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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>> MODERATOR: Thanks everyone for joining the session today, I hope you are all settled comfortably. Just to start off and say I think we should all give a round of applause, big congratulations to ourselves for making it through four days of the IGF. And especially to you all who have made it to a 6:00 p.m. session on, technically day 3 of the IGF, but really 4.
So essentially for this session just a bit of housekeeping and structure to begin with. We will be starting off with a main panel discussion just to sort of warm up the room, get thoughts going around. We would encourage you and we want to leave a lot of time for you to participate in the discussion and share your ideas on our topic today, which is on inclusion, in the WSIS+20 review process.
So we really want it to be a collaborate five discussion today. And so essentially just for context, the U.K. is preparing for the WSIS+20 review process, and one of our key goals is to ensure the process is fully inclusive to the multi‑stakeholder community. However, while that is our objective, we don't want to just guess at what can make the process most inclusive.
We want to hear directly from you, the wider multi‑stakeholder community. Therefore that's why we have to take this interactive approach to our open forum. While the focus of the session is on WSIS+20, the discussion could, of course, relate to other UN processes that including Internet Governance, for get, the GDC, so while we will be focused on WSIS+20, there may be ideas you may want to take back that are applicable in other spaces as well.
Without further ado, I would like to have my fellow panelists introduce themselves. So I will pass the microphone across. And well start with Mary.
>> Mary: It's more than in my continent. Good morning, Africa. Good afternoon wherever you are, and good evening. I'm glad to be here, my name is Mary Uduma, I coordinate the African Internet Governance Forum I am part of the African Internet Governance Forum and have been a member of the MAG at the UN Internet Governance. I also, I'm the first convener of Nigeria Internet Governance Forum. So Internet Governance, Internet Governance, Internet Governance.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much, Mary. Over to Alan Ramirez Garcia. Good afternoon, my name is Alan Ramirez Garcia. I'm currently a MAG member a policy maker in Peru and a lecturer in Lima, in my personal capacity in such a vital discussion. Thank you.
>> TIMEA SUTO: I'm Timea Suto, I'm the global digital policy leader, International Chamber of Commerce, ICC is a global business organisation representing more than 170 countries, companies of all different sizes and sectors, and while we are here is because we were the business focal point to the WSIS+20 process almost 20 years ago if you count 2003 and we have been following up on everything WSIS+20 ever.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: , Anriette Esterhuysen, I was there 20 years ago when we were negotiating those outcomes from WSIS+20 review.
>> MODERATOR: Fantastic, thanks so much, my name is Rosalind Kenny Birch, I'm an international policy advisor focused on Internet Governance within the U.Q. Government department for science, innovation and technology. I would like to kick off with a warmup question. We have been hearing throughout the week and it will come as no surprise to anyone but the multi‑stakeholder model is crucial all week. So just to sort of set the scene in context before we delve into more specific questions, why exactly is multi‑stakeholder engagement so essential to the Internet Governance space? How can we articulate that.
And perhaps, Anriette, I can start with yourself.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I'm nodding because I think people say it without necessarily saying why. It's like why is ice cream bad for you? Well, it's not. It's bad for me. And I think we've lost actually the substance of why. It's become like a brand. The GDC says they are following a multi‑stakeholder process. The Secretary‑General is talking about making the UN multi‑stakeholder.
And I think we have started using it as a kind of level, like it had been approved, it's kosher it's Halal, it's million, and bad policy progresses are getting the multi‑stakeholder stamp. That doesn't make them good policy processes even if they are multi‑stakeholder. It also doesn't necessarily make them fully multi‑stakeholder, so why. If you work with the people that have to comply with the policy process, they are more likely to comply with it.
You may have to compromise. Business might not like what the public sector or civil society want it to do in terms of regulatory intervention, and civil society might not want to concede, but in the end, if you come up with something that actually is known and understood by the different stakeholders, that muchs their capacity and willingness, pushing boundaries, you have to push boundaries a little bit, but then you are more likely to have compliance.
I think the one thing we don't need in our environment are lots of policies and guidelines and principles and regulations that no one complies with. Then you have an unpredictable and unstable environment. As far as human rights is concerned, you don't, you also want understanding. So that's the second thing, compliance, and then knowledge, understanding. It must make sense to people.
And then they are more likely to work with it, to believe in it and commit to implementing it. And then I think the third thing is it's almost like if you participate in a process, and I think maybe ICANN is a good example of that, if you are part of a process, you invest in it, and you actually invest in promoting it, and getting other people to be part of the outcome of the process.
So it's kind of it builds in a demand side angle to your policy and regulatory environment which top down processes simply don't have.
>> MODERATOR: It's no surprise I'm going to Anriette for a lot of things. I'm going to bring it back to a business decision making theory, let's say. That's one of the values of a company I'm not going to name. But there is part of this degree and commit. If you want to make a decision in any keep of setting if you are a team in an organisation trying to move forward in what you are going to do you need to hear the voices of everybody in your team on how to make forward. How, it's not going to mean that you will be able to take a decision.
People are still going to disagree with a decision or they are going to have a different opinion, but then somebody will take the decision and the decision will have consequences but for the team to get behind the decision, to have that buy in, people need to be heard. People need to feel not just that they can talk or share, but they need to be heard.
A multi‑stakeholder process that is effective is a possess that hears every stakeholder, that creates meaningful opportunities for these voices to be said, but also to be heard. And once that's done, yes, there will be a decision, yes, we have to make compromises, but we will be able to get behind a decision a little bit more effectively if I can say so. That is my hope. It works on a small scale. The more voices you have, the more difficult it gets, but I think it's worth the investment and the example of that is the Internet itself.
The Internet itself is a multi‑stakeholder creation. It had at the origin an idea that came from, you can discuss whether it was a Government or researcher idea, it became a business product. It is something that all of us are benefiting from and is shaping every day. It works.
And in order for us to be able to make the governance of it and on it for those of you who were on the panel before work, we need to embody the same principles. I think that's why we need the.
>> MODERATOR: Will. We need to be able to buy into it, keep it ours, feel that it's, all of us have voices shared and heard. I think that moves us forward.
>> ALAN RAMIREZ GARCIA: I want to take a second to thank you for your permanent commitment to supporting and em powering the multi‑stakeholder model. Let me say that it is a great honour for me to share the panel with Anriette and Mary and we agree on why the multi‑stakeholder model is not only essential but the most efficient way to address the Internet Governance process. It is a model that needs to be fit with commitment from different stakeholders that could be potentially jeopardized if proper engagement is not applied.
So what we need for The Internet We Want is to empower to get more resources, more engagement, to be more strategic in how to avoid risks but it can lead to losing engagement by parties involved.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much,al, now, over to Mary to cap off that question.
>> MARY UDUMA: Hello. Yes. Thank you very much, and the previous speakers, they have all said it well and what I want to, I met the international fora when it was ITU and ITU you have to be a member to be allowed to attend their meetings. It's a closed meeting. And Government and Government negotiations between Government and Government they make treaties.
And all of a sudden this big elephant in the house called the Internet by research and those that developed it and it became a sort of source of concern to the Governments that do go into the room and make negotiations and agree on what to do and how to manage their spectrum, their numbers, and they have their boundaries. And here comes the monster that does not have a boundary, and how do you get everybody to agree on how to participate in this new world called the Internet? So you need for us to think out of the box and look at other things because I started hearing this multi‑stakeholder approach from WSIS+20 review, the second Wisconsin when we were trying to come ‑‑ World Summit on Information Society when we were trying to come up with the IGF.
So the buy in, the understanding, I don't know whether the Government really understood it, especially from my own environment, whether they had really gotten what the multi‑stakeholder process is, but the truth is that we needed everybody's voice to be heard and everybody to participate in the process of making sure that we benefit from the new process called the Internet.
And just like to me, I said Internet is an elephant. If you touch the head, you think that is all about the elephant. If you touch the leg, you think that is all about the elephant, and so many people participants, so it's open. I don't know whether it's television, computer or raiseio, or telephone. ‑‑ radio or telephone. If I hold this, this is everything I can do my television, my telephone, even my camera.
So for this, the process of getting everybody understand, everybody participate, all of the actors participate give room to this multi‑stakeholder process, and the good thing is it is bottom up. It is not up bottom.
Even at the national level now our legislators and our Governments, our regulators ‑‑ when I was a regulator, well, we do consultation not as much as, okay, tell us what you want, and we do what we want to do. But these days the regulator goes let's have multi‑stakeholder process in coming up with the regulation? So those are the things we have gained from this process. That's what I can say for now. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much. I think that elephant sort of metaphor is valuable in that regard as well. So now moving on, now that we is sort of set the scene, well start to dig into more of the meat on the bones so to speak. So now, looking at the current landscape, in your opinion are opportunities to participate in UN processes surrounding Internet Governance expanding or shrinking and how have you seen these processes evolve and what direction are they evolving in since that initial Summit, those initial Summits back in 2003, 2005? And programs we can go down just given the microphone situation in the same order again for this one.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks, Ros. I think I tried to say earlier it's about better policy yum comes.
It's not always harmonia. Stakeholder groups are not fixed. I think if we apply the multi‑stakeholder process in a way that's going to be meaningful so that the discussion and process is rich and diverse enough, you need to analyze the issue that's being discussed, and then make sure that the stakeholders are ready. I think it's in that context that it is concerning that with the Global Digital Compact there is the idea that the technical community is not a stakeholder group in their own right because I think that would be an example of, in fact, if I was the UN and I was looking at AI policy, I would bring educators in as a particular group.
I would bring people that are sociologists as a particular group. So I think what we have seen within the UN system is wise cis started and evolved a fixed understanding of what the stakeholder groups are, civil society, technical, academic, it was fluid in how it classified that group, and business and Governments and we work with that, and where we worked with it well, we made it more granular. We brought in women, women's rights groups, Human Rights groups, small businesses, big businesses, so on.
And where we did not work with it well, we starting treating those stakeholder groups as check boxes, business person, Government person, civil society person, and a technical person, then you were multi‑stakeholder. And I think the UN has, the positive thing is that they have adopted the principle much more, I think much more widely even at the ITU you see much more sort of wide use of the principle of multi‑stakeholder, but is it being applied well and in a meaningful way? I think not really.
Secondly, where we have less, where opportunitieses are shrinking I also also has to do with more of these discussions moving to New York. I think there was kind of a unique, as far as the UN is concerned, characteristic of the WSIS+20 review process that much was based in Europe which meant you have UNESCO that dealt with culture, education, Human Rights and media, very important aspect of this. And then you had the Geneva institutionstion WIPO dealing with intellectual property, you had the ITU dealing with infrastructure and access issues and then the commission of science and cloth and UNCTAD dealing with the follow‑up.
And the Human Rights instruments in Geneva. So I think but with more of these decisions moving to New York, you are going to have less of that, and also you have the women's, you know, some of the women's organises in Geneva as well. I think you just have less participation. It's much, and it's also from a Government perspective. You are dealing mostly in norm with UN missions which means that your process is really being run by the ministries of foreign affairs, but when it was in Geneva, you have a slightly more diverse mix of people, and for Developing Countries, you often have the same person in the mission in all of those agencies.
So there is just more voice fertilization.
>> Thanks Ros and Anriette. We are getting into a good dynamic. Anriette is throwing the balances and all I can do is catch them and add things to it. In terms of where we have evolved, if you were in the session just now in the future of the Internet Governance, I read out how the paragraph in Our Common Agenda on that actually came up with the idea of having a GDC, a Global Digital Compact sets out a multi‑stakeholder process.
It doesn't say multilateral and multi‑stakeholder, it doesn't say Governments with consultations of all relevant stakeholders that we have seen in the resolution and documents before. It says Governments, business, civil society, technical community coming together to forge a Global Digital Compact. I think that's progress that Anriette is saying. That is the progress that we have come in the past 20 years.
Again, caveat here that every single UN process still needs to negotiate its modalities and needs to negotiate in what form, if at all, it will allow multi‑stakeholder input, and there is a huge array of differences in that.
I mean, in a dream world, the UN would come up with a multi‑stakeholder modalities, and then we would all just save ourselves two or three meetings at the start of every process discussing whether or not we want to let stakeholders in. That's one. Two, who are the stakeholders? I think Anriette hit the nail on the head with that.
Yes, there are the main groups of stakeholders, but none of those stakeholders are homogenous. Government is not homogenous, there are different Government agencies and branches, then you have parts of the administration that need to also be consulted there. In businesses, no two business is the name, no two business mols is the same. There are different industries. We have been hearing again, we are here mostly with telecommunications or digital companies, business is a lot larger than that and now every business is becoming homogenous.
So if you want a meaningful multi‑stakeholder process it needs to start with a stakeholder mapping of who are the people that are likely to agree with you? Who are the people not likely to agree with you? Who are the people who should be at the table but don't know about these things so I think there is another element there that we need to discuss of, again, what does multi‑stakeholder mean in a true, effectively applied, meaningful way. I think those the. Another thing is the layers of governance. We talk about international level because we are in an international setting has the multi‑stakeholder trickled down to regional sub national levels of decision making, of discussions? Have we matched it with adequate levels of capacity building of all of the stakeholders that need to take part of it including Governments, but also the businesses, civil society otherwise that may not know how to be part of a multi‑stakeholder conversation or that they can be part of the multi‑stakeholder conversation.
>> ALAN RAMIREZ GARCIA: I fully agree with Anriette and Mary. We live in a more connected world so I find opportunities for participation in the UN process from different stakeholders, maybe from the Government perspective, I think what you need international leaders and Government need to get involved with the process, and with everything how the modern benefits to problems, addressing public problems and human rights.
>>
>> MODERATOR: Just some initial reflections there as well, definitely hearing sort of the different, perhaps, cultural differences between Geneva and New York and the UN sense there and also how important it is to be proactively engaging different groups including not just looking maybe at these groups in specific boxes, but understanding those nuances as well.
So I will hand over to Mary. After Mary goes we will do a quick rapid fire last question. So just to get your wheels turning now, we will be asking for a bit more participation from the audience quite quickly. So start thinking about what points you may want to make and include.
But Mary finish us off on this question.
>> MARY UDUMA: Thank you very much, where the UN process is shrinking or expanding I will say that the UN agencies have been running with the World Summit on Information Society outcomes and they have their own community, and they have been trying to bring in so many of the actors within their own confines. Let's look at UNESCO and the ITU, the UNCTAD, so they are opening their doors now. They be opening their doors and I will say that it's not have linking. If anything ‑‑ shrinking, if anything they bringing more actors into their own individual processes that are feeding into the global, and I think that's what informed the Secretary‑General to look at, can we look at the Global Digital Compact, so everybody, all of the actors who come in, but on the other hand, when we look at the processes, for instance, the ITU, there are some actors that we have known, some of the stakeholders as Timea Suto said who are the stakeholders that are not as prominent. When we started we had a lot of ICANN people all over the place, the business who were looking for their bottom line so that they could get it, but I don't know whether they are still as large as that when it comes to IGF processes.
We don't see most of them, and we also find out that the Government as well, some Governments are not appearing here in IGF. Maybe language issues though we have been trying to move forward from that to the U.K. Government that sponsored the translation in the UN languages. So there are still people that, there are still the communities and stakeholders that are not here that we need to bring into the process. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Mary, for those insights.
So last quick rapid fire question for the panel before we open it up more broadly, is just simply, we have pointed out challenges or opportunities what can we do about those? How can we act on those observations we have made? Are we equipped to address the challenges that have been raised? I will start it going this way with Mary first this time and we will come down that way.
>> MARY UDUMA: Consultations, collaborations, those are things, those are two words I think we should look at. And also the grass roots at the national level, are we having a preparation, WSIS preparation which is preparation at the national level, and, at national level you can see there are so many other actors within the Government, the department, foreign affairs, telecommunication, education, all of that. I think preparation from that level will to send the conversation, the conversation will get to the actors that will be participants at the next level of WSIS+20.
So that preparation is very, very key. When we were to do the WSIS in 2003, there were preparatory meetings. I could remember we went to Ghana, and I don't know whether the Government and the countries are still doing that or blocks like the African flock, the West African block, even the Commonwealth, I this think we were doing preparation, I don't know whether that is still going on.
I think we have to have the conversation and discussion, debate at that level and know what we are doing with the global level.
>> MODERATOR: Alan, over to you.
>> ALAN RAMIREZ GARCIA: Thank you. I want to propose applying a perspective methed that to address challenges raised in the future. We need to identify what the emerging risks are that can jeopardize the multi‑stakeholder model as we know it and to how the risk is to happen, how impactful it could be? With that identification, which is objective strategic applications need to be applied now for all stakeholders interested and involve in that. Thanks.
>> TIMEA SUTO: Another analogy, which you are trying to bring in new voices to the decision making process or even raise up new talent in organisations, people say you need mentorship and you need sponsorship. You need mentors that tell you how they have done it, what they have learned, how you can apply that. I think there is a lot of that going on around this room, taking stock of all of the good lessons learned.
We have seen how some processes have done it and what can learn from that and what we can apply. You need the sponsors, and I don't mean it in a financial way. The sponsors that speak up for this when we are not in the room, we are in those processes where we are not being let into. There are some of us that are there, that know different ways of doing things.
We need to count on them to carry the flag, and, I mean, since we are in a U.K. open forum, the U.K. does that and thank you for that, but I think we need more of that, and I think in order to expand the multi‑stakeholder model and get that down the layers that I was talking about earlier, we need that sponsorship, otherwise we are going to talk to each other in this multi‑stakeholder echo chamber and we will be sitting here 20 years from now still thinking what we need to do.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks for doing this when we all are so tired, it's very brave of you. I think, and don't use multi‑stakeholder process as a short cut, don't use it as window dressing. It will discredit in what is in fact a powerful way of making policy, and I see everyone doing that. Be serious about it, otherwise don't do it. There are other ways of making policy. It's not the only way.
So if you want to do it, do it well. We talked about, Timea mentioned stakeholder mapping. I think one thing that none of us has explicitly said is look at power and don't assume that power doesn't play in multi‑stakeholder process. It does. Global South, Global South, rich company, poor company, small company big company all of those dynamics gender dynamics, race dynamics, they all play out in these processes and if you are serious about your multi‑stakeholder processes, acknowledge that.
Don't abuse it. Actually, design in order to counter the impact of that or at least be very solicit about it, I think transparency ‑‑ explicit about it, transparency is important.
I think clarity of purpose is important not every multi‑stakeholder process is the same and design according to that. And also assess what you want out of it. Design it in such a way that even if you don't achieve consensus, you achieve relationship building, you deepen understanding of why there are differences. And then be flexible, and adapt accordingly.
>> MODERATOR: Brilliant. Thank you so much to the panelists. Now, I would like to move us into discussion and challenge us to think about potential answers to these questions.
So I would like to challenge you to turn to your neighbors around you, hopefully someone new you might not have met before and start the conversation. How can the WSIS+20 review review process be shaped to encourage more inclusive participation from the multi‑stakeholder community?
I'm actually hoping that lots of you may not know the people around you, but turn to your neighbor, perhaps we can take five minutes or so. Those online, I think there are about five of you, perhaps you can discuss in your own breakout group as well. And let's get the wheels turning.
>> MODERATOR: All right, everyone, one more minute. You can wrap up your conversations.
All right. Everyone, let's come back in. If you have moved seats around, I know a few have, feel free to come back.
Fantastic. All right. Well, now is an opportunity to sort of reconvene after those discussions. Hopefully we have gotten good ideas going. I certainly saw lots of interactive conversations. Does anyone want to be brave enough to go first? I may call names otherwise. Jimson, please. Thanks for being brave.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much. Well, very excellent interaction. Thank you for bringing this up. Well, first to say, what matters to everybody is the economic standard, their wellbeing. When WSIS started in 2003, the global GDP was $50 trillion, but today it has more than doubled, and ICT WSIS has helped a lot, but in Nigeria, it used to be $100 billion GDP, that was in 2003. Now, it is has increased five fold to $500 billion.
So the same thing, it is is WSIS activity because Government changed direction and involved everybody. So how can we increase that which is the crux of the matter? We need this to continue from the private sector I was thinking from private sector perspective, the private sector have common purpose to boost the welfare of the people.
We know how to create jobs. We can create opportunities to when we work together, we can create more opportunities so get more people to come in because it's expensive for private sector to self‑fund to come in here.
So what we try to do is bring in all stakeholders together in Africa so that we could have focal to speak for us representing us. So that kind of mechanism we have in place. Organisations like make ISOC can create more awareness within the system, engage, they are technical mostly but they can engage stakeholder group, make more Government, engage other civil society in the area of influence.
And create budget line. We need to have special budget line for inclusivity. We are doing that, the U.K. Government is supporting this event as well, so we need more of that. There has to be budget line. If there is no budget line, you can't do much. So this is where I will stop for now.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much. And really good point I think too about people reaching out and going to places, not putting the onus on people to all go to necessarily travel to New York for discussions, things like that with that proactive route reach.
>> AUDIENCE: There is a point I need to make. There are a lot of hops that this IGF is encouraging. In Nigeria they say hop, following many proceedings so we can encourage more hops as people come to participate.
>> MODERATOR: Tracy, I see your hand up.
>> TRACY HACKSHAW: Yes, so I was thinking a lot about this the last few years. When we come to these meetings, who do we see here? The same people getting grayer, getting older. Every now and then we have a new batch of people coming in through ISOC and others. If they stick around, we are happy, if not, they disappear.
How do we keep folks engaged? And the reasons why I think that we don't do well in this is because we are talking to ourselves a plot. So we are the IGF, we are WSIS, come to us. Come and talk about the Internet.
We don't go out. We don't go out to them because in many of the countries, the Internet is not a priority. First, we have the unconnected, so we have that group, then many countries the Internet is still a luxury. We have issues, we have road issues, there might be climate change problems, and people who they are trying to gravitate to, they gravitate to issues that affect them. If your island is Inc.ing, then the Internet is not the ‑‑ sinking the Internet is not the issue you are dealing with. If you have no water, it's not the Internet.
How do we reach out to people who can be engaged? I think there needs to be a really considered effort from the UN and others to reach out with cut reach, that's the word we have been talking about, to get to people who are not involved, get them involved. So you don't have to come to these meetings, nobody is saying come to Kyoto, but get them involved in some way and if they are not connected, use other means.
Use radio, television, write a letter. This is what, what does the Internet mean for you? How do you engage people that way? I don't think we are doing well in that at all. So we will still have 8,000 people coming to the IGF, and of that a few of us, a few of the same people coming every year and then next year it's a recycle.
It will be maybe local people coming, et cetera. How do we reach out to those people? I think we are not doing well in that way, and if we are doing bottom up engaging and getting to the topic, how do you engage in the bottom up? I think there needs to be a better job because it will affect everybody. If we look at the other areas like the climate change issues, I think we do a much better job of engaging their stakeholders because it means something to them.
So we probably haven't really done a good job of saying that Internet Governance means something to you because if you haven't explained the topic well, so what is it exactly? What is Internet Governance? What does it mean to you? My colleague asked how did he get here. He is relatively new. Someone told him, but if no one told him, he would just be, I guess, riding a bike or whatever you are doing at home. There is something going on in Kyoto, I don't know about that.
So how do we get that resolved?
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Tracy. I think, you know, you make the point generally, but it's especially true,en is, of UN processes. If you are going about your day, you may not be aware of what's going on, so I think a really pertinent point for that specifically as well.
Did I see hands over here?
>> AUDIENCE: Aminah from the University of Sussex. I'm academic and also my ‑‑ I'm not really a policy expert but trade economist and lawyer. The reason I come here first time IGF is because of trade all of these trade agreements is including all of the trade provisions. I'm really worried about this in societal and economic impact on it.
I have been learning a lot in the coming year and looking at things from the different side, but this is Internet community. The thing I would like to make is even stakeholder means, even academia, I'm in a different field. So this is really interesting to engineering also trade lawyer, trade economist, we try to work together interdisciplinary approach.
So this sort of different field, the communication from the different field is really important. This is one thing we are talking about, and so my colleague is also the first time here. We talk about we learn a lot and this is really excellent approach, but on the other hand when you talk about plus 20 something, I never had a vision, what is this panel about? I don't know this UN approach.
And then the other thing is I completely agree with him that how the voice, here we did not talk anything about it, but my personal view, it's the voice should be voice to be heard, but that voice we require knowledge, especially Internet really technical, and then also the sponsorship as somebody said that, money just to get that knowledge, and then also institution.
And here I went and I looked at all of these participants, mostly western countries, oriented still, and even the local Japan is now sponsoring it, but I could see very little contribution from the Japanese organisation, civil society organisation I was wondering why is that.
And the shocking thing, for example, consumer, Japan consumer organisation, there is no people who have knowledge with Internet. So who, who can represent for this? There is no knowledge about this. So this is really critical thing come and talk to us. Just I want to learn. And there is no awareness in general that very limited awareness.
>> MODERATOR: No problem. I think this is a really engaging discussion. It's hard to have a time limit, but I my just go ahead. Before I come to yourself, and I'm sorry I do want to acknowledge our online participants as well.
Would anyone from the breakout group online like to make some points from their discussion or perhaps my colleague, Marek who is online moderating could summarize for the group, whatever is most comfortable.
>> MAREK BLACHUT: We had an interesting discussion from a brought up barriers to access both in terms of cost to participate in some of these global Internet Governance meetings and the kind of related costs and barriers to physical attendance in a meeting like the IGF as well as the administrative burdens whether that's restrictions on travel or kind of processes like Visa applications.
And so I think that we talked about some of the challenges to having more inclusive processes and kind of highlighted the need to think about different channels for consultation and inclusion of stakeholders beyond solely physical meetings as well as virtual meetings, and other types of coordination mechanisms. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much, Marek, and thank you to the online participants for participating in the breakout group as well. And finally, over to yourself. And then we will conclude with closing remarks.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. My name is Greg Shatten, Tracy I am one of the newcomers coming to IGF for my first time.
(Applause).
On the other hand, I have been involved with ICANN since 2007, I have been to 30 ICANN meetings and on a dozen Working Groups, but as I have kind of changed my focus there, that's why I'm here. I started out in the private sector. I still spend my daytime in the private sector, but having opinion the President of the intellectual property constituency for three years I left that sort of the world sorry, simple Jon, and now at large where I'm the Chair of the North American regional at large organisation, and the president of ISOC New York, so I absolutely no excuse not to be more involved than I already have been with the GDC and with the UN in New York.
And I, Jimson and I were talking about the barriers of access to information, capacity development and the like for civil society and for individual end users, and so I'm going to make somewhat of an offer, which is if there is anything that ISOC New York can do while ISOC global is a technical‑oriented organisation some of the U.S. chapters especially New York and DC are very policy‑oriented so if there is anything that we can do to help to provide a project, a home, online, we have the indefatigable Jolie McPhee who can put anybody online at any time and he is part of ISOC New York, we can do something to provide a hub, a project, a space virtual or even physical, I have my day job I have a law firm that has Conference rooms and whatever we need to do. We are on 42nd and Lexington, five blocks from the UN. If there is anything I could do to help to provide some form of a node, a nexus for any of this stuff through the capacities that I have, I'm more than happy to do that because I like the idea that something is finally happening in New York instead of Geneva because I was born on the island. That's my island.
So I think I want to make it work, and not make it feel like all of a sudden we've lost the Geneva kind of environment and that the New York environment is cold and unfriendly. New Yorkers are only cold and unfriendly until you ask them to help you and then they are as warm and engaged as could be.
So I'm asking to help you. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much. I think we can all help each other too. I would encourage those, even if you are new to this space, tell us what we can do to be more inclusive. The onus is on us to come to you, but don't be afraid to reach out equally, I think.
We have to work together in this process. And with that, I would just like to pass over for some closing remarks before I will formally conclude the session to the Deputy Director for Internet Governance at the U.K. government for department for science, innovation and technology to just make closing comments so thank you.
>> I think it's a real achievement that here we are between 6:00 and 7:00 on day 4 of the IGF and a really good turnout and an animated discussion as well. I want to thank you, Ros. I want to thank your fellow panelists, Mary, Alan, Timea and Anriette for sharing your time.
The U.K. Government, we have organized the session really committed to multi‑stakeholderism and that's going to be so important as we have got the WSIS+20 review process and before then we have got the Global Digital Compact and the IGF is an important vehicle for that. My reflection, and Anriette, you spoke about window dressing and I think it's important we don't, we use the M word of multi‑stakeholderism a lot, but I think it's important that we mean it, first of all just to make sure that it remains credible.
If you want to enact change, you need to bring people with you, and it's through, it's through listening, not just hearing and making a reality of moldism that you can make change happen and make change stick.
So it's a false economy just to sort of pretend doing window dressing where you are better off not doing it at all. If you are going to do it, do it properly and that's the commitment of the United Kingdom Government. I will stop there. Ros thank you very much again.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Paul. If this community is anything, it is engaged. So thank you for your time today. Thank you for your excellent commentary engagement. I think lots for us to take away, and, I mean, certainly we will be doing as Paul says all that we can to ensure that this WSIS+20 review review process is fully inclusive to the multi‑stakeholder community.
And with that, I will leave it, and I think it might be reception time if I heard correctly!
(Applause).