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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>> AMARA SHAKER BROWN: Good Morning, Afternoon and Evening, Everyone, We Are on Channel 1 from the tech team and we will get started in just a moment.
We will get started and people can join us as they can. Once again, good morning or afternoon in your timezone. Aim Amara Shaker Brown I'm a programme officer with the National Democratic Institute working on our democracy and technology team.
And today we will be discussing the key themes coming out of regional and international fora for this year and identifying how digital rights advocacy and advocates in the global majority can better engage with policymakers at the global, regional and local levels on the vast number of issues impacting the digital space.
As I'm sure is a key theme at the IGF so far, but 2024 has served as a pivotal moment for the international community to come together and articulate the future of Internet Governance through all of the things that have happened this year, from NetMundial to DRIFT to WSIS and with the adoption of the Global Digital Compact. Throughout all of these processes we unfortunately have seen the continuation of the themes of the global majority and global majority voices being undervalued, underrepresented or not represented at all.
This ties into some of the National Democratic Institute's work along with our partners and so since 2016, the National Democratic Institute, the centre for international media assistance and the centre for international private enterprise have been running the open Internet for democracy initiative, a programme to build a network of open Internet advocates to champion the democratic values and principles to guide the future development of the Internet and how it works.
Our Open Internet Leaders programme, two of which are with us along with their mentors today have been a key part of our work, our leaders are emerging experts in digital rights and open Internet issues from the global majority representing civil society, the media, and the local private sector.
So, I will quickly introduce our panelists. And then we can jump right in. We will start with Ananda. Ananda Gautam is a passionate youth leader focused on democratizing human rights in the digital age, advocating for inclusive technology policies since 2016, his commitments include leading global initiatives like the Internet Society Youth Standing Group and co founding open Internet Nepal while also promoting digital freedom and cybersecurity.
Through research, advocacy, and capacity building initiatives, he strives to empower young people in shaping the future of Internet Governance. And he was one of our leaders.
Paola Galvez is a tech policy consultant dedicated to advancing ethical AI and human centric digital regulation globally. She holds a master's of public policy from the University of Oxford, congratulations, recently. And serves as the Founding Director of I Dahle AI lab UNESCO lead initiative in Peru and as a team leader for the centre for AI and digital policy.
And Peace aming guy is the strategy lead at the association for (?) communications where she works on the intersection of technology, human rights and gender. She is a member of the UN Multistakeholder Advisory Group with the Internet Governance Forum so she has been very busy. And she is also a member of the advisor group for our open Internet for democracy initiative.
So thank you all three of you for taking the time and for coming for this. And we will hop right in with just an easy, simple question on Internet Governance. So, piece, I guess we will start with you and move across. How can global majority advocates maximize the impact of key themes emerging from these 2024 fora such as NetMundial, G20, WSIS, to advance a free, open and interoperable in their regions so taking some of the local themes and applying or advocating for them at a regional level?
>> PEACE: Thank you very much, Amara and everyone else who has joined us in this room. I am privileged to be part of this panel and have this very key discussions.
I think to me what will be important is is to first of all unpack what we mean by free, open Internet, what does that mean to us, what does that mean to the different to the different stakeholders that we have, to the different communities that we are talking about, the different contexts, I think when we access when we unpack that, then we will know what we exactly want because we need to be have some clarity when we talk about the open free Internet that we want to advance, and so then when we have this clarity, then we will know, set our priorities and know if we are talking about affordable access, if we are talking about local content, you know, I think it will be important when we have that clarity or unpack, know what we mean.
And then we start to have more details and create this priority that I have just mentioned and then have our agenda set. And then we go into having our very harmonized strategy, you know, for us to benefit or leverage from all the processes that are happening and I think then more and more we need to extinguish and engage and embrace clocks and synergies across the different stakeholders and, you know, embrace the multistakeholder approach and also very important crucial aspect of the Internet to talk about is the access. We cannot talk about any other things, any other issues if we are not connected, meaningful connectivity, having communities, local communities connected. Because we have not that many people connected. That's one thing I want to, setting our priorities and for me as someone who comes from Africa, access is so important.
>> AMARA SHAKER-BROWN: Thank you. Paola.
>> PAOLA GALVEZ: Thank you, Amara. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Let me give you a perspective from someone that is from Latin America and from Peru. It's a developing country that had participated actively in these discussions but it's not well? Okay. Can you hear me well now? Yes. Thank you.
So, let me provide my perspective as someone that comes from Peru, a developing country, that has participated in these processes that are very well aware of what's happening, but at the same time, that has critical challenges happening on the ground. I can say political crisis that sometimes mean these very critical detail topics get overlooked.
I do believe that we need to maximize the impact of all this fora to look ahead, what's happening after 2025, and for that, I have three ideas I would like to share.
On one hand, strategic alignment. I believe we have we are several actors and we need to work as a community with coalition building to bring the voices to the ones that are making the decision, they are on the table.
Second, try to bring localized narratives. It can feel abstract sometimes when we think about this global discussions, right? But they are absolutely important for our national and local realities. So, how can we localize these topics by thinking local examples how to provide them to our national context. This is very important.
And third, but not least, I believe monitoring implementation is very, very important, advocating for clear mechanisms that track commitments made during this fora. This is usually the government implementing them. But there are mechanisms in place, so civil society, media, and also the private sector can play a vital role in this.
I'm going to be brief so we can discuss among others. So I will keep it there.
>> AMARA SHAKER-BROWN: Go ahead, Ananda.
>> ANANDA GAUTAM: Thank you. So, I think as peace started the context of Africa, I come the Global South as well and we have certain issues that are still, like if we do the global context, we have more than, I think about 25% people still not connected to the Internet. And then there is another issue, the people who are recently connected to the Internet doesn't have enough capacity to have a full levers of this platform or the opportunities that are ongoing with access to the Internet.
So, in my context, the two major issues will be the access and empowerment, I call it. So, first thing is people should be access regardless of any barrier, and the barrier could be either access to infrastructure or like there might be other barriers like language and, like, affordability and other accessibility issues like how persons with disabilities can have access to Internet and we can call it on a broad topic how we can ensure the meaningful access to the Internet.
Another thing is, after having access, we will be discussing about the human rights in digital perspective. Are human rights protected when we are being online or we are leveraging different technologies, now we are talking about AI governance and we are also now talking about AI gap along with the digital divide. AI divide is also very concerning topic today.
So, how do we ensure that these policies or this kind of forums we have, like, national forms, regional forums and (forums) and we are just ahead of the WSIS+20 review process. We just passed the Global Digital Compact and which has really positive message but we are to see the WSIS+20 process.
So, one of the major challenges this kind of forums are not binding. It doesn't have kind of ripple effect. You know, people are not bound. People or like any stakeholder is not bound to implement the takeaways.
But if we have any mechanism that we could that governments could uphold the values that are taken away from this forum is very important. And need, actually, focusing on the perspective of the young people, I believe young people has a very big stake because I believe they are the biggest stakeholder of the Internet and they are the future Internet Governance leaders who need to be equipped with enough capacity, enough knowledge so that they can decide what is the future of the Internet they want.
So, the three things I want to take away from this first round of our sharing is that we need to complement access with empowerment and we should not forget meaningful access. We need capacity building of young people and marginalized communities so that they can leverage, and then they can actually make their voices heard in the global forums. And then, like, the deliveries of this forum should be somehow taken back to the communities so that we uphold the human rights.
I would break here and going to another round of discussion. Thank you.
>> AMARA SHAKER-BROWN: Thank you all. Yeah, I think we have all heard, sort of, the issues around accessibility being the you know, the first barrier before you can even get into how the Internet works.
So, IGF is a key Multistakeholder Forum. And there have been a couple other ones this year. And we you know, multistakeholder is the key word of the year. But what, in your view, are the key challenges and opportunities for effectively implementing a multistakeholder approach to Internet Governance, especially ensuring and I think this is the key word meaningful representation, you know, not just having people in the room as a standard bearer for the global majority for their country but having meaningful representation in fora like the IGF, WSIS or the past Summit of the Future.
And I guess we can go the other direction. So, Ananda, we will start with you, and then Paola, and then Peace, unless someone has a burning desire to start.
>> ANANDA GAUTAM: This is a very challenging question. But my point of view being engaged with national regional initiatives for a while and then the biggest asset that Internet Governance has is its, I think 270 plus national, regional initiatives. Being said, we are the United Nations backed initiatives, I see that United Nations should also have some form of cooperations with national governments and other international agencies that they add here with this initiatives that so that we can implement the multistakeholder discussions not only at the global level, but also at the regional and local level.
We have many challenges. I also chair the youth IGF Nepal and like many UN agencies themselves does not know about Internet Governance Forum still. So there is a huge gap. They are leading main digital initiatives but they are not aware that these deliberations are happening and these are led by the Internet Governance Forum.
So, I see it kind of like structural cooperation gap. And if this coordinations could be made, SOUPBGSZ one of the major institutions that is global actor that can force a partnership and that can develop coordination mechanism with all stakeholders including governments (so United Nations) and if these deliberations are done like we have many this year, IGF has spent many funds in bringing in the parliamentarians. And if we can make those parliamentarians take these initiatives back to their countries and support the national and regional initiatives, I see by sometime, not by tomorrow, but, like, by in a couple of years, if we can make them realize and we need to make those kind of mechanisms. I see those mechanisms lacking in global level, we come here, it is so good, we go to regional IGF, it is a bit less, not private sector are not very interested, government participation is always minimal, it is overcrowded by civil society. It should be what we call equal footing on multistakeholder bodies, there should be equal participation as well. So we need to ensure, IGF needs to have initiatives and coordination mechanism with all UN specialized agencies and all the projects or the initiatives that are being done, either being eliminating digital divide or it could be on digital safety or it could be on AI, whichever UN agency is working on, if they align their efforts, aligned with Global Digital Compact and the relation of Internet Governance Forum, I think this is the best way we can get this thing done from bottom up approach. Thank you.
>> PAOLA GALVEZ: So I will continue, as you said, Amara. I'm just taking this off to not overhear me. You let me know if you guys cannot hear me well. Thank you.
I see different challenges. First of all, sometimes this fora, vital discussions are happening in places that are far and it requires lots of resources. First of all, monetary, so funding is one good barrier that we have. And then let May go for the opportunity. That's why sometimes we need to look out for funding support, organizations that are able to support civil society, media to come and join, academics as well. I mean, all the stakeholders. Because small organizations cannot join on their own.
I remember if I was able to come into an IGF for the first time, 2019, it was thanks to Internet Society and a fellowship called ISOC youth ambassadors. So, these are great opportunities that we can look out for it to come and have meaningful representation. This one thing.
Second, and that goes tied to another challenge. I would say for this for development countries, from where we come from, is the lack of knowledge and experience. And sometimes it sound the UN Internet Governance Forum, like, NetMundial, this big events where only experts come, right? And that's far from the truth.
If we can really understand about this process, actually, what we want is people that is really passionate and want to have a stake on the future of the Internet, right?
But it takes, and this is the opportunity, to bring more information, make it accessible for everyone, and I think the three of us that are in the table, we try to make this in our localities, like, to informing what is an Internet Governance Forum, right, at a local level. The regional level, to try to motivate other organizations to come and join. That's why the newer the newcomers, sorry, sessions are very important because it can be a monster. If you see the (?), there are so many sessions happening at the same time. So having some mentors, somebody that can prepare you, pair and follow you during the IGF that could be great and I think that's a great use case, best practice.
I remember my first time, it was somebody from ISOC that joined me, and guided me a bit on how to make the most out of this fora.
One third challenge, I would say power asymmetries. If and when we are here in the same table, let's say, we are all here, then we will have, I think, an open Q&A so everyone can comment and make a question. There are still power asymmetries that, you know, on this global fora, we can reflect agendas shaped by wealthier nations, more developed countries, richer or bigger corporations that can hold bilateral meetings that sometimes a small CSO don't know it's happening or don't know could happen, right?
And for the opportunity, I could say creating more inclusive mechanisms to push for everybody to be really at the exact same power in the conversation so that we can all have a meaningful participation and that our opinions can get hurt, as it should be. Thank you (heard).
>> PEACE: Thanks, Paola. I totally agree what you said and so I will just add on to (peace) a few things. And one challenge that I see and I want to repeat it is capacity building. And I think the lack of capacity that exists among the different stakeholders, but I think something that we must (?) is we have heard over time, the list, there have been steps that have been made in regards to civil society. Lots of initiatives have been going on to build the capacity of civil society organizations or participants and not to say that they are already there, no, but at least I want to acknowledge that there are some steps, there are some strides that have been made.
But where we need to also put our focus is the judiciary, the parliament, the law enforcers, the government, the private sector. We need to look at these other stakeholder groups to build their capacity, because if I look at Africa, the renal, we have had organizations like equality now, APC, ICT for change, kicker net, NDI, a couple of organizations that have been really trying to have capacity building so I think we need to, again, kind of map out, you know, and look at where the gaps, who are the people that we need to focus on in terms of capacity building and I want to also say that, yes, I really agree on the funding opportunity because this (?) facilitate the capacity building, bridging the skills gap, you know, that I am mentioning, and also ensuring that we have meaningful participation from these stakeholder groups when we talk about, you know, when we were at the IGF, when we talk about the different conversations that are happening in the WSIS plus, the GDC that just ended.
One challenge that is there that we see is limited, harmonized agenda. As civil society, do we have an agenda, you know, from a national, international level, going to the subregional, pushing forward to the regional, coming at the global level. When we all sit, like Paola was saying that we will all have different agendas so I think we need to have a kind of harmonized agenda or strategy.
And also there is still a problem of fragmented efforts. We are doing so much, even when we talk about the capacity that I just stepped away from. It is very fragmented. We need to harmonize our efforts as we talk about these challenges that we see.
I think also we need to look at, be very inclusive when we need programmes, we need to be very flexible and acknowledge and be aware of the different contexts and look at our participants as people that have different challenges and abilities, you know, looking at the women, looking at the persons with disabilities and looking at the timing when these conversations are happening.
I think you all remember when the GDC consultations was happening online. It wasn't very inclusive for other people, like Ananda like you, it was happening when it was very late for you, it was happening in my afternoons, and also let's look at the IGF now. It's happening around Christmastime when people some people are already off work. Some people working until 15th and taking their break. So, I think this kind of timing should be very should be very inclusive and we need to look at them as well.
And the challenge of also venues. If these conversations are happening in Geneva, happening in New York, it's not inclusive. You talk about even when you have maybe funding to travel there. You might be limited in terms of visa, you will not get visas. So I think these are some of the little things that might be ignored, but the big challenge to our participations and engagement and for us to have the impact that we desire.
So, and, again, to say what Ananda mentioned that having these other stakeholders in the room, having a multistakeholder conversation and not having more, maybe civil society but having everybody in the room is one of the challenges that we still continue to have. Thank you.
>> AMARA SHAKER-BROWN: Thank you. Building off of that a little bit, have you seen in your work in the past year or do you have ideas in, sort of, of the future of more effective ways that civil society, media, and the private sector can collaborate to engage with these multilateral processes or even civil society can help bridge that gap and pull other stakeholders in? I know some of those divides are hard to bridge. But if there's any work that you have seen either at the local level or at the global level of ways to really bring those nongovernmental stakeholders together, especially trying to, sort of, engage the private sector.
>> PEACE: Amara, Paola was pointing at me to okay, yes.
Yeah, I think one thing that I would suggest is definitely the bottom up approach, you know. When we come here, we meet with usually it's a very many people experience we meet here our government, meet here members of parliament. When we go back to different countries or regions, we then don't have any conversations happening and I think we should leverage on our structures like the IGF that is very starts from the grassroots. I think we need to embrace and leverage on it for us to have meaningful conversations and have everybody participating and harmonize our efforts and avoid fragmented efforts, put together our agendas.
But one thing that I need that I also want to mention is research, you know. We need to have research done. We need to map the stakeholders that are putting different efforts in place. We need to map the existing knowledge. We need to map the resources that we have. And at all levels really, starting from national, from grassroots and building all through coming to the at the global level and putting a funding mechanism in place is a very key thing that we need to focus on as well.
And have then after doing that, the research, all this mapping that we have, and then we need to also leverage on the power of the collective, you know, the collaborations, the synergies that we are building, we need to leverage on this synergies that we build. And then come up with this strategy all together, because I think we really need to emphasize collaborations and synergy and a multistakeholder approach. I think that's what I want to say now. Thank you.
>> AMARA SHAKER-BROWN: Ananda or Paola, whoever wants to go.
>> PAOLA GALVEZ: Okay. Let me just build on what Peace just said. The power of networks and alliances is huge, literally. I can name two examples. And for the presence of Latin America, for instance, in the Global Digital Compact Summit for the Future, I see the coalition of SEUFRPBT digital rights, NGOs in Latin America happen and they all went to New York, participated. I see this as a fantastic example of how Latin American organizations can come as unified voice, right?
Another example, for instance, the idea of this is my fifth IGF and most of the time this is the space where I see Ananda every year, for instance, if there is another meeting, we will not meet. But the immense potential of bringing new people to the conversation, new organizations probably or somebody that is working on a specific topic, it doesn't have to be an expert on Internet but if you are talking about children or financial services, it's good to have their opinion too, right and they don't know about IGF.
But, for instance, I built on the centre for digital policy community to work on a proposal, this is an example, but algorithmic transparency and getting to know to the community what is going to happen in December, the IGF, and many people reach out asking, what is the IGF, right?
So, this is a good example of when there are newcomers have participated in this IGF and will provide expertise and evidence for new regulation in the future of AI. This is an example once again.
But I do think good practices are happening. Also we need to and if we are thinking about civil society and media, we need to be very creative, right, because we most of us know about the UN call for travel support that exists. But unfortunately, resources are limited, right? They cannot fund everyone that applies.
So, let's be creative and try to find other governments that can have funding or universities. Universities for economics are very good allies that they want us to continue our research and make reports on the discussions that are happening.
So, I think these can be use cases and maybe people that are joining online have some other ideas would be great to share on the chat or here in the room. Because we need to act as a community to start changing it, bringing the voice of the global majority to this discussion and they need to be very meaningful.
>> ANANDA GAUTAM: Thank you, Paola and Peace, being the last speaker, I have the privilege to opt in for what are their voices and challenges to bring in something new.
My perspective is, like, it is a collaborative approach. As I mentioned before, we have challenges, but I give the invitation from IGF to my Minister of (?) but they didn't care, because they didn't know the value of this kind of meetings. And that is why we don't have much support in many countries. If we could establish importance of this conference or this kind of events, multistakeholder forums and government start taking it seriously, this will create another kind of environment they want to send their young people attending this events, maybe they can secure funding from government as well. That is one of the options we need more of the government support, which is very, very lacking.
And then if government start supporting this kind of initiatives, another collaborative approach is we need equal collaboration of civil society and private sector. So, private sector works in their business activities and which are very much related to the governance of if they are a tech company, the governance of technologies is going to affect their business as well.
So, they need the help of civil society to make responsible use of the technologies, and to make awareness and capacity building of this kind of issues. I think private sector can help civil society with some kind of we can see as it is like kind of a corporate social responsibility so that they help civil society to represent these kind of issues in this kind of forum. So they can have, like, tech companies like Meta, TikTok or whatever tech companies are there, they can help civil society to send their representative to these forums. They can help them to create the capacity building initiatives, to create awareness programmes, to make responsible use of technology.
That is kind of collaboration that is required. And this kind of forum should foster environment for those collaborations. It should force the environment to bring government in the board so that they actually take this thing seriously. If they take this thing seriously, private sector would also definitely look at things at more responsible way and this is what we ideally believe as the multistakeholder collaboration. So, I call for this kind of multistakeholder collaboration.
And another part that I have believed is I started youth IGF Nepal back in I think 2022, and within three years of establishment, we have been able to make an impact that there is a youth IGF in Nepal. We need to hear them. So, our ministries often call us for the consultation meetings. And our ministry was so happy that I delivered him the (minister) the letter from the IGF. Although, didn't this is an impact, by 30, he might come. We never know. But people are conscious that there is Internet Governance Forum. There's youth Internet Governance Forum in Nepal. We should hear them. They are young voices. We should include them.
So, I have been taking part in different consultations. And our community is growing. For the first year we trained 100 people and coming to the third year we have trained more than 300 people. And few people are part of now Internet Society youth masters programme. People are going to APrIGF, few people are going to regional IGF and they will take this back to their community.
Another thing is while we come and join this kind of forum, we get the opportunity, we should give something back to the community so that this community thrives and create an environment that will impact, it is not an overnight change, but we need to make our efforts. And even should make a lot of effort because this time as Paola mentioned only 10 people got the travel support. All of the fund was actually invested in the parliamentarians.
So, if government could have send their parliamentarians with their funding and those funds could have been utilized to bring more stakeholders, it could happen wonderful. Or even there's so much of other opportunities that UN can pull in to support in bringing more young people. And one of the best examples I can give is from Brazil. There is a CGI that supports more than 15 people every year, bringing to the IGF and other regional events. That's why you might be seeing any Brazilian young people in this IGF, that's because there is a support mechanism that has been intact. We need those kind of support mechanisms.
I think that's it from my side. Thank you so much.
>> AMARA SHAKER-BROWN: Great. Thank you all. We are now going to open it up to questions either in the room or online. Please feel free to put your question in the chat or to raise your hand.
I see we have a question in the room.
>> PEACE: Yes, we have someone in the room and she will take the mic.
>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you. It's great to hear about the youth IGF. I am really interested to know more about it. I know I'm from Australia and I see that IGF is there in Australia. I am an academic in the research space as well so I'm really interested to know more about that. Thank you.
>> ANANDA GAUTAM: We are going to take more and do you want to take more questions and answer or, like
>> AMARA SHAKER-BROWN: We can go ahead, if you want to answer this question, and then we can see who else has questions and take them in a group.
>> ANANDA GAUTAM: Okay. So, in regards to youth IGF Australia, I don't know, I was just having this thought. I was having a conversation with Jordan from ODA who established Australian IGF. I was about to ask him why don't you guys start a youth IGF but, unfortunately, I couldn't.
So, it is a good way when there is a national IGF, youth initiative, it will help bring in more young people, at least they will start looking for what IGF is and then, like, most of the people won't agree when they get fellowships, the global forum and Regional Forum and then realize there's a National Forum in their own country. So, like, this is a good one they are having awareness and a few people want to go to the IGF and they contact me how we can go to the IGF. Even some people from ministry this time contacted me. We want to go to the IGF. Is there any funding available? And I'm like, I said, we shouldn't have any funding available.
So, there are basic principles. The UN IGF Secretariat has created a toolkit to establish a youth IGF. If you want support, we from Youth Coalition on Internet Governance and then internegotiating youth training group help establish a lot of youth initiatives. We also help to funding few initiatives, but I'm not sure how much would it be for Australian people but in the developing nations we are starting youth initiative and I think we jump started five youth initiatives supporting them from the Internet Society youth training group. We have a very limited budget but I want in my tenure I want to jump start a few more youth initiatives.
So, we can help you. Maybe if you know Jordan already, we can sit with Jordan as well because Oda is the entity that has been there was a (?) Pacific IGF and then they have started Australian IGF. And if you find someone from Australian IGF, we can sit together and then discuss how discuss and help how you guys can start your own youth initiative.
I think that is it. Thank you.
>> AMARA SHAKER-BROWN: Great. Thank you, thank you for your question.
Any other questions in the room?
Okay. I have one from prele online. Question is, what are some strategies that you have see are successful for civil society advocates to engage with their local or national policymakers so parliamentarians, judiciary, anything like that on these issues because we know, sort of, getting a multistakeholder voice into the multilateral system can be difficult. So any past success there.
>> ANANDA GAUTAM: Can you put the question in text? Maybe it was so long.
>> PAOLA GALVEZ: I can start and then, Ananda, you can jump in. I actually have a good example. Because as you said, Amara, it's hard to bring the government into the multistakeholder discussion.
But a while ago in Peru, we started with capacity building programme for Kong mention and talking about digital economy. NGO participated, Comix which is a chamber of reuniting private sector in Peru that has committee on the digital economy and groups different (congressmen) technological companies we develop this. I remember it was under a context of a period when the Peruvian congress wanted to regulate the sharing economy on these platforms like Uber, et cetera. So we started with these sessions so they can understand a bit about the technology, the economy, et cetera.
It was a couple of weeks before Peru IGF and we said, and it would be a great opportunity so that we can all have a discussion and you can listen to what civil society media, academics and other stakeholders have to say on this and other topics related to the Internet Governance. And they were interested, a bit skeptic at the moment, but we had some participants from the parliament. This is one thing.
On the other and sometimes this happens because I was working on public consultation in Peru as part of the UNESCO AA readiness and methodology that I conducted in Peru and we had to do this. And public sorry, Congressman went there but some others D'go and only sent their advisors.
This is a very personal opinion but I would say let's not take it as a wrong way, having their advisors is also good because they are the ones speaking to the ears and actually they are the ones writing the bill so that's good, too, as long as there is a commitment from the congressmen to send their team. So there is a good step. So I can tell you these good examples that I have and I hope it can be replicated.
But showing them that it will benefit their work is a good way to speak to them so that they are interested in joining these discussions.
>> PEACE: Thank you. So, I want to just give also an example of what we have been doing to engage the legislators or members of parliament. We have APC convenes the African school on Internet Governance Forum and from last year, 2023, we were able to have about 16 members of parliament coming from different African countries. And to have these members of parliament in the room with the other civil society with the other stakeholders like civil society, technical community, as fellows or participants of the school was very important and very key, you know, for them to really learn, you know, understand the issues we talk about. Because when we go back usually want to engage them but they do not understand these issues that we talk about. Even the reports that we publish, they don't consume these reports because they are long reports, they do not have the time and the rest. So we need to pull them and bring them to this conversation that we always have.
So, I think having the members of parliament, you know, join the school was really key. And, again, I want to give example still with APC and because APC is a network of other civil society organizations and still across Africa APC works with other civil society organizations, for instance, KICTANet, for example, UG net that is based in Uganda and in 2022 ughnet was able to support members of parliament and someone from the judiciary to attend the IGF. And they did not just stop at supporting their participation at the forum. They continued to engage them back home. What next? You know, having the other stakeholders in the room and saying, okay, we were together at the global forum. What next for us? What are some of the things that we need to talk about at the national level?
So, I think this kind of very strategized engagement needs to happen and should not stop by them coming once to the conversation, them coming to the meeting once. We need to continuously engage them, you know, to have their buy in, to have their understanding and also to ensure that we have people on the floor of parliament that understand the issues that we talk about.
I thought I should just share that strategy that we use and, again, even this year, we had over six members of parliament join and while I'm at the forum we have seen some of them again during the parliamentary track. So you can be sure that continuous engagement of these members of parliament will bring some change when we go and knock the doors to talk about the policies, and the gaps that we see, share with them the policy briefs that we come up with from the from our different countries or regions, they will be able to understand the issues that we are talking about. Thank you.
>> ANANDA GAUTAM: Thank you, Peace, for taking this about the learnings of parliamentarians. Even each United Nations Secretariat started the parliamentarian track I propose that they bring parliamentarians and young people together in a setting that they would contribute afterwards getting back to their local community with the young people so that it could be something takeaways, but it never happened.
I think there is one parliamentarian track youth leaders dialect today but I'm not sure it is means it on that way or not.
Another example is we have a digital freedom coalition in Nepal, and we have been working with parliamentarians on different bills that have been proposed in Nepal so at least we have to start at some point. Being said that everything we advocate for might not be reflected in the development, but they will start listening to it.
And I have reflected that many parliamentarians are very keen to learn about these new issues and build their understanding on the emerging issues at least. So, this will help in a longer run. The immediate effect might not be there. But if we if we advocate it for persistently and continuously, they will start listening to it and when they feel the importance of it, they are the ones who are writing the bills, they are the ones who will be making the laws. If we make them understand this is doable, that is it from my side. Thank you.
>> PEACE: Ananda, let me add something that I remembered just yesterday. We were having a conversation, like with one of Ang's member called root international that comes from Congo and I was happy from Congo, DRC Congo they have brought I think five members of parliament. I think maybe I forgot the number (APC) I like what it was talking about that, okay, yes, they have come. He is very happy they have come but was thinking about what kind of, you know, sessions guiding them because coming to the IGF is one thing, like I just mentioned, but afterwards, are we going to come and move around and that's it, playing a strategy for what engagements they should be part of, who are the people they should meet and trying to organize some people to, again, you know, give them some insights. So, I think this is some of the things that we need to do as civil society, as different stakeholders if we have these opportunities to have members of parliament or policymakers in the room, let's go an extra step and have agendas set and have strategies laid well so that we can have some impact. Thank you.
>> AMARA SHAKER-BROWN: Thank you. We have time for one more question. If anyone online has a question. Otherwise, I have one final one that I can put.
All right. We are trying to get global majority to meaningfully be involved. As your global minority partners, partners from the Global North, either funders or other civil society, are there specific things other than promoting things you have said, funding, more funding opportunities, more inclusive timing and location, other things that we can be carrying forward if we are in the room and you are not, other than advocating for you to be in the room, but are there any specific, you know, actions that your Global North partners can be taking or supporting to help, sort of, bring your messages into the conversation?
>> PAOLA GALVEZ: I can start. First, I think and that reminds me to one invitation I received, but it was first they because I'm based in Paris but I'm Peruvian and they were thinking I was in Paris, they invited me to a global forum, let's say. And I mentioned I was in Lima doing this project with UNESCO. And they say, ah, then you can join online because we don't have much funds. And, you know, at the moment, it was a tough decision, but I was very sure of what I believe and I said, I'm really sorry, but I don't think it's the same engagement when you join online and you deliver your speech as much as I'm very passionate when I speak. I said it will not be the same.
So, let's please look for someone else who maybe is in Europe that can come.
In the end they made the effort and they found the funds. So, this is one thing to say, I appreciate when the Global North want to help us. But there is I don't think there's a replacement of Global North representative speaking for us. So, I would like to reiterate the importance of being more creative and getting the funds to bring the voices of Global South representative, because there's nothing more important than having them. We all know that the main sessions are important. But what really, really matters are the discussions that we have during the coffee breaks or if we can have lunch and the space when we can really mention our needs, our pains, what are the challenges we are living.
So, yeah, advocating for having more funds and because we may have the funds and then we may not have the seat on the table.
I'm trying to looking forward because if we are in a conversation where we are discussing education in rural areas, it's nice to see experts in education but we must have teachers that are suffering or living the challenges of digital technology impact on education, right?
I myself found in challenging looking for these real actors that meaningfully engage for this consultation that I mentioned. But I know my fault, right? So I asked for help to an organization, do you know if people or communities of teachers that can come and then in our (?) which is a community in Peru came all the way to Lima and participated. That's meaningful. It's a lot of work but we need to do it if we want discussions to be valuable and to really have the impact on the Internet we want.
>> PEACE: Okay. Thank you. I want to add on the funding mechanism. I think we need to also know acknowledge the different contexts, you know, content and embrace, you know, local content. But like I mentioned at the beginning, for instance, in the African Region really the issue of access is very, very important.
And so then we need to look at mechanisms or that work. When we look at, for instance, the access, just picking on access. The mechanism that can work like community networks, you know, so I think sometimes we are using the same approach everywhere. But we need to tailor our approaches to fit the context of our targets so I think as we work on our different strategy we need to ensure that we are aware of the different contexts and what kind of work like policies that's not someone else cannot come and speak for, you know, the local community. So, I want to just emphasize that we need to always acknowledge that in general we need to have gender responsive approaches and embrace multistakeholderism. Thank you.
>> ANANDA GAUTAM: Thank you, Paola and Peace. Complementing them, my major kind of reflection is, it is not about finding new funding. I think it is alignment of the existing funding. Are we giving the funds to who need it the most or are we just distributing, the alignment of the available funds is very important. We have so many events and are the efforts of all the specialized agencies in line with the now we can say will they be aligned with the global digital KPHRA*BGT or what WSIS+20 will deliver it. Another is collaboration, have we sought out for the collaborative approach from all the stakeholders. I think these two things need to be addressed so that we can have (compact) the kind of multistakeholder engagement that we are seeking. Thank you.
>> AMARA SHAKER-BROWN: Great. Thank you all and thank you all for joining us. I think we can sorry, excuse me wrap it up. Thank you to our panelists. Thank you for sharing your expertise, your experiences and for giving us some ideas of what we can be doing in this next year so ensure full, meaningful participation of all stakeholders.
And with that, I will say have a lovely evening to those in the room and have a lovely day for the rest of you. Thanks so much, everyone.