The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. 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 to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> Let me share an operational message with you. This workshop will be translated in six languages. You can grab your translation radios outside, also we remind you all sessions are being live streamed and translated. We invite you to go to the IGF website and the IGF YouTube channel to watch and share.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Okay. Good morning, everyone. We would like to welcome you for coming.
Again, thank you for coming to this panel. I am the head of the Digital Program and Article 19, the Mexico and Central America office. I will be co-moderating the session with Anja Kovacs.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Good morning. Thank you for being here, both to the people on the stage and off the stage.
I'm Anja Kovacs from the Internet Democracy Project in India and look forward to being here with you this morning.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: We will have an opening remarks by our Host Country Chair, Ministry of Public Administration.
>> YOLANDA MARTINEZ: Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our third day of activities in Jalisco in Zapopan, Mexico.
I'm part of the Digital Strategy Coordination Team, and we're happy to have you all here. Please be welcomed to our third day of activities of the Internet Governance Forum.
The main session of today will address the importance of Human Rights, specifically Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights that we consider to be given the same importance to Civil and Political Rights. Economic, Social and Cultural Rights describes our lives, we communicate with one another and earn a living, the Rights provide us a certain quality of living. This space for dialogue is more relevant in the framework of the 2030 Sustainable Agenda, and it is my pleasure to have all of you here.
I invite you to be active in your participations. The purpose of the Forum is to exchange ideas, to be proactive and assertive in the proposals and be aware that we have a huge responsibility towards our planet and to advance a multistakeholder model in order to find solutions and to generate better standard of living for populations.
Thank you for being here. I declare official opened this plenary session.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Let me introduce the panel and what we're going to discuss today.
The kind of conversation we want to have, it is the opening, engaging, deepening conversation on the interdependence in the ability and disability of Rights. It will engage the discussion on the interconnection between Civil and Political Rights and the Economic, Social, Cultural Rights. Through this to facilitate a deeper dialogue on Internet Governance and it covers a full range of Human Rights.
Anja will give us the format and I'll lineup the session.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you.
We will be dividing the session into three sections. In the first hour or so we'll be looking at Civil and Political Rights, and the key issues of the moment and emerging issues going forward. In the second session we'll be looking specifically at Economic, Social, Cultural Rights as an area that needs to be looked at in much more detail in its intersections with Internet Governance. In the third section of today we will then be looking at the interconnections between these two sets of Rights. Something that's not been explored much so far, and that's a debate that we really hope to move forward in this morning's session.
In each ‑‑ in the first two sections we will ask first a number of discussions that are with us here on the stage to make their interventions. Following that, we'll open in both sections the floor for the audience in the room to make interventions as well. We ask everybody to be short and snappy. We're looking for 3 minutes from speakers on the floor and one and a half minutes from the audience. In the third section, the floor will be opened for everybody to intervene and all interventions will be limited to 1:30. Finally, we'll also be using Slido for the session, you can go to url.com/hrigf2016 where you can put comments and questions on the session directly which will be live streamed here on the screen.
The questions that are asked, we encourage you to focus especially on the interconnections between the two sections of Rights, and we would like to come back to those questions in the third segment of today.
If you would like to comment, the url, url/igf2016.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you.
Let's begin with section one. We'll focus on Civil and Political Rights.
Since 2010 the U.N. and different bodies had recognized the importance of these Rights on Internet, why Freedom of Expression and privacy specifically are crucial to continue exercising other Rights in the digital realm. Nowadays we have special resolutions from Special Rapporteurs aiming to protect and promote these Rights in the online world. We can also remember how they will developed different and broader interpretations of the Rights and why we need them to continue to enable these communities and different spaces to become more and more democratic and participative.
What I want to invite our discussions in this session, is to answer some specific questions. I mean, you can stick to one of them or try to go deeper on the three of them.
They are on what have we achieved in terms of addressing Civil and Political Rights in relation to the Internet? What, in your work and opinion, are some of the key milestones? What do we need to do to consolidate the achievements and not lose ground in relation to this work? What are emerging key issues in the area that we need to address given the current context? For example, emerging issues around privacy and big data or Internet of Things, Freedom of Expression and association issues on the role of the Internet in shaping discourse and facilitating the mobilization of support and counter‑support around radicalized expression. What are some Best Practices or lessons learnt in this area, if any?
I would like to give the mic to Ana Neves, she's the director of the Department for the Information Society.
Good morning, everybody.
>> ANA NEVES: I'm here to share the work that my ministry in Portugal is doing around this issue.
I would like to pick up on three components: The first one will be work on empowerment of the citizens to strengthen their Civil, Political Rights, second on privacy and personal data, and the third one on the work on content related to Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Expression.
On the empowerment of the citizens to strengthen their Civil and Political Rights, as we all know, the Internet is now our central platform for engaging in dialogue about the most important issues facing a country. It is where we share our views, speak out against injustice and express our hopes for the future. Conversation is distributed online as well as generated. The enjoyment of all Human Rights is interlinked. For example, it is often harder for individuals who cannot read and write to find work, to take part in political activity or to exercise their Freedom of Expression. Similarly, more demanding societies are likely to be where individuals can exercise political Rights such as the right to vote. Bearing in mind the need to empower citizens to exercise Civil and Political Rights we developed a national strategy on digital inclusion, literacy and accessibility for the period 2015 to 2020 which will Democratize knowledge and access which has had some very good results.
The second point, privacy of personal data: With the Internet and growing digital society, it has changed habits, behaviors, aspirations, rules, jobs, fears, prejudices and the citizens' needs. Therefore, the implementation of new privacy standards, as is the case in Europe of the European Parliament and of the Council from April of 2016 on the protection on natural persons to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, it is particularly relevant to the various representatives of the Internet community. The argument the accusers must have full control over their own data implies a better preparation of users and consumers to this process through proper skills and training. This will enhance their Civil and Political Rights and better understanding what is at stake and how to prevent abuses on the protection of their personal data.
My last point, content related to Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Expression: I would draw your attention to the relation between the Civil and Political Rights. There is an example of a recent Portuguese initiative named Legal Office with two concrete goals, docking of websites with illegal content and provision of an awareness platform with a list of legal websites with contents related to music, video, games, books, you name it. The initiative was set up by several private associations, including the ones who represents the national IEPs and from the Ministry of Culture responsible for the rating of movies, video games and related media. The initiative, more than 250 websites were already blocked. The initiative has been subject to a great deal of criticism. First and foremost, because it could undermine the Right to Freedom of Expression, secondly, because we can have here a lack of legitimacy since we don't have a court decision to support the block of the websites but only an administrative decision from that public entity. Civil and Political Rights are being challenged.
In the case of websites that include undoubtedly illegal contents, blocking does not necessarily translate an infringement of the certain right of the Freedom of Expression. There is always ‑‑ there will always be a clear conflict of Rights because political right, free and open access to courts will be limited each time that the website, the content is blocked even if illegal. They're limited by an administrative decision from the public entity.
Here is something that we have to deal with in Portugal in the very short and immediate terms.
Thank you.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you for sticking to the time.
I want to remind you all to please stick to the time limit.
Thank you very much. I think that legitimacy in these measures, it is an important point we need still to address.
Now I want to introduce Hernan Vales. He's a lawyer that works in the Rule of Law and Democracy Section at the Office of The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva where he is responsible for the Democracy Portfolio. You can help us to answer what in your opinion are the key milestones that we're addressing right now. Thank you.
>> HERNAN VALES: I'll focus on that.
Thank you.
The question was about the ‑‑ about what we have achieved, the key milestones. We have achieved a lot in a very little amount of time, a relatively short amount of time. It doesn't mean that we are naive or that there is room for being compliant, the situation is serious on the ground, but it does not negate the fact that there are some very important achievements of the U.N. ‑‑ in the U.N. on Human Rights field.
I think in 2011 there was the first report that Frank La Rue, actually sitting here with us today, issued on Freedom of Expression and the Internet. That's only five years ago. It's very recent. Since that time, there have been many important reports, decisions, and here I would like to mention, for example, the Human Rights council resolution that you mentioned in the beginning on the promotion, protection, enjoyment of Human Rights on the Internet. If you think of that resolution, the first time it was adopted was in 2012, four years ago. It was a very short resolution, only two pages and had five imperative paragraphs, it was very succinct, timid if you wish. The latest resolution adopted in 2016, with ‑‑ we have five pages including issues of Human Rights based approach to access, Internet policy, gender divide, access for Persons with Disabilities. We see a lot of progress was made in this regard.
Also in terms of privacy, you know, after the revelations in 2013, that accelerated a lot of developments on the U.N. plane. We had a couple of resolutions from the General Assembly, and the last one is about to be adopted by the end of this year. It will include issues like transparency, for example. All this to say what, this develop ‑‑ this milestones, these decisions, jurisprudence has two consequences, States know they're being scrutinized, particularly on Freedom of Expression and privacy. States, also, governments, they can no longer claim there is not ‑‑ that there isn't a clear international Human Rights law framework when it comes to privacy and when it comes to Freedom of Expression and other Political Rights. I'll leave it at that.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you very much.
I would like now to give the word to Patrick Penninckx.
>> PATRICK PENNINCKX: Thank you.
I think this panel will go into the records as being the largest panel and, therefore, enter into the Guinness book of world records. It is a session of speed dating it feels like. I'll be short and snappy as requested.
I'm ‑‑ I'm Patrick Penninckx with the Information Society Department under the Girectorate General Human Rights and the Rule of Law at the Council of Europe. They have been strong in promoting Civil Rights, Freedom of Expression, data protection, that's a traditional way of entering into the discussions also in the Internet, the Rights and values, it is not a linear process. What we're facing today, it is that we sometimes feel that we're either going backwards than forwards. You want to link it to present day developments in our societies. I will not focus on any country in particular, but we're facing more challenges with regards to those Political and Civil Rights.
We can question ourselves, whether we still have a judicial security when States delegate, for example, their own responsibilities to the private sector. Let's look at, for example, the takedown of Internet content.
I want to say a few words, nevertheless, about the Social, Cultural, Educational Rights. Our social Rights are based on the industrial relations that date back to the 19th Century, and the instruments that are developed to protect those Rights basically go back to before the digital age. I can tell you, for example, our European Social Charter has many difficulties to ensure that these Rights in the new age link to how work is organized, how surveillance is organized in the workplace, so on. They have difficulties to implement the new Rights in the digital age.
Cultural Rights, I believe we're still at the age of wishful thinking. Unfortunately until now there is some generic reflections about how to integrate the digital culture into the cultural heritage but there is a number of open questions that remain.
I think on the educational part there is also one of the bigger challenges, that's namely to do with everything that we deal with digital education, education to use the Internet today. That would be my key input.
Thank you.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you very much for explaining that.
I now ‑‑ you mentioned that you feel we're going backwards than forwards, we have a lot of challenges. That's why I want to give the mic to Luis Fernando Garcia who is Executive Director at the Digital Rights Defense Network of Mexico. He will highlight issues related to privacy in Mexico, particularly surveillance.
>> LUIS FERNANDO GARCIA: Despite Human Rights rhetoric has gained space in our Internet Governance Forum, the translation is far away from reality. Companies ‑‑ the users of the Internet privacy in some countries basic principles of protection of privacy have been incorporated in some countries in terms of which authorities and under which procedures can surveil citizens. In some cases not even that is included in legislations, but in respect of basic principles and practice, it has not happened.
In Mexico, for example, we have placed on record how authorities with no jurisdiction to surveil the population have done that. We have records of phone tapping and tapping users' data has been performed without a warrant, we have confirmed that the tap, the telephone company has not rejected any of the requests to access the data of telecommunication service users. Mexico is one of the biggest buyers of sophisticated surveillance malware. Most of the authorities purchasing it do not have the jurisdiction to oversee citizens. It has been used against journalists, Human Rights advocates and Civil Society members.
In the State of Jalisco where we're at, where this Forum is taking place, the government spends 700,000 euros by ‑‑ and the purchase of this equipment, and only report to have requested a judicial request two times in three years. That means each tapping would cost 350,000 euros or the Jalisco government is spying on its population illegally. In a country like Mexico and a State like Jalisco where the difference between the state and organized crime does not exist surveillance out of the judicial control compromises the citizen security and also the dialogue of multistakeholder interested in Internet Governance is compromised.
How do we make sure we're on equal footing? How can we make progress in this conversation? When I point out to this fact, it is perceived as an offense or I'm being rude and that one stakeholder in this panel spies on other members of society and should be neglected, not discussed, I believe if that's the case we won't be able to see this conversation moving forward and this is what I have to say.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you for going to that level of detail.
Now I would like to introduce Will Hudson. He's Senior Advisor for International Policy at Google where his work focuses on Internet Governance, Google's relationships with international organizations like the United Nations and other International Policy issues.
>> WILL HUDSON: Thanks so much for that introduction. It is a pleasure to be here.
I think one of the things I'm excited about this panel is the amount of time we have for the discussion later. I think as we'll go into my remarks an important thing on making progress on this issue really is the kind of multistakeholder engagement that is provided at the IGF.
I want to talk about three things: One, the importance of free expression to Google; two, need for transparency on the issues; and three, the vital role of multistakeholder engagement.
To start quickly, free expression is key to Google since we were founded. As we all know, protecting Rights and promoting free expression is not something that's static in time. Because it was there at the beginning doesn't mean it is there forever. We're always looking for ways to engage and adapt as the world evolves around us.
Google has a belief in the fear of expression, it is a tenant of free societies, but more information means more choice, power, more economic opportunity and more freedom. At the same time there are limits, in some cases as Freedom House on the network highlights which you're aware of, if you're not, look at it, the limitations are without merit or legal basis, but it is generally accepted there are exceptional case where the limitations are permissible. The question is how you work out these pieces of the puzzle. Rather than talk about content ‑‑ we have talked a lot about that over the course of the week in different sessions, we can talk about it later. I would rather go to the question of how we actually use technology and the power of free expression to continue to protect it online.
A promising way we have seen is something called counter‑speech which tries to promote tolerance and understanding by building up new voices to express themselves. The basic idea is that positive voices can and will drown out content promoting violence, hate, promoting fear. We want people in need of community to be able to find helpful messages online, not just harmful ones. A small piece of this puzzle, in September we launched Creators For Change and I think we're providing equipment, education to content creators, announcing a charitable fund, giving grants to non‑profits to build cross‑cultural understanding and investing in local programs which is critical in countries so that this is self‑sustaining in communities.
That leads to the question of how do you know if all of this is working? How do we make progress? That's where the important role of transparency comes in. It is important for activist users, governments, others to understand the many ways that free expression is used online. That's why Forums like this is important so we can talk about it together.
With that in mind, I'm glad we were one of the first companies to do a transparency report, and we have reiterated on it ever since. We have gone further in recent years by doing things like reporting on European requests for removable and the Right to be Forgotten decision. We removed pages from search which is generally sacrosanct, and we do it for a legal order, we post an order on that and we report on the realtime availability of Google products over the world to help us and users track disruptions and shutdowns.
Quickly ‑‑ I'm out of time ‑‑ I would like to mention again the importance of multistakeholder engagement. In addition to the IGF, one important Forum that we found valuable is an initiative Rebecca will talk about later, as a founding company Google sees the benefits of engaging with partners from all sectors on this important issue.
I want to say in close that I don't think ‑‑ I hope you never have the impression that Google thinks I know the answer to this stuff. I don't. I'm looking for further discussion later to see how we can do better.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you for remembering while multistakeholder models are important to continue discussing this kind of things.
I would like to introduce Paz Pena. She's a journalist and independent consultant on Human Rights and Digital Technologies with a specialization on Gender Approaches and is part of the Coding Rights Brazil. For eight years she was the director of advocacy at Derechos Digitales America Latina.
>> PAZ PENA: Thank you.
Discrimination and hate speech have not just increased in the public opinion but, in fact, have got electoral and political results in many, many regions of the world talking about Civil and Political Rights on the Internet is an extremely complex task. As an advocate for Human Rights on the Internet there is no doubt for me and our communities that the Internet has been a powerful tool for political organization and participation for those, of course, who have the privilege to have a decent, affordable access to the whole Internet.
Without a doubt, Civil and Political Rights on the Internet are in critical danger, especially when we think about political participation in a data society that is increasingly shifting to hate speech, xenophobia, et cetera.
Digital technology, particularly Internet today is conceived as a tool for companies and States to harvest irrational amounts of personal data, data they say is not only the key for a business and the digital economy, but also for control and surveillance. A perfect example of that is this State, Jalisco, where the government has illegally bought surveillance hacking software to collect information to avoid the exercise of their Civil and Political Rights.
In this data society we are in a critical point where Internet will consolidate as an enabler for the exercise of Human Rights or will be a smart tool to control subjects through process of documentation, profiling, criminalization according to activism, occupation, gender, health, condition, social class, race. This is the war in fact we have to tackle. This disproportionate impact of the data Society of The oppressive groups, oppressive groups not only suffers surveillance from the States but also social and economical control. From a gender and intersectionality perspective, ask for transparency and accountability to know who has our data and what they do with that data is not enough. Basically because that will only legitimatize a controlled society where Internet is a smart, modern harvest tool. We need to do more than that, we need to reclaim our democratic oversight of a society leaving ethical decisions to data algorithms handled by fifth parties. Today, more than ever, as a community of consumers, users, citizens, we have a responsibility in our everyday life to fight against the model of Internet as a control tool from fighting against Internet monopolies to look at the logics behind the Internet of today.
Thank you.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you very much for your insights.
Now that you're talking about not only States, but companies, I would like to introduce Rebecca McKinnon. She's Director of Ranking Digital Rights, which evaluates ICT companies on the extent to which they respect Freedom of Expression and privacy. She is also cofounder of the Citizen Media Network Global Voices.
>> REBECCA MacKINNON: Thank you very much.
You know, we're in a difficult time right now. As a Brazilian journalist that teaches in Texas, they often say prior to the Internet we lived in an information desert. Our governments, information systems were based on scarcity. All of our government systems have been built around the assumption of information scarcity. Then the rain came, the Internet came, we have a rain forest. Our governance systems, are mechanisms to prevent the abuse of power and the mechanisms for exercising power or holding power accountable are not fit for purpose in this new ecosystem. This ecosystem is crossing borders, it is not something that you can just resolve the problems in one jurisdiction and we have countries, governments trying to address problems within their own jurisdiction and then causing more problems for Internet users elsewhere. We have, of course, companies exercising power globally in various ways.
It is so important that we have this community here at the IGF, these people pointing out where the system is not working, where the government mechanisms and regulatory mechanisms are in some cases doing more harm than good. I have been looking specifically at the role of companies in this ecosystem, but it connects very much to what governments are and are not doing.
The Ranking Digital Rights Project evaluates the ICT companies on their policies and practices effecting Freedom of Expression and privacy specifically. We found widespread incoherence in companies, transparency or lack of transparency, how they inform users about what's being collected, with whom it is being shared, how it is being used, that even companies that do disclose a lot are not disclosing things in ways that people can make decisions. There are efforts of transparency, there are companies making commitments. We have found a direct correlation between company membership in the global network initiative and the telecommunication industry dialogue and whether they're doing Human Rights impact assessments, whether they're making efforts to be transparent about their policies and practices, but there is a very, very long way to go and we have a lot of work to do to get companies where they need to be. I welcome the resolution that's come out of the Third Committee of the General Assembly that we just heard about, which is calling on companies to abide by their commitments, but also calling on governments to abide by their responsibilities to respect and protect Human Rights and not to do things that prevent companies from meeting their responsibilities.
In our research we have been finding that many governments are compelling companies to do things that are not in keeping with a Human Rights norms or preventing companies from being transparent and are not being transparent themselves about what they're demanding of companies. Unless we build a system in which we have much more transparency on all sides, we have mechanisms for accountability, we have Human Rights impact assessments being conducted by governments on how they're policies are effecting Internet users everywhere, not just domestically, and we have grievance mechanisms, remedy mechanisms that work for the people being affected.
We're going to have problems. I'm optimistic with this community we can gradually work towards solutions.
Thank you.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you very much.
That's a complexity of this ecosystem and why Internet is not finished, something that we have to remember.
Now I would like to introduce Anita Gurumurthy. She's executive director of IT For Change, an NGO that works at the intersection of ICT and development combining practice, research and conscientization for a world that is socially just.
>> ANITA GURUMURTHY: The first question, what's being achieved, key milestones? First, the span of Digital Rights, it is clearer, and acquired some legitimacy. Second, more recently, we have seen shifts that demonstrate a new phase of Civil and Political Rights that move away from cascading protests and rebellions to experiments it deepening democracy through a public discourse, individual freedoms come together with civic participation for the promotion of the common good in which the Internet is centrally implicated.
I would point to an example, the ‑‑ this is a movement for citizens right here in Guadalajara. The free software companies contributions, the freedom box project launched in 2010, 2011, a critical milestone to reclaim privacy, control over data, freedom to hold and share opinions. What's evident in the practices not only suggests ideas for the appropriation and use of the Internet, but ideas about the Internet itself and the radical and the potential for Human Rights. What to do to consolidate the achievements? Firstly, we need to look beyond the offline, online, violations are in the very real hybrid spaces where embedded life meets the network. The digitalization of governance, for example, has far‑reaching implications for those that don't own any gadgets as they become subjects of a new data‑fied regime. We have to look at the idea of Rights in the different sociality in the digital age. This is about future proofing everything,
David Case talks about the mechanics of holding opinions have evolved, and I would submit that the mechanics of everything, all institutions have evolved in the digital age.
What are issues to address, emerging, first, ethical, political issues rising from the global network data complex? Thanks to the data complex that drives on and the globalization, the Rights and freedoms in relation to the Internet, it is cast in a game where the Right to connect means loss of privacy and public notion. This is ironic given that the paradigm is able to nurture a sound game ‑‑ but even as others have said ‑‑ for more freedom we may have to give up the pursuit of economic value. We get out of data and close the pipes to save our societies and save Rights. The problem is that the globalization is increasingly shaping jurisprudence at many levels. This is paramount. We have to think of how data government regimes promote collective intelligence and collaboration.
The second, the absence of international jurisprudence to look at the Human Rights issues in the digital age; and the third, the issue of emerging development data that's pushing the world on to a new colonial path. With connectivity slowing down, half of the world is not connected and the decisions by the government are not likely to be represented, the loss of sovereignty, it is high for the poorest countries who don't have the capacity to manage their data. The result is a transfer of national governments to citizen leader to transnational cooperation and with that, the duty of the State to safeguard people's Rights and interests. We must bring the power structures to account.
Thank you.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you very much.
Now, all of your inputs have given us a complete landscape of where are we in Civil and Political Rights. It's more challenging to go to the next section.
Right now I would like to open to the public for the Q and A section. We'll be presenting the Slido over there for the remote participation.
I would kindly ask you to stand up and say your name when you raise your comments or questions, please.
>> Brian.
I would like to thank all the speakers. I feel the term Digital Rights went missing from this discussion. The Digital Rights I believe is a new set of Rights, they are Human Rights that will allow people to freely and easily use access, use create and publish digital media without harassment from government or non‑state actors. I have a list of bloggers, others that are in prison just because they post a Tweet or a Facebook post. Now I think it is in the heart of this, especially the IGF, anywhere, to protect the Digital Rights of those people. We have to remember those who are in prison because they enjoy their Freedom of Expression on the net, and I look forward to see how we could protect Digital Rights of people who are trying to use the Internet to promote peace and freedom in their countries.
Thank you.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you very much.
We have two questions from the floor. There is one.
>> Good morning. I'm going to speak in Spanish.
My name is Fernando, I'm from Guatemala, Central America. The topic, it is of great importance in terms of the exercise of Human Rights.
We often go on at nauseam discussing how governments control the population and society, but I think in countries we have the mechanisms to a greater or a lesser extent to surveillance mechanisms to control society. The question is, what's being done in other countries in Guatemala? We're not sure how this is happening. We're trying to find out, but what is being done to control companies, private sector, where the data is coming from, and the data is used to control citizens.
For instance, right now those of us taking part in the Forum, beginning to get quotations via the Internet for hotels, food services, we open the page, and the first thing that we get is an offering of hotels, Tequila, et cetera, it is almost harassment. What are we doing to control the private sector, the companies, governments at the end of the day are undertaking or using a mechanism for surveillance or supervision.
I would ask if you could perhaps clear that up within your fields.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: He was asking about other practices in other countries and how countries are making it comfortable on how they're gathering data and using it.
I would like to mention one of the remote questions, it has more awareness of Human Rights on the Internet by governments resulted in more respect for those Rights or more laws that legalizes violation of those Rights?
Someone wants to answer?
>> HERNAN VALES: It is a bit of both.
There is more awareness and governments know they know the Rights and how they need to respect them. The framework, it is there, and they know it is there. The thing is that they are more sophisticated in ways to go around it, and we have seen States that adopted the draconian, repressive Internet laws giving an apparent ‑‑ going through the process, it legitimizes the law, it is a law that's bad if it is so ‑‑ I think it is a bit of both.
Thank you.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you.
We have another question up there.
>> EDUARDO ROJAS: Hello, good morning.
I'm Eduardo Rojas of Bolivia. I'm the author of The Digital Oppression Concept that we have seen in international Fora.
One of the things that we have seen in Human Rights in the Information Society is lack of clarity. If we're going to protect a database that are owned by different owners or the ‑‑ the legal ownership of individuals we have to put at the core the defense of human begins, the concept of digital protection focusing on people, not machines or ownership of infrastructure. Talking about cybercrime, cyberwar we're often emphasizing the assets infrastructure, setting aside the respect and protection of the people which is where our emphasis needs to be. We have to look at the negative impact of the technologies, that's what we're looking at rather but we also need to pay more attention on the negative impact of those technologies on people, on the subjects of the Rights, not on the assets, per se.
I would like to see, for instance, what the opinion is of panelists in terms of creating a standard so as to enable a dialogue at the same level of comprehension of the legal protection of people and not get confused with the protection of the assets, the databases, the infrastructure per se of private memberships.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: I would like you to remember the question if you can answer.
>> PAZ PENA: I'm going to speak in Spanish so as to answer the people who pose their questions in Spanish. In terms of the responsibility of companies, with respect to our data, I think here the work done by Rebecca McKinnon is very important in terms of having accountability, in terms of companies.
I would also like to underscore the responsibility of users, consumers, citizens, the view we have of the tools online. We can be reluctant and resist to a certain extent. We need to think about whether we want to continue to use the tools of companies that are ‑‑ that have monopolies with our data. For instance, we're talking about Google, Facebook, as users we need to be able to decide what tools we use and resist usage of other tools.
Now the importance, for instance, of open software, how open software can be an instance for resisting to the management of our data and control of our data, not just our data but of our lives through that.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: We have another one, it is how does Google draw limitations on sexual speech as a champion of Human Rights and do they take right to sexual health and info into consideration.
>> WILL HUDSON: I should answer that one.
So very briefly, on products like Search where the general operating parameter, the operating principle of those should be an index of all information on the web with few exceptions, we generally don't try to become a filter for information on any content that people might find controversial, may be offended by whatever it is. You know, whether it is information about sexual health, sexual identity, whatever. On Search, you know, that won't be ‑‑ that won't be effective.
On products like YouTube on ‑‑ on Search, I want to say another thing, there was a health component. On Search, if you use Google and you type in a search result about a medical condition or an issue like that, you get results about that condition that's been curated by doctors and verified for accuracy. The idea is to help you ask more intelligence questions of your doctor, whatever. That's an area where this concept comes into play. Back to the power of technology, what I said before, reaching new people, building up voices, a thing we saw on YouTube ‑‑ maybe you're aware of the It Gets Better project. It was a massive project on YouTube basically to help, you know, give voice to people that were struggling with sexual identity because they were being harassed, experiencing hate, being rejected by their communities, friends. We found in that experience that, again, you know, technology, the problems we see online in terms of harassment reflects real world problems ‑‑ that was something that was mentioned earlier today too. You can use technology to start, you know, fighting back and being a part of the conversation and maybe the same on this issue.
That said, on more specific questions on it, it is not my area of expertise, whoever asked it, email me. We'll figure out how to get that information. I'll be happy to follow‑up.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you.
Rebecca MacKinnon, you wanted to add something?
>> REBECCA MacKINNON: Quickly on a couple of questions regarding company practices and collection and sharing of data and use of data.
One step is obviously you need good data protection laws. One of the things that we have seen in our research is that in countries that haven't gotten around to passing data protection laws, companies tend not to really bother adhering to Best Practices. What we're trying to encourage and we have a whole set of questions in our methodology that we use to evaluate companies and we're actually encouraging groups in Latin America to apply the questions to more companies operating in Latin America, there are questions like does the company allow you to download all of the data they have on you. You can see what they have collected. Does the company allow you ‑‑ enable you to opt out of use of data ‑‑ use of your data that's not central to providing you the service? Does the company give you any control over under what circumstances your information is used. We're seeing particularly in the case of telecommunication companies around the world not very good practice in that. In countries where particularly where the law is not requiring good practice it is ‑‑ I think it is important as Paz said for users, for investors, consumers, you really need to push, and there is a number of NGOs doing good work around Latin America starting to do research to expose, including Luis Fernando Garcia's organization looking at Mexican telecommunication companies and their practices with data and a number of other organizations around the region.
I recommend really pushing companies to do the right thing. Pushing the government to enact better laws.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you.
We have one question here, and someone is raising the hand there and here.
>> Good morning. My name is Cali from Venezuela. I work on Rights in that area.
I would like to bring up a couple of points, that is that in Venezuela the Internet has been the window that we have had to express ourselves given the huge censor that exists in other media. There are two major challenges: One is access to Internet, because the divestment of technological companies and infrastructures, it is very important and increasingly smaller number of people have access to the Internet in Venezuela unfortunately.
The second point to bring up in terms of personal data. In Venezuela biometric data collection is a very highly used for buying food, medications. We have to provide our fingerprints every time we want to buy flour for instance. We don't know what the companies do with that information nor what the government does with that information, and whether they can use that information to spy on the private lives of people or to use it for any other effect that has an impact on the privacy of our lives.
>> AUDIENCE: I'll speak in Spanish.
What I want to say is access to justice for women, online violence against women and the repercussions this has in terms of the self-censorship that women live and how the authorities and companies are reacting bluntly and effectively and sometimes they don't.
I would like to share that what we have seen is replicated in other geographies like India and that it is a global trend that we can draw from the experience. There is a generalized climate, the generalized climate we see of the women Rights violations in the offline world is replicated online and the lack of mechanisms to have access to justice I believe that we're living the same situation.
My question is, are you aware of other experiences, accommodations, what it is ‑‑ what is the State of things right now and what we can do to react to this, in spite of the fact that we have exchanged ideas with the government, we have had conversations with companies but it looks as though when there is a rape threat for a women in the platforms, they don't act. But when they censor content, feminine, activists, on those platforms, they immediately act on them to block the pages and censor. We see that the online world functions at a patriarchal world.
That's a question for us.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: We have four minutes to answer the questions, so only another question.
The another question from the remote participation, can we put it here too? There are a lot of questions.
I will take one and it is the first one, many of the violations that people face is attributed to social media ‑‑ this is not a question ‑‑ no focus on the people behind it creating using and providing, we have a question, manipulation of algorithms by social media and certainly engines affects our abilities to live outside an echo chamber, what can we do to push back? I'll leave it at that, keep that in mind. I want to take the two last questions from the floor.
>> AUDIENCE: I have two questions. One is about access to knowledge because I have stopped a long time ago to use Google as my search engine since it is clearly profiling me. Maybe I'm dumb. I know that the search in itself is not so neutral as it pretends to be and there are different information. This brings to the fact that we do not have really true access to knowledge because we don't get all of the information, the information that could happen, they happen and they appear in the ranking also related to what the Google engine, the G mail engine conveys as to what I could probably be interested in, that's one question. The second is listed to the harassment online, there is an interesting reflection done a long time ago about the Internet and the amount of money spent in spam, how to control spam. Investing from company to control spam technologically but in moderation. Why the harassment, the garbage that we have against women cannot be considering the same way and invest the money in the moderation and that means a lot of education on the cultural and educational framework.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you.
We have another one over there, please.
>> Good morning.
My name is Gonzalez. I come from Mexico.
My question is the following: What are we doing to integrate Indigenous communities to Internet and what are we doing to protect the integrity and the Human Rights of Indigenous communities? On the Internet we have seen different activities and we have participated and we have to go beyond real access to the information that Indigenous groups have access to and I believe that Latin America is the continent where you will find more Indigenous communities but what are we actually doing to protect them? Thank you.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Please.
Is there an Association for Progressive Communications, one of the speakers Luis Fernando Garcia talked about surveillance, buying surveillance equipment and how it is being used, this is a global problem. What can be done about that? In my country there are ‑‑ the government actually out sources surveillance to commercial companies. There is no transparency around that, there is no monitoring of that.
Is it actually possible for us? Is it possible to have a regime of oversight at national and global level that can create more accountability and more transparency, or is this practice already out of control and there's nothing we can actually do about it?
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you very much.
We have responses which ‑‑
>> LUIS FERNANDO GARCIA: A few. I can't answer all of the questions. What I want to say, I need everyone to understand.
First, I think when we talk about different ‑‑ for example, the problem surveillance, we develop the principles to control it, I think that the experience in the global South needs to be understood, it is different to have surveillance in a country that has institutional checks and balances and when it doesn't and just importing the principles from the global north and trying to just put them in your law, everything will be fine, it is not going on. It does not ‑‑ that's not happening and the evidence shows even when, for example, in Mexico, there is a law and there is judicial warrant requirement, the authorities, they just don't comply with it. We need to take that into account.
Also we need to take into account and be weary of legal colonialism. For example, what is going on with the take down of the copyright provisions that are being basically exercising censorship around the world because of the law of countries or one country. That's a problem, and when authorities in Europe are demanding for content to be taken down globally and that's something ‑‑ that's a problem. It is, as I said, a form of illegal colonialism.
Also companies should understand that they have Human Rights responsibilities, particularly those that have the largest share of certain Internet markets that just because they're private companies and they can establish certain rules about how we use your service. This possibility, it is not unlimited. You have limits especially if you have a bigger share of the market. If you make rules about your ‑‑ how the community is going to use your platform, you need to be consistent that the rules that you establish need to be non‑discriminatory and respectful of Human Rights. And I think that's asked, the companies are starting to take and make decisions that impact even more people than the decisions that the governments make, they need to take that into account, that they also need to be accountable about how they develop their rules and how to implement them and how that harms Human Rights, understanding also the local context, particularly of the Global South.
Thank you.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you.
We have Ana and Will Hudson, we'll close with you, thank you.
>> I thought I would take a stab at the question we had ‑‑ ‑‑
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Excuse me. Can we stick to one minute each, please?
>> Yes.
>> STUART HAMILTON: I want to talk about manipulation of information by algorithms, and here it reminds me of being in school. I studied history and you study sources, ask where does this document come from, who wrote this document, looking at the origins of information. It is not a new thing. We need to consider strongly getting to the point of immediate information, literacy, digital skills training we have to use library why is to bring that to people of older ages and move beyond the discussions having here and think about how to rollout big programs on this subject to help people to tackle the sorts of information. I'm not certain there is a technological solution in this, we have to invest in the human capacity to understand the question.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Will. Will Hudson.
>> WILL HUDSON: One, on the ‑‑ the related question on the echo chamber, the data that companies are using to provide results which are somewhat related.
One, on the echo chamber, you know, as Rebecca pointed out, one of the great strengths of the Internet is that you can get more information from different points of view. This isn't just something that I'm saying, there is data out there to show that people consuming online media sources, online news sources are seeking out more kinds of content from different kinds of viewpoints than they were before. Again, this is a historic problem but we're of the belief that more information is better and that the more information you put out the better people will be.
On the data that companies are using to provide things like search results, one, I think for Google at least, we found that the quarry itself is the best indicator of what people want. Searching for today's news, you know, if you're signed in on one account for today's news, signed in on another account, doesn't produce dramatically different results. At Google this goes to the transparency and user trust issue to get online and you can see the pieces of information that Google has about you and you can see how we collected it, what we're using it for and you can delete that information or you can download it and take it with you and delete it. I think that the user trust piece is important.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you.
Ana Neves.
>> ANA NEVES: From what I heard, I would like to make three comments.
I think the strategies for digital inclusion, literacy, the accessibility, that's key, number one.
Number two, users and consumers in parliament, it is crucial as they must have full control of their own data.
Finally, it is ‑‑ I think it should be required, greater responsibility and accountability of actors who provide services and products over the Internet so by design and default principles should be the private sector priorities which could reduce eventually government regulation. This is my final comments before I part.
Thank you.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you.
Any final remarks?
>> YOLANDA MARTINEZ: Okay.
I believe that the challenges are clear. It is clear that these are common challenges, our colleagues who made reference to Indigenous communities, I believe we have two major tasks and that is to be responsible in a multistakeholder Community to fight for the communities and to advocate for them, we need a clear legal framework in terms of what should be done.
In Mexico we have a special act on the protection of data in the hands of private entities and having data is an enormous step forward but we have to make sure we have a clear strategy to educate on the use of the Internet. We need to identify the possible partnerships that can take place with Indigenous communities and in the case of Mexico every year we have 31% more users and in 2018 we'll have 98 million people using the Internet and we have a huge responsibility as a community not only in Mexico but in Latin America, the region of the world, with he have to make sure that in this inclusion process in the Internet, the Rights, they're fully granted.
Thank you very much.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you.
20 seconds.
>> ANITA GURUMURTHY: I wanted to point out that the discussion on data should also account for the fact that you're not only talking about individual data, because to reduce the entire data phenomena to a question of personal content would be incorrect, data is also a social phenomenon and we know that in the nexus between states and corporations, if we allow the data to become an individual question we will lose the whole idea of the democratic social ownership of o you are communities and societies.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you very much to the public, remote participation, for all of your answers and insights.
Let's continue with our second section where Anja will be moderating.
>> ANJA KOVACS: What this section made clear, the questions are back on the Agenda, what we wanted to do in this second session was to look in more detail at how the economic social and cultural Rights are already addressed in Internet Governance or not and how they should be.
What it would mean to have a Rights‑based approach to Internet Governance specifically from the perspective of Economic, Social, Cultural Rights, what are some of the key issues in this field that we need to look at. Some have been mentioned, there is more. What are the practices and lessons we have learned in this area and that we can draw on going forward.
We'll follow the same format as in the previous section and I'm going to ask, again, everybody to try to stick to time as closely as possible so that we can have a rich discussion.
I would like to ask Juan Fernandez, a senior advisor in the minute is it industry of communications of Cuba and a MAG member to share what's going on in his field on this subject.
>> JUAN FERNANDEZ: Good morning.
Madam Chair, dear colleagues, first of all, I would like to say how satisfied I am to set foot in Mexican land. Mexico and Cuba are neighboring countries that are united with deep historic cultural, friendship ties.
I would like to thank as well the organizers of this session for having invited me to participate in this section devoted to Economic, Social, Cultural Rights and also to point out the pertinence of carrying out this debate in Mexico since it was one of the first nations in the world to enshrine such Rights in its Constitution in 1917.
Before moving on to specific questions raised by the moderator, allow me to express some general considerations.
In a few days, the 50th Anniversary of the adoption by the General Assembly of the United Nations of the international covenant on economic, social and cultural Rights will be celebrated which commits the parties to work for the concession to persons of these Rights, including labor Rights, the Rights to health, the Right to education and the Right to an adequate standard of living, also two days ago, the 30th anniversary of the adoption in the United Nations of the declaration on the Right to the development took place which enshrines the Right to development as an inalienable Human Rights by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in an economic, social, cultural and political development in which all Human Rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized.
The reality is that in today's world it is far from achieving the goal of addressing the economic, social and cultural Rights and also the Right to development on equal footing and with the same weight as the Civil and Political Rights.
In the case of the latter, today virtually no one questions its rightness and there are international mechanisms for examining individual grievances.
However, in relation to economic, social and cultural Rights some even question their own existence and refer to them as ideals for the future. . I therefore con great late the organizers of this session for having granted a great importance to the principles recognized by the international communities on the universality, indivisibility, interdependence and interrelation of all Human Rights. Nevertheless, it is necessary to point out that the effective implementation of these principles constitutes a challenge not yet surpassed in the allocation of resources by the international community, in the existing international instruments on the subject and in the performance on the United Nations Human Rights machinery itself. I turn now to address some of the questions raised by the moderator. From previously expressed remarks it is clear that are economic, social and cultural Rights and the Right to development have not been incorporated with the pre‑eminence they deserve in the debate on Internet Governance. On the other hand, I believe that the adoption by the international community on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development constitutes an opportunity to put the attainment of these Rights at the heart of the Internet Governance. In this sense it is necessary to recognize that Internet, like any other technology, it is not an end in itself, but it is a means to the satisfaction of the needs of persons and peoples.
We must reject the concept of Internet exceptionalism and begin to treat it as its fair value within a set of necessary and enabling technologies for the provision of basic services such as drinking water, electricity, food, housing, education and health.
I would like to conclude by emphasizing that if the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals are to be fulfilled, a fairer, more equitable international economic order will have to be established. The Right to development exercised and direct participation and leading roles of the countries of the South in decision‑making at the global level, including Internet Governance must be established.
Thank you very much.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you for the opening remarks and for reminding us of the history of these Rights.
And the challenges that have sometimes surrounded them both online and offline.
I would next like to turn to Sally Wentworth, vice President of global policy development at the Internet Society which leads the organization's public policy activities and guides the development of public policies that support a global, open, trusted Internet. Sally, with he know that ISOC has worked on looking at the intersection of Internet Governance and especially the SDGs for a while now and really tried to put that issue on the Agenda. How do you see the intersection between the Economic, Social, Cultural Rights and the Internet Governance and I would like to again request all speakers to please stick to 3 minutes.
Thank you.
>> SALLY WENTWORTH: Thank you very much. Thank you for including the Internet Society on this important discussion.
As you said at the Internet Society we have long believed that the Internet is a force for empowerment, it is a technology that can really strengthen the ability of individuals worldwide to exercise their economic, cultural Rights and to express themselves and build communities in ways that have never really been possible before.
We believe quite firmly that the issues related to access and the Internet are quite linked to the issues related to Human Rights, we're pleased that this issue is high on the Agenda of this panel.
As one of our colleagues I think in the audience noted, the gentlemen from Venezuela, there is people in his country that see the Internet as a crucial medium open to their expression and opportunity and there is inefficient access in their country for all people. These things are quite linked, I do want to point out that from the Internet Society's perspective, we look into the future and we note that it is not sufficient to bridge the digital divide in terms of technology. We have to be looking forward to the other kinds of divides that start to emerge. We don't want to see a world of the Internet where some people are only consumers and don't have the opportunities to create.
We in our community, we're seeing a rising concern about different kinds of divides that are starting to emerge where people don't have a quality in the nature of opportunities that come from the Internet. It is not sufficient to simply have access, you need to have access that's empowering, you need to have access that creates economic opportunities and you can't have the kind of divides between different levels of income and status in a society that determine your right to access.
One issue that's starting to emerge that I think is quite interesting is ‑‑ and concerning, perhaps ‑‑ of course we know to further the Internet we have to trust it as a technology. There are concerns that there is divide emerging between groups that have access to high levels of security, high levels of encryption that have the digital skills to utilize those tools versus others that do not. You could see a divide emerging between individuals who can secure transactions, secure interactions online and those that don't. That creates a whole new level of vulnerabilities that I think is particularly important when talking about Human Rights and Human Rights activism online.
Those are just a few issues that I thought I would put on the table linking the economic development to the exercise of Human Rights.
Thank you. You
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you for putting on the table, some of the new vulnerabilities that misplaced Internet Governance can create, and I would like to next invite Carolyn Njuyen, Director of Technology Policy at Microsoft, she focuses on the policy issues related to Internet Governance and the digital economy.
>> CAROLYN NGUYEN: Thank you. Thank you to the organizers for putting this issue at the forefront and for including me ‑‑ enabling me to participate in the panel.
I wanted to start my comments with the response to some of the previous questions with respect to responsibility of corporations.
Since 2016 Microsoft is a signatory of the U.N. Global Compact. From that perspective we look at both Civil and Political Rights and had the Economic, Social, Culture Rights and in 2013 we release our own Human Rights statement and since then follow‑up on it with our privacy principles that look at privacy, security, transparency as well as development of technologies that would have to benefit the individual user.
As a leading technology provider, we take this issue very seriously. For example, through participation at appropriate U.N. organizations and in dialogues such as this. Others have mentioned already the criticality role that the Internet access plays in achieving Economic, Social, Cultural Rights. I want to go back to the point of the fact that the WSIS process has, now, aligned ‑‑ the outcome document has now aligned the WSIS process with the SDG so that as one mentioned, that makes the Economic, Social, Cultural Rights really at the heart of the discussion of the Internet and Internet Governance.
I think it also has an additional, practical effect in terms of broadening the discussion in Internet Governance and bringing to the table ministries and government agencies that are dealing with economic, finance, education, health, creating as such additional pressures for enabling policy environment and furthermore and more importantly, a more holistic, a balanced discussion on the impact of the Internet with Human Rights being an integral element of that discussion.
Regarding key issues related to enabling Economic, Social, Cultural Rights, at Microsoft we look at this through a three‑pronged approach, firstly it has to do with enablement through connectivity. This has to do with connecting the remaining 4 billion that are still unconnected. From that perspective it is essential to maintain an open end‑to‑end secure, stable, resilient Internet infrastructure as the Internet continues to expand and also enable affordable, ubiquities access to the Internet globally. Secondly, we believe in empowerment through education, throughout efforts such as UNESCO putting forth information literacy and more importantly creating motivation for the individual users and everyone to care about education and access to the Internet, for that we believe the Cloud is an important enablement platform serving at the basis of our trust and responsibility and inclusive Cloud policies and advocacies.
We believe in transformation through employment. For this, we work, for example, with refugee organizations around the world to enable refugees to apply for settlement as well as employment opportunities online.
Fourthly, what's important that's been brought up by others already, it is the important of multistakeholder participation to enable well, informed policy stakeholders to fully understand the impact of ICT in enabling ESCRs Rights and are then motivated to develop policies that are well intentioned.
Thank you.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you.
I think it is an important point that you put on the table to say that actually we need far more ministries, other stakeholders in rooms like this to actually have this conversation properly and then in turn the entire Internet Governance system will likely benefit from their participation.
Nanjira Sambuli is from the Web Foundation where she leads efforts to promote digital equality in access to and use of the web. You have worked a lot with marginalized populations, people who are particularly vulnerable. What are your insights from that work for this debate?
>> NANJIRA SAMBULI: Thank you.
Starting with where we are right now, we see that there is acknowledgment that the Internet is a very enabling tool for women everywhere. We have seen this in the SDGs and specifically 1.4 had talking about digital equality and how that is enforced for women. We have seen in the broader United Nations system through the Secretary‑General's High Level Panel on Women Empowerment, the ownership of assets is just as important as financial and property assets and the idea is to catalyze more commitment from all actors we're talking about in the room to actually do something about it. The situation on the ground as we found so far is that income and equality is effecting how women own the digital assets and had how they access and use the web in a meaningful way. Working with affordability reports, it highlights this clearly. Advanced social norms are also effecting how women are owning property and had in this case digital property and digital assets. We're seeing that gender blind ICT policies as we're seeing them now, they're leaving women behind. If we're talking about, for instance, universal access, what 9C calls for by 2020 it, the rate we're going, we'll miss the mark by 22 years. Something that was brought up by someone in the audience about blocking and filtering of content, also what we're seeing with this trend of introing Internet is keeping women specifically from accessing meaningful information on sexual reproductive health and that's a ground we're looking at in the framework on these issues. Where do we go from there? There is a question around the Human Rights council resolution 2016 calling for comprehensive Rights based approach to accessing the Internet, how we see it at the web foundation is that it entails what we call a react framework, it has to cover the Rights, education in this case, digital skills that are taught not just in primary schools, secondary schools and for education for women and others to get digitally empowered, we're talking about affordable access talking about more ambitious affordability targets over and above what we have right now we're talking about investing in public access for women and others. Really the community at large to engage. Gender responsive policy, something we're working specifically on, by trying to bring in governments to understand that, you know, this is not just about putting out ICT for policies but gender responsible policies, gender desegregated data, others, last but not least I want to mention when we talk about multistakeholderism in this order we have to make sure that it is not justly service as with the SDGs, we have to make room to acknowledge who is not in the room and their perspectives are not covered. This will be very important for us to understand that maybe our perspectives are not sufficient and had we have to bring those in.
That's how we're trying to work out the issues. I hope to come back next year and to talk about more solutions and not just the challenges we have.
Thank you very much.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you so much.
Many challenges, the questions then, it is how do we resolve them?
Carla Reyes has worked on Governance By Design and done research in that area as well. I would like her to share her comments next. She's a visiting assistant professor of law at Stetson University College of Law and had also a member of the Dynamic Coalition for Blockchain Technologies in the IGF.
>> CARLA REYES: Thank you for inviting me to participate this morning.
I would like to answer the question posed by the moderators as to whether ESCRs is on the Agenda. From my perspective the question may actually be whether we have good tools to incorporate the ESCRs in the Agenda in a meaningful way. What is my perspective exactly?
As a member of the Dynamic Coalition on Blockchain technologies and a law professor, my background is on law, technology with emphasis on blockchain technologies or what is called commonly as distributed ledger technology.
With that background, it is possible to see blockchain technologies as a possible way for further incorporating Economic, Social, Cultural Rights in the Internet Governance Agenda.
Specifically blockchain technology offers opportunities for rethinking governance models to allow for a Rights‑based approach that focuses on Indigenously designated Rights and needs of the community at question. At the core, we see blockchain technology as representative of transformative potential for peer to peer based granular control ‑‑ ‑‑ and 0 knowledge proofs, ‑‑ the idea in a nutshell is that blockchains can serve as a tool to enable large‑scale distributed collaboration and more participatory decision making in turn could change its way we think about governance. It could enable us to change the way that people experience, defend, enjoy their Economic, Social, Cultural Rights.
It is a tool that would allow communities to basically organize themselves and to build into their organization, into their own governance structures their values, the values and economic aspects of Economic, Social, Cultural Rights that are important to them, not that we're telling them should be important to them.
It is a way to bring as the last speaker just mentioned other voices into the conversation, Indigenously from their own action.
My colleague actually has worked extensively on this idea of governance by design and she envisions blockchain as a tool for developing governance models that are flatter, more participatory and transparent, there are challenges to implementing the blockchain technologies as a tool for this sort of realization of the Economic, Social, Cultural Rights and in particular the challenge that's probably most relevant for this Forum is that even within distributed governance models there is be an opportunity for accumulation of soft power through control of the building of the government structures, the question may be for this Forum becomes how to prevent such soft power from the ‑‑ the accumulation of the soft power from stopping the potential of blockchain technologies to help folks integrate more thoroughly their exercise of their Economic, Social, Cultural Rights.
Thank you.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you so much.
Thank you for putting on the table a way of moving the debate forward on these issues. Sally Burch, you have worked on communities on the ground as well, participation is a core concern. How would you respond to this proposal and Sally is with Asociacion Latinoamericana de Informacion and with the JustNet Coalition from Ecuador.
>> SALLY BURCH: Thank you.
Just a correction on the program, moo I organization is Latin American information agency. Internet Governance under the multistakeholder model was essentially designed to deal with mainly technological issues. Today there are more levels of complexity by far covering a vast array of areas of human society that can't be governed through a technological approach.
In fact, both the terms Internet and Internet Society are rather vague terms with different interpretations of what they actually include. This leads to dangerous and often unperceived slips or displacements from the level of connectivity and access to that of content and interactions.
Often it is governed by untransparent algorithms, the platforms we set up, to facilitate the content sharing things like that, it often takes on a roll of mediators, of data bank managers, media, of sensors, of libraries, of markets and many other functions that often end up overriding the government city governments that societies have built over decades to regulate the areas in the public interests.
The implications for economic, social and cultural Rights include the fact that although these have been recognized in many international declarations they mostly are ensured by national legislation and public policy. The Internet platforms operate globally, they become no longer applicable. Human Rights by essence must be guaranteed in the democratic frameworks.
The present international government frameworks, they need mechanisms ‑‑ have mechanisms that are inadequate to deal with this. Whether it is Internet Governance per se or other areas of governance that are not adapted to address new challenges such as in labor, women Rights, Indigenous Peoples Rights, disabilities, education, et cetera.
As challenges, this means among other things that we need to develop first of all international binding instruments to ensure Human Rights and transnational spaces.
Secondly, the mechanisms related to those that both individuals and States can have resource to when their Rights are violated. This means working both in the realm of Internet Governance itself, but also incorporating the Information Society in other existing areas of global governance. Thank you.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you. You put important attention on the table, the one between national and international frameworks. We see that in other areas as well.
Burcu Kilic works with public citizen where she's the legal and policy director relating to a single end‑point server to medicine, innovation and information issues.
You have worked extensively on the Internet as it relates to international trade agreements. How would you look at this issue from that perspective.
>> BURCU KILIC: Thank you.
Before I came to this session, we had a session ‑‑ one of the negotiators of the TPP, and when we first started to discuss the TPP he said something ‑‑ I think we should all remember this, to ourselves, trade agreements are trade, they're not about to be memorized, not about Internet Governance. We shouldn't expect trade agreements to protect Human Rights or Internet Governance because that's how the negotiators see the agreement. The trade agreements and the TPP ‑‑ we're popular nowadays among the politicians and everyone is talking about the TPP. So the Trans‑Pacific Partnership agreement, the basic, it is negotiating for five years among 12 countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Chili, Japan, many others.
Serious concerns are raised about the TPP, it is the impacts on Human Rights, Civil, Political, Social, Economic Rights. Last year during the negotiations, they were coming to an end, the Civil Society organizations, 150 Civil Society organizations from the TPP countries, they filed a special ‑‑ they made a special submission to the special procedure mandate holders about the TPP because we were asking them to fake action against the TPP and all the issues that the TPP will be effected. We attached the 150‑page analysis in order to show the potential for significant Human Rights impact due to the TPP, it is available online if you like to check, but some of the Rights ‑‑ some of the issues we identified among all are like cultural Rights, education environment, privacy, Freedom of Speech, health, food, many other issues, the special procedure holders, thankfully they took our request seriously and they made some recommendations such as the Human Rights impact assessments and row boast safeguards for Human Rights. The issue is like we're talking about trade agreements and it doesn't really make sense for trade negotiators to think about this issue unless we bring ‑‑ unless we bring the issues to their attention. All those years I have been coming to the IGF and raising the issue on the trade agreement and this year I'm happy to see that there are many workshops about the trade agreements and maybe we'll have what main session on trade later this afternoon.
It is very important for all Human Rights and as IGF community, we have a very important duty to raise the issues and to bring the issues to the trade negotiators attention.
Thank you very much.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you so much. Thank you for this important remainder and also call to action.
Finally, I would like to ask Stuart Hamilton to take the floor. He's the Director of Policy and Advocacy and Deputy Secretary‑General at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions where his brief includes all issues relating to access to information.
>> STUART HAMILTON: I'll frame my remarks in the content of access to information and knowledge.
The libraries facilitate the Right to access information in the community and we also defend other Rights such as the Right to privacy wherever we can. With so much of our work being digital, it is essential to us that the Rights are included in the Internet Governance discussions and are they here? Yes, they are in part. There is useful progress on the Right to sort of basic Internet access, that's increasingly accepted as basic infrastructure and we welcome this. When it comes to content, what's accessed, we have to do more to support the information Rights online, the freedom to access the Internet means little if you can't get to the culture and innovation there and the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural Rights underlined there is a right to culture and the fruits of research which is extremely important to libraries, let's put this in the con telegraphs of the SDGs, target 16 is calls for increasing public access to information, but libraries finding challenges to meet the target as we don't have the legal and policy frameworks we need to access and preserve information.
Many libraries and membership, they're saying that the current situation we have is not sustainable.
This is where I would like to bring in the issues I think we need to pay attention to. I really draw our attention to the changes in ownership of information to the shift of digital that's developed and I think that rectifying this situation, it is essential for fulfilling all SDGs. This situation is getting worse every year. In the eBook market, Amazon, Apple and Kobo control that, scientific publishing, we have five companies that control more than 50% of that environment last year the journal publishers earned $10 million and the biggest five companies there have profit margins of over 30%. These are earned through consistently rising costs of information, huge titles costing between 2, 35,000 for libraries, to the point where Harvard University can't afford to pay for them anymore and has called the situation unattainable, if you look at costs of textbooks, since 78 the prices have increased 812% and the consumer price index was only up 250%. Is this sustainable? I think not. The Sustainable Development Goals is for 15 years, we have to think longer perhaps. We suggest that we need to think very clearly about Best Practice around long‑term sustainable information environments and we need legal frameworks at national levels talking to each other at international levels and they need to address the creation of information, use of information, preservation of information, and favorable conditions to the public interest when it comes to accessing information. To finish with one concrete thing we need, we need to reform a global copyright system, the current one we have is outdated for libraries archives, built for a print age, not the digital one, in many countries, particularly the global South have no exceptions and limitations that would help preserve and access information. We need a better system that will carve out exceptions to help us exercise the Rights I have talked about and we need a system where commercial interests in particularly licenses and contracts cannot undermine those Rights.
I'll stop there.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you so much, Stuart.
Thank you for the discussions on the table.
I think what this discussion has shown is that it really is an urgent issue. The overall picture is actually fairly grim and worrying and clearly needs action.
We have about 15 to 20 minutes to take comments from the floor as well. Try to is it I can to about 1:30. We'll take several in a row and then go back to the discussions.
I see one over here and one over there. .
We'll take these three to start with.
Maybe start here.
Just please stand up. That's easier for the cameras and introduce yourself.
>> This is the Association for Progressive Communications.
There are some governments that are trying to make us believe that if there are some efforts in place towards the realization of ESCRs we should not reclaim Civil and Political Rights, particularly if they are to be fully exercised in their online sphere by using the Internet. I would like the panel to let us know their views on ‑‑ what they would tell the ones that want to put certain, political Rights and economical and social and cultural Rights on a separate relationship by ‑‑ you know, by exerting arbitrary and also the disproportion control over the Internet
>> ANJA KOVACS: That's a question for the panel later.
The gentlemen in front.
>> AUDIENCE: Brian from the Center for Human Rights.
I think it was Sally that mentioned the need to not just have access to the Internet, but to have a quality access to the net. That's very good.
Then we have to face realities on the ground like in our had countries, about 60% of our population have no access to the Internet due to the lack of social justice, corruption, other factors. Now could we do something for the people? What is the role of the big companies? For many years we heard a lot about for example ‑‑ just an example ‑‑ Google, free Internet balloons. I wonder where they are flying? Probably in the U.S. where there is no need for them.
I mean, could we just ‑‑ could we adopt an initiative to support communities who have no means to access the Internet? That's a question we need to address.
Thank you.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you.
One more question in the back.
>> Hello. I'm from Hong Kong, China. Actually I really appreciate the first speaker from Brazil about the decision making process at the international level and the national level of the Human Rights treaty.
My question is actually many companies, you know, the Internet company, social media company, the governments, they're coming from society which has a relatively weak Human Rights discourse or traditions. My question is how can we invite the organizations, the companies, the governments in this society who call the South parts of the international society, they need more engagement in the Human Rights debate at U.N. level and also at an IGF program.
Thank you.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you.
Just to check, is there a question from remote participation?
We have one more comment here now and then we'll take the other two in the next round.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Carlos Francisco, I'm from the University of Guadalajara here in Mexico.
What I'm most interested in as well in addition to what you were mentioning in terms of the gaps that currently exist for having Internet literacy in many communities and peoples where it is required, in addition to literacy on usage of the Internet, how are we assessing the literacy of the Internet but not even that, actually even basic literacy in terms of basic knowledge whether efforts in literacy projects are actually being successful within this context or not.
That takes me to what we were discussing in terms of libraries, all universities such as the University of Guadalajara have very expensive data banks ‑‑ extensive data banks, a great deal of money is paid for that information ‑‑ while neither Google, other types of companies that are privatizing, if you will, the information, they're generating junk information as was mentioned previously.
It doesn't contribute to admissions or students and they're using it. That's what challenge. A low income student who doesn't have access to the Internet basically, which is one of the hugest Chapel lengths in my opinion, and subsequently once that student has access the information is not as accessible or it's discriminated and the student can't generate a good paper or Article. What can we do so that that can happen so that there becomes a Google ‑‑ I'm using that reference because it is easy for me ‑‑ but so that there is good information provided in that search engine.
Thank you.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Let's have one Slido question as well. Are monopolies in certain telcos and Internets service pace bad for accessibility and connectivity and what are Human Rights oriented alternatives to the monopolies. Who on the panel would like to take any of the questions that are raised.
>> On the issue of separation, it is a tricky thing especially with governments in the global South, (Nanjira Sambuli) strategies , among ourselves here, to be clear, while we have to work on them separately, we cannot have one without the other and to take that message with us. Then we go, have meetings with the governments of Civil Society, and it is a different type of access than private sector companies and that's why having these principals we adhere to, it is important. Enforcing it on this other side of stakeholders, it is really, really critical to help us get this understood. There is a culture of fear, the political mechanism, how it is set up, challenged everywhere, we have to all agree that this is how we go about it. No separating one without the other. To the point about connecting those that are not connected, yes, we definitely need interventions of private sector but I'm keen to make sure we don't excuse our governments. I come from Kenya as well. We tend to have this notion especially sometimes that it is up to other actors because we're used to bad governments. Market forces alone won't get us connected with 2020 by the SDG, we have to have strong leadership, agitate for it, we cannot exonerate the government from their job. When the other sector, many, private sectors that aren't here, they come in, they're ad hearing to Best Practices so that when they're preparing standards to the countries, it is not a monopoly to fight when talking about certain, political Rights but because of the rules of engagement, that's how we see it and how we'll work with all actors to make sure that that will happen.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you.
>> SALLY WENTWORTH: To build on the comments to connect the unconnected. This is something that the Internet Society feels passionately about. You're right it is ‑‑ we can talk about quality of access, I think that's important but first we have to speak clearly about access itself.
From the Internet Society's perspective it is not sufficient to bring in equipment. You have to build communities, local communities that can both build the technology, use the technology, innovate on the technology and express themselves with the technology. That's an approach of building communities rather than just bringing in technology. That, we think, is the way to see empowerment.
We're seeing all over the world with projects that the Internet Society has supported in partnership with many others to see community networks growing up of individuals who are passionate about this, who believe in this and are building it for the futures.
I do want to ‑‑ I want to build on something that D ‑‑ that Anja said is about ‑‑ we cannot absolve the governments from the responsibility. They need to create an environment in which community networks can grow in their countries. That I think goes to the question that's online here about the monopolies, bad for accessibility, absolutely. If we don't have a had competitive environment in which new and innovative services can be deployed and which new actors can come into the marketplace, we won't see affordable solutions coming forward. We won't see local and small businesses come into the market.
I think all of these things are tied.
I'm sorry, I have to head out to the airport.
Thank you for the conversation.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you very much for being here with us.
There are several other speakers that either had to arrive late or leave early but we're grateful to all of you for being here.
>> STUART HAMILTON: Thank you.
Quickly addressing the questions from the gentleman on the left. Literacy is a target in the SDGs, I'm very keen to see, you know, that fundamental literacy, connected to all of us addressed.
I can't speak for what search engines are doing on good quality information but in our responsibilities as a librarian, an educator we can do a bit more in our institutions to shift ourselves to open access, to maybe communicate to our communities just how much money we are paying the companies, often there are non‑disclosure agreements and more and more countries like Finland to find ways around to draw attention to where the taxpayer money is going, that's important to do, then finally to go back to the connecting the unconnected, the unconnected and very much agreeing with the government responsibility in this, I don't think we'll get that 1.5 billion online without a public access to the Internet component and there I think we can use institutions likely bracer more to bring people online in the community.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you.
Before we go back to the floor, yes.
>> ANITA GURUMURTHY: I think of economic, culture, social Rights, in the history of nations, societies, we have seen that this is a kind of an evolving kind of framework. In India particularly where I come from in the recent past we have had discussions around right to information, right to education, right to food, all of these they're legislated. What I would like to say to the question, just like Brazil had a Marco Civil process, we have to think of that as a national level not including Civil and Political Rights only but focus on the indivisibility and interdependence of the ESCRs which includes many things because one demand to make with governments, if you are going digital by default, then access should be by right. If digital by default, then access by right.
This will include many things, public provisioning, public interest content, public access, minimum data allowance, digital literacy as a right, community‑owned infrastructure licenses, regulatory, redress mechanisms, the architecture of the Internet itself, net neutrality and the Right to participate.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you.
Let's take three, four more comments from the floor and we'll go back to the panel and move on to the next section. I saw one there, there was a question here.
There is one more here and one from remote. Let's start with remote.
>> REMOTE MODERATOR: Greetings to all. ‑‑ am I on? (No audio).
Good afternoon.
My question, it is addressed to all of those governments that have ratified conventions and that have acknowledged access to the Internet as a Human Rights. I would like to know how have you managed to interact between government authorities and CSOs considering that the interest of governments and organized Civil Society interests are sometimes difficult to reconciliation.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you.
>> Remote: Is it really possible to protect Human Rights while they do exist, a lot of juxtaposition is on around the Right of criminals, they're given more respect than the privacy of the victims and sadly it goes on and on and it is ‑‑ is it possible?
>> ANJA KOVACS: Who was the question by?
>> (Remote participation: By anonymous.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you.
>> I'm Sonya Kelly, I work at Freedom House, much has been said about the importance of closing gender gap in Internet use and the data we currently have actually indicates that gender gap has been on the increase over the last few years. However, I would like to stress the importance of having gender desegregated data in order to really zero in how extensive the problem is. I'm not really sure whether you all in the audience realize, only 70 countries provide gender desegregated data to the ITU, so my question is how can we ensure that all of the governments actually provide the data because the bottom line is that we cannot start addressing this issue until we know how extensive the issue is. Also we cannot know in which countries this is the biggest problem again until the data is produced.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you.
Yes? This will be the last question and then we'll come back to the panel.
>> Thank you. As we all know, the ESCRs have very strong relationship with political processes or to say clearly, with the State.
The panelists have spoken about how important ESCRs are with regard to the Internet and we know that the Internet is a global phenomenon that national policy spaces are largely helpless with regard to it. Most small countries don't even talk about it because they don't see the talk going anywhere in front of that global policy phenomena in front of which the policy spaces, it is very weak.
I think it is important, therefore, to talk about the Rights, the ESCRs, without talking about spaces for developing norms and public policy framework at the global level. The question to the panelists is if these Rights are important what policy process at the global level are important? Let me say the reactive process of Human Rights institutions at the global level are not enough. As Anita said, these are areas that are ever‑evolving and we have to interpret first the Rights in terms of what exactly they mean in the digital space and develop the policy spaces and frameworks and then enforcement mechanisms for it.
Thank you.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you.
One more question from remote. ‑‑ on Slido, can we hear about the intersection of cultural Rights, religions, sexuality? I'll read the other as well, right holders are gendered individuals, how to ensure the expression of sexuality will not be moralized, punished by the private Internet. Who would like to respond? I would ask you to be fairly brief. We have the final session of the day, it's completely interactive, so you will get a chance to comment again.
Who would like to respond to this?
>> LUIS FERNANDO GARCIA: A brief comment.
As the governments providing services and access to Rights through the Internet, what happens, it is important that they take in account the language barrier. Many governments are putting money and effort into providing services online, but not in connecting people.
This can create even an affect that far from creating, making it a leveler between society, making it even disparities larger, particularly in the Indigenous Peoples, peoples with disabilities, they cannot access information that is provided by the government to access services and this is a problem.
We also need indicators to measure the progress and it is very important because for example in Mexico it was changed, the way it was measured how people access and use the Internet so this can provide artificial results about the progress that's been made regarding connectivity. It is important that we have countable indicators to measure the progress and finally, besides government, also making connectivity programs that need to be accountable and measured as well, it is important also that the governments facilitate the communities to ‑‑ the community networks to arise another component that can be together with what the market can do, what the state can do, what community networks can do, we can achieve universal access.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you. I saw Burcu Kilic, Sally, Angela.
>> BURCU KILIC: I want to comment on the question regarding the policy space. I have to say, this session, it has been informative for me and it once again demonstrated that we have so many challenges such as access, connectivity, gender, digital divide, and we have to deal with this issue, these challenges. The problem is in trade agreements, people that are already making rules for us, people are already negotiating and making rules for Internet and Internet Governance without discussing these challenges. Once again, the trade agreements become ‑‑ the trade agreements are really important, policy measures. The global policy ‑‑ globally, the countries, especially developed countries, the U.S.A., the E.U., they use the trade agreements as a way to limit the developing countries, especially small countries policy space. The policy space is shrinking and that's why we need to discuss and we need to be more involved in the trade process.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you.
>> SALLY BURCH: Yes.
About the question on what kind of global policies are important, I think ‑‑ which is initially what I addressed. Some of the spaces where these global policies could be discussed beyond this Forum, there is a process in the United Nations Human Rights Council already taking place to draft a treaty on the transnational cooperations and Human Rights as a binding treaty.
So far, Internet and Digital Rights haven't really been taken into consideration in that space and maybe it is something ‑‑ a place where they should be present.
Second, there is a proposal, I don't have the exact name of it, there is a proposal in discussion at the United Nations on a treaty on cyber war and to demilitarize the Internet which is fundamental spa us to have more input from society.
The third, possibly the third space to discuss these things, the countries ‑‑ the South, the Global South, they do have international integration spaces, in the case of Latin America, the CILAC, the Latin America, and the Caribbean, they have not really taken on had these issues as part of the Agenda either, these could be key spaces to discuss common policies and to have a stronger voice in International Policy making.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Before we go on, was there another comment from remote? How to ensure that information regarding alternative sexualities and gender identities is available to people in countries with strict religious anti queer laws.
>> NANJIRA SAMBULI: That's a really hard question.
I wanted to talk to the issue on the desegregated data. It is ‑‑ what we're trying to do is a carrot and stick approach in the sense that we can't get further ahead if we keep telling governments what they're not doing and not working with them to figure out how to do it with the woman Rights network, we have done caucuses on the digital divide for some countries to show them where they are. But also very clear action Agenda, and through the work we do with the alliance for affordable Internet we're making sure that they have gender responsive policies, if those are writing them now, make sure it is baked into it and how they can go about it. Those looking to row vice it, working to figure out what are the Right indicators. We have to work together, say what are the indicators we need around gender, not just men and women versus this, but meaningful data telling us how to progress so we're welcoming as many people as possible to help governments understand that so that we're not always coming back saying it is a problem but we start having progressive solutions to help us understand all of this.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you.
I'm aware nobody covered the various questions that came up about gender and sexual identities. Perhaps somebody could come back to those still in the third segment which bell move ‑‑ which we'll move on to right now.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you.
Now we just covered which are the main concerns and challenges on both sections from Civil and Political Rights and then the Economic, Social, Cultural Rights.
In this third section we need to discuss ‑‑ I'm not sure if we're going to find answers, how these Rights interconnect, how are they disconnected?
How should we start analyzing and incorporating them if we're already talking of which are the exact equations and components to add on these questions. If we're talking about access to Internet and then we have to talk about shut downs, we can bridge the digital divide, not only with technology, but then we have to go and ask what about data protection? I mean, we need to think on how are we going to connect them and how are we going to enable this environment to have citizens exercising Rights, both sets of Rights informed.
I would like to raise some questions that could help us answer and it is what is the potential impact of not considering what sets of Rights in thinking through some of the emerging issues, how are increasingly data driven algorithmic decisions around social serves and empowerment impacting on Rights such as right of information and privacy. These are just some thoughts on questions that we could be discussing on. I think that ‑‑ before we start discussing, I would like to introduce David Souter to provide his insight. He's an independent researcher and writer on the information society and public policy that worked extensively on Human Rights issues for IPC.
>> DAVID SOUTER: Thank you.
What I'll try to do is comment for four, five minutes on the connections between certain and it political Rights and ESCRs which I'll refer to as ESCRs Rights. I'll make six general points which I hope will inform or help stimulate discussion.
First, it should be clear that the Rights set out in the two Rights covenants, Civil and Political Rights and the other forms a single Rights regime. After all, they both stem from the same source document, the universal declaration. Rights advocates have repeatedly and consistently declared that all of the Rights included in these covenants form part of a single comprehensive framework, that they're indivisible. Let's take that as a starting point.
There are nevertheless important distinctions between most of the Rights included in the Civil and Political Rights covenant and those in the ECS Rights covenant, many ECS are enabled by public provisions that can be achieved collectively, more so of the Civil and Political Rights, they're concerned with us as individuals. Many of the ESC Rights require investment over a prolonged period of time or progressive realization as it is usually referred to to bring them to fulfillment. These aspects of the ESC Rights have implications for the roles that must be played by governments, by businesses, by citizens and indeed by the Internet in ensuring they can be done. That's the first point.
As what was said, there is a lack of attention to the ESC Rights about the discussions on the Internet of Rights compared to civil and political Rights.
I have heard some within the Internet community say that ESC Rights are less important than Civil and Political Rights.
>> However, there is equal status with the Rights in the International Rights regime, they're not subordinate, not secondary, not less important, they deserve equal importance here. Indeed, I come to the third point, I would say that the efforts to achieve ESC Rights can broaden and deepen our understanding of civil and Political Rights and vice versa, the efforts to achieve the civil and had Political Rights will deepen the other. Take for example the interconnections between the Rights and two covenants, the Rights to Culture and the Rights to Participation in Government. For example, between trades union and freedom of association I suggest we consider three things then: How the Internet effects freedoms of expression and association or Rights to privacy or participation in public life, the certain, political life. We should consider in lights of the Rights and in the status of Civil and Protective Rights. We have to look at how to facilitate this and how to freedom from hunger, Rights to health, education, a decent standard of living, economic, social, culture Rights effect the others. Don't forget in this context that the Conventions on the Rights of women and of children also connects with both right groups.
Fourth, I think we should acknowledge that the Internet poses problems for Rights and opportunities. We know that this is the case with privacy and it is also the case for employment Rights, full employment, Article 6 of the ESC covenant is challenged by automation and digitalization of work, Rights at work, Article 7 of that covenant challenged by casualization, trades union Rights, Article 8 rarely recognized in Internet businesses. when ESC Rights are weakened so are the civil and Political Rights that depend partly on them. The fifth point, development, ESC Rights are associated with development, Rights to development, which has been mentioned earlier and with the Sustainable Development Agenda, I think in some ways that the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals can be seen as establishing targets for the progressive realization of some of the Economic, Social, Cultural Rights. They're not the only lens to which development should be considered but I think that the link between them and the SDGs can help provide sort of a unifying framework for ICT for development. I'll close with three cross‑cutting themes or reciprocities to which we may consider the relationship between the different groups of Rights. First, the role of Freedom of Expression in enabling people to secure economic social, cultural Rights.
Along with that, the role of Rights such as education and the Rights to take part in cultural life in facilitating free expression. Second issue is the role of access to the Internet in enabling the exercise of economic social, cultural Rights and also the way in which access can be seen as being rooted in the Economic, Social, Cultural Rights to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and applications third, equality, Articles 2 and 3 in the covenants.
The importance of equality in ensuring that the Rights of every kind and also access to ICTs in the Internet, they can genuinely be enjoyed by all. Those are 6 broad themes which I think are to do with the intersection between Civil and Political Rights and may help to inform the discussion.
Thank you.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you.
We would like to now open up this debate, both for people on the panel and for people from the floor.
We will look in depth specifically of how the interconnections play out in the real world and also what some of the challenges and possibly also solutions and way forward are.
Anyone who wants to intervene?
>> Hello. Thank you.
I'm Nicholas from Argentina. There are a couple of things that I wanted to mention.
We work with community networks. We're part of the economic and digital economy. One of the things that was mentioned here today, it is the missing people in the room and I wanted to ask the room whom of us have Internet connection at home, if you can please raise your hand.
Okay.
We usually have a problem that we're not being able to have the people who have the problem speak for themselves. The same thing has happened in the LAC IGF and the Argentina IGF which are participating also. I think we're lacking strategy about how to have them here, how to have them more represented to tell us what are the actual needs. I only heard a couple of mentions of actual needs like where are the Facebook planes, they're not flying over my home. No.
Regarding this sort of solutions that are appearing lately, this is something else that is a problem from our point of view, it is clear that the market with is not able to provide those places, that will not be profitable, so we have different solutions are trying to get free Internet to the people but they're actually creating an Internet for the poor and an Internet which is not a true Internet connectivity world where you host your services or offer content, et cetera, but you have some Internet for some time or in a public place where you don't have really intimacy, real privacy. I think we need to address this also in this respect, the communities, they have a lot to say and there is already at the ITU level the D19 recommendation and now ‑‑ I'll wrap up ‑‑ now at the CTEL there is the resolution to propose the governments to actually create the framework to allow non‑profit and community networks to expand in the American continent. I want to just mention these issues.
Thank you.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you. Allan.
>> I'll Allan from APC.
In terms of the intersection, obviously Internet shutdowns is a violation of CPRs with the economic changes and cultural exchanges from our perspective, I wonder if someone can comment on the regulators role in pricing and controlling the competition and monopolies. If prices are too high and prevents people from being able to perform cultural and economic exchanges, if this can be considered a violation of the ESCRs, particularly the clause in the covenant.
>> Hello. I'm Argin. I work with Freedom Lost in India and I want to talk about Internet shutdowns.
We have seen a disturbing trend where governments around the world developed a habit of shutting down the Internet at the slightest provocation of any sort of violence. In India actually over the past 4 years my organization recorded around 46 separate instances of Internet shutdowns. Not only does this stand in the way of realizing important Human Rights, Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association, but it also severely compromises efforts aimed at leveraging the Internet's role in the human empowerment. I wanted to get a sense of the panel's take on this larger issue and what would be the ideal responses to the challenges.
Thank you.
>> PATRICK PENNINCKX: Sally and Anita wants to respond.
>> SALLY BURCH: I wanted to contribute something else on the discussion.
About the Freedom of Expression and the interlinking role between civil and Political Rights and the Economic, Social and Political Rights. As we know, it is important, for the participation of society, we need access to not just information, but to the means of public expression. This requests more than just freedoms, but explicit public policy to ensure that we have access to the adequate information and the means of public expression of different viewpoints.
The problem with the Internet is that it gives us ‑‑ those that have access to the Internet, has almost unlimited access to be able to express themselves publicly, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee the Rights of others to have access to the adequate information and journalism is being heavily affected by the new advertising model of the Internet which no longer allows good investigative quality to survive, we have a serious problem on getting access to the quality information in the Information Society. We need a new economic model for good journalism.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you.
>> ANITA GURUMURTHY: I wanted to also contribute a bit more to broaden the conversation.
I think that all of these years, you know, we have been discussing the feasibility of having a treaty on the Internet. Should we, shouldn't we? We already have very strong international governance, we have five major instruments. We should be doing more to strengthen them.
I would like to throw a problem out there, which is that my colleague here was talking about trade. Someone else working on the Intellectual Property should feel that we should be out there fighting Intellectual Property, fighting the regime so that everyone can have access to knowledge.
I also want demilitarization, people are working on cybercrime, bioethics, fighting the nanochips that are in human power metric bodies, others are working on labor, migration, everybody will be talking about how the Internet is critically defining the domains. Let's take the other side: Unless we have standards call it a treaty, government, public policy, an instrument, unless we have one that talks about this horizontal layer that cuts across all of these other global agreements you're not going to be able to interpret trade in a way that's globally just.
Just to conclude, there is this entire thing called critical Internet resources, then there is data which is a horizontal layer, there is the cloud, then there are smart grids, there is Internet of Things, there is much more. What I would like to submit, even pose as a question in this debate, it is that we cannot have one without the other. We can't reinterpret trade in a socially globally just way without talking about a Human Rights treaty on the Internet.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you very much.
Frank, you wanted to say something too? No? Okay.
>> BURCU KILIC: I just want to follow‑up on that comment and actually it is very important issue and thank you for raising that. We have been having that problem in trade agreements. The TPP, it is the first trade agreement with the mandatory rule on cross‑border data transfers. When we talk about the rule, the cross‑border data transfers it, the privacy, those rules, the exception the negotiators, what they put in the text, in the TPP says that the countries may have legitimate public policy measures and then there are all of these tests and classifications that those measures have to pass. When we look at the definition of the interpretation of the legitimate public policy measures in trade work it is said it should be widely ‑‑ it should be widely practiced. When we come back to privacy and protection, we don't have one standard, we don't have a rule out there on privacy and the data protection, every country has a different approach to privacy and in Europe it is Human Rights, in the U.S.A., it is a consumer privacy issue. It becomes really hard to justify privacy and data protection measures in terms of the trade without global standards, Human Rights standards on the issues.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you.
I would like to take one question from the floor and one from remote participation.
>> Good afternoon. I'm here from Guadalajara, Mexico, I'm an IT lawyer and University professor.
My question goes in regards to Freedom of Expression and the Internet has become, you know, one of the hubs through which we get information in the current state of the planet.
We have seen in the last year the spread of false information through the Internet and that may affect even civil and Political Rights. People might vote on the presumption that things they are seeing on the Internet are real when they're actually fake news. This is I think a central issue. It is not only regarding Human Rights to have access, but how do we validate the truth in that all ideas that are expressed are actually, you know, based on something, and not just propaganda.
Thank you.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you.
The remote ‑‑ okay. We have a lot of questions.
If access to online con sensual pornography a Human Rights, how can it be protected in light of the increasing porn bans. Different Rights are linked. Is there a right, why not protect Human. Rights simply? And can we hear from governments and private sector representatives their stance of Freedom of Expression on sexualities since they're the ones who sanction.
I would like to recall on the shutdowns as two people raised concerns about them in case some of you can answer.
Hernan Vales.
>> HERNAN VALES: Thank you.
I would like to answer the very good question by Ginger on Slido.
First of all, I'm ‑‑ I agree with many things that have been said before in terms of the little importance that's been given to Internet policy on Economic, Social, Cultural Rights and some other panelists said that it is not helpful to continue this divide between this apparent opposition between civil and Political Rights and the other Rights on one hand, I fully agree with this, the origin of this, the division, it is historic, it doesn't make sense in our current times.
Maybe to provide some kind of way forward, solution, although it is a big word, another thing that has received little attention is applying a Human Rights based approach to Internet policy. What do I mean by Human Rights based approach, it is not a new idea, it has been used already to raise the Human Rights base approach to development, there is a Human Rights base approach to elections. It means basically ‑‑ I will summarize, it is basically three things, that you apply to Internet policy the principles that derive from binding international Human Rights laws which are the principles. Non‑discrimination, equality, participation, if the rule of law, if you apply the principles to Internet policy you have some of the problems already partly solved.
A second element of a Human Rights‑based aid approach, it is thinking in terms of duty bearers, which are governments, most of the time, they can be companies or even individuals.
And thinking in terms of right holders.
Individuals, we all have Rights entitlements, we're right holders. Why is this helpful? If you think in terms of duty bearers and right holders ‑‑ I'll be quick, my time is up.
‑‑ you actually provide and make easier for remedies and for States to be held accountable.
The final point, is that of the Human Rights‑based approach, means that all involved in the Internet work, all involved in the Internet policy, if we apply a Human Rights‑based approach we need to be aware of the application of the Human Rights framework to our everyday work.
Thank you.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you very much. Someone else from our panelists that wants to ‑‑ please.
>> WILL HUDSON: So I'll talk briefly about the gentlemen's question that was getting to the issue of fake news and what we could or should be doing on that. As you say, you know, we have all this, you know, Freedom of Expression online, you know, it sometimes is being used in other ways. From our perspective as a search engine, right, if we're delivering results to users that are inaccurate, misrepresentations, we have not done our job. The question is, how do you tackle a challenge that's been ongoing for some time? You look over the last couple of centuries, fake news, hoaxes, pamphlets, it is not new, what is new is that, you know, the Internet makes it easier for publishers to spread that kind of misinformation.
At the same point, it is also a great opportunity to let people find out alternative source pace of that information and to fact check.
One of the ‑‑ Google has been trying to deal with this in a couple of ways, in a couple of countries we started introducing a fact checking tool to the Google news product in a couple of countries and we're looking to expand that to other places as we can.
For us, it is important that, you know, we talk to a gentleman like you, others in the room to help us figure out the best way to do this. I think a concern we have is you can try to draw distinctions between a reputable news outlet and a non‑reputable news outlet and even a reputable news outlet will get the story wrong sometimes in the rush to get the information out or they'll report inaccurate information. The question is always how do you describing that balance in a way that gets to the question you were talking about, even very established news outlets and journalists sometimes get it wrong. We have to approach it very thoughtfully. We're always looking for ideas.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you, Will.
>> ANJA KOVACS: If I may just follow‑up briefly on that, there are several he questions around gender, sexuality, the intermediaries, the takedowns focus on these issues, different countries have different approaches as to what the laws says on the international frameworks, perhaps not all approaches are equally valid. One can argue not being able to express one's sexual identity impacts a wide range of Rights. There were several questions on how intermediaries should deal with those and what the responsibility is in countries that have more narrow sets of laws on these issues. Could you perhaps briefly comment on that as well.
>> WILL HUDSON: All right. Yeah. Happy to.
Very briefly: As you say, it is a complex topic, not just about gender issues. When you operate a global platform and you operate in different countries with widely different laws and cultures there's bound to be issues. I think we have tried ‑‑ as I said, our approach, we try to strike an approach that on the search platform, we try to maximize the amount of information online and to minimize with a tremendous degree of attention and precision the information that's taken off.
On YouTube, you know, a host of platforms like that, it is a different story, one of the things that we struggle with, just like other companies do, as you ‑‑ you don't just operate a global platform from one market but a had localized domain right, you have a Google.co in India, whatever, how do you apply the laws in a thoughtful way there. I don't pretend to have the answer.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you.
>> REBECCA MacKINNON: Interesting to follow‑up on that with particularly people who are gender minorities and who are trying to avoid persecution and still exercise their Rights online. This is where having real ID policies is quite pernicious and people need to control what their identity is online and companies need to be much more thoughtful about the choices they provide people. Yes, I know there is a counter‑argument about harassment, accountability, I think some assumptions have been debunked in that sort of counter argument as well. People having control over how their identity is presented online is absolute lit crucial. I think sometimes some companies are not sufficiently sensitive to that and need to be much more so because it is also linking up with the surveillance system.
I'm wondering if I can take a tiny bit more time to just comment on the link between online and off that ginger commented remotely.
She's absolutely right. When we talk about online, offline and the interconnection, sometimes we're siloed in conversations on online Rights or online threats and not thinking about how think relate offline.
I think one example where the partitioning has been quite harmful is in the debate about extremist content online. The focus on we need to remove harmful speech or, you know, basically putting the onus on the companies as a source of the problem and failing to address the problem where offline we have a situation or a quasi offline, online, independent journalists, Civil Society in the countries where the extremism is of greatest concern, they're being put in jail, silenced, people that are most likely to provide the kind of speech and put it online and elsewhere in the newspapers, so on, they provide alternatives to extremism. They're under attack by extremists and their own government and prevented from participating in the discourse, whether it is online or off. This is contributing to the problem. I think it is not sufficiently addressed in these debates and the obligations of countries to respect civil society's Rights to exist and speak out and organize and conduct independent journalism and the threat against this is I think a part of the discussion that's often lost.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you so much.
Any more comments from the floor? One here ‑‑ all of a sudden, there is many! I have to ask you to be very brief though.
>> Very brief.
>> Can I just finish?
>> Yes
>> ANJA KOVACS: We'll take thee threes comments and then go to Mr. Frank La Rue to provide a summary overview of his thoughts on this and finally very briefly we'll come back to the discussions, those that want to comment on how they feel their stakeholder group can contribute to taking this forward before we go to the Chair to close.
>> Thank you p from the center of Human Rights, I believe that two sets of Rights are interlinked, there is no prosperity without the respect of public freedoms but in a region marked with dictatorship so long, it is important to protect this right, that's a real question to me. Two colleagues in prison, now before leaving, Nanjira Sambuli says go to the government, we're doing the job, we're not taking it for granted, you know, we're in the field.
I appreciate what was said at the start of the session. It is a multi‑responsibility. Governments, business, others, it is very important for us that somebody will take an initiative to support us so that we can put pressure on governments. This is very important, it is not just leave us, go on and fight your government, this is not ‑‑ you know, going to help us and we're not going to get anywhere. We want to make a peaceful change in our region but we need the support from other stakeholders.
Thank you.
>> I'm from Cuba.
I'm leaving this Forum with a strong feeling of the enormous challenge facing all of the participants and those involved in the topic of Internet Governance. We have spoken about the responsibility of government, companies but I think also that we, civil society, we have a huge responsibility as well on the educational side and tie‑ins that may exist with organizations such as UNESCO on the topic of education of people when we sited before the computer screen talking about Internet, we have spoken about false content, the search for information and generally the interests that any person may have, it is very important that people know what they should look for and how they should look for it and to know how to distinguish between quality and bad information.
Thank you.
>> I'm African IGF Secretariat resource person, following the debate from Senegal on connecting the unconnected population, there are groups advocating deployment of the wide spaces to underserved areas at double the rate. We have examples in developing countries which type of communities are connected. I hope libraries and documentation centers will benefit as they're closer to the population they serve.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you.
I now request Frank La Rue to take the floor before we come back to the panelists. Frank La Rue, many of you know him as a former Special Rapporteur on the Freedom of Expression at the United Nations and currently assistant Director General for communication and information at UNESCO.
You have about five minutes.
>> FRANK LA RUE: Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll speak in English however because of the international broadcasting, I would have liked to have spoken in Spanish.
I have dutifully and patiently waited for my space at the end and silently waited for my moment.
I'm just going to highlight a few points, it is difficult to summarize this whole richness of the panel and this wonderful experience of being here today.
Many things have been said but I think trying to summarize especially from our perspective as UNESCO.
Number one, it is we're talking about Internet, yes. A new technology. We have to focus it from what it is doing for human kind. This is in reference to the comment from our friend from Bolivia saying human beings, men and women have to be at the center of our consideration and definitely this is true.
Secondly, precisely because we're looking at this technology and how it is serving human kind we want do have a Human Rights focus of it, which was already here emphasized in the panel, everything we do in UNESCO, it is coming from the Human Rights perspective but it is very important in addressing the main means of communication we have in this moment, everyone should have a Human Rights perspective in addressing, especially states designing the policies for the implementation of communication through Internet.
The issue between civil and Political Rights and economic, social Rights, I won't emphasize much, we all agree, all Rights are equal, all Rights are universal, interdependent and interrelated, one thing I make, oftentimes people want to pit some Rights against the other, civil, political is more important than social, economic, other the other way around, this is a mistake. Human Rights as a whole is a network built to protect human beings and every knot in the net is important, if we break the net, any part of it, it is useless. All Rights, all the time for all of the people are fundamental. Here we can make no categories and no difference and no differentiation. This is curiously important.
The third aspect, when talking about communication and we're talking about Internet today, we're talking fundamentally of Freedom of Expression. There is always a debate whether access to Internet is a right or not. We always say it is a right. But in reality, the Right is to exercise Freedom of Expression and it is two dimensions, to a single end‑point server information and to transmit and to share ideas, knowledge, opinions and information as well.
The Internet is the best tool at this moment for doing this, this is why in a way it becomes a right but an instrumental right, Internet is the instrument in which we will exercise Freedom of Expression and the Right is Freedom of Expression and here is why we're always use the phrase of exercising Freedom of Expression off line and online, it is the same right. And sometimes it is with the same challenges but for Internet makes it stronger in terms of a communication but makes some challenges as well stronger in some of the dangers as well more profound and stronger.
This is crucial.
When we're talking about Internet and Freedom of Expression, we're talking about a right that's not more important than the others but does play a facilitating right through Freedom of Expression we'll exercise all of the other Rights and demand other Rights. Freedom of Expression, it is also intrinsically connected to other Rights it, one is privacy, today we mentioned privacy, there is two distinct Rights but without privacy we won't feel safe to exercise Freedom of Expression which is why the policies of many states for surveillance, whether it is explained to combat organized crime, terrorism, national security, all of these practices of surveillance has to be done within the rule of law and democratic way and has to be transparent and accountable to its own population. If we allow that the technology override the Rights because it is so easy to monitor Internet and so easy for any authority to look for private access then we're harming actually the future of societies making them weaker even in their national security because national security has to be the strength of its own population, of the trust of the population has in the authorities and of the democratic model of participation and the strong participation.
I also think that we must understand that the Internet today is linked to democratic participation in the sense that there is a flow of opinions and dialogue and democracy with many dangers and I will come back to this because it was already mentioned the negative amount of false information being circulated in the Internet which is real.
There is dangers for children, which we have to protect, there has to be media literacy, our friend from Cuba mentioned that clearly, young people, they have to be educated and trained and our media literacy programs, every, they have to build critical minds in the young people because there are many dangers in the content received. The alternative is not to sensor or to hide it from children, the alternative is from children to youth, making them more critical in what they seek, how they use it, what is the benefit.
Moving into development, the third aspect of this, we have said that communication is important for Human Rights as a right, important for democratic participation but it is fundamental for development. This comes to another right, the Right to development that's been mentioned. Why is it fundamental? We have recognized that without information we cannot build knowledge societies, without information we will not reach the development goals. The millennium development goals, the precursor, they did not reach the goal for two real bigamies takes they had, number one, the Agenda of the developed world telling the developing world what to do, a bigamies take in the concept but the second one, they didn't reach the goals, the communities on the ground, the development to be possible has to be the Agenda of their own people, people have to assume it as their Agenda, if this is not assumed as their own, it is not implemented as their own, it will never succeed.
Today we have this challenge of the SDGs, the 17 SDGs, by the way, development, it is not only the 17 goals and we must think beyond the next 15 years but this gives us a framework for the next 15 years in a very concrete way. Here we point out to many goals, using communication for education, using communication for building content on gender equity, not only in connectivity, women with equal access to Internet, but in content. This sure one of the big issues for UNESCO, it is important, connectivity and content, they go hand in hand. This is clearly defined in goal 16. Goal 16 is telling about the conditions for the developed society, you have to build societies and peace, inclusiveness, access to justice, transparency, and guarantee it says public access to information.
The three elements in this phrase, number one, it is public access, meaning it is the Right of everyone, knowledge cannot be appropriated by an elite.
Knowledge should be the Right of everyone. In this sense, knowledge should be shared by all of the technologies of sharing knowledge.
Number two, we talk about access, access means connectivity, we should ensure that for the poorest sectors of the society and remote regions, everybody, number three, public access to content and information, we must guarantee that the information is relevant because oftentimes we're finding in irrelevant information. Two quick final comments, we're living in a world of dangers, Internet can easily be monitored and the faster the technology moves, the faster it is to develop the software to monitor communications and this is a real struggle we all have to ‑‑ will have to deal with, with the demand transparency, many demands are made, secondly we're also discovering phenomena that's dealing with sexual harassment of women online dealing with false information circulated, people believing, elections, consultations, they're based on false information.
This is really tragic and very serious. There is a crisis! A crisis in journalism as well. Which cannot ‑‑ we can no longer defend the quality of investigative journalism. In this moment of crisis, where we have to reaffirm the Human Rights focus we have on the Internet and the approach, the Human Rights perspective but secondly, this is the multistakeholder dialogue, this is ‑‑ of course the States have an obligation to guarantee Human Rights and the policies will not come from the states alone, will not come from the corporations, there is a danger in the concentration of the corporations as well. This Internet is allowing media to concentrate massively violating the principle of diversity and pluralism in communication. We have to really enhance the multistakeholder dialogue where everyone has the chance to speak out and have part of the planning of the policies and this is the only alternative, States, corporations, big platforms have to understand but in civil society we have to acknowledge and participate to make this real.
Thank you.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you very much.
We're running out of time. We have a minute. Any urgent final remark that a panelist wants to raise, it is welcomed right now.
We have Anita, anyone else? Ana, you want to say something ‑‑ no. We have Anita.
>> ANITA GURUMURTHY: Thank you.
I wanted to respond to the Frank La Rue's intervention, and I'm going to read so that I take little time.
I think that the Internet is not only a communication infrastructure, it is also the primary means of production, and economic resource as we have seen in the network data complex in developing us today. Therefore, the dichotomy between online and offline is not only unhelpful, but may do disservice to the unconnected if we go with that framework. I would submit, therefore, that we treat the relationship between Communication Rights and the Internet separately from the issue of Digital Rights and the Internet.
Thank you.
>> PAULINA GUTIERREZ: Thank you.
Thank you, everyone, ‑‑ for coming, for staying and for all of those people attending remotely.
I will give the mic to you to close the session, please.
>> YOLANDA MARTINEZ: I couldn't agree more with all of the ideas, the contributions and challenges that we have all shared. I'm firmly convinced that we can only face this working as a community with a multistakeholder model that we can make the Agenda as ambitious as it is actionable, the 2030 Agenda. I agree development is comprehensive, we cannot give more importance to one Right than another but only in an open community where we network and where we are open to innovation, that's the only way and space we can be successful.
I invite you to participate in all of the workshops we have scheduled, and this I declare officially this session closed.