The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF 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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>> ANJA GENGO: Ladies and Gentlemen, good morning. I hope you can hear me well. Thank you for being here in beautiful Kyoto.
I hope that the fact that you are here means, first of all, that this is your first physical IGF meeting. And if so, I hope you have a pleasant, friendly chat about what the IGF is, about its working, how to engage across these four days that are in front of us, but also how to long‑term engage in the Internet Governance Forum, having your voice heard.
My name is Anja Gengo, and I work at the IGF Secretariat. The Secretariat is an office. We speak about it a bit later. It's based in the United Nations office at Geneva in Switzerland. And its main theme is to support this whole physical process in a usual way and the Secretariat has been there, put in place since the inception of the IGF.
Unfortunately, the head of our office that planned to be here this morning with you couldn't because of some last‑minute changes. But I am sure that yesterday, if you were here, you already know who Chengetai is, and you will see him, of course, after this session when we formally start the opening of the 18th Annual IGF Meeting. Please feel free to approach myself, Chengetai, any of our colleagues in the Secretariat. We have an office here, which I think is 104. Numbers. Stop by. We always want to meet you.
Now, I would like us just to quickly go to some basics about what IGF is, how was all this started, and as I said, what are the ways for long‑term engagement.
I will guide you through this history of almost two decades long, through a couple of slides. But I hope that most of the time of this morning's session can be reserved for a dialogue with you. The Secretariat is very interested to learn about your feedback on the current process, the way, for example, you heard about the IGF, reasons to be here and, of course, your expectations from the forum. This is always very valuable for us to improve the process for the time to come.
Now, to go to a little bit of a history of the IGF, as you can imagine, the concept of the United Nations additionally is multilateral. It's first of all, member states centered and people‑centered process. So in early 2000, the concept of the multilateral model was ‑‑ I think we have some interference probably from Zoom. So, let's ask our technicians to mute the online participants. We will certainly have, as I said, time to give floor also to online participants, and I hope that you can give me a couple of minutes to just introduce the topic and then we will give you the floor. Thank you.
So, as I said, in traditionally multilateral intergovernmental process, introducing the concept of multistakeholder model was something I'm sure you can imagine was exotic at the time, and as the internet was on the rise in the early 2000s and the late '90s and was becoming more and more part of people's daily life, the community, not just the Member States, but the community, different stakeholder groups, called for a process to govern the internet while at the same time keeping it accessible, affordable, safe, secure, of course, human rights centered, and the internet is one, which is very important, so to avoid any fragmentation.
So, in early 2000s, because of these calls, the Working Group on Internet Governance was formed, and the working group was formed of different stakeholders coming from different backgrounds. Some of them, you can, actually, meet here at the IGF. I think they are really valuable resources of information, and if you go to WGIG website or Wikipedia, you can check the names of those members and maybe approach them during this meeting to get to know each other.
But very long story short, the WGIG did come up with a working definition of internet governance and I hope you can see it on this slide, saying that the internet governance is the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society in their respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the internet.
This definition that is older than the IGF itself, is a definition that is still in use today, and I am sure from your experience as well, just as mere end users, first of all, you can also tell that it's very much relevant to today's digital public policy processes.
Going further, within the World Summit on Information Society of the United Nations, there were calls by different stakeholders, of course, including the Member States, to establish a forum that will be inclusive, that will be multistakeholder and that will enable everyone to get together and discuss issues that pertain to internet governance.
Through two phases, which are most important happening in 2003 and 2005 in Tunisia, and in Switzerland, and Geneva, finally the IGF was convened. The Tunis Agenda for the Information Society specifically it's paragraph 72, is what gave life to the IGF. It set its mandate.
The convening of the IGF formally speaking happened in early 2006 by at that time serving Secretary‑General of the United Nations, and the very first annual meeting took place then in late October, early November of 2006 in Athens, hosted by the government of Greece.
Now, the rest is, of course, history. Today we are sitting at the venue that is hosting the 18th annual IGF meeting. These five days of the annual meetings are far from being just organized by an event organizer. It's a part of a process. And it's organized by its Host Country, the government of Japan for this year. And also by various modalities within the structure of the IGF.
The heart of those modalities is shown on this slide. I hope you can see it. First and foremost, the IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group or the MAG. The MAG is a multistakeholder body composed of 40 members coming from different stakeholder groups, different regional groups, with gender parity across the membership. It is chaired by a chair that's elected through the membership and endorsed as such. The group is appointed annually by the Secretary General of the United Nations, and its core mandate by terms of reference is that it serves to advise the Secretary General on the programme on the agenda of the annual IGF meeting.
Currently the MAG is chaired by Mr. Paul Mitchell, that is the first chair coming from the private sector. And this year's meeting is particularly important with respect to the Multistakeholder Advisory Group composition, just because probably during this week, if not even today, the community will be informed about the renewed membership of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group. And not just that, also by its new chair. So, we will have a rotation of the chair as well. So, please stay tuned. The information will be at the IGF website and I'm sure it will be announced also during the IGF meeting at appropriate places and sessions.
The MAG is renewed, as I said, by approximately one‑third of its total membership every year. So, today or in this week, we will learn who are the new 11 incoming MAG members, from which countries they are coming, what are their backgrounds. It will be very interesting to see how the composition will be refreshed in that sense.
If you are interested to be part of the MAG or to contribute, then the call for nominations usually opens during the first half of the year for a couple of weeks. And any stakeholder, individual or organization, is most welcome to nominate eligible nominees, that are then considered for possible appointment to the membership group for one term subject to extension for up to three terms.
As of last year, the structure of the IGF has been advanced and reformed to an extent, so today we speak also about the IGF Leadership Panel. The Leadership Panel was appointed last year by Secretary General, following a process that came out of the Secretary General's high‑level panel on digital cooperation and roadmap for digital cooperation, calling for the IGF to advance its modalities, given the fact that, as you can all witness, rapid development of digital technologies, and it is on us to ensure that the mechanisms for governing those technologies are keeping pace with that development.
So, the Leadership Panel is a high‑level multistakeholder body, composed of in total 15 members. Among the 15 members, as an ex officio members are, for example, the MAG chair, the Secretary General's Envoy on Technology. But also the Host Countries. So, for example, the current Host Country holds a seat as well as the future Host Country and the past Host Country. So, we have the three party arrangement through the Leadership Panel which allows us to bridge the process from last year, the current year and then the future year. And with that, keep the continuity of the discussions and the process.
Just yesterday, I think it was the last session hosted in this room, so if you were here, you had a pleasure to meet most of the members of the Leadership Panel and to hear from them. There will be other opportunities during this week, a plenary open sessions. And that's a good opportunity to listen what the Leadership Panel has in plan for advancing the IGF, its modalities for making it more impactful, more visible, globally speaking, and for helping us to engage those that are not currently engaged and ensure that we are leaving no one behind.
The profiles of the Leadership Panel members are visible, hopefully, to you on this slide. You can see it's very diversified. The chair of the Leadership Panel is Mr. Vint Cerf, well known father of the internet to all of us, and his Vice‑Chair is Ms. Maria Ressa, the Nobel Prize winner and I'm sure a person that's well known to all of you.
And then finally, you can see that part of the working mechanisms of the IGF, as I said at the beginning, is the office where I work, for example, the IGF Secretariat. This is the entrance in Geneva where we are based, and the role, as I said, the Secretariat, is to ensure that all these mechanisms do work within the framework of the IGF principles and procedures.
Now, whether what are the IGF principles? The IGF is an open, inclusive, bottom‑up, transparent, noncommercial, multistakeholder process that runs throughout the year. Its funding is extra budgetary. In other words, it doesn't have a regular financing channels, but it depends on support from various donors, whether it's financial or in kind.
The IGF is very transparent when it comes about its financing, the way it functions. So, if you visit the IGF website, you will see who are the donors through the IGF trust fund, who are also the in‑kind donors and supporters.
Just in case if you would have questions later, I can tell you that among the biggest donors, of course, are certain governments and also the technical community, then the private sector. But there are also those that come from completely noncommercial domain that can be nested under the civil society. So, it's a very interesting composition of the supporters of the IGF. And we are very grateful to all those friends who are making sure that the IGF functions for almost past two decades.
I mentioned to you at the beginning that the IGF is a process. So, not just the annual meeting. And that process, of course, includes a couple of components. But two are major, which I think would be valuable for you to memorize. One is called the intersessional work. Everything that's happening between the two annual meetings is called the intersessional work. It's a community‑centered, community‑driven work. And I will be speaking about its concrete form in just a couple of minutes.
And then another integral part, very important of that process is, of course, what's happening today and what's going to happen in this week here in Kyoto at this venue. The IGF annual meeting. Different Member States have, different governments have hosted the IGF so far. And the 18th annual IGF meeting, as you can see, is hosted by the government of Japan. For the next year, we will formally announce the host very soon, so please do stay tuned in this room we will learn where the IGF will be going next year, in 2024.
But on this slide, you can see where we were in the past 17 years so far. It's great to be back in the Asia Pacific Region, as you can see, after a long period, since we met, I think, in Bali. That was the closest to this region.
This is just to illustrate quickly the dynamic atmosphere at every IGF. But I am sure that especially those of you who attended the wonderful gala night just last night, already felt the dynamics and just the energy that is produced by so many people gathering at one place who really care about internet and who are strong believers that the internet, its associated tools and services can really transform this world and bring better life to all people.
This annual meeting, of course, is not just about discussions. Of course, the IGF is not a decision‑making forum. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't produce concrete outcomes and outputs. I am sure from your experience, you would agree, one of probably the greatest value and benefit individually and also for organizations participating in the IGF and in person here at the annual meeting is the fact that you can network and exchange good practices, maybe not so good practices, learn from those practices, and ensure that going back to your respective communities, you can make a change and make an improvement.
There are also tangible outputs. So, toward the end of this meeting, you will be able to consult the IGF website what we call the IGF messages. Those are the messages action oriented and tangible outputs that emerged from the reports of the session organizers.
So, in other words, more than 300 sessions that feature this year's programme of the 18th annual IGF Meeting will result in concrete messages that are developed around the main subthemes of the IGF.
And the main subthemes, I'm sure that by now you all know them by heart. So, the internet we want empowering all people is the overarching theme of this year's IGF. And under the overarching theme we have eight subthemes which you can see are very diverse. So, we are discussing matters related to connectivity and access to human rights online, artificial intelligence, other emerging technologies, but also matters related to, for example, digital governance, to sustainability and environment, safety and security, data governance and so on.
So, there's plenty to choose from. I know it can be also overwhelming when you look at this very robust and rich agenda. But it is only reflective of the world that we are living in now, and that is that with respect to online environment, different communities have different issues and a global forum needs to be inclusive of all those. And I hope that your inputs coming from your respective communities will help us to understand better those local specificities and ensure that this global community then is informed and can act upon that information.
Yes. This year's forum for now marked record number of registered participants. We are now close to having 9000 participants who have registered to participate in the IGF. Of course, the largest number of them over, I think, 75% is in person participation, and the rest is online participation.
In terms of the participation and the backgrounds of the registered participants, it is really diversified. And we have stakeholders coming from all stakeholder groups, different disciplines. So, representatives coming from the government, international and Intergovernmental organizations, civil society, including the academia, private sector, technical community, and other related industries and disciplines.
Now to move to this first component that I mentioned, the IGF process, which is called the IGF intersessional work. So, I want to concretely say what does that mean, and especially what are the ways of engagement, what's the value of being engaged in that type of a work, and what you need to do if you are interested in any of these topics.
So, the intersessional work, the work that's happening in between the two annual meetings of the IGF whose results are then discussed at the annual meeting, takes different forms. We have, for example, the best practice forums and the policy networks. Both are multistakeholder driven community networks focused on particular issues through which stakeholders work together to unpack mapped issues and to look at good practices, maybe not so good practices. And while not issuing concrete recommendations, we are very much focused in the intersessional work with actions that can be taken to bring progress on recognized issues.
So, for example, for this year, the Best Practice Forum on Cybersecurity looks at cybersecurity‑related agreements and norms at national and international levels, trying to identify where are the gaps. And I think in this week, the cybersecurity has a dedicated session. So, you can certainly visit that session to understand what has that work resulted so far in.
But the way, the Best Practice Forum, for example, functions throughout the year is that its modus operandi is its public mailing list. Anyone is most welcome to join the public mailing list. From the MAG, from the Multistakeholder Advisory Group, usually a couple of MAG members act as co‑facilitators. The IGF Secretariat holds a pen as a neural editor and all together we work with community, with stakeholders from around the world to discuss the issues. We usually meet at least once monthly and, of course, we meet at the online meeting ‑‑ at the onsite meeting once annually speaking.
Just like best practice forums the policy networks are very similar in terms of the working modalities. The only difference is the scope. While the best practice forums look good practices, best practices, the policy networks have a much broader scope. They look at what are the issues, what's the statute scope, what could be done to change it, how could that be done, who could do good actions to resolve certain issues.
And for this year, the MAG decided that we have three policy networks that are focused on meaningful access, on internet fragmentation, and on artificial intelligence.
You are most welcome to subscribe to the mailing lists and to join these networks at any point in time.
The PNs, the policy networks, they also have dedicated multistakeholder working group of experts. So, they are very much of help to drive the work toward the right direction and to engage other stakeholders from the world in order to ensure that we have an inclusive process reflective of all issues globally that exist.
Now, I mentioned to you that the BPF and PNs are dependent every year on the MAG. But also on your input. Because through the public call for inputs every year, the MAG, basically, advises on the final agenda of the annual IGF meeting, on the subthemes, for example, looking at where is the pulse of the community, what's relevant for the community, and they also decide on what are the topics that it seems the community finds most relevant and marks as a priority, and that they orient sessional work of the BPFs and PNs. Unlike these forums, the dynamic coalition is something that's more consistent, more independent in terms of the MAG and the IGF working mechanisms. They are run by experts coming from different disciplines, different stakeholder groups, different regions, and some of the Dynamic Coalitions which are issue oriented exist for years. Some of them exist close to the duration of the IGF so far.
As I said, they are issue oriented, they are very concrete. For example, that you have now, it says '24, but by the time we reach the 18th annual IGF meeting here in Kyoto, we have three more. So 27 in total. And they are different. There are Dynamic Coalitions, for example, on Blockchain, on public access in libraries, on environment, on Domain Name System and so on. So, you are most welcome to visit the IGF website, look at what the Dynamic Coalitions are doing, subscribe to their mailing list, or simply reach out to the IGF Secretariat and we will put you in touch with the coordinator of this work.
And then part of the IGF process also relates to capacity development. By the mandate of the IGF and the Tunis Agenda that I mentioned to you at the beginning, at the heart of the IGF is to build capacity in all countries, developed and developing countries.
And the capacity development strategy is every year tailored to fit the needs of the global community. But I would like just for the purpose of this meeting to focus on two very important components that are also present here at the IGF in Kyoto. They are the parliament track and also the youth track.
We are very much focused on developing capacity and working with legislators, members of parliament coming from different parliaments from around the world, through our parliament track. The parliamentary track that's coordinate by my colleague, Celine, sitting in this room, is coordinated and developed in cooperation also with the regional IGFs. That helps us a lot to reach the local communities much better, much more efficiently. So, for example, this year we had a series of capacity developing workshops hosted at the Asia Pacific regional IGF in Brisbane in Australia, but also at the Africa IGF in Nigeria. And here at the IGF yesterday a series of workshops and dialogues between members of parliament and with members of parliaments took place.
Today it continues as well. So, I do advise you to please visit the IGF website, IGF 2023 manual parliament track. And just see which session takes place where today. They are very interesting. And it's a good also experience so you can engage better maybe with members of your parliament in your countries.
Part of the capacity development for us relates to sustainability of these processes and the sustainability of the processes, of course, relates to investing and working with young people. Through the youth track, the IGF Secretariat works throughout the year with many youth IGF coordinators and many youth‑related networks and communities on internet governance to design and then implement the youth track.
So, this year young people advised us that their priority is to look into safe digital future. So, we are unpacking, basically, that concept through a couple of capacity development workshops. Some of them, just like the parliament track, have been posted at the regional IGFs or at the Asia Pacific IGF. We first actually toured the globe through regional IGFs starting at EuroDIG. That is the European IGF in Finland.
Then we moved to the Asia Pacific IGF, which was hosted in Australia. Then to Latin America region through the Youth LACIGF hosted in Colombia, and then we concluded with the African IGF, which was hosted in Nigeria in September.
The conclusion of the youth track took place just yesterday. We had a wonderful IGF 2023 Global Youth Summit where we tried to establish a framework for a meaningful dialogue between the current generation of experts and leaders and the next generation of experts and leaders. And that's very important for us. It has been a message that's been sent by youth throughout the years of the IGF's process, that young people are very much interested to be active players in this field, but that they do not want to be isolated. And that is important that we have a meaningful dialogue with them, between the decisionmakers and the decisionmakers holding those positions here right now.
Now, I mentioned to you already a couple of IGFs. Not just one. And that all relates to the concept of the IGF initiatives. National, regional, subregional and youth IGF initiatives or we call them shortly the NRIs.
The NRIs emerged organically. If you look at the Tunis Agenda it doesn't call for establishing a national IGF in a particular country or a regional IGF. But it does very much calls for development of a multistakeholder model at local levels. And building on that, learning from the IGF as a model, many multistakeholder communities or many countries and regions started organizing their own IGF processes, applying the same set of principles, frameworks, procedures, in their local communities.
That history of close ‑‑ well, 18 years now, resulted in having today more than 160 officially recognized NRIs by the IGF Secretariat. The IGF Secretariat is entrusted by the NRIs to run the recognition process, ensuring that the processes do add here to the IGF principles, and also to support the network. So, we work throughout the year on a couple of objectives, including to be presented here through a couple of sessions at the annual IGF meeting. But also on other types of objectives you can see on the IGF website, which we always set at the beginning of the year in a bottom‑up consultations with all the NRIs.
Many of the NRIs are present at this year's IGF meeting here in Kyoto. And they will their main session, a couple of collaborative sessions. So, I do invite you to consult the IGF website and join us on those sessions and meet colleagues doing this really great things also in their respective countries.
And I want to recognize, of course, our host, Japan has an excellent national IGF that has its own evolution and just I think in early September they hosted their annual meeting, which was excellent. And I think set a very good preconditions for engagement of Japanese community in this year's 18th annual IGF meeting.
So, I mentioned the Leadership Panel. I won't keep my ‑‑ I won't keep your time now on that. You will have opportunity to learn from the Leadership Panel directly.
I hope that you have visited the IGF village, which is just near the registration area at this venue. The IGF village you have seen probably is composed of a couple of exhibition booths. And it serves for the community to better connect with institutions, organizations that are doing excellent work on internet governance. And it's a very good opportunity and a quick one to connect with work of these organizations and see how certain maybe partnerships and cooperation could be developed long‑term speaking.
There is a system of bilateral rooms. I hope you have seen that at the IGF website. If someone participating in person in this year's meeting is of your interest to meet with ‑‑ in a bilateral setup, so in a private setup, you can reserve a room through the IGF website. The Secretariat will facilitate the approval, and you can meet with those stakeholders.
And of course, if you need any support to connect with anyone, please email us at [email protected]. We will be happy to support you.
Now, I won't go that much into the processes which are with the United Nations are very much related or have an impact on the IGF. But I will mention briefly, of course, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. And I am sure you have seen these 17 SDGs really cross‑cutting the agenda or the IGF. This community is very much outspoken about the SDGs being great accelerator of sustainable development. And all of us as session organizers, as session participants, are doing what we can to ensure that the reflections and how the SDGs can be supported by certain digital public policy‑related processes are reflected in discussions at this meeting.
I mentioned at the beginning the digital cooperation concept. I am sure that many of you also heard about it, especially the Global Digital Compact, Our Common Agenda. Those are all the processes that are very recent. They came out of the Secretary General's office. And the whole goal is to look at future, long‑term speaking to ensure that we can all benefit from it.
It impacted the IGF already and probably it will long‑term speaking, for example, the Leadership Panel is the outcome of the roadmap for digital cooperation, and you can see hopefully on this slide more about this whole concept about the roadmap and its pillars.
The Our Common Agenda and Global Digital Compact, there will be discussion a lot with respect to these topics at this year's IGF. Many sessions are indeed directly or indirectly focused on this. The GDC is gaining momentum, certainly. The Member States will soon enter the negotiation process to understand what the GDC will be about, and, of course, the IGF as the forum within the United Nations where all stakeholders as equals discuss matters related to internet governance, public digital policy, is directly engaged in these processes and reflected by the discussions happening within.
Now, I am going to invite for your comments and questions. Doesn't have to be a question. But I would like to also hear from you, how do you find this year's IGF, is it overwhelming for you? If you have any questions for the Secretariat, I would be happy to respond. We have, I think, a couple of more minutes left.
And I also invite you to connect with us. So, to subscribe to our mailing lists, to connect with us through our email, [email protected] is the email address of the IGF Secretariat and we would be happy to hear from you.
You can also visit our social, connect with us on social media, we are present on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. There is also the IGF mobile app. It's very convenient and quick way to follow the schedule for this year's IGF, rather than going through a browser. So, I hope that you have experienced it. If not, then I do invite you to download the app and use it and tell us your user experience so we can do better for next year.
So, with that, let me stop here and pause here and just to see if you have any questions or comments on what you have heard so far.
I would assume that if yes, if there are comments, we would use these microphones that are up front, correct? Yes.
Good. I don't see any comments. Any requests for questions. I don't know if you have anyone online that would like to ask anything before we wrap up here.
Oh, thank you. So, we don't have any requests from online participants. Good. This is a compliment. That means that it was clear so far.
First of all, I want to sincerely thank you for being here and for being at the IGF, learning about it. It's been a great pleasure to speak with you and to you this morning.
As you know, we will start preparing for the big moment of this year's IGF, which is the formally open this year's meeting. And I think everyone will benefit, especially the organizers and the technical logistical team of a couple of more extra minutes to set the stage, prepare the room.
So, I will wrap up, then, earlier. Thank you very much. Please let us meet also outside. Feel free to approach or visit our office, 104. That's the number of our office. We would be very happy and grateful to connect with all of you.
Thank you very much for your attention.
(Applause)