IGF 2024-Day 3-Plenary-Main Session 3 Internet Governance and elections- maximising potential for trust and addressing risks-- RAW

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Good afternoon. Welcome to this open session, the main session on Internet Governance and Elections: Maximising Potential for Trust and Addressing Risks.

My name is Pearse O'Donohue, I'm the Director of the European Commission. It is my honour to moderate this session with the vanish distinguished panel of speakers as some of whom are online, I will introduce in a moment.

Just to understand what we want to get here today, over the course of this year, we have experienced the largest number of elections in history, it was a megacycle cycle of elections across the world. In the elections, we have seen in a number of places that countries have experienced cases of tech harms, technical interference or use of technology to influence or interfere with elections. The Internet brings influence to citizens and support elections during elections, it has sometimes become a tool to hinder that democratic process.

So this is an issue which we must address.

Already on Sunday emergency on Day 0 of this Internet Governance Forum here in Saudi Arabia, we had a session on misinformation. But now we want to focus specifically on the issues around elections and maximizing potential for increasing trust and addressing any risks that exist.

So this session will therefore have a discussion on the role of stakeholders in actually protecting information and election integrity.

What are the rights, what are the possibilities for action?  And we really want to see, how can we leverage the Internet to support informed citizen participation while mitigating the risks to electoral integrity.

For that, I would like to introduce our great panel of speakers. Whom we have and I would like to start by saying hello to Ms. Sezen Yesil Director of Public Policy for Turkiye and Azerbaijan at Meta. Ms. Lina Viltrakiene Ambassador at Large for Digital Affairs for Lithuania. Mr. William Bird, who is from media monitoring Africa. And Mr. Tawfik from UNESCO. You are welcome Tawfik. And we have online Ms. Rosemary Sinclair, the outgoing Chief Executive of auDA. And Ms. Liz Orembo from RIA. You are both welcome online. It is great to see you. We can see you on stage here.

So I will move to the seat.

I beg your pardon, Your Excellency. This is the problem of not having paper in front of me, I'm still not adapted. We have our representative from Zimbabwe member of the Parliament, Honorable Fortune Daniel Molokele,I apologize for excluding you from the list. Thank you for being here.

The way we will proceed with the panel, I will allow each panel member to make a brief opening statement in relation to a question which I will now ask. They'll have three minutes to respond. And in the good tradition of the IGF, we will then immediately allow for input from you, the audience, both here and online, to those questions. Before then I'll go back to the panelists for more detailed questions for which we have chosen specific subjects.

That is how we would like to proceed. As I said, get ready. We would like to encourage your participation so that the output of this session will actually be something which we can have some well informed,able action measures which can be taken. And I will say if the context of the IGF, where we know that there is so much that the multistakeholder platform that this represents can do in such an important issue.

So to get us going, I'm going to ask the following question to all of our panel members. ...

With more than 65 countries going to polls, 2024 was marked

by the biggest number of elections in history, being

called the Year of Democracy. Looking in retrospect, how do

you think the year went by? What worked and what didn't work?

So perhaps I can turn to you, please, first of all.

>> SEZEN YESIL: Thank you for hosting Meta on this panel. We know that the election year was coming. And specifically for the election, we inform our election integrity work at Meta. In 2024 we ran a number of election operation centre to monitor continuously the issues on our platforms, and to take actions as needed swiftly.

I can share a few observations from this year's elections. In our action we try to strike a balance between protecting voice and keeping people safe. I must admit it is one of the hardest jobs in the world.

We have many policies, rules on what is allowed and what is not allowed on Meta platforms.

And remove content that is violating rules or policies.

Throughout this year, we decided to update some of our policies. For example, we updated our penalty system per feedback of the Oversight Board to treat people more fairly and give more free expression.

Secondly, we updated our policy on violence. People of course have every right to speculate on election related corruption. When it is related to violence, we remove it. This went very well during elections this year.

Second observation is about prevention of foreign interference. We had coordination in the behavior networks that consist of hundreds of Facebook and Instagram accounts and pages and work to mislead people and spread disinformation unfortunately.

We observed some networks we disrupted moved to platforms with fewer safeguards than ours.

The last is about the impact of artificial intelligence AI. In the beginning of this year, many were concerned about the potential negative impact of Gen AI, generated content on elections.

Such as deepfakes or AI generated disinformation campaigns. However, sorry, to address these risks, we took a lot of technical measures, plus we signed an AI election accord with other major tech companies to cooperate to combat threats coming from want use of AI on elections.

And we observed that the risks did not materialize in a significant way. And such impact was modest and very limited in scope. For example, only less than 1% of the fact check misinformation was AI generated.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Time now.

>> SEZEN YESIL: Done.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Sorry, you are the first to realize the keeping of the speakers short.

Next, Tawfik Jelassi, Director from UNESCO, we'll be happy to hear your views on the question of really, what do you think, how did the year go?  What worked, what didn't work? 

>> TAWFIK JELASSI: Thank you very much Mr. Chair. You reminded us this is the super election year with 75 elections being held. That is involving half of the population of the world. Obviously, this is a major test for Democratic systems around the globe.

What worked well to answer your question, I think there were Global efforts to protect election integrity from process point of view, however, the second maybe thing that worked well is the involvement of the youth and first time voters in elections around the world. Especially in countries where half of the population, sometimes 60% of the population is under the age of 25.

I think we saw this major engagement, that's good. What has not worked well is the exponential spread of disinformation and hate speech derailing the integrity of electoral processes and maybe casting some doubts about or trust in election outcomes and democratic institutions.

The second thing that did not work well, which is a major challenge is it the safety of journalists covering elections.

Many attacks happened against them. And we know that extremely high impunity rate for violence or crimes committed against journalists.

The third thing that did not work well is the huge digital inequality that exists, especially marginalized Groups, including women and persons with disabilities who faced major barriers to participate in democratic processes.

Finally, what can we do about this?  And what is the way or the path forward?  I think we need some stronger regulatory frameworks to address harmful online content while protecting freedom of speech. So I want to say a regulation, I'm not referring to censorship, I'm safeguarding free speech online.

Second, we need to maybe expand media and information literacy in the digital age, especially among the youngsters and citizens.

And finally, I would say that UNESCO is contributing to this Global effort on media and information literacy in the digital age, but also through the published UNESCO guidelines for the Governance of digital platforms which happened a year ago.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you very much. Some of the subjects you raised we will come back to in detailed questions. It is a very clear view as to the main points that we must address including of course, intimidation and violence against journalists and the general gaps which have themselves an impact in the derivement of the elections. Thank you. If I can ask the same question to the 50 of our online participants, our online panelists.

Ms. Liz Orembo a researcher at the RIA of ICT Africa. I would like to hear your views on the same question about how things went, what worked and didn't work. Please, Liz.

>> LIZ OREMBO: Thank you for the floor. Thank you for inviting me to this very important discussion in my reflection, there were things that went well and didn't go well, that were on site. I'm sorry, you might hear some chicken sounds behind me.

So one thing that did go well is the stakeholders even locally, even in Africa, because I work in the context of Africa, they knew that this was coming. And we did changes in technology, they were aware that they needed to come together and tackle some of these risks.

Some of the risks were tackled but also the challenges of the free flow of information itself. And with that, I also talk about data.

That remained a problem. And when free flow of information is not there, with challenges of policy and infrastructure and challenges also of media, then people don't access information the same way. And it breeds a certain ground for misinformation and inequality.

And also note the culture of data sharing, as understanding the context of election, and this brings that unevenness of access to information itself and also misinformation.

But that problem continued. It also meant that trust for election management bodies also kind of went down.

Because people are looking for information, truthful information. And getting mixed information. At the same time media is not equipped, it is a struggling industry trying to get information to people.

That breeds another fettered ground for misinformation. So data and information flow, I would say was an urgent problem to me. But also as much as stakeholders came together to tackle misinformation, also there was a bit of challenge in tackling in bringing all stakeholders to come to place because we challenge the data becoming more available, we need more capacity to crunch data and get it to people. Those capacities were different as well and from many challenges.

Those data, sometimes in data availability, the challenges in making use of that data.

Another persistent challenge is especially asking the Global South reaching the tech companies. And with that we also experience regulatory challenges and comes to crisis that can sometimes lead to Internet down. I will stop there for fear of being time limited.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you. Very interesting perspective, including the last point, but not least the last point with regard to the particular issues of the Global South.

Hopefully we can come back to some of those questions as well.

Now, if I can turn to the next of our speakers here. William Bird from media Monitoring Africa. Please.

>> WILLIAM BIRD: Thank you. It has been a big year. I want to ask if people genuinely feel better about democracy having had 65, 70, 75 elections?  Because the sense that I get from speaking to people is that despite it being a year of celebrating democracy, we don't feel good about democracy. I think that speaks to fundamental changes. The first is the rise of fascism, this is a real problem for us, in terms of I think it is deepening polarization. It is naming people that support human rights as Left Wing extremists because you talk about fundamental equality and dignity for all.

There is something that happened that we need to accept as a point of departure of power structures. We're no longer in a place to have a power and messaging framed by one or a few central entities. There is the wonderful possibility that almost anyone can have a few.

Inasmuch as it is a good thing, we mustn't throw the baby out with the bath water, as the expression goes.

We need to make sure that there are certain things that are common that we can at least agree on.

So I think in terms of things that worked well, I was thinking about it last night, I came up with media seems appropriate, electoral management bodies Civil Society collaboration and adaptability. Some colleagues have talked on the adaptability of the entities adapting to the emerging challenges. MECCA.

For media, we saw them facing huge problems across the continent, particularly Southern Africa and we developed mechanisms to assess how they perform and contribute.

Electoral management bodies in countries with a big switch in power, we saw where there is a stronger more credible body they can contribute and function despite being subjected to significant attacks.

Civil Society, I think, worked really well, certainly in our experience in South Africa. They centre research projects, worked with Universities, and a public complaints platform and worked together, the next point collaboration. Can I finish collaboration, which is that we worked with the social media platforms, Google, Meta and TikTok and the electoral management body. That did something positive.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you, William for a new acronym for a way of analyzing the different issues.

We will come back to that also.

And now, certainly not going to forget him this time. Our next speaker is the Honorable Daniel Molokele, a member of Parliament in Zimbabwe. Please.

>> DANIEL MOLOKELE: Thank you so much. I will speak more from the African point of view. It was also a very huge election year for Africa, 2024. I would say as we end the year as a continent, we are generally happy with the election processes across Africa. We're largely and peaceful and successful elections in countries such as South Africa, Madagascar, Botswana and recently in Ghana.

And we managed also to benefit from the innovation around media and technology. Especially harnessing the youth in elections. Generally, young people are not wanting to participate in elections. This year we had a higher participation of young people as voters. We need to see the young people as candidates or elected representatives. And saw the use of social media in a progressive way, for voter registration and to turn out as voters.

Including the media platform including TikTok, WhatsApp, Facebook and X. And so we're harnessing media to access elections by average citizens.

We ended the year on a note in countries like Mozambique, where there is no peace at the moment. There is continued escalation with no solution in sight.

Last I checked hundreds of civilians have died mostly at the hands of secured officials like police in Mozambique. The election remains disputed. We need a solution to that.

Interesting enough, there is a huge use of media technology or innovative approaches to use of media, the leader is not in Mozambique at the moment, but provides leadership everyday in Mozambique. People are using access to media technologies to respond. It can be a bad thing and be a good thing. That is the situation at the moment in Mozambique.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you very much. So between what Daniel Molokele said and William before him, we are faced with a number of issues where we need to consider the role of the Internet and online data and communications. On issues such as William mentioned the rise of extremists as a result of the elections or in the case of Daniel the actual fact of violence as part of the elections leading terribly to the death of certain individuals.

And to what extend is misinformation, to what extend is digital or online information or platforms contributing to those serious issues.

So the next speaker is here with us, so it is Ms. Lina Viltrakiene from Lithuania. Please.

>> LINA VILTRAKIENE: Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. And indeed, I would like to say that Lithuania significantly contributed to this year of democracy by having participated in three elections this year.

We had presidential elections. We had elections to the European Parliament and we also had the national Parliamentary elections.

So from the Government perspective, it was a challenge and a lot of Governmental institutions including Lithuania electoral Commission and other institutions, indeed worked hard and consolidated efforts to make the elections going smoothly and make them reliable.

Particular attention was paid to ensure that only legal sources of fundings are used for electoral campaigns. Transparency is maintained with real expenditure of the political parties and individuals for the media.

Effective communications channel with media are maintained, appropriate channels to protect against disinformation and comprehensive system to mitigate risks is established to mention just a few.

Some of these requirements and other important requirements are covered by Lithuania and European legal acts like the election code, the criminal code, the political party law, the provision of information to the public, to mention some of them.

And thus solid legal environment is the first thing I would like to mention in the list of what worked.

Another action, which I prefer to include in the same list is established collaboration of responsible state institutions with media. Including with social platforms which no doubt in large public space invigorated public debate during the election campaign.

But on the other hand, all around the world, we faced the unprecedented issues of lies, disinformation, deepfake statements of top politicians, appearing especially on social platforms.

This increased the threat of influencing the choices of people seeding distrust in society and eroding trust in democratic institutions.

You may know that in EU, the Romania and Bulgarian elections experienced significant interference by foreign actors via social media platforms. Especially TikTok and telegram.

Thus, this shows us that we need to work further on continuous collaboration of platforms with state institutions.

While regulatory institutions need to be improved.

As a model, I would like to refer to the EU Digital Services Act which could really encourage the thinking. Thank you.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you very much, Lina. If I can add, working in the European Union for the European Commission also, we had put in place a number of measures for monitoring the health of the European Parliament elections. We're still doing that assessment. It is clear that some problems were avoided. You did mention a number of other problems.

For the first time the appearance of deepfakes which can be very influential and turn people against an individual or a tendency or a party. And be very damaging, even if they are quickly identified as being fake. Because sometimes the initial damage is done.

Thank you. Our last speaker in line, thank you for your patience, is Ms. Rosemary Sinclair, the Chief Executive of Australia at auDA.

>> ROSEMARY SINCLAIR: Thank you for allowing the technical perspective on the panel. I would like to give a technical reminder about the Internet. It is a network of networks, 70,000 in total. It operates on open standards and common protocols to enable Global interoperability. It is made useful by the unique identifiers, the names and numbers coordinated by ICANN, it is in itself a community that uses a multistakeholder approach.

I'm part of the technical community. I'm responsible for auDA, the small company that administers point AU. We focus on technical operations and performance and domain name licensing rules and we're open supporters of the multistakeholder model. When I think about 2024 and what worked and what didn't work in that year of important elections.

I want to make note of what worked, particularly the Internet worked inspect in Australia we delivered 100% of availability to users during the year. Every time they used or wanted to access the domain name system, they could.

Why is that important?  Because the Internet worked to share information, provide communication and commerce to grow economies and standards of living.

There are a number of harms. Many of those have been mentioned just now. Misinformation and disinformation and fraud and others. And they are key challenges, particularly in such an election year.

The harms of course need policy work. That is what we're here to talk about. The tensions as we see it are between open information, secure identity, and privacy for individuals.

The question is how to balance those things. So practically speaking, during elections we sometimes see about increased requests from people to take down the websites of the political opponents.

Those requests are often made with claims of misinformation or disinformation.

Those claims must be assessed by others who are authorized by law and skilled to make the judgments.

Our judge is based on the doc rules and not on the political content or request of the requester.

We have not seen the impact of AI on elections in Australia. But we're expecting a national election next year. We think that AI will be something we need to work during that process.

So the Williams work that we all have to contribute to is really a work in progress. We see Internet Governance Forum as the place for these discussions, including our own technical perspective.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you, Rosemary and thank you for giving us the views of the tech community and those of ICANN and of DNS in relation to the issues we're talking about. And the need for independent verification and moderation with regard to any attempt to take down websites. It is a two edged sword. Thank you to the panelists for the first round. We will see if anybody from the audience here, in the Conference room or for that matter online would wish to make any inputs?  I would ask that they are short.

To do so in a time honoured fashion. If that is the case, come up to the front and use one of the microphones.

If anyone wants to do so, please identify yourself and the organisation you represent and keep your input short. Two minutes as a maximum.

>> ATTENDEE: Thank you, Giacomo. I'm a member of the organisation you know well. We discussed in the Working Party Day 0, that was organized about the Task Force that worked on vigilant integrity of the European election last year, compared to what happened in the U.S. election in South Africa.

The contribution that we can give you is that the assessment of what happened during European election was very good. Because it was a successful example of cooperation with the platforms. Made in a multistakeholder way. In the sense of, you know, unique place, you have Academia, fact checkers, institutions working together through the practice assigned a number of platforms.

This information we bring to the attention of the platform. The platform react immediately.

So we have been successful in removing things without having enforcement, but made on good will and cooperation.

Unfortunately, what was reported by U.S. friends was not exactly the same.

They said the level of cooperation in the U.S. was not the same. They leave very worrying experiences    it is important for the UNESCO people here    of pressure and intimidation of fact checks to suppress them and in the public discourse.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: I have to ask you to wrap up.

>> >> ATTENDEE: YOU NEED TO FIND DIFFERENT WAY TO ACT: In different cultural context according to the different situation.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you for the insights, need the useful workshop that took place on Sunday. Another speaker, your name and organisation.

>> ATTENDEE: Hello, Alexander, from the University at Russia.

I would like to point out along with misinformation and data spread, Internet may be used by some Government for watching. In Russia two set of elections, one was presidential election for Mr. Putin and Internet voting was used in these elections.

Without possibility to multistakeholder discussions on implementation of the system.

Without the possibility to check trust, this system undermines any results of elections. Unfortunately, implementation of the systems and results of elections are not well observed or seen by Global community. It brings another dimension to the undermining trust and improving risk of fair elections. Thank you very much.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you, indeed. I'm looking to see, do we have any online inputs?  Anybody who would like to take the floor?  This is the way of giving the spotlight to Bruna what has done all of the organization for the session.

>> BRUNA SANTOS: I would echo a comment. I'm mocha from Iranian academy community, some cross border digital platforms refused to cooperate with the authorities of independent countries in the feud of immediately dealing with the information, many felt the harms that were given during the reasons, due to excuses including political sanctions and refused to establish legal representation. My question to the panelists, what is the legal and political solutions to solve this challenge and the double standards of digital platforms should maintaining the health of many elections impact?  That is the question.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: I ask the panelists, anything we heard so far, particularly the last question, if you want to incorporate that in responses in the discussion.

A final participant from the floor. Please.

>> ATTENDEE: Thank you, I'm from the Egyptian Parliament. Actually, the problem is not just during elections, but it gets worse, during elections.

We find those what they call it the electronic flies or so. They attack anything we put. They put they lot of disinformation and try to get us down by any means.

Even those in the regime or opponents or anything. Even when we report, it takes long time to take any action, if the action is taken. So my question is, is there a possibility to have a platform or anything between all of the people, to support such attacks or harassments especially for women politicians of course, so the action can be taken in a rapid way and we can get rid of these things or not?  Thank you.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you. Again, I hope the question can be addressed. I will allow myself to give a potential answer. Not a full answer.

In the European Union, particularly with the introduction of the Digital Services Act, we have a requirement for individual, large operators, of platforms to house the facility for the reporting of such activities

But also centralized databases, monitoring the issues. By the way, verbal and online abuse against women and particularly politicians is something we're concerned about, particularly in a city with a long term effect and effects on the individual.

These are issues to address in the case of the European Union, we see this as a necessity, the ability to report such incidence and hopefully see quick action.

I'm sure there are experiences from around the world and we're willing to learn. We will have a longer section at the end. I hope we have more participation online. We will move to the second set of questions. Here we have broken them down between our expert panelists.

I will start with William Bird and Liz Orembo. You have the hardest job. I will ask both of you two questions. And give you five minutes each to answer both of them. So we have put them on screen. And I hope you can see them. But certainly, what evidence has come

to light of information

integrity in elections being

weakened through human rights or

tech harms?  How should the

weakening of election integrity

through these and other risks be

identified?

That is for William. Liz, I would like to ask you ...

What are the implications or

consequences of such risks to

information integrity in

Elections. Liz, we'll come back to you in a moment.

But back to you William. You have five minutes, please.

>> WILLIAM BIRD: I love the point, a lot of the things occur outside of elections. We see the things occurring at a heightened level in an election period. Attacks against women, for example, online don't stop because it is not an election period.

Three things where we saw information integrity, first in attacks against the international management body, these were multipronged and out of the misinformation play book. They spread rumors in the disinformation and target individuals and lace the campaigns with pseudo legal challenges and rely on a willing platform partner to scale the dirty work. Most of the instances on the platform, that is X, that is not part of our collaboration. The second issue is attacks against human rights individuals.

In a two week period we saw attacks against journalists and most actually against one journalist in particular.

Organized network behavior, including issues linked to incitement.

Thirdly, the bigger impact of the decimation of media as we have seen them undermined as trusted systems. That feeds into the idea of media and polarization, the sense of people not knowing what is go on and being unable to operate. How should they be identified?  In EU, there is a platform where people with report attacks against journalists. So there is an archive. We have a place to report hate speech, threats against public workers, this is on a platform that operates independently from the state. The public have faith. It applies the same standard. We found what is okay on one platform is not okay on another. If I want to report on X, nothing happened. If I report on this platform, it is another process. And this one is another platform. You can report on any preliminary and take action.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you.

Consistency in the confidence in the individual that whatever the application is, they will have redress or have the issue examined is important.

Turning to you Liz, what are the implications or consequences of the risks to information integrity in elections?  Including the risk to civil and political rights or the interference by foreign actors, so on?  Please.

>> Thank you. I begin by first looking at the media environment.

There are certain most information that comes from the online environment, coming to media and vice versa. When does information integrity on online platforms, it means the media has to respond to a lot of public interest. Get information that is misleading there and putting it out to the public. Demystifying some of this misinformation.

Also, competing narratives. A lot of the information also coming or online means the media has to go through all that information and spotlight the kind of information their public should focus on. They could be overwhelmed with a lot of information coming from the different media.

Again, we see the capacity issue of the media because of the shift with advertisement and revenue to online spaces. There is a challenge there.

What does it mean?  A human rights and civic rights is people don't watch from an informed point. They miss a lot of information that the country think useful for voting. The right choice of candidate. It means this will impact things to do with development issues. Development is a right that some enjoy first generation of rights, like freedom of expression.

The other is incitement. When there is no information integrity, there is a lot of polarization online understood effort. The Cold War are much more marginalized. You mentioned women and girls. Women who have been active change makers at the grassroots level and try getting into the spaces of Governance, face violence online and offline. This discourages them from pursuing Government office or electoral office.

This means that we are widening the inequalities.

I would also like to point out the Africa continent faces different challenges and context. We are at different levels of development. Different levels of democratic progress.

And that means that policies that are by the big platforms cannot be applied blanket lead because some will not apply in some countries because of special tech and democratic context as differing to others.

Sometimes we see there is not much investment or tech companies get overwhelmed to give special attention to special context.

This year, what we have seen, especially with the Mozambique as the situation continues, naturally, the tech platforms are not engaging but also the overstretch in engagement to respond faster to situation on the ground.

Also the challenges we are getting in most African countries, even if there is attention there, there is not the specialized attention on the ground, because most of the tech companies are not domiciled.

The other thing, when we talk about information integrity and trust in electoral management bodies, sometimes you have a focus on electoral management bodies maintaining their reputation.

At the same time, for them to get trust from the public, there needs to be an environment where there is proactive information coming also from election management bodies.

And especially in the context of how they manage elections. Now, because of different media access, the situation in Africa, either the connectivity is uneven or access to even traditional media is uneven.

When they try to communicate, whichever platform, it doesn't really reach people. That unevenness in information access also brings about the fettered ground for misinformation.

I say it also touches on what William Bird had also mentioned.

I would like to touch on what we try to do.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: As quick as you can now, please. Thank you.

>> LIZ OREMBO: Yes, yes. We are working in Mozambique, Ghana and Tanzania having elections next year. The focus is on media Coalitions and access to data also. We are trying to as we do that research, another thing we're seeing right now at the dilemmas around data sharing, data sovereignty and whether to host elections in the country and outside the country. I will stop there.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Okay. I'm sorry that I have to interrupt you. That was a very interesting analysis. Quite a number of issues that you have identified as being things that need to be addressed. The consequences in some detail and obviously some lived experiences as to what happens.

With that in mind now, we will move on to the next set of panelists, this time the format is slightly different. We have one question and I will ask that question to three panelists. And hopefully you can feed off one another.

So I will start with Daniel Molokele. The question is ...

What initiatives have

successfully responded to

challenges posed to information

integrity in elections, and how

is this success measured? Are

such initiatives specific to a

given time or place, or could

they be used more widely around

the world? Mr. Daniel Molokele, please.

>> DANIEL MOLOKELE: Thank you. There are several initiatives, most are just starting. I wanted to highlight a continental one that occurred in September. We met in Senegal as Africans on the freedom of Internet Forum.

One of the key pillars of the Forum with hundreds of Delegates from across the continent.

One was the access with the perspective of elections.

Especially knowing in some instances in Africa, we have seen Governments using strategies such as Internet shutdowns where they create a complete blackout during the campaign period to force an advantage for the opposition.

And instances where the social media platforms like WhatsApp also restricted in terms of operation to make it difficult for people to access information.

Also the overreliance on state media at the expense of media that is independent and shutting down alternate media platforms, especially media houses that are sympathetic to the opposition.

We have started an annual meeting in which we get presentations and research and assessment in terms of electoral processes and access to information. And also related to that, there is a parallel process around challenging policy frameworks and legislative frameworks that make it harder for people to access information especially Civil Society, especially political parties that are not the ruling party.

Especially journalists that are covering elections. Access to information laws in Africa are there, but some of them are designed in such a way they create a more bureaucratic process. Ostensibly they're supposed to increase access to information. At the same time they make it harder for someone to access information.

We have such laws in Zimbabwe where I come from called the official secret act. That also can be used to sort of make it difficult to access specific information, if it doesn't create advantage to the ruling party.

There are a lot we see, not just in seeing coming in to the space but research from Universities, from schools that teacher journalism and media studies. That helps to have a more robust view of access to processes. And integrity.

Africa is a Region where is a great Digital Divide compared to the rest of the world.

The majority of people in Africa don't have easy access to Internet or no easy access to mainstream media. They're subject to misinformation and disinformation and a lot of state funded propaganda. At the end of the day, it is a disadvantage that makes the election systems not as free and fair.

In most instances it favours the ruling Group in the continent. Thank you so much.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you for suggesting solutions you identified one or two further problems to be addressed as arising from your experience. Now I would like to ask the same question to Lina. I will read it briefly or after the accident bridge, what initiatives have successfully responded to challenges and how such initiatives specific to a given time and place or used more widely?  Please.

>> LINA VILTRAKIENE: Thank you very much. Indeed measuring the impact of counter disinformation initiative is a challenging task. But I would like to share with you several good practices that we developed in Lithuania.

And that could be really replicated worldwide. So I will refer to three of them.

First, in Lithuania, we created really a consolidated system of monitoring and neutralizing disinformation.

We take comprehensive whole of society approach to monitoring, analyzing and countering disinformation involving not only state institutions, but also the whole vibrant ecosystem of non Governmental organisations, media, business, which really helps to create resilience of the society and also trust.

In this context, I would like to particularly stress the importance of NGOs.

In analyzing and countering disinformation but also, particularly in promoting digital and media literacy.

Including journalists working or writing to audiences of national minorities, developing learning Programmes, and different devices to vulnerable groups.

We have NGO resilience initiative, that worked a lot on that.

We have an important non Governmental organisation debunk that organisation.

This institution also researches disinformation and runs educational media literacy campaign.

Indeed, developing critical thinking is key to resilience against foreign information manipulation and interference.

Another important element I would like to mention, it's the collaboration between business and Academia to develop technical solutions.

Effective solutions indeed, are required such as AI driven tools, for example, that could detect manipulated media bots. And coordinate it in authentic behavior. Here, the collaboration between science, between Academia and business is really important.

In general, I perhaps refer to the question from the audience about reporting platforms and so on.

In Lithuania, we have really a lot of people, a lot of society members participating in countering this disinformation. We have a very nice initiative the Lithuanian elves initiative. People are reporting to social platforms about the accounts spreading disinformation. This works really well.

Second practices, which I wanted to share with you, and which is very much related to the first one, is a cross sectoral approach to find disinformation and closely cooperating at the national level.

We have established a cross institutional team of experts and framework under the national crisis management centre, indeed helping to quick detection and rapid response to disinformation or to information incidents which could have a big influence.

This national crisis management centre, coordinates the strategic communications and also provides guidelines for a possible response to different information incidents. Our experts are really willing to share and sharing their experiences also with other countries of this effective functioning of cross institutional framework.

Finally, that brings me to my third point, that sharing experiences among democratic States is really important.

One situation we have in Lithuania is the information integrity hub. Which is operated by Lithuania and the OECD.

Which provides the training for officials worldwide. So this is a training Programme offering opportunity for OECD and non OECD public officials to be alert and strengthen capacities to protect, pre event and suppress the source of the disinformation. This is important when the experts are gathering together and sharing the cases of disinformation they face and perhaps also that could form a kind of inventory of practices, of bad practices which would be then easier to recognize when experts are discussing and sharing that. Thank you.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you very much, Lina. The same question to Sezen Yesil. You have been waiting a long time since you last spoke. What initiatives have successfully responded and can they are used elsewhere? 

>> SEZEN YESIL: Thank you very much. I hope my answer will also address the questions of the audience, the one from the online participant and from my sister from Egypt.

I know that woman politicians are especially vulnerable, unfortunately. And we have a special protection in place. After this session, if she kindly stays and meet me, I would like to explain more in detail.

I can say that we, as Meta we have a very well established playbook on election integrity.

We keep improving it, according to lessons learned after major elections. Our measures are globally applicable but we make risk assessment for each election, specific to that country and adjust our measures if needed. So that participants from online media said that we don't have local representations, et cetera.

That doesn't matter because all of our measures are globally applicable.

We have about 40,000 employees working on safety and security and we have invested more than $20 billion in this area. There are five pillars in our integrity work. First is we don't allow fake accounts. Our automatic detection tools block billions of account, often within minutes of creation.

Second, we disrupt bad actors. We took down more than 200 Internet behavior networks since 2017. As you know, the networks are used to mislead people, especially during election time.

We work in connection with law enforcement, other agencies and Academia to identify the actors.

Third, we fight against misinformation. It is really tough issue, nobody agrees on the definition of misinformation. For example, a politician says they have the best economy in the world. What if the indicators do not agree with him?  Are we going to remove that content as labeling it as misinformation?  That is not appropriate.

We have a three part strategy. Remove, reduce, inform.

Under remove, we don't allow misrepresentation of voting date, voting location and times. We don't allow misinformation on who can vote, who can participate and what Documents are required.

Under reduce, we work more than 40 fact checkers around the world and use six languages to look at content.

The rated content is not allowed and is reduced. Under reform, we put labels like false information on the information provided by fact checkers. And we put the notice to get more information.

Under fourth pillar we increase transparency especially for political ads. We have an authorization process, advertisers have to prove who they are and located. They can only target audiences in the country where they are based. And we put this disclaimer so people can understand who is funding the political advertisement to give more transparency.

Also political ads are kept in the ads library for seven years. For example, researchers use it a lot. It is publicly available free and you can see all the information to the Swiss funding and more.

And finally if content is created with AI apps, the advertiser have to disclose it to us. We put a label on the content like digitally created so people understand it is a photo realistic video or something.

And last pillar, it is about partnerships. We work with local trusted partners to receive timely insights on the ground.

Okay, final comments, also user education is important. We do work with third party fact checkers to raise awareness on how to fight disinformation and misinformation. Thanks so much.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you very much for that.

We heard particularly in the answers from Daniel and from Lina already references to Civil Society, NGO, and multistakeholder process as having an important role with regard to you know, what could be successful responses and how we learn to share initiative across countries and Regions.

And one element of the next question I will pose to our final two panelists, again, thank you for your patience. And that question, again, it is on screen is what are the Governance principles, tools and mechanisms

that could be applied in order

to help protect the integrity of

electoral processes and

information in the digital age,

while upholding human rights and

democratic principles? Are there

specific roles for particular

stakeholders that need to be

highlighted? 

So I'm going to put that question, first of all to Tawfik Jelassi. Please.

>> TAWFIK JELASSI: Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I think we agree that ensuring that information is trustworthy and accurate is a very critical challenge today, maybe more than ever before, especially during elections. I want to quote a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Without facts there is no truth, without truth, there is no trust, without trust there is no shared reality. That is a powerful quote that reminds us that fact checked information is the basis for not only democracy but for society and for communities to live together.

So it is a major challenge, but then second and final quote from journalist here is Carole, Pulitzer Prize winner and journalist, that said what we do as real journalists is to give our readers the best obtainable version of the truth.

It is a simple concept, but it is difficult to achieve and especially elusive in the age of social media. We have the power of influencers who have 50 plus million followers per digital influencer. The recent study shows more than half of the content they post online is not fact checked, it is not verified.

This is a new challenge that we need to deal with.

So the dilemma is there. The pursuit of truth is especially challenging in this digital age, where information spreads rapidly and far faster than objective information.

Recent MIT study shows that false information travels 10 times faster than fact checked information.

So it is a real challenge, and as I said, this is at the heart of preserving democratic processes.

The question is what can we do about this?  Here, I will say at UNESCO, we are deeply committed to advance our Mission of protecting the integrity of information.

And here, I must say that we are honoured at UNESCO being asked last month by the G20 Summit to become the Secretariat for a Global initiative on information integrity.

And to administer the Global Fund allocated to that by the G20, the 20 most important economies of the world.

I think information integrity is at the heart of what we are discussing. Especially also when it comes to climate change.

How can we combat climate disinformation when we try to resolve the environmental crisis?  This is part of our Mission.

Next question is how do we go about it?  Our approach has been all along anchors in the international human rights standards. We referenced the guidelines, the guidelines for the platforms based on human rights.

To promote transparency, accountability and inclusivity.

We believe this is a Roadmap to address harmful online content while protecting freedom of expression online. This is very important to stress.

Second, maybe initiative, because it was raised by the Egyptian participant, what do we do to protect women politicians?  They know the Meta executive here has addressed that and offered more details after the session.

We have been working a lot to protect women journalists.

Why?  Because our study shows that 73% of women journalists are subject to online harassment and 20% of them end up being physically attacked.

What starts online moves to the physical world. 33% end up quitting their job because they couldn't take it any longer. This is really dramatic. Somebody was exercising her profession has to quit. One third of them have to quit because of online harassment and I said sometimes physical violence as well.

This is what you have to do to protect human journalists. You talked about politicians. Our panelists here addressed that.

We believe that true empowerment starts with education. Education is at the heart of the matter. Some of the panelists mentioned media information literacy in the digital age. Literacy, in reference to education.

Our Programme on that is a cornerstone of our strategy. We want not only to have guidelines for digital platforms and for regulatory Authorities. That is on the supply side of information you have to work on the demand side and usage. The aim through our educational Programme is to make the users of digital platforms become media and information literate by developing a critical mindset so they can distinguish hopefully between fact checked information. Objective information and obviously falsehood. This is something we believe is important.

We want them to raise a few questions, who created this information I come across online? 

Why was it held?  And what evidence support it?  Otherwise, the users of information online become amplifiers of misinformation and disinformation. They like and share that information.

Finally to say, it is a corrective effort. I mentioned what UNESCO is trying to do. Of course, it is a collective effort. We need Governments to create policies to protect human rights, safeguard freedom of expression and having the right regulation maybe for digital platforms. We want tech companies to adhere to accountability and the moderation of content and the education of empowering them for the fact and not fiction.

The time is up to say not only at UNESCO are we remaining steadfast in the commitment to the cause. We believe that together we can build a digital age that does not divide but unites. That does not harm but heals does not undermine democracy, but strengthen it.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you. A lot to think about there. Finally, waiting patiently. We would like to hear from Rosemary Sinclair, on her views on the same question. Please, Rosemary, the floor is yours.

>> ROSEMARY SINCLAIR: Thanks. It is a very pig question, Pearse, as I know you know.

So just a few thoughts from me. We have been focusing in this panel session on elections, misinformation, and disinformation.

But I think we're really talking more broadly about information. And that means we're really talking about trust and confidence in an online world. And we're having this discussion right at the point where we have the possibility to secure amazing innovation which can benefit individual people, their communities, and their economies.

So this is a conversation really worth having. For a long time, we have been focused on practical connectivity. And that is the way to go, I know, particularly in the Global South.

More recently, we started to think about cultural connectivity. If it is focused on digital inclusion through language. But I really want to stress that our focus must be on building or in some cases rebuilding confidence online.

In Australia, we at AU do research into the digital lives of Australians. For the first time this year, that research told us that Australians are starting to think about doing less online because of the harms that they are experiencing.

Right at a time where, for productivity and efficiency reasons, the policymakers and others are wanting them to do more online.

So I think we have got to get back to a point where technology is seen as a tool and not as something that is somehow beyond policy. And when we think about policy, we have got to balance innovation and integrity.

And I think we need some very big thinking and we have done some of that at auDA. We have forced ourselves to do it using a scenario process. If the scenarios are of interest to anybody, they're available for free use on our website.

But there are two scenarios in there that are pertinent to this discussion. And I'm going to summarize them in about six words.

One of them says Government is in charge of information. And the other of them says Private Sector is in charge of information.

And when we dug into those scenarios, what we found were really some shared issues about the crux of individuals to privacy and to choice the importance of integrity and impartiality around information. There is a whole set of issues around the importance of the security of people's identity.

We explored the role of the Internet, open, free, secure, and globally interoperable. And we really thought about integrity and the assurance processes that would need to be put in place to assure people of integrity.

So in answer to the question, we need Governance principles, tools and mechanisms in all of those areas.

Getting back to our topic today, which is elections, I wanted to make the point that really Democracy Now! Is a team sport, and more than that, it is actually a Global team sport.

And who we need on the playing field with the voters and the politicians, we need Civil Society, we need the technical community, we need the Private Sector, media, technology companies, the platforms, we need Government, public service officials, we need the combination of judiciary and regulators to actually implement and enforce policies, laws, regulations. The people who are accountable for election oversight and the like.

In addition, I want to be bold enough to suggest that we might need philosophers on the playing field as well to think about the limits of markets as Michael sandal has done, to think about big questions around values and ethics and culture.

My final point    in fact two final points. The first one is, I'm finding it very interesting that organisations that have usually been concentrating on economic policies and competition and the like are becoming very interested in the issues too.

And if I just give you one little quote from the OECD's report, facts not facts, strengthening disinformation integrity. That report says informed individuals are the foundation of democratic debate and society.

And the report also goes on to make the comment that a multistakeholder approach is required to address the complex Global challenges of information integrity. More locally, in also, our AAAC, our competition authority has been conducting an inquiry to digital platforms.

And in its final report, it says this inquiry has highlighted the intersection of privacy, competition, and consumer protection considerations.

Privacy and data protection laws can build trust in online markets.

So the fact that these bodies are thinking about these issues for the purpose of economic and societal outcomes, I think it is very interesting.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: I'm sorry, Rosemary, I have to ask you to wrap up, please.

>> ROSEMARY SINCLAIR: And my final point Pearse, just we need to have a Global Governance architecture. I think the Internet Governance Forum has a role to play. I am really hoping through the processes next year the role of the IGF is made clear and permanent so that it has the certainty to help do this work. Thank you.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you very much, Rosemary and thank you for the very clear enumeration and explanation of the principles that we need to revisit in the work that we're doing with regard to the Internet as a whole and specifically with regard to election integrity. Of course, to Tawfik for his analysis. Again, the worrying facts of violence against journalists,particularly female journalists,there is a direct and thick line between that and election integrity.

If the journalist, free press is intimidated into silence, we are already losing the electoral integrity process.

Something to think of and the digital elements to that.

So now, as I have said, we want to again, open up the floor to questions. But particularly statements. Because on this occasion, we'll make you work harder. This is to participants in the room and to online participants.

We actually have a couple of questions for you. If anyone would like to answer the questions, address the questions or address points made by our panelists, in their very rich responses to the set of questions we put to them.

So it is simply this, how do you think the broader Governance debate impacts the intergovernance and how can the IGF discussions, multistakeholder approach, how can it contribute to improving and strengthening the information integrity in elections? 

And the elections space? 

Do we have anyone who would like to take the floor on this?  Or make comments about what has been heard from the floor?  If so, please come to the Mike phones, one are at the head of the room. I'm also looking at Bruna, if there is anybody online?  Okay. We'll keep going. We have been very disciplined, I have to say. I have been nudging one or two of you, but I would like to thank all of the panelists for being so disciplined in time while giving such rich responses.

Now we have the opportunity to perhaps open the debate to you, to everything your co panelists said in the questions that were asked, in relation to what are the problems, you know, what evidence has come to light?  What initiatives have worked?  What hasn't worked?  What are the principles to apply?  Now, I'm giving the floor to you. But I would like to put to you the question I posed now, and you can tackle any or all of them as you see fit. It is, you know, how can the broad Internet Governance discussion debate interact with the issue of electoral integrity?  How can the multistakeholder approach contribute to improving and strengthening the situation? 

Now, the floor is open. Who would like to take the floor?  Please, Tawfik.

>> TAWFIK JELASSI: Thank you. You remind us the focus is elections, of course. Reporting on elections is in a fact check objective way, requires proper training of journalists covering elections. UNESCO is doing this in many countries, recently, to provide the training needed by journalists.

Because of course, the information they bring to the floor is so important. Especially in this era of misinformation and disinformation.

Second, the impact of emerging technologies on elections such as the impact of AI on elections. This is another training that we developed. It is an online course on the impact of AI and Generative AI and artificial intelligence on election processes.

This is part of awareness creation, awareness raising, advocacy, because we need in place an enabling environment for elections to take place in a fair, free, and democratic way.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Very good. William, you are next.

>> WILLIAM BIRD: What struck me is despite us all coming from radically different perspectives, how similar the issues we're facing are. And in fact the similar approaches to dealing with them are.

That says that often these things are not as I said at the beginning, the question of how to deal with the new information chaos environment where power dynamics have shifted so dramatically. That seems to be a common question that all of us are grappling with to varying degrees.

The second thing is the critical importance of digital literacy. This is mentioned in every instance of these things that I go to. The thing that is consequently and still missing in massive amounts are effective and properly resourced plans to implement these things.

We can come and say all of the good things but there is no real meaningful action.

How do we deal with the outliers?  Elon Musk being one of the outliers. X's power is diminishing. Because it is diminishing, the harm it is causing in real terms is still significant. We don't have an answer to that. We have seen a major world superpower buddy up to this man, who openly used his platform to spread misinformation and disinformation. And in the case of South Africa, happily allowed it to spread attacks against journalists, insight violence and hate speech. We need an answer to that. IGF and all of us, we need to say how we will deal with this.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you, Daniel Molokele, please.

>> DANIEL MOLOKELE: Thank you so much. I want to speak on something I feel we have not addressed that affects electoral integrity from an information point of view.

It is the issue around the need for standardization and professionalism. You will see that we are seeing a rise of new social media platforms, or media technologies that are highly influential in influencing political opinions especially near the electorate. Some have blogs or podcasts, some are live.

Some have X pages or Twitter pages or Facebook pages. They can actually go live at any time. Millions of potential voters tune in. And in that live broadcast, they are some untested facts around the election that are said or even elections, for example, around rigging or cheating the elections.

Because the audience trusts the person behind the podcast or show, it affects everything in terms of integrity of the entire election process.

Yet, most of these people who conduct the live sessions and so on are actually not trained journalists. They do not practice any form of ethics. And they have no form of qualification or certification. And at the end of the day, there is no emphasis on professional or sage or standardization of content.

And also driving them is the fact that at the end of each month, they get a paycheque and it is based on the amount of interaction or interaction of the use of the blog or pod. The more people are emotionally intuned, the more interaction, the more currency at the end of the month.

The net effect of that a single person or two people can shift the narrative, depending on the side view. It allows people with money, maybe business people, who have got interest, maybe public tender systems to fund these people, unofficially.

And influence the electoral processes. Because at the end of the day they will want a Government in power after the elections to be aligned to their business interest.

It is a major concern. And main media houses or professional institutions that practice journalism to standards are normally overrun by this kind of life transmissions.

And to zero in on artificial intelligence, for us, as Africans, we are coming from a position of being left behind.

I think the average person, especially in Zimbabwe where I come from, it is still very difficult to distinguish a story that is AI generated and one that is real.

If you look at the videos and pictures, they look so real. And if you can come up with content that is misleading, misinforming or disinforming, an average voter will be able to take it seriously.

By the time the clarifications and follow ups are done, it is too late. It affects the credibility of the election system. Thank you so much.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you so much. Indeed, I agree. I see the same.

I want to check. I don't know if we have a hands up function. If Rosemary or Liz wanted to come in on what we heard on the panel discussion and the question about the broader Internet Governance debate and the IGF. Either of you want to come in on this? 

>> LIZ OREMBO: I can come in and make remarks on how elections, the discussion can integrate with the Internet Governance.

Which from my view looking at the Governance of infrastructure and Governance of content as far as the discussion of Internet Governance is concerned.

When it comes to elections and information integrity, I don't think any society has really got a grasp on what is good information or misinformation. What information should be encouraged online and what should be discouraged.

But we're also seeing, people are saying there should be plurality of information and when does that plurality of information, some of theme oppose each other. And in shaping the relevance, we try to label the other information as misinformation.

Some information is outright misinformation and they're put out there to influence some unfair narrative, which is also harmful to the society. But now we're talking about a plurality of information that sometimes causes tensions in the society and it is not really intentional on harming any citizen, but still it harms our democratic process.

And I think as a society we need to reflect on such dangerous misinformation coming out. But if regulatory concerns are taken out, that means that such input will be filled it.

With Internet Governance discussion, and this is my last point, I think we need to go broader to accommodate and appreciate what is really happening within the elections environment. Because it also touches on the wider issues of the development, when the right people in Governance are not the right people in Governance are put in place, it truly effects how our society will develop democratically. In some, violence will also erupt, that means economic consequences also follow.

That is because in cases where countries face elections after market or three years after election, contesting elections, going to court, and even being passive in applying policies that are put in place by the illegitimate Government, it will lead to slow economic growth in the countries and people cannot prosper there.

We need to be wider in how we think about Internet Governance and democracy. Going beyond just content moderation and infrastructure Governance, but also to the underlying issues like other panelists are saying. They also play out in between elections. But they actually rise when it comes to the elections themselves. Thank you.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you. Rosemary, I United States of America    I saw you wanted to come in. Conspire Rosemary Sinclair: Sorry, I'm having difficulty with the mute button.

(No audio for captioner)

I want to give more about that in Lithuania.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Lina, that is an invitation to you will, please.

>> LINA VILTRAKIENE: As I already presented. We have quite a comprehensive system established in Lithuania on countering disinformation. But perhaps, as we are now moving to the end of the discussion, I wanted to react very briefly to your question about how IGF indeed discussions could lead us to something more specific. And here I think, indeed, we should understand very clearly that here in multilateral format, we really could come to the Global consensus on particular measures that could strengthen integrity, information integrity in election spaces.

So my    perhaps one of the examples which we discussed during this discussion and in the very beginning, we were talking about defining the responsibility of social media platforms. And perhaps finding some legal tools to enforce that.

So we really think that we could establish clear responsibilities, legal obligations and sometimes even penalties for platforms that fail to prevent the spread of organized disinformation campaigns. And this is one of the measures which we could develop in discussing in this multistakeholder format where all views are heard and where all of us are on board.

So that could also lead us to implementation and probably also developing the mandate of Global Digital Compact.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you very much. Just one moment. I will come to you now in the sense that I see there is unfinished business, but also great opportunity to take this forward. Because I'm going to ask all of the panelists now to give their views and I will come to you first Sezen. It is just in relation to in wrapping up, a maximum of two minutes. You know that I'm tough, but you're very disciplined.

The purpose really here is I would really love if you could come up with a recommendation, a request, a best practice that we could take as takeaways from this discussion and as I said, I think there can be another one from Lina or Rosemary, but the centralized clearing house, that any person can address themselves and hope the action taken to address the issues. We can adapt that, I'm sure there are different models, throughout the system, it would be great.

I will ask you to do that now. Two minutes maximum and I will show you off so everyone gets the last word. Sezen, you go first.

>> SEZEN YESIL: Thank you, all of this discussed misinformation and disinformation is part of democracy and use of Internet brings those to another level. We all accept that. And also the problems are not specific to one country or to one platform only. Bad actors can work from country X to target people countrywide. And also use all the platforms they can use.

So I believe that like all other Global problems, election integrity related problems can be tackled best in collaboration with all of the stakeholders.

Like private, public, Academia, and Civil Society and the bid of IGF is it is bringing us all and we're hearing each other. That is great. I appreciate the esteemed panelists' views and comments on the matter. Taking this as homework, I will feed those as input to the election integrity work back at Meta.

So at Meta we understand our responsibility. And we try to improve ourselves and we're already leading and participating in many collaborative efforts. We will be more than happy to expand our collaborative efforts to the other stakeholders, including Governments, UNESCO, et cetera. Thanks so much for this opportunity.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you. I will turn to you now William, your two minutes. Yes. Don't worry, I'm being random for a purpose.

>> WILLIAM BIRD: So my points would be, I think to call for resources outside of elections, period. Because what we see is that elections approach and suddenly everyone is excited. Then elections go and we're also upset about it, and suddenly, there is no work. We need to see these as ongoing societal challenges. The next is intersection of online harms need to be dealt with. And we need action.

Not enough to say the attacks against women online are bad. And we need to do something. Let's do something!  Let's hold them accountable. We can't take him to court in Africa. But let's take him to court in the United States, where he's domicile. We need to hold people accountable that continue these things. We can't leave it as is any longer.

The third thing is misinformation and disinformation is thrown around. Everyone said there is no common definition. For us, we reference public harm as an element of misinformation and disinformation. One of the things that we could and should be looking at are more nuanced labels around understanding misinformation and disinformation that it isn't all the same thing. We already accept some things as problematic.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you.

I will now turn to Tawfik, please for your two minutes' worth, thank you.

>> TAWFIK JELASSI: Thank you. Not to repeat myself. The title here is how to maximize potential for trust and addressing the risks. For me, I repeat myself. The number one risk is misinformation and disinformation. It is not by chance that that is the World Economic Forum this year put fighting disinformation. Disinformation is the number one Global risk for 2024 and 2025.

This is the super election year that will continue into 2025.

Disinformation for me is at the heart of the battle. If you can address it or minimize it, maybe not totally reduce it. We can maximize trust and address the risk that it represents.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you very much. Liz, were you still with us?  We see a very interesting photo of you. If not, I will turn for the moment to Rosemary, please. What would be your last comments. We see you Liz, we will see you in a moment. Thank you, Rosemary, go ahead.

>> ROSEMARY SINCLAIR: Thank you. I would like to make two comments really. One is to reemphasize what I said very briefly. That I would like to see the role of the IGF clarified and made permanent so we have a Forum for large, multistakeholder discussions about matters of importance.

Second thing is practically, I would like to see the tapestry of Internet Governance Forums knitted together much more closely. So in Australia, we have the local IGF, AUIGF, and then we have the Asia Pacific Region IGF. And then we come to the Global IGF.

If we could imagine a world where all of that effort was focused on a topic area, perhaps centralized clearinghouse or reporting. Perhaps how to deal with platforms. If we can somehow maximize that effort and bring that work to the Global IGF for consideration and discussion by the multistakeholder community, then I can see a possibility of progress. Thank you.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you very much. Now, Liz. We would like to hear from you.  No, we don't hear you, trying to unmute.

>> LIZ OREMBO: I succeeded in unmuting. Thank you. I think my only one point is that positively, we have seen a lot of effort for strengthening information integrity for election. This year came as a golden opportunity because of the elections happening. In Africa, we have seen a lot of partnerships, different partnerships our stakeholders coming together to fight misinformation and fight this disinformation and fight it proactively.

This happened not siloed, but different parts of the partnership, but also needing important stakeholders. Like one panelists said, it is a big thing and we should expand more.

The other thing is that we should not leave the work here. We should make these different works connect to each other to get a full picture of what really happened this year and what to anticipate in the next elections next year and even the years after.

So that connecting the dots from the partnership in the Civil Society with the tech people to even data and those working with data, to watch it and see how to connect it together. Thank you.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you so much. Now I would like to turn to Daniel, please.

>> DANIEL MOLOKELE: Thank you so much. I think in 2024, we saw democracy continue to grow in Africa. The elections that we had all across Africa, they significantly gave us an opportunity as Africans to showcase ourselves. And rebuild our reputation as a continent. To that end, access to information from a perspective of electoral integrity is very important to Africans.

And as a Parliamentarian, I think one of the issues we need to focus on is making sure that there is a standardization in terms of information and news across Africa, especially during election campaigns and election announcements, and results announcements. And make sure that the policy frameworks, the legislative framework all across Africa is modelled and standardized, so that it benefits democracy in Africa.

Because information has the potential to build our democracy and can make our electoral system conventional. And it can undermine the system. It is important to create models from a continental point of view that will enhance quality information and promote trained equity.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Lina, please.

>> LINA VILTRAKIENE: From my side, I would like to leave you with the message that elections is the test of democracy. And indeed democracy is not something that we have for granted.

So if we    if we want to live in democratic society, upholding liberty, human rights, rule of law, other democratic values, all together, we need to work for strengthening the democracy. And in this task, I firmly believe that all our societies need to be on board. And that is the only way to build trust, to make comprehensive action on strengthening resilience and critical thinking.

And again, I believe that critical thinking and resilience is key, indeed in all of our efforts to ensure the smooth, reliable, free from malign interference elections, democratic elections.

And perhaps in addition, just one more thing I wanted to mention is that how important it is to coordinate among ourselves, among democracies and that is crucial indeed to ensure that we appropriately, effectively respond to foreign information, manipulation and interference. And that we prevent hostile actors from manipulating and hi jacking the information space.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you. Tawfik, you were very short. You have 30 seconds you didn't use.

>> TAWFIK JELASSI: I ask the floor again, two parts to the question. What can the IGF do, I did not answer. 20 years ago, IGF did not foresee the rise of digital platforms, nor the harmful online content that we suffer from today. I believe that going forward, IGF has to ensure that information is a public good, not a public hazard, not a public harm.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you. So I want to draw a close to the meeting. I'm not going to draw a form of conclusions. That would not be appropriate. That would be subjective and I think we should show our appreciation for the fantastic insights and analysis by our panel. Physically and online. Please, a round of applause.

(Applause)

They have made my job very easy. One by really focusing on the questions, but also by allowing the discussion to continue by limiting their time. I know it is frustrating. The only censorship that is allowed during the multistakeholder process is your speaking time. Everything else is just not allowed. So what I will do is I would like to say that we have a clear set of well informed views that show yes, the experience tells us that the threats are real. The challenges have been experienced across a number of countries and meetings and you would expect they get worse unless action is taken.

I take that back. Largely disasters were avoided in 2024, there have been stark examples given to us where serious problems have arisen. But almost all domains, countries, have seen a level of disinformation, certainly misinformation in going all the way to the use of deepfakes as well as the suppression of opposing views.

So we are united in diversity and it might not always be the case that I am happy with the result of the election. My side didn't win. That is not the point. That is democracy. It is well, did the side that win do so on the basis of the democratic process?  Which we all welcome. Or did they do so because they use digital technologies to misinform or disinform or actively prevent another voice from being heard.

That is the line that we must follow with regard to information and with regard to election integrity.

I think we had great insights. As I said at the start, we do hope in what will come next is in listening to the stakeholders, to actually share experiences and find inspiration, make suggestions, be able to give actionable insights to guide stakeholders and the actions they can take, including and particularly in the IGF. We have the IGF coming to us next June. I think this work can continue. For that, we have a Rapporteur from this session who will help us. I would like to thank him, Jordan Carter for his contribution in organizing this session as well.

I must single out as well as thanking panelists, in particular I must single out Bruna Santos who has been the driving force in organizing this event. I saw Bruna in action in the work and appreciate the work she's doing on the MAG. And Jordan is on the MAG. This is a issue to continue to focus on. And the multistakeholder and IGF is the place to find the responses to the challenges to the digital and what Tawfik wants to say as well. Embracing all the good digital technologies can bring to societies across the world. Thank you for your presence. Thank you for those online. Thank you to the speakers. I wish you a great continuation of the IGF.