedoms around the world when it comes to press freedom, freedom of expressions. However, when it comes to monitoring and measuring the real state of Internet, digital spaces in relation to human rights and development, I said it before that we didn't have a holistic approach and this is -- we felt that it was lacking. And even within Sustainable Development Goals indicators, there are very few indicators that report no major aspects of Internet, and this is what ROAM principles emphasize and bring.
And, of course, as I said without measuring what matters, Internet will fail to bring more freedom and more access to information. And, again, from the perspective of journalism and news media community, we are seeing that this current crisis of trust in institutions, threats to democracy and shrinking civil spaces is actually continuing on a downward trend, and it is again opening a question of what kind of internet we want. And if we don't gather all together in a true multistakeholder manner, we will fail to create conditions, not only for Internet united; but also, we will fail to be able to respond to new challenges and those that are we know about for a long time like the climate crisis and other Sustainable Development Goals.
So just to get to the end, the community that the global forum for media development represents will be using those indicators through all aspects of our work. This afternoon, we will be hosting a session at the Dynamic Coalition for sustainability of journalism and news media, and you will be able to hear this afternoon about initiatives that aim to improve the quality of information, trust in news and integrity, and to try to do that at a scale and scope. And this is one of the areas where we continue to cooperate with UNESCO and other partners and interested actors.
So just to conclude on how we can, not improve this initiative, but how we can make it more in touch with other actors that are collecting data and evidence. And similarly, as with what we argue in the context of SDG data collection, here we can also look at what nonofficial data providers can bring to the conversation. And so for instance, many of our members and partners are following and monitoring different indicators related to media in digital, including IRX, Self-Ranking Digital Rights, and we also have regional investigations like Vulcan investigative reporting network that are monitoring digital rights and their breaches in the region, and then South Africa is doing something similar in Africa and something in Latin America, for instance. And I can also reiterate what our Council of Europe colleague has said and stressed about the engagement with other types of actors as well.
Thank you so much, again, and I wish you a productive and good day.
>> XIANHONG HU: Thank you, Mira for also many substantial inputs. I realize time has flown. We are having four speakers in line, so I will move very fast through our next speaker. Tomasz Komorowski representing Polish Commission for UNESCO.
>> TOMASZ KOMOROWSKI: Good morning and good afternoon to all colleagues in Katowice and online and encouraged by Xianhong, I will be quite frank and maybe sometimes going into some UNESCO details connected with my perspective.
UNESCO, the Internet universality concept and indicators are very important as many of us have pointed out. But at the same time and for the same reason for which they are important, they can be regarded in a sense as difficult to take. Yes, the reason why they can be difficult speaks much about their value, and it is the complexity of the ROAM-X principles and the related complexity and diversity of the indicators encompassing a wide range of perspectives from infrastructure to ethical and humanistic, thus offering a comprehensive vision of the Internet as a social and human space based and human rights.
At the beginning of the 21st Century, rather than embodying the idea of (?) we still tend to be professionals specially focus on strictly even narrowly defined areas of expertise and this is why I think IUIs can be sometimes difficult in implementation.
Yet, with we realize while it is inevitable it proves sufficient in important respects and conducive, for example, to fragmentation and deepen the crisis of understanding the world, human beings, human rights, societies, democratic values demonstrated by the success of misinformation and disinformation and now called infodemic realities of COVID-19.
There is a need for evidence-based, broad and even holistic perspectives and but evidence-based and dialogue involving different stakeholders and segments of the society runs in the isolation and not uniforming us but uniting us in our efforts and uniting our differences in these efforts.
In the area of digital -- in the digital era, it's especially important. In this context, the indicators are an important tool in several respects, and it was already said that of course because of the impact of a national assessment report, both nationally and internationally too, but also of very important part of processes of preparation which can be and are a significant step toward breaking fragmentation and silos seeking common language and enhancing interdisciplinary and cooperation. And even independently from the work on national reports, I think the IUIs can contribute to the deepen the debates on the Internet in this spirit.
And maybe, thus, the IUIs could be promoted not only with immediate expectation but further country assessment work and reports appear, but also more generally as a trigger of the ROAM approach and maybe it could prove to be successful also in terms of also -- of increasing the number of country assessment reports. All of this seems to be important in the life of the question which was asked to us of how to improve the Dynamic Coalition and how to enhance the global implementation and role in fostering digital collaboration. So, very briefly what forms of activity in order to promote the IUIs and strengthen the coalition's impact, and what kind of cooperation, I can speak based on my personal experience as a national commission for UNESCO officer, and from this perspective, the following suggestions and further questions come to my mind.
Firstly, our intersessional sharing of information, reflections, and common engagements. Of course, webinars are mentioned in the action plan for the coalition would be very useful, and the coalition could strive to be present as far as possible in main activities of UNESCO on communication and information. Several occasions and opportunities seem to be awaiting in the near future, such as the universality of the UN plan of action on safety of journalists, and presentations for WISIS + 20, UNESCO based (?) for example the award press freedom day is I think a very important opportunity for the digital coalition to be active, and synergies with promotion of Windhoek + 30 Declaration seem especially timely with the concept of information of as a common good, as well as the global media and information week.
Secondly, with regards to informing country entities as a means to promote the coalition and especially the indicators, and hope to inform and possibly involve and let me mention just some UNESCO networks present in the Member States, so in fields. National commission were already mentioned by the Dorothy Gordon with the bridging and convening role. UNESCO chairs in the communication and information but also other fleets of competence of UNESCO, social instrument and education. UNESCO programs and national committees such as IFAP which is obvious, but what about the member of the work program national and regional committees, they might be interested in at least some aspects of indicators relating to document or preservation and accessibility. What about possibly also to involve other programs from other sectors of UNESCO, and I mean especially the most program, social transformation.
>> XIANHONG HU: Excuse me, Thomas, may I interrupt for one second. You know, we're really going behind and also technician just informed that we cannot go over the schedule, only for two minutes, so could you please wrap up a bit because more written contributions. Thank you.
>> TOMASZ KOMOROWSKI: Yes. Yes. I come to the conclusion. Yes, of course. So I -- to the projects of IPDC, I will not expand on that, and for all of the coalition to promote the indicators in this way, but what I think to sum up, my recommendation is first of all, information and reflections sharing both within and outside of Dynamic Coalition and using existing opportunities and networks to present; and therefore it is also important for the DC members, the coalition members to receive information about initiatives or plans existing in UNESCO and within UNESCO environment of cooperation, I would say. Which could be relevant from the point of view of the indicators, and by UNESCO environment of telecom, I mean of course IFAP or IPDC but also broader commission for sustainable development, and also IGF and EuroDIG and also in other international, including regional integration organizations with which UNESCO cooperates, and I think it's a very good sign for the sustainability and for the contribution of our coalition to digital collaboration that experts connected with those bodies are involved. Thank you very much. I apologize.
>> XIANHONG HU: No. Your suggestions are super valuable. We have our original contribution and we'll link it to the website and definitely take them forward. Apologies for the rest of the speakers. Mr. Dawit Bekele and Madam Anja and Kossi, could you limit to three minutes. And if we have a final minute, I give the floor to Marielza to close. And if you have burning questions, I'm here and approach me after the session. Thank you.
So, Dawit, I think you're online and thank you for patiently waiting for us. Dawit is Regional Vice President of Internet Society in Africa.
>> DAWIT BEKELE: Thank you. I try to compress my presentation, but I will provide the written statement and I hope that you will have some time to read it. Good morning, good afternoon to many friends who have been at this IGF journey for more than a decade now. I wish I was in Katowice in person; but unfortunately, I will be participating from beautiful Addis Ababa host of IGF 2023 and the host of Internet Society and IUI that we worked to inception is going to critical move of creating Dynamic Coalition around it. I think if there was anyone not convinced that the Internet is important, I think the COVID crisis has shown that it is. Thanks to it, we have been able to have assemblance of normalcy in this crazy time. We've been able to work, study, and do many other things, and even during the harshest lockdown moment.
But all Internet access are not the same, and in some countries, we might have nominal access where you have many barriers, and these limit what you can do to improve your life using the Internet.
We often use the environment as an analogy for the Internet. We all love our environment. We like the air that we breathe. We need it and the water that we drink, and so on. And we want to have quality environment. Unfortunately, not everyone has that. There are some people who live in an environment where there is air pollution that creates problems for their health.
And it's the same thing with the Internet. We need an Internet that enables us to live a healthy digital life, if I may say that. And to continue with the analogy, if we don't understand enough our environment, we'll risk spoiling it and lose everything that we need for our life. That's why we need to measure our air and water qualities. It's using the same logic to protect and improve the Internet that we love, we need to know the features that makes it what it is, measure those features, and work to nurture them.
The Internet Society has identified a number of features that we need to follow from the technical point of view, and I won't go into the details because today's focus is on the IUI, but I encourage you to go and look at those indicators if you are interested in the technical properties of the Internet.
>> XIANHONG HU: I'm sorry, could you please wrap up, we are really very tight in timing.
>> DAWIT BEKELE: Yeah, but okay. Anyway, the Internet Society is really proud to have been closely involved in the indicators of UNESCO and we have been supporting the IUI studies in Ghana and Argentina and we'll continue to support it and I believe that the establishment of the dynamic coalitions around IUI is the right step forward and it is important that all stakeholders work together so that we have as many countries as possible where IUIs are implemented and we follow how the Internet health is all around the world.
Finally, I wish everyone a great session and invite you to my home city at Addis Ababa in 2023. Thank you.
>> XIANHONG HU: Thank you so much. Anja is representing IGF Secretariat. Could you please give us your remarks maybe in two minutes. Thank you.
>> ANJA GENGO: I'll try to be brief and not repeat what other colleagues said. Thank you so much for this session and having me. There are two points I would like to make and I'm not going to elaborate a lot to give Dr. Kossi time to speak. But I think obviously colleagues spoke about the importance and values of the indicators. We spoke for the past two or three years about the importance and value. I think there is no need to underline that again. We're just very fortunate to have such system implemented and made possible and available to everyone in the world to assess what the Internet ecosystem is about on local levels and with that on the global level.
I do strongly think that the multistakeholder system on the Internet ecosystem needs to be done through multistakeholder lenses, which means who is doing the assessment is also extremely important rather than how the assessment is also done. I think you've given us such a good framework in terms of the methodology, but then who is doing it is extremely important. So, I'm trying to make a point that all stakeholders need to be involved in the assessment. How that will be done, obviously it's a matter of methodological approach but at least a round of open, public, inclusive consultation is something extremely important before the report is released to public to ensure there is accurate data. The main reason for that, obviously I don't need to elaborate, is because just the Internet is such a complex tool that finding one discipline to speak about various aspects of it is actually very difficult.
And another point that I wanted to say relates to the NRIs which you asked me at the beginning, and so I work with the national and regional IGFs for the past couple of years, and when I said at the beginning who is doing assessment and it should be done through multistakeholder lenses, I think it can easily be connected to the national IGFs especially. In a number of countries still, the only grassroot multistakeholder forum of let's say network on discussing the Internet governance but also impacting and shaping the decisions is really still with the national IGFs, and we have over 90 countries which are recognized by the IGF Secretariat fully functional. And Dr. Kossi is the best person are to speak about it and I do think we're in a good position to have good authors for this type of assessment.
And then the second point that I wanted to mention relates to what happens next. So, let's say we finally get the recover basically all Member States all multistakeholder communities existing on member state level, and so what happens next? Who is the one making decisions in terms of filling up the gaps and trying to connect us all to the Internet that we all want according to the assessments? Through the national IGFs and the regional IGFs you also reach those that makes concrete decisions, so the governments, especially parliamentarians, legislators, and as well as who I said is impacting the decisions so that's why I think that's a very good way to conduct the assessment and in a starting position that's already there in place. Thank you.
>> XIANHONG HU: Thank you, Anja for all of your constant support. Kossi Amessinou from African Coalition, please take the floor.
>> KOSSI AMESSINOU: Thank you, Moderator. The Dynamic Coalition is a very good statement and framework to learn more of what is doing in some countries and what you're doing in another region and so on. But what is important is supposed to have clearly when we are making some countries, always to support would be involved. All of them, support to be on the table.
When we are making, governments have a part to make something. Private sector also has money and support to contribute with their money. If they are not on the table the discussion they've been doing is not -- we are not sure we can be when we need the help and to concretely address the indicators. That is very good point to see.
When we have some indicator, we don't address one year, second year, it's important to make a review and see what indicator we want to move or delete and have short indicators where we can have anywhere, we can compare it. I've been doing in Benin, Africa, Ghana and so on is it's sometimes better for decision-making to know that. What I'm doing is going through for myself, for my region, and if other countries make good a thing they can look at that thing and make the same thing in their countries. The indicators can also be, take reparational economic commission like CDL, we ask Member States every time about the indicators and to have regional statistic, it's very good to have indicators, Internet Universality Indicators in the statistic and each year we can have opportunity to know if you are going through good or bad. That is the point to help us to know exactly how we can help the people. In our region, we have also the challenge of money to make the statement country by country. If we can have support from ESOC, for example, for some countries in our region, it would be very good to have a statement in other countries. Thank you.
>> XIANHONG HU: Thank you. That's why we're here to support. From the official expression of our technician, I think we have maybe two minutes for our director to address maybe a tweet or closing, but nevertheless I would like to thank all of you, our technicians for excellent help and also my colleague in Paris, Karen and also Stephen for helping with us and also other speakers. Marielza, please take the floor and address your final remarks.
>> MARIELZA OLIVEIRA: I'm going to actually take 30 seconds to say, you know, it was a fantastic discussion. Thank you to all of the people that contributed to that, all the organizations that are our partners on that and let me just say that, you know, the ROAM approach applies to all the technologies as well and we've already applied it to artificial intelligence, and we look forward to applying it to virtual reality, to quantum and others and invite you to contribute to that effort as well. Digital ecosystems of all kinds need to be assessed for how they impact human dignity and human rights. Let me highlight the importance of the multistakeholder approach that dynamic Coalition represents and that everybody mentioned as the key element willing to really take it forward and to say that the ROAM assessment is the first step and what we really need is the capacity to implement the changes that the Internet Universality Indicators point to us are necessary to really enable human rights approach, open, accessible, stakeholder governance Internet ecosystem for all of us. Thank you, thank you very much for all the contributions.
>> XIANHONG HU: Thank you all. Thank you. Thanks to everybody in the room and online. yeah. And also see you next time maybe Addis Ababa.