IGF 2019 – Day 4 – Convention Hall II – Legislative Main Session

>> ANDREA THILO:  Distinguished legislators, dear representatives of all stakeholder groups, esteemed guests, I very warmly welcome you to the first legislative Main Session in the history of the Internet Governance Forum.  I hope you had very fruitful discussions so far and very enriching experiences and together with you I'm looking forward to today's finals of the IGF and I'm now very glad in a minute to hand over the stage to Thomas Jarzomek for our first keynote today.  A Member of the German Parliament, the Economic Affairs Commissioner for the digital industry and startups.  The floor is yours, Thomas Jarzomek.

[ Applause ]

>> THOMAS JARZOMEK:  So, dear colleagues, dear legislators from all over the world, I appreciate very much that you're here, today, so the session should be opened by a very dear colleague of ours, by Jimmy Schulz, and I guess as you all know, over this week, Jimmy died in the beginning of the week, and I guess we all should be still for a moment in respect to him.

So thank you.

Maybe you find your opportunities to sign the book for him behind there and I can say some years ago, we had a special group in the German Bundestag that had a Working Group on Internet Governance, and I was leading at this time, and Jimmy was always the guy who traveled around the world for us.  He was a kind of Foreign Affairs Minister for the Parliament so to say and whenever there were Internet Governance events all over the world, Jimmy was there and he always confronted us in the German Bundestag with the results of this and in the beginning some of us thought this is pretty strange what he's doing over there but in the end he convinced us.  He convinced us about how important Internet Governance is, and he explained to a lot of colleagues from us how Internet Governance works.

And this is the reason also why we are all together here, because he was a huge promoter for having the IGF here in Germany to explain to the public, but also to the colleagues in Parliament and the Government how Internet Governance works and how important it is to be part in this Internet Governance and to set standards, so we lost a very, very special colleague and I will miss him personally and he will leave a blank that cannot be filled.

So thank you for your respect to Jimmy, and it is ‑‑ to come to my speech, it is a very special IGF we have here in Germany, because it's the first time that we arranged a Parliamentarian session.  With this Day 0 and that so many of you have spent the whole week here in Berlin at this Conference at the IGF is a very good sign because I believe in all these multistakeholder groups, there is one important group and these are the legislators.

And it's important to take up all the challenges that we see when it comes to Internet legislation, because the performance and the speech that we have in our democracies is not that fast as the development of the Internet grows and so what we are facing is for years right now a very difference in speeds that the Internet Community, the developments in Internet technology, are moving very fast, and the response of the legislators cannot be that fast in a democracy, and there are challenges all over the world.  There are paradoxes you have to solve.  There is in Europe the right to be forgotten, and on the other side, you want transparency and information on everything.

And how to balance that out.  These are questions that are involved until today, and it's good to be here to have this discussion on the Parliamentary level to bring also the knowledge from this Conference back home, and especially these days, this year, the Internet is challenged I think from two sides.  The one side is that there are a lot of places in the world that are pretty proud to say, now we have our own Internet, and we as Germany are afraid that this global resource is maybe going to be fragmented, that barriers are raised up in the Internet and not everything can be freely spoken everywhere around the net, so you are here in Berlin, a city that has been parted for a long, long time with a wall in between, and so we know that barriers and walls are not good, and prohibiting people from freely speech even is not good.

And therefore, it's necessary to keep this free global open Internet without any barriers.

[ Applause ]

And the second challenge that I realize is coming from the industry.  In the beginning of the Internet there were a lot of activists, there was a lot of open source.  It was hands‑on, and in the meantime, we have seen that there are big companies that raced which are stars on the Internet, fascinating companies that brought a lot of innovation, but they are challenging this free and open and federated standards that created the Internet and right now we see at every corner that new standards are born, but these are proprietary standards and not open standards, and the open standards are challenged by the big companies and we believe that the Internet to stay as a platform of innovation needs open standards, and therefore we in Germany, we fight I guess all together over all the barriers of the different parties for free Internet, for open Internet, for open standards, for open source, for open documentation, for OpenAPIs and this is welcome to stay this Internet platform.

We don't want to see an Internet that in the end is dominated by companies.  We want to have an Internet that's created by the users and their community and this is for us very, very important.

Today, we are here to make the Jimmy Schulz call, as I hear, around I think this is a great tribute to a great politician who always declared especially the topics and the values that I described right now, and so therefore, we are facing a lot of further challenges, what about crime on the Internet, what about hate speech, how to balance that out against the freedom of speech.

And therefore, it is good that politicians all over the world change ‑‑ exchange their attitudes and exchange their thoughts and their strategies, and to come to a good exchange, and therefore, we as the Ministry for Economic Affairs of Germany, we support this year our Secretary Peter Altmaier from whom I shall bring the best wishes, who was here on the Day 0 and opened the Parliamentary session.  We support this very much.  We are pretty proud that you are here in Berlin to be here for this week, and I hope that you have a fruitful last day, a good explanation, and we're all looking forward to the IGF next year in our neighbor country, in Poland, and we hope that we can continue to work with these values on one world.  One net.  One vision.  Therefore, I wish a good time, and I'm glad to stay with you here today.  Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> ANDREA THILO:  Thank you very much.  Thank you very much, Commissioner.  If you had been here at the Opening Ceremony on Tuesday, you may have witnessed the moving words, the speech, by Hansjörg Durz on Jimmy Schulz, and we ‑‑ in his memory, we have a condolence table over there and I most kindly invite you to leave your personal notes and your personal memory in the condolence book over there at the left side.  Thank you very much.

And with these words, I'm now glad to hand over the stage to Hansjörg Durz.  He's a Member of the German Parliament, and he's the Deputy Chairman of the German Committee Digital Agenda.  Very warm welcome on stage, Mr. Durz.

[ Applause ]

>> HANSJÖRG DURZ:  Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to warmly welcome you here, and first I would like to thank Thomas Jarzomek for his words.  He is representing ‑‑ I am representing a Committee of the German Parliament that he used to be a part of, and so I am very happy if somebody really says that it's important to include Parliaments in the debate, and I would like to add a few words to what Mr. Jarzomek said.  Thank you to the German Government, and thank you also to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy for supporting the hosting of the IGF here in Germany, and also for really contributing to the good organization of this year's IGF here in Berlin.

Thank you also for being an interlocutor here at the IGF for the week so thank you to all the representatives of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs.  I would also like to thank the members of German Parliament because it was a Parliamentary initiative, they decided they wanted to host the IGF here in Germany.  Many members of Parliament had taken part in the IGF for many years, including Jimmy Schulz, who passed away on Monday.  He and his team did a really good job, and they really made it all possible that we have the IGF here in Berlin this year.

[ Applause ]

Thank you very much for this.

Parliamentarians such as Jimmy Schulz have recognized early on how important the Internet is, and how important the digitalization of all aspects of life is, how important the discourse is about the Internet in the 21st century, and that also the Civil Society, businesses, the tech community, Governments, but also Parliamentarians need to be included in the debate.  At the IGF last year, we realized that this is necessary, because a Delegation from the Digital Agenda Committee visited Paris and took part in the IGF there, and we realized that many of the debates that were had there are not really covered by the Parliamentary routine and we realized some things need to change and today we realize that things have indeed changed, and that this is thanks to you, because you as Parliamentarians, you have accepted Germany's invitation, you've come to Berlin this week and so this is really something that enriches the debate not only the debate, it also enriches the discourse here in the German Parliament, not only at the IGF because I think that you will take back the insights that you gained here and will feed them back into the debate in your Parliaments.  I hope that as Parliamentarians, you have seen this time here in Berlin as well spent and that those who will host the IGF in the future will also see that including Parliamentarians in the debate is something that is enriching, because if we are bound by one thing, we all Parliamentarians, we like to have debates, and I hope, I think that this will be put on a permanent footing in the future for the IGF.

We also want to strengthen other traditions from the IGF, because all of the participants of the IGF have seen themselves as people working for free and open Internet, an Internet that everybody has access to, a network that connects the people, a digital link that helps the people, that's there for the people, no one else.  By participating in the IGF, we want to strengthen the debate about an open Internet and this is important because the free Internet structure is seeing two challenges and Mr. Jarzomek also alluded to these.  There's one challenge in the minds of the people and there's one challenge that has to do with the technological applications.

First of all, about the minds of people.  There are different countries that are convinced that by building an Internet ‑‑ that building Internet is better than using the global Internet, and countries that in the past have promoted multilateral solutions, geopolitical influences, are also becoming more important in the Internet realm, and you can see that as something that the Internet is seen as an important field of policymaking, and that this is also used in the political debate but you can also see this as something that some of the policymakers ‑‑ 

This does not necessarily represent progress.  Operated, at the heart of the technological application is an important issue because it's not least the digital world that is living a life of its own and this is presenting a challenge to us.  They really provide momentum to our lives but not everything has developed in the way that people used to predict.  In the Western world in particular, the Internet was seen as some kind of catalyst for enlightenment and enlightenment views and Representative of non‑western philosophies probably had been asking themselves for a long time why the West thought that enlightenment and democracy would be spread by the Internet and we now have to recognize that all these hopes were not necessarily justified.

Immanuel Kant at the time had said that it was necessary to actually be bold to serve oneself of their own mind.  Now people simply turn to their smartphones and this is having a massive effect because these end use devices carry not only the world's knowledge but also a host of misinformation, and this can sometimes lead to strange results.  So if you search for pictures of Immanuel Kant for instance you will increasingly find the counterfeit of Friedrich Jacobi, his nemesis but many people think that just because they searched for this on Google this is the case and this means that even experts are using Jacobi's portrait thinking that it is Kant's picture and this is even reputed journalists who are doing this and this is just one of many examples that demonstrate that algorithms are having an effect on cultural knowledge.  They are serving as intermediaries and they can usually, they can often point people in the wrong direction in this world, and similar things are true of social media companies.  They used to be celebrated as harbingers of a new world of the digital era, but now we need to ask ourselves whether the monopolies and oligopolies that have emerged and that have the unique access to massive amounts of data are really working for the good, because at this IGF, we also need to discuss new rules for the Internet, for the applications and platforms hosted on the Internet.

30 years after the invention of the car, the first traffic rules were created.  Now we are celebrating 30 years of the Internet, and we still don't really have traffic rules for the Internet.

On Monday, we, members of Parliament, met for the first time at an IGF to discuss the latest challenges, and this meeting, which took place on Day 0, and of course we'll hear a report about it later on, was a massive success.  Not only in terms of turnout, but also because the small groups that were formed to discuss things like AI, also how to keep the Internet open, and we also discussed the chances or the opportunities the Internet presents for democracy and open democracies.

We also learned that MPs create networks just as quickly as smartphones connect to the Internet.  So it seems that MPs have very strong interfaces that are also intraoperable but what was even better was when we tried to go back to the Plenary Session to summarize our discussions, we found that our discussions had been so intensive that it took several attempts until everyone finally agreed to return to their seat in the Plenary.

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope that things will be similar with the Internet.  Let's hope that the enemies of an open Internet will find it just as difficult to take apart the Internet as we find it easy to continue to work with our different contacts within our networks.  So please let us show that interconnections are more valuable than separation.

I was very glad to hear from Secretary‑General Guterres at the opening of the IGF on Tuesday that he was about to appoint an Envoy for technology.  This person will be charged with developing a framework for the digital international work, and we have a number of digital representatives from different countries, and they are going to represent the results, or they are going to share with you the results of the individual discussions.  I would like to thank you for participating in this discussion in advance, and I'm looking forward to seeing you again at the 2020 IGF in Poland.  Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> ANDREA THILO:  Thank you very much.  Thank you very much, Mr. Durz, for sharing your reflections and spreading the big challenges, and you just named it.  We are now experiencing the summaries of the IGF workshops during the next 75 minutes, 15 minutes, approximately, each.  By German and international Parliamentarian topic heads.

And we start with the topic:  Artificial intelligence, and I'm now honored to welcome on stage Dr. Anna Christmann, Member of the German Parliament and Alexandra Geese Member of the European Parliament.  Very welcome on stage, please.

[ Applause ]

>> ANNA CHRISTMANN:  Yeah, good morning everyone.  Good to see you all here, and good to be here at the IGF, which I think is a very important venue to come together and talk about these technologies and how they impact our future and what our role is to have an impact on that future and how we can shape it.

My name is Anna Christmann.  I'm from the Green Party, a Member of the Commission on Artificial Intelligence.  We have in the German Bundestag, so we are involved in talking about all the issues related to AI over two years now, and we'll have a full report on AI from a German perspective next year, but I think it's very important to have venues like this where we talk about AI, artificial intelligence, on a global perspective, because AI is a technology which will have a global impact, which has already a global impact, so it's very important that we also talk on a global level about artificial intelligence.

And I think I will start now for three or four minutes and then I will give over to my colleague from the European Parliament, Alexandra Geese.

First of all, I think it's important that we take for us as legislators, as a task, to make sure that artificial intelligence is a technology where we use the chances but where we also make sure that it will be a technology that is fruitful for our democracy and our liberal values we have now as society and that is not a given thing.  I think there is work to do to make exactly that sure.

Because it should be our goal as legislators to develop artificial intelligence in a way that aligns with our values, human rights, and also sustainability.  In order to achieve that, we need to agree on shared standards internationally and determine the fields of application of AI that are desirable and those that need to be restricted or even banned, like for example, lethal autonomous weapons which I want to mention which is one part of our discussion on artificial intelligence.

But on the other hand, we can shape AI for the benefit of the people, and also for the environment, so that we have these two aspects of this technology where there's really an important role for us as legislators to impact the development of the technology in the near future.

And of course, it will take a lot of time and energy to reach these kind of global agreements, but it is simply necessary and I think the IGF and events like this are an important step towards exactly that goal.  And our German Government published an AI strategy a year ago, and most countries did that.  We have lots of AI strategies in Europe and other countries, but I think it's much more is needed because it cannot be that every country only aims to be world Champion on AI, but I think it needs global ambition to have common standards that we can use the technology for our good.

And especially I don't think that countries that are as small as also Germany and globally we're a small country and there are many small countries in the world, so we shouldn't aim at having globally technology leadership, but to have really a joint interest in this.

And so we need to discuss I think Global Standards for AI.  That means the technological as well as the ethical dimension.  For example we need to agree on standards for robust intelligent systems that are safe to use.  At the time we want to be able to understand that AI does and therefore need to agree on ways to make it explainable and also truthful because I think it's very important to have the people understanding this kind of technology.  It's a point of education.  It's a point of making AI explainable, understandable, and going from a black box to an understandable technology.  That is something that is important from a legislative perspective.

And we need to bring people on board through education.  Citizens need to understand the principles of AI so they can take part in the discussion.  I think something we have on the CAT Commission here in Germany is really a tool where we can reach this aim to bring the people in the discussion and to really discuss in what fields we want to have more technology, more artificial intelligence, and in what fields maybe we want to have the human really be the crucial part still.

So this is also a huge challenge regarding the labor market maybe as the last aspect which is also a very global discussion.  We have ‑‑ people are afraid they might lose their jobs because of automation, because AI will be something that is going to replace humans, and I think that is a very, too simple term for this development.  I think it's much more complex, and there are many challenges as well as risks but we need to take serious that people think about all these things, and so it's our task, in my opinion, to really have this debate in an open way, to include people into this debate and to invest in education, to take them together with us on that road.

So I would be happy if we could really follow up this discussion on artificial intelligence and the many aspects to talk about and what kind of fields do we really want to develop joint standards?  It's about autonomous vehicles but it's also about maybe things that can help us for having ‑‑ solving problems regarding to climate change.  This is also a whole global task, and I would be happy if we could use a technology like AI also for these kind of global challenges we are impacted all over the world.  Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> ALEXANDRA GEESE:  Good morning.  My name is Alexandra Geese from the European Parliament and talking about challenges I have the very challenging task today to give you an overview about the many discussions and debates that have taken place on AI during the IGF.

As we always say, there are quite a lot of opportunities, but there are also challenges and I think this is true for artificial intelligence, as well, for this task.  I was quite pleased that the discussion on artificial intelligence was kicked off by a network of bodies that one maybe not consider as experts of artificial intelligence but by the network of equality bodies and they might not be experts for the technology but I think they are experts for bias.  They have long experience with that and bias is one of the big issues that we are facing in artificial intelligence.

While there are a great many opportunities, we also have to consider that AI should be serving everybody.  That means also women, also people who are not white, also people with handicaps and we know that this is not considered enough at the moment.

Data was presented by the National equality bodies that 70% of AI experts were not working on defining best practices for avoiding discrimination on AI.  This is something we have to take on board as Parliamentarians because we're representing the whole of society.

Another Workshop discussed another kind of digital divide, the digital divide between Europe, or the U.S., and Africa and the Director of the United Nations, UN Global, talked about using AI for global good, noting that AI can hold great promise, but also present potential risks around bias and accountability, and also noted only 70% of AI developers are women.  The African Union quite welcomed the initiative of the UN, and stressed that it should start at grassroots level, and inform the representatives of the African Union inform participants about the 2019 Sharm el Sheikh Declaration.

Parliamentarians also had a Workshop and they focused on issues about how could it be otherwise democracy, very important and peace, and then there were a series of recommendations presented by different global bodies, the OECD Council, for example, that presented the OECD principles on AI approved in May 2019 for responsible stewardship of AI.

There's also UNESCO report called Steering AI and Advanced ICTs for Knowledge Societies, which explains on the one hand the positive right to information that has been approved to better Internet connectivity and proliferation of platforms where when we speak about Internet connectivity we have to consider that for example Africa Internet connectivity is definitely not a given and it's to be improved but on the other hand the same right could potentially be compromised by AI because it selects news and information that we see on the Internet based on our data.

I think there was the common shared opinion that AI needs to be human centric, that it needs to tackle the digital divide and the need to have a multistakeholder approach.  It also needs to consider human rights and ethics, and it needs to implement the SDGs.

Coming from the European Parliament, I would also like to stress that the European commission that has been voted into office on Wednesday this week has announced an initiative on a framework for the human and ethical implications of artificial intelligence within the first 100 days in office, and I think this would be very interesting because Europe has already set a global standard on data protection and that it's going to come up with might be a new Global Standards for the human and ethical implications on artificial intelligence.

And I would like to appeal to all of us:  This discussion should not only be a discussion where experts for the technology are involved.  I think the task of experts for technology is to explain to us, to society as a whole, what this technology can do, like tackle climate change, like making our lives easier but then we have to bring all the stakeholders to the table to decide together as a society how we want to use artificial intelligence.

Thank you very much.

[ Applause ]

>> ANDREA THILO:  Thank you very much for summarizing this core topic.  We come to another key topic which is the international cooperation to secure an open and free Internet, something which we are tackling since Day 0 this year and I'm happy to introduce on stage Ulrich Lechte, a Member of the German Parliament, together with, on your own, you are joined then by Leonid Levin Member of the Russian Parliament.  This is your clicker, please.

>> ULRICH LECHTE:  Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished colleagues who have all made their way here, it is a great honor for me to summarize for you and also to moderate the IGF Workshop on the open Internet.  We had a broad turnout from Parliamentarians from Egypt, from the democratic, Burundi, Brazil, Bangladesh and many other countries in the world.  I would like to thank all the MPs who made this Workshop a success.  This was the first of its kind so we really didn't know what would happen and we were glad to have a such large turnout.  The Representative of Russia unfortunately was President able to participate in our Workshop.  This is why my colleague Leonid Levin will give us a Russian perspective here.

In my presentation I will only focus on the results of the Workshop and I won't give you my own stance on the subject.  Of course, it is evident that we have different views, because this is what Parliamentarianism is all about.  That's what's great about this job, we all have something to discuss and we all have different views on how we could achieve and should achieve our goals.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to start with the issue of connection and connectivity.  For us in this room it's evident that we always have wi‑fi.  German even has its own word for it, which is called WLAN, and sometimes we know there are too many devices and that's when the wi‑fi collapsed.  It happened in Paraguay, there were too many devices connected to the network and suddenly the speed was very bad but many people in the world do not have access to the Internet at all and this is particularly true of the poorer regions of the world and we agreed in our Workshop that everybody, every human being should be able to connect to the Internet in particularly the poor.

And of course, we were not entirely agreed upon how this should be achieved.  There were some who said that access to the Internet should be a human right.  Others said that this should be tackled by the market, and they were saying that this would be the most efficient way of actually achieving this, but we all agreed that poorer countries need support when it comes to building up the infrastructure.

We also agreed that fair taxing of e‑Commerce is necessary, meaning that all countries should have access to the tax revenue generated in their own countries.  With regards to access to the Internet, we also discussed the issue that people should not have access to only fragments of the Internet, but to the entire Internet, so we do not want the Internet to become fragmented.  We want one world.  One net.  One vision.  Which is also the motto of this IGF so most of us spoke out against content restrictions and against censorship.

Of course, there were individual people who said that this should be an option in the interest of security.  This is why I would like to appeal that we should at least abide by the universal standards of the human rights, because all members of the United Nations are bound by Article 9 of the Declaration of human rights and this includes the right to free information.

So Article 19 is about Freedom of Expression.  Article 20 guarantees the right of coming together.  And this also applies online.  We also talked about the protection of personal data and all of us agreed that this was extremely important.  The right to privacy, which is guaranteed in Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but this means not only privacy but also means the ability to enforce it.  In memoriam of Jimmy, I would like to point out that we have a right to end encryption, without any sort of back door.

[ Applause ]

The personal data of people needs to be protected from Governments and from the world's companies, both.  So it should be true privacy for all people.  With regard to data security, it's also important that we cooperate internationally against Cybercrime because there's no other type of crime that can transcend borders so easily.

We would like to appeal to as many countries as possible to sign and ratify the Budapest Convention of 2001 and of course this will also need to be developed, because the progress is happening.  With regard to the Internet, we talked about the dangers of monopolies.  We want the Internet to stay an open space for new ideas and new business models as other speakers have already highlighted.

And we need strong competition law, which prevents the formation of monopolies, and where there are already monopolies or quasi monopolies, regulation is needed in order to make platforms open for competitors so that there is a true level playing field for all.

I would also like to highlight something that we all agreed on:  The Internet is the property not of individual companies or states, but of humankind, and this is why we welcome the multistakeholder approach as followed by the IGF.  I would like to thank you for your attention.

[ Applause ]

>> LEONID LEVIN:  Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.  I represent the Russian Federation and its Parliament.  This is why I will be speaking Russian.  I am Chair of the information and IT and ICT Committee in the Russian Parliament.  Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak today at this important panel, of an important Forum to state Russia's position.

These issues are governed by certain legal basis, so society and the Internet, and we've had this legal basis for a number of years, and yet there has been ‑‑ there have been new trends over the past years concerning digital sovereignty in many parts of the world, and this is because of new diverse threats in cyberspace ‑‑ hacking attacks on finance infrastructure, transport, and other important infrastructures.  And these attacks can cause a breakdown of entire structures and entire regions, and then there's cyberbullying and attacks on personal data, which means that attacks on our universal means of communication, and this is why certain barriers need to be established to guarantee people's security and safety online.

The Berlin Wall came down 30 years ago, but right now, many Governments and many states are planning to build similar walls in cyberspace.  Ideas on new norm and the standards in this area have been discussed at past IGFs, as well.  What has happened since last year's IGF?  Of course, Parliaments all over the world now need to take specific steps to pass laws that all go well together.  This IGF of course is an expert Forum, and it is clear that society needs specific recommendations, and this is why the IGF is gaining importance each year.

We can say that the UN Resolutions on the Internet should be debated within this system of the IGF, and we could maybe revise the status of the IGF and turn it into a platform that could issue binding UN documents to be able to really discuss contradictory and contested issues, as well.  The Federal Chancellor Dr. Merkel when opening this Forum mentioned that she would like to see international guidelines be translated into National norms, and the IGF could contribute here.

Another challenge of today is artificial intelligence.  It is an issue that concerns all society.  Certain Government Administration tasks will be automated in the future.  We are discussing a multistakeholder approach here, and this is a traditional approach in Internet Governance, and it should also be extended to artificial intelligence.  It is key that processes of governance aimed towards open and harmonious solutions so that we can advance together.  The Budapest Convention of 2001 is of course a key document in cyberspace, even though it is almost 20 years old, and the Internet has transformed since then, and yet many parts of the Budapest Declaration are still relevant today even though others may not be.  There is however need for a new Convention.  There has been Russian‑French consultations on this in November and we've seen that we need to learn to understand each other better so that we can respond to challenges faster.  Of course, there's also cooperation between Russia and Japan which is worth mentioning.  In September, the UN General Assembly discussed ways to prevent the use of ICT for criminal purposes.

There's this question of blocking, blocking tools on the Internet.  What's often ignored though is that there's an increasing amount of attacks.  The fight against cybercrime is becoming more and more relevant.  Often when people don't want to block content this may also mean that they wish to not take on too much responsibility in fighting cybercrime.  There has been increasing regulation over the past year and changing terminology, as well.

The Russian Federation is aiming towards an international Convention on the use of ICT and to ensure the use of ICT to fight cybercrime on a global scale.  To conclude, I would like to say that the Internet has been open and transparent for many years, and it was free across borders, but now it is in a process of Balkanization and this leads to new regulatory challenges that require a new kind of international cooperation that keeps up with the speed of technological development.

So right now, the global Internet is still in its infancy maybe, and battling with the diseases of infancy, but I'm sure that we as an international community will be successful in establishing new norms and rules to enable a productive and positive use of new technologies for the entire world.

Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, we need to be more proactive.  We need to take the lead to create common regulatory framework, and we should push our Governments to put these issues on the agenda.  We need to stress that these norms are absolutely required.  Parliamentarians are of this opinion, experts as well, but also Heads of many multinational businesses, many of them have been saying for years that they expect the international community to come up with harmonization and rules in order for them to offer their transnational services securely and according to general standards.

Please enable us to help our citizens by establishing this universally applicable rules in a globalized world.  Thank you.

>> ANDREA THILO:  We're now digging deeper on the question how to secure critical infrastructures, and we are doing so together with Ronja Kemmer, Member of the German Parliament, and Charles Mok, Member of the Legislative Council for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.  Very welcome on stage, please.

[ Applause ]

>> RONJA KEMMER:  Dear ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ronja Kemmer.  I'm a Member of the German Parliament and I think that the discussion during the IGF this week made it really clear that the open and free architecture of the Internet is an essential, an essential for competition, for fair competition, an essential for innovation but also for democracy, and risks and undesired developments in the Internet I think are increasingly having a direct impact on our everyday lives.

So today an effective International Governance is not possible without cyberstability and of course if you want to pursue the goal of a free Internet, one of the most important requirements is the underlying core infrastructure.  And unfortunately we heard that before today and also during the week the open architecture is under pressure and this is I think due to main reasons.

On the main reason some countries have tendencies to fragment the Internet, to create closed and National internets or other systems, and as a result I think of the discussions during this week I note that there is a broad consensus that we must work at all levels to prevent further fragmentation of the Internet.  And therefore, I think in particular a spin of states or entire regions of the infrastructure of the common address system, the DNS, must be counteracted.

And on the other hand, new challenges for the security of the Internet Infrastructure a core, a core of course from the technology side.  The contributions from the IGF have shown that especially with regard to new technologies as AI, as IoT, as Big Data, create new challenges, and seeing the attacks now I think we see a lot of serious problems.

If such attacks are successful, vital parts of the infrastructure fail.  For example, the energy supply can be impaired.  Serious disruptions in the flow of traffic, of the traffic, can occur, and also, the basic civil services such as search and rescue may be impaired.

From an economic point of view, also financial losses occur in all countries all over the world.  According to a big comm study, companies in Germany just only in Germany in the last two years, between 2016 and 2018, might have lost around 33 billion Euros due to cyberattacks.

I think that it has also become very clear that we are facing the risk of citizens as well as companies losing confidence in digital processes if we do not manage to do better securing the critical infrastructure, and the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace published its final report just two weeks ago.

And the Commission proposed a standard to protect the core elements of the Internet architecture, and this applies to both, to attacks by Governmental but also by non‑governmental actors.  And the Commission has stressed also that the goal can only be achieved with a multistakeholder approach, especially with regard to more common legislation and respective enforcement of these laws.

So in my opinion, this is exactly the path we need to take.  From the German side we are really committed to further strengthen the multistakeholder approach.  We need these constructive dialogues between of course states and representatives of the states, but also between International Organizations, companies, science, and Civil Society.

So this has been the first time this year that I think such a strong involvement of Parliamentarians has been taking place during the IGF, and I think we have to continue to build this great Foundation in the future.

So what is important now is that we build on the success of the last days, that Internet Governance of course doesn't end with the last day of the IGF, and that every single one of us is now called upon to carry the results to our fellow lawmakers and to continue working on the topics with commitment.

And of course, responsibility for the Internet structure lies not only with lawmakers or regulatory agencies, because it has become very clear from the contributors of the representatives of ICANN and ITU and others especially that are important key players.

But automatically responsibility also lies with every user.  Each individual bears his or her responsibility when it comes to cyberhygiene so ensuring their data is well protected against attacks, using secure passwords and regular updates as well as working with adequate hardware.

So I think it is important that we create more awareness for the importance of the Internet Governance and especially for technology understanding that would has been, or has to be brought into the social debate, and also into the political decision‑making processes to a greater extent, and I'm really optimistic that we can do this, and if you have seen the passion and determination from the people here around the world during the last days, I hope that you are also as that optimistic.  Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> CHARLES MOK:  Hello.  Hello, everybody.  I am Charles Mok, and I am a Member of the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, and in my capacity this time to join the Internet Governance Forum is actually a new experience for me, because previously, when I joined the IGF, I was not having the capacity as a Parliamentarian, but at the time, I was either a Member of the industry or as a Member of Civil Society.  When I was the Founding Chairman of The Internet Society of Hong Kong, so I can say that probably I have seen from the different perspective but now as I'm trying to use the capacity of a Parliamentarian, I do see that there are new perspectives and new angles that we can bring to the IGF proceedings, and the IGF experience.

I have found that in fact, in many of our ‑‑ well, in our different jurisdictions, including in Hong Kong, in recent years, the development of the digital infrastructure has become a very important topic, and having said that, that actually means that Governments are trying to use Digital Technologies to develop their economy, to improve social services and in all different kinds of areas, but often time we come across the problem that many of the Parliamentarians are actually not very familiar with the technologies that we are trying to promote, and also when it comes to issues such as the handling of the critical infrastructure, use of different technologies, concerns from the public about human rights and surveillance issues, and so on, Parliamentarians may not necessarily be very prepared.

So sometimes it is also very important for us to be able to network with the different Parliamentarians from different parts of the world, with a similar understanding about the technology, but putting the problems into different perspective, and trying to find good answers, solutions, for what we have to deal with.

In the situation where I come from, our Government is trying to develop their smart city initiatives and so on, which is very similar to many other cities in the world, but I think the problems that sometimes we encounter is how to explain the benefits to the citizens, how to make sure that citizens are trustful of the Government, when Governments are creating and handling many of their data, that many people are beginning to become very sensitive about in today's world.

They are not only sensitive about the handling of data by big technology companies, but oftentimes also by Governments, especially when in the cases of some Governments where the trust of the people in the Government is relatively low.

[ Applause ]

So this is the area that I think we have to be very careful about, particularly in my situation, in where I come from, I think we are in a particularly sensitive period of time, so I think a lot of times when we see many of the developed world countries talking about the issues about critical infrastructure and security of the Internet, the perspective may be because they are having the background and support of a Democratic foundation where these foundations do not necessarily exist in other parts of the world.

So oftentimes when it comes to how to handle and work with the big tech, and how to make sure that the services they provide are secure, the solutions that are called for sometimes by the Western countries may not be necessarily applicable to others in the world, where I'm not even saying that this is about developed world or developing world, but simply where the Democratic institutions are not as secure or mature so this is one area that I think, I hope through the IGF process, we can bring about more understanding and more common solutions that we can use to tackle this very complicated problems that technologies have brought about for all of our Governments and Parliamentarians and corporations and Civil Society most of all.  Thank you very much.

[ Applause ]

>> ANDREA THILO:  Thank you very much, Charles Mok and Ronja Kemmer.  We have two more summaries in this morning's session now.  The next one is how to keep and to safeguard peace in the digital age.  And I'm now welcoming on Falko Mohrs, Member of the Bundestag, and Marianne Azer, Member of the Parliament of Egypt.  Welcome on stage.

>> MARIANNE AZER:  Good morning.  That's it for now.  Dear Fellow Parliamentarians and from all over the world, I would like to specially thank on your behalf the members of the German Parliament for making this Parliamentary session work the way we see it.  It's a pleasure to be here, and I would like also to hold the opportunity to express my gratitude to IGF because also of the testimony they gave to His Excellency Dr. Tarek Kamel during the Opening Ceremony.  He was the ex‑Minister of Communication in Egypt.  May his soul rest in peace.

So I have, like, one question:  Do we really care about the peace in the digital age?  I think we all do, and if we're ‑‑ obviously the Internet has become definitely one of the areas of future conflict, and in the Opening Ceremony, His Excellency Secretary‑General had mentioned in his opening remarks very important questions that I will say and add on them.  The first question said:  Where will the technology take us?  And I might add:  To peace or to war?

The second question is:  Will our dignity and rights be enhanced or diminished?  And my question:  And what about our peace?

The third thing:  Will our societies be more equal or less equal?  And my question is:  How will the divide triangle of digital, political and social divide affect the peace?

Will we become more or less secure or safe?  This was his question, and I'm concerned how the cybersecurity and privacy affect the peace.

Let me state some of the challenges and we as Parliamentarians are used to votes.  If you find one of the challenges extremely important and relevant, please raise the right hand.  If it's less relevant, please raise the left hand, if you wish.

So let's start with the first challenge.  The first is how to set a framework to protect individuals from the use of surveillance technologies that interface with the enjoyment of human rights.  Is it right or left?  It's up to you.

These include a range ‑‑ thank you for voting ‑‑ of measures for states about users and exporters of surveillance technologies, as well as companies.  To me, the respective obligations and responsibilities.

The second challenge and we will vote on this, is how to strike the right balance between benefits and costs across all expert control categories for dual‑use items?  And I'll explain more before the vote.  So as you know the expert controls are among the most complicated policy issues to address.  Expert controls combine laws technologies and policies at National and international level and in this case also sit directly at the intersection of human rights, security and business so it's an important challenge or not.

I trust you.

The third challenge is how to face the new forms of violence through the Internet of Things devices?  The number of or IoT devices is expected to be 22 billion in 2025, and despite the lack of specific laws, or IoT evidence is already showing up to courts, so is it a challenge or not?

The fourth thing is the public, it's our public interest to protect dignity and peace, so how to solve the conflict with the interests of social networking companies?  And I'll explain more before the vote.  In one of the sessions there was a Representative of these countries and he mentioned that every minute, there is 500 hours of media that is posted, and 1% is guaranteed to be illegal or harmful.  So he said, there is an issue, we can't deny it, but you need to know that the amount of effort that needs to be done for this.

So is it important or not for the social companies?

A related question to this challenge is:  How can we tackle online hate speech and cyberbullying with children?  And there is that fine balance between the freedom of speech and criminal prosecution.

The sixth is how to deliberate governance approaches for this information, so this information is one of the major challenges for the peace.  Through self‑regulatory, what is done in the European Governments is self-regulatory codes of practices, direct regulations on online content and the development on legislations.  However, during the sessions, the floor added to this that there might be a good ‑‑ we need to distinguish very well between individual disinformation and industrial disinformation because the latter is done by bots and, like, more machine‑oriented so it needs to be well distinguished.

The comments from participants varied from demanding more transparency from the platform side regarding their business model, the collection and use of data and function of the algorithm to completely rethink the core of their business model.  This is very dangerous.

Some comments are argued that the Freedom of Expression is not an absolute right.  It is provided and regulated by law.

Finally, after having talked about all this, a major challenge, and I think we all agree about it, is how to quantify peace and conflict in cyberspace?  This is how to say there is real peace or there is no.  It's difficult to measure peace in cyberspace because of geopolitical tensions.  However, possible indicators might be, if you think, a measure of the gravity and number of cyberattacks for instance, and the second thing is the indicators showing the likelihood of being a country of origin of cyberattack and how does the international society deal with them?  Are there sanctions for the countries that issue this terrorism?  We don't know.

Finally, an important question is:  Who will be the able to tackle these challenges?  And this is the most important.  This is why we are here, because peace is a human issue, and needs to be implemented by human actors, and I recall Mother Teresa's call to say if we have no peace, that we have forgotten that belong to one another, so the only solution is a collaborative stakeholder approach with a focus on human rights, protection of critical infrastructures, reporting of vulnerabilities, and security concerns in the supply chain.

Finally, the most important is the follow‑up mechanisms after the whistle is blown is to maintain peace in the digital sphere, and I will end my summary by editing a quote by Ronald Reagan who said:  Peace is not the absence of conflict.  It is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means, and I would add:  Of one word using one net and having one vision:  Peace.  Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> FALKO MOHRS:  Good morning, everyone.  It's the last day here in Berlin, I'd still like to welcome you here.  Berlin is a very iconic city when it comes to the question of peace and to the German mystery and I guess it's now one of the most lively and vibrant examples of inclusion, tolerance, but also innovation when it comes to technology questions so I guess it's a very good place to hold the IGF here in 2019 and I hope you all had a very fruitful week here in our capital.

When it comes to the question of Internet and peace, we all know there are different narratives.  There's one that is very much focusing on the independence and the power of independence that lies within the Internet, and one that is questioning, or that is focusing more on the question that it comes from a military history, and focusing on its negative side.  I'm sure all or many of us are witnesses to both, the positive and the negative powers of the Internet.

When I think back a couple of years when I've been an Advisor to The World Bank in the North African Region on youth policies, back in the years 2009 to 2012, we have seen that the Internet, the social networks, have a power when it comes to Civil Society, when it comes to challenging governments, even though some of the challenges are looking on a long‑term perspective, have not been very sustainable.

And we also see it today, and I'm very much in solidarity with the people of the streets of Hong Kong that also use today the Internet for their fights of freedom, but we also see that Governments are using Internet for sanctions, controlling and censoring opinions.

So we see when it comes to the question of peace, there are two dimensions that we need to tackle and we need to take in our focus.  And the Internet and peace is challenged by both, by Governments but also by non‑governmental actors.  So it's all our responsibilities and we need the multistakeholder approach for that to secure security, safety and integrity in the Internet.

So we need a framework, we need rules, international rules, when it comes to securing these dimensions.  And I'm sure that we need the human rights based approach when it comes to the framework.  Human rights must be the underlying element when it comes to peace and freedom in the Internet.

So one of the questions in the very first days that we heard was:  What kind of capacity and capabilities do Governments and countries need?  Do they need capacities for counterattacks for hack backs?  And still keeping in mind there's a severe problem when it comes to attribution of attacks.

The DiploFoundation in its report published 50 countries confirm they have these kind of hackback and counterattack capacities when it comes to the Internet.

And we in Germany as well are debating whether we need these kind of capacities.  And of course it is the right of every country to defend itself both on and offline but we also need to make sure that every country and Government's actions are relatively to its threats.

My dear colleague has mentioned the question of how do we measure the level of peace and security?  And I don't want to repeat because I believe she has done it very well but of course when we talk about peace, that is the main question:  How do we actually measure peace in the Internet? .

And as I mentioned we need a multistakeholder approach because everyone has a crucial role in that, and that's why I'm so glad that the IGF is such an example of a multistakeholder approach here.  So to summarize, let's be very clear, we need a human rights based approach.  We cannot leave space for compromising or violating human rights in the Internet and it's our global but also our National common responsibility to secure this peace and to secure that the critical infrastructure of telecommunication and communication network is secure and peaceful and that we can ensure the positive power that lives in the Internet.

Thank you very much, and I really hope that you can all take back lots of input and that we'll be able to follow up what we've seen over the last days.  Thank you very much.

[ Applause ]

>> ANDREA THILO:  Thank you very much, Mr. Mohrs.  And Marianne, may I make like this?  In Germany it's very strange to hold up your right hand but may I say thank you for all your enriching summaries so far in this session.

And we make it a full circle, now with our last summary.  We are asking the question:  Digital age, is it Democracy's tool or trap?  And we are doing so with a Member of the German Parliament and we have Karen Melchior as a Member of the European Parliament.  Thank you very much.

[ Applause ]

>> ANKE DOMSCHEIT‑BERG:  Yes, it's difficult to speak in the very last round.  I'd like to present myself shortly as was said.  I'm a Member of the German Parliament.  I'm the Internet policy speaker of the left party and also Member of the Commission on artificial intelligence.  When we discuss many of those problems as we have heard already today.

I was leading the Workshop on Day 0 with the Parliamentary group where we discussed topics around democracy and digitalization and it was a very intense discussion we had with Parliamentarians coming from all sorts of countries all over the world such as from Mongolia, from Brazil, from Hong Kong, from the Maldives, Japan, El Salvador and also from Germany.  We talked about four issues mainly, the biggest being the challenges by digital monopolies where we all agreed we have a global failing anti‑trust regulation.  We saw the issue of election interference and misinformation and we also exchanged not only that we felt we see these problems, we also tried to discuss National approaches how to deal with these challenges so we heard for example from Brazil there's a regulation planned to enforce more transparency on political advertisement.  In Germany there was an Expert Group working on competition law 4.0 to deal with the challenges of monopolies.

But we also heard from a Member from the Hong Kong Parliament that there are very country‑specific challenges, that you cannot just transfer one regulation to another country, so what one country can use to fight misinformation could another country use for censorship, and that must be prevented.

We talked also about the lock‑in effect, the network effects making monopolies so powerful and what can be done about it, which is really a big challenge to tackle.  We all agreed that we need more forced interoperability, better working standards, but we also went a bit farther.  We were discussing whether it's not a good idea to have something like a not‑for‑profit social network on a global basis because we talk about social infrastructure of the digital society.  And we were discussing open‑ended who could actually do this or organize it.  We came up with the United Nations, but this was as I said an open‑ended discussion.

We were also talking about the issue how to break two big monopolies, who could do this?  And it was not easy for us to find out.  We didn't find the perfect answer.  Most of us were suspecting the U.S. can do this, and nobody else.  I'm not so sure about it and I know that at least at the European Union level, there are discussions, especially on how to probably unwind already taken place mergers like the one between Facebook and WhatsApp on Facebook and Instagram.  We talked about the importance of data dominance by digital monopolies and what could be done about this, and there's an international discussion going on and whether it's probably a good idea to force big monopolies to open up part of their data, non‑personal related data.  We didn't find a consensus on that one, because there were interesting questions on what kind of data, how could it be enforced?  So it's not an easy one but it was an interesting one for all of us.

I will briefly talk about the other challenges we covered.  We talked for example also about hate crimes, violence against children and women in the Internet, and what can be done about that.  In one country, I believe it was Brazil, we had the challenge that digital evidence so far is not recognized in courts and now there is legislation in plan to change that.

In Germany, we are now ‑‑ there was a decision by the Government taken to create a special criminal Department with required competencies to deal with digital hate crimes.  We are not talking about hate.  Many people can just hate.  That's freedom of speech but there is a type of hate going over the redline and that is hate crime, violating penalty code and that should be dealt with accordingly.  The third challenge we discussed was the Internet access to all because you can also only take part in an effective Democracy if you have access to the Internet and then there are different challenges again from country to country.  In Brazil, there's also a legislation in plan to make Internet access a universal right and somebody from Mongolia said we would like the same but Mongolia for the biggest part of it has a very, very low density of population and so it's an extremely high challenge to make this a reality and they still have not found out how to actually do this and the last topic I would like to mention is everything around privacy, data protection, not only what big companies do with our data talking about Cambridge Analytica et cetera, but also about what Governments do with the data.  In the European Union the general data protection regulation was mentioned by Parliamentarians from other continents as a blueprint which they not copy one to one but take as a good example which they adapt in part to their own regulation and as to the use of Government of personal data by Governments there's also a decision being taken by the German Government to established a so‑called data dashboards, that citizens will be able to see in the future what kind of data the Government at all Federal levels has stored about them and what public Authority had accessed what type of data.

So that is a very brief description of what we discussed in our Workshop on Monday.  In summary, I can say we realize that across continents, we shared the same issues.  We realized we can learn a lot from each other but not copy/paste.  We must also bring in our perspectives and recognize that what is good in one country can be bad in another.

We would look forward to continue this debate on further IGFs but we also had another conclusion, that we should copy the multistakeholder approach on how to deal with Internet policy to our own National decision‑making, political decision‑making, that is, so bring more multistakeholder approaches to Parliaments.  That was what we liked.  Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> KAREN MELCHIOR:  Hello, and thank you to the German Government and German Parliament for this initiative for Parliamentary Assembly and that's all my German.

Tearing down the wall here in Berlin, we must remember that now is not the time to set up new digital walls and fences.  We need to use the opportunity that digital tools give us to communicate with our citizens.  The open and the free Internet allows for empowering our citizens to engage in their society.  We must use digital tools to open up our Governments and authorities, to control ‑‑ to be controlled by our citizens because who do we serve if not our citizens and all of our citizens?

Our citizens must be protected, but not against an undefined cybercrime.  We must ensure the integrity of each of our citizens against masseur vail lance by our Governments, our security services across the world but also from commercial surveillance by companies, data brokers and by platforms.

We as Parliamentarians must insist on getting oversight of what data is being used, how we're being treated, and we must ask of the platforms to help societies to have Democratic dialogue.  It should be free and open, uniting our society.

Not allowing business models to push us towards more and more polarized positions through microtargeting and a tension economy.  We must not allow our colleagues to spread lies and fear about their fellow citizens.  For no matter our religion or ethnicity, our gender or sexuality, our political views, we're all humans, we're all citizens, with equal rights in our societies, and in our world.

These equal rights are or should be the foundation for our cyberspace.  These equal rights and our human rights need to be supported, not undermined, by the technological tools of the cyberspace which is why we must defend end to end encryption, net neutrality, and access to information.  This is the foundation for a free, open, stable, unfragmented, and innovative cyberspace, as is called for in the Call.  This should be our one vision, for one net, for one world.  Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> ANDREA THILO:  Thank you very much, ladies, for these last summaries.  Can I take the principle of Marianne and ask you now to raise your right hand if you think it was a good idea and a very good initiative to have such a strong voice of the Parliamentarians in this year's IGF?  So please raise your right hand.  If you don't think, use your left hand.  I don't see much contradiction.  Okay.  Thank you very much, for this idea, Marianne.

I hand over now the stage for our 45‑minutes Panel Discussion, including a strong Q&A part, so we need you in this discussion.  The question is:  What do we have to take with us or what do we or you take with you into your or our National Parliaments?  The moderation will be in the hands of Thomas Schneider, he's Ambassador and Director of International Relations at the Swiss Federal office of communications and we have four cherished panelists here.  I just introduce them very quickly.  We'll experience Marianne back on stage, still Member of the Parliament of Egypt.

Alhagie Mbow, Member of the Parliament of Gambia.  I invite you on stage.  Carla Zambelli, Member of the Parliament of Brazil and finally Margarita Escobar as MP of El Salvador.  They will have 5 minutes each.  Thank you very much.

Thomas Schneider will then hold the discussion with you for the next whatever 25 minutes.  We have microphones in the room, so good to have you here, Mr. Schneider.  Thank you very much.

[ Applause ]

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  Hello, everybody.  It is a special honor for me to Chair this session because there's someone moderate, as someone who has and is involved in IGF in the European IGF in EuroDIG and also in the Swiss IGF, we've always tried to include Parliamentarians in the discussions, because that's one of the missing links of course, if there is a disconnect between what is discussed in fora like this and the decision makers on all levels are not part of this discussion.  So we're very, very happy and also thankful to Germany who has taken a lot of steps to make this happen.  And of course, also to you, the Parliamentarians, for you to attend.

So with this, let's start the discussion, and the first question is a simple one, it's basically there on the screen:  What did you learn as Parliamentarians?  What did you experience as new information, new insights that you will take home and feed into your discussions in your Parliaments with your colleagues?  And maybe also was there something that you have been missing that was not discussed here that should have been discussed?  Free to go ahead, whoever wants to go ahead, go ahead.

>> ALHAGIE MBOW:  Good morning, and thank you very much.  First I want to take this opportunity to thank IGF in general and the German Government for including the Parliamentarians in such a wonderful forum. 

Personally, I think it's essential that politicians are engaged at every level, especially when you talk about the Internet Governance, because if you look at worldwide Parliamentarians are at the center of governance anywhere you go in this world so having to discuss such a particular form I think it was good Parliamentarians are engaged.  Personally I think the collaborative effort that I've seen in this IGF I think is a key thing that I can take away to my country at the level of Africa as a whole because if you look at the governance structure, it involves everybody actually.  You need to engage the executive, you need to engage Civil Society organizations, you need to engage Internet organizations and every aspect of society and I think the IGF 2019 actually has clearly shown that a collaboration is key and if we want this world to move forward we need to all collaborate and get away from our individual convenience and come together as one nation, come together as one world so that we can move this world forward.

I think the key here is the collaborative efforts that we actually have seen as a key take‑away.

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  Thank you.

>> MARGARITA ESCOBAR:  Thank you very much.  I would like to take an opportunity to first of all thank the German Parliament for this initiative, and in particular, Jimmy, whom I never met, but I love him dearly for his vision.  Thank you, Jimmy.  One thing that I'm taking back is that we should fight for no walls in the Internet.  We want an open, free access to Internet.  That's for the benefit of humanity.  So no virtual walls I think would be important for all of us.

The other thing I think we need to look at this issue of main relevance.  Today, IGF has made a great step forward by including Parliamentarians on this fora.  And it is that we have connected the disconnected, in this case, Parliaments, which at the end of the day, we are the ones making National legislations and the rules.

So I think this is a very good approach, and it was missing so I take this back to my Parliament, and encourage other colleagues to get involved, as well.

Another point is that IGF National designations should play a bigger role.  IGF National designations should include Parliaments in their activities at National levels.  IGF National Designations should be more democratic in including all stakeholders at the National level, just as we have done it here, and so I didn't know this was an option, but now I know, and I will make sure that this happens in El Salvador.

I am promoting a Bill in El Salvador's Congress about universal Internet access as a human right, based on the human rights Council of the UN that considers Internet a human right.  That Bill I introduced it about a month ago.  It will be on the floor I hope shortly and it will include children's rights, women's rights and human rights on the platforms.  It's not an easy question but it's there so if anyone can help, you're welcome with your ideas.  I think Parliament should designate focal points for this IGF process and the Inter‑Parliamentary Union should also create a specific Committee on technical aspects and National laws so that these focal points can follow on the spirit of this fora.  I have other points, but I think I will stop here so that we allow the interesting comments from our colleagues, and thank you, Marianne, for your wonderful presentation this morning.

[ Applause ]

>> CARLA ZAMBELLI:  My name is Carla Zambelli.  I'm a Congresswoman in Brazil.  I am the same party of our President, and I would like to take the opportunity to be here and represent my country, but I apologize but I will speak in Spanish because I think that way, my electors and my people in Brazil will understand me better.

What I've learned in the last couple of days and what I liked the most was to learn more about the bleaker situation in other nations and the situation in other countries.  Brazil has a special situation.  We have a very large country.  It's almost a Continent.  And we had a very strange situation.  For the first time we had a President that was elected via the Internet.  The President was in hospital after he had been attacked, his life had been attacked, so that everything had to be done via the Internet.

I'm here because for several months now, I am the most popular politician on social media, and this has only been the case after the elections.  I haven't been on at all before the elections, and today, I am reaching 80 million people via the Internet.  This means that we have a great amount of outreach, so against this backdrop you can see how important Internet platforms are, and this also means that it's not only important to guarantee Internet access as has been said several times on this panel.  They have said that access to the Internet is a human right, but many of our citizens don't even have access to clean water, so if you talk about Internet access as a human right, then that's maybe difficult to reach.

This space was shaped a lot in the past by large companies that regulate access to information and the Internet and content.  What we're seeing now in the world is that the Internet does not only belong to big companies, but also to normal people, like myself.  And it's important ‑‑ and I think that's a concern for Brazil.

Freedom of thought needs to be strengthened.  I am from the right‑wing party, from the President's party, but it's also important for the left side to have freedom and so Internet access should not only be human rights.  What we are concerned about is that is the freedom of opinion.  We have a former President who has just been released from prison and who's not talking about the fact that the Internet social media need to be regulated so this is something that has been repeatedly said here on these panels, and there's one thing which we haven't stated yet, because you also need to talk about repression on the Internet by Governments.  For example, there's Facebook and more than 400,000 people, their accounts have been deleted from the Internet.  They had the opportunity to express themselves and overnight they lost this opportunity.

This means that ‑‑ so you cannot privatize the justice system.  The free speech is a right, it's not something for commercial platforms.  Thank you.

>> MARIANNE AZER:  Thank you for your kind words.  So there is a lot to be taken back from this important IGF.  It's my first.  I'm very happy to be here.  The first thing is the ecosystem that is there.  Actually, the IGF had tackled a lot of issues and each issue is related to another, because we're looking forward for a better future, so we need to tackle things as an ecosystem, and not independently.  This is the first thing.

The second thing is the opportunity of exchange with fellow MPs to see the legislations that are there, and if the legislations do not cope enough with the new digital era that we are about to go through we need to adjust ourselves, so this is a second take‑home message.

The third one is that as I know that the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams, I do believe that together, with this exchange between technical people, members of Government, Parliamentarians, private sector, this exchange will help us more to move forward to this one goal:  One net.  One vision.  For one world.  So that's my take‑home message.  I will share it with my fellow Parliamentarians.  We'll keep working on it with the members of the Civil Society in our country, and the Government and other stakeholders.

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  Thank you very much.  So in addition to let's say substantive take‑aways I see that the discussion on how do we work together in the spirit of cooperation and the inclusivity of all stakeholders working across silos is something that is seen as unique.  It's maybe also seen as a little bit complicated, complex and not easy but is necessary from what I hear from you and as you all know, this is one of the key actually of the key elements that is discussed in the report of the UN Secretary‑General's High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, where there are some recommendations, first there's some identification of gaps, and then some recommendations on what to do.

One question to you is:  Realizing that it is necessary to build a bridge from expert discussions in whatever Forum, but of course also in a Forum like the IGF and the National Regional discussions and decision makers, be it Parliamentarians or Governments or also private sector decision makers, CEOs of companies and so on, what can we do?  How do we build bridges between these silos?  How do we better connect and going beyond just participation in a dialogue, but also when it comes to supporting decision‑making, making decision makers profiting from a dialogue like this?

So how do we build these bridges concretely?  What can be done?  How can this be institutionalized?  How can also, how can you get better connected to this notion of horizontal networks of different actors that take decisions each one in their silos being the ICANN that takes decision on Domain Names, whereas UNESCO or other UN institutions take decisions on content or education issues, how can these horizontal networks that take decisions, that develop standards, how can they be brought together with you so that you are also connected to other decision makers on National, Regional and global level?  Thank you.

>> ALHAGIE MBOW:  Thank you very much.  I think when you look at it in totality you realize that the fundamental thing that got to happen first is the building of trust among all the stakeholders.  Once we build a good trust among the stakeholders you're going to see that then we can start to collaborate, we can start to move things forward.  Now, if you look at the world where we're going to right now as far as we're concerned, you'll realize the politicians basically are at the center of most of the disruptive nature of the world, so including politicians now for the politician toss have a clear understanding really of where we're going to and I think that will be very important and again the trust has to be built around Government.

When I say Government, not only about the politicians like the Parliamentarians but also the executives as well.  They need to be at the center of everything.  Then you have the private sector on top.  Then you have Civil Society organizations so there needs to be this kind of link that provide trust in the middle and again you're going to see that once we have the trust, each one of us will have a very clear understanding of where actually are we going to because when you look at the issues surrounding the Internet or issues surrounding Internet Governance itself you'll see the key things to the Government is like human rights issues.  You look at Civil Society organization, also it's about human rights issues.  Then you look at the private sector they're talking about how do I make money for my own institutions?  Again where it comes is the digital economy, what do we do with digital economy, with digital rights?  Who is responsible for what?  The important thing is to build the trust among all stakeholders and once that's holds, that platform holds very well then anything else can come on top of it.  Without trust, really it's going to be very difficult because each of the stakeholders will really be on their own silos, be apart, because there's no trust.  And you can see this across various countries when you want to fight cybersecurity, so we need to be able to create that cyberspace where trust is there, where we can actually bring peace, where we can allow others to trust what Internet brings.

If you remember the Founding Fathers of the Internet basically was just to make their work easier in terms of connecting so they created various protocols and again it's human nature that the same human beings that created the Internet and the same human tried to disrupt the protocols but the fundamental key is about building trust among all the stakeholders across the world.  Thank you.

>> MARGARITA ESCOBAR:  Thank you.  Nobody likes to deal with Parliamentarians but we have to deal with them anyways.  I think that a practical measure to enhance cooperation is to create in this IGF 2019 a Steering Committee from Parliamentarians, which under the leadership of the German Parliament we can all help you to bring to our regions the spirit of IGF 2019.  So that's one practical recommendation, and I hope we can create that today, if possible.

Two, I already mentioned we should create focal points in our Parliaments that deals exactly and specifically on this fora, and also in the Inter‑Parliamentary Union, that should create a specific Committee on this issue.  That's another practical suggestion.

The other one I think it's important is that we should create guidelines for Parliaments when we're drafting law.  Those guidelines could be taken from the work that has already been done at this Forum, and other institutions like European ‑‑ I don't want to mention anyone but other institutions because I may leave some institutions left and that's not my intention.

But having Parliamentarian guidelines for drafting National laws that follow international standards I think would be of the essence.  If we wanted to have one world, one net, and one vision, we need those draft lines.

And on the cybersecurity Global Commission report, I think we should all take a hard look at it and if we do have any cyberlaws at the National level, this is an opportunity to upgrade those laws according to the recommendations of the Global Commission on cybersecurity so now I will leave those four or five proposals to take into account.

>> CARLA ZAMBELLI:  I agree with my colleagues about what you said about building trust among stakeholders and also with what my colleague just said.  Maybe it would be a good idea to meet more often, not wait until the next IGF, but also to exchange before that and have a Parliamentary Commission, Committee, who could then address these issues.

The communication platforms on the Internet are very important in the sense that trust is really important to be built in these platforms, and jurisdiction must not be privatized, and algorithms is another issue.  I believe that algorithms are like filter bubbles, which means that the diversity of opinions that we have from the right, left, and center, everybody talks with everybody, that this diversity of opinions will be undermined and it's important to ensure this for us as Parliamentarians.

So I think that filter bubbles are a real problem.  You need to look beyond your own horizon, you need to talk to other stakeholders.

So ensuring democracy on communication platforms, and talking with one another more, and also maybe seeing the fact that a law that works well in Germany, and I think that Angela Merkel alluded to a very important issue here, namely infrastructure that's necessary to network these platforms all over the world and that there's more decentralization in these platforms and that we're helpless as we see this happen.  This is also something we need to discuss as Parliamentarians.  So for me, I think the solution would be to know whom we are talking with, because the German law is maybe not adequate for Brazil, the law that ensures that there's no fake news on platforms.  This wouldn't work in Brazil, because in Brazil, it's important to have freedom of opinions, and it's the courts that will then deal with the fake news, and not just one company a platform, and I think that's all from my side.

>> MARIANNE AZER:  I do agree with all my colleagues and I second the opinions of trust that you both mentioned, and also the Steering Committee, and as you mentioned Margarita that we should right now and you reminded me of Elvis Presley's song, you know the song?

It's Now or Never, so it's now or never to work together, as multistakeholders and I recall that during issuing for example in Egypt the cybersecurity law, we had, like, 21 sessions in the Committee before the general sessions.  1/3 of these sessions was with Government, National institutes, private Sectors, universities, all like there was inclusion for women, for disability, for everyone to say their opinion about this law.

So this was a seed for a good law that needs to be improved every now and then, but the basis is working together, is something important and I like to say that the word "team," if we team up with the stakeholders, the word team is TEAM:  Together each achieves more.  That's team.  Together each achieves more.

The thing also that I think that our goal is not easy.  We have a lot of challenges, but today's inspiration is tomorrow's motivation.  We are so motivated to work and to make it happen, if we have a Steering Committee, this would be great, but work on building trust is not an easy job.  It will demand us a lot of effort and a lot of credibility, as well, that those opinions that are set are taken into consideration once they are correct.  This creates a circle of people looking to the same goal, and I think on the international level, if we can do it, and on the National level, to work with the local stakeholders, I think things will be much, much better.

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  Thank you, and I would also fully agree.  Trust is a fundamental component, because if you don't trust each other, it's difficult to work together.

And trust is also a result of cooperation, because if you work with others, you get to know each other, you get to know that you may disagree, but maybe your lives are different or your situation is different, and the other views or the other interests may be legitimate as well as yours, and this is a basis of trust.  Of course, trust.  Also need some rules that create trust, so a certain reliability, predictability of the forms of cooperation or the underlying principles is also an important element, and the clarity about the respective roles of the industry, what is the role of a platform?  What should not be the role of a platform?  This is also something that is hotly debated, has been hotly debated, since they exist I guess in all of our countries.

And then, of course, the cooperation between National Parliaments through ideas to institutionalize connection to the IGF, also to institutionalize structures in the interparliamentary Union that would help to liaise the focal points from different National Parliaments so they have an exchange there and help them also to access, be able to provide and share material, share ideas, and of course an important point is the guidance.

There's a number of intergovernmental institutions around the world but also private policy networks that produce guidelines, private commissions that produce guidelines, that think about some issues that of course somebody needs to read this, so it takes resources, it takes time, but the better people are connected and share that burden, again the more you can actually profit from all of this.

So one last question, a short one, to all of you, and then it has already been mentioned there are microphones in the middle of the room, so please join the discussion, and contribute, ask questions, make comments so that we can involve more people in the discussion.

The last question is something that in particular fora like this, I keep realizing that even after years of discussion, meeting and talking to each other is one thing, but then you realize you may even use the same words, but if you come from a Civil Society institution or if you're a politician or a technical, member of the technology community, you may have a completely different understanding of the same words, because you have historical or social different concepts, so how can this let's say language gap be bridged between the different silos so that they also when you legislate that you actually, the measures that you intend to do, you actually get the result and not maybe the opposite of what you intend to do, just because the language is different, the cultures is different, and there's no common understanding of what needs to be done.

>> ALHAGIE MBOW:  Thank you very much.  I think the issue of language actually has and will continue to be an issue in governance especially at the level of legislation.  Now, with language, you're going to see that our understanding basically may be different due to cultural issues but sometimes also you realize that people tend to understand things at their own benefit, for example, because the human mind itself is actually corrupt.  You know what I mean.

So what is the most important thing is us to have a common understanding and a common ground on the meaning of certain technology for example we need to have a common understanding.  We need to have a common platform.  If you look at a few days ago when we were talking about how all this Internet came about, about the various protocols that was created, the reason they were created, so they could have a clear understanding, which means you can have one infrastructure, be able to communicate with another, so that's the meaning of communication.  There must be understanding and Terms of Reference, so generally speaking, in terms of legislation, we must have some international interpretations of particular words or particular terms or phrases so that it doesn't get lost along the way because of translation, because again anywhere you go in the world even in the English language, sometimes the choice of words I use in Gambia may be quite different from the choice of words in the U.S. but the most fundamental or important thing is to have a common understanding, this is exactly what we mean when we say this phrase or this is what we meant when we agree on a particular world but the most important thing is to have a general understanding ability the meaning of particular words, meaning of particular phrases whenever you go to any kind of language, then at least you're really very consistent.  You may not be 100% correct but at least the consistency in terms of meaning then becomes very important.  Thank you.

>> MARGARITA ESCOBAR:  Thank you Ambassador for this very important question is how do we understand each other?  Well, for me, Monday, the first time I came to the meeting, I was really thinking, if I was in the right or the wrong place.  I didn't get it.  But now, I see that I've been able to understand the words, the concepts, the challenges, and the answers.  So this leads me to think that knowing and meeting each other in one room, talking about the same issues, is the best practical way of diminishing the bridge between politicians and technical people.

We have to learn from technical aspects, and I don't necessarily think that technicals should learn about politics language.  No one wants to be in that arena, trust me, sometimes.  But ‑‑ so I find that a practical example is this, what we have done today, from Monday to Friday, 5 days.  If I were to say to my Parliament, come on, let's do Law 4.0, and let's all of us get together and do legislation 4.0, I bet that they will think I'm crazy.

Some of them might want to follow, but the rest will never embark in such an adventure.  Nevertheless, we're doing it.  We're now considering personal data protection in data.  We will start studying the universal inclusion to Internet.  I agree with our colleague from Brazil it's not going to be easy.  We have other problems but we need to start now thinking about that because in El Salvador, which is a small country, only 30% have access to international.

So we Parliamentarians should worry about that, especially that is considered a human right from the Council of Human Rights of the UN.  So bottom line, how do we bridge the language?  We're all human.  We must be able to understand each other, and where legislation 4.0 will take us will depend on all of us and that global understanding of issues, to have one world.  One net.  And one vision.  Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> CARLA ZAMBELLI:  Well, this is a rather philosophical question, and I'm a really, really practical person, which means that it's extremely difficult for me to talk about these differences, and of course, there is a major discrepancy between Brazil, Africa, Egypt.  In Brazil, we're seeing that the world is changing extremely fast and in very profound ways.  And there's been a massive understanding on the Internet.  Only a few weeks ago, the world was thinking that's the Amazon Region was alight, that it was on fire, and some of these fires were caused by criminal intent.

And in fact, the NGOs set some of these forests on fire in order to create problems for the new conservative Government.  And this is the first year in 20 years where we've not seen that many forest fires, so it was fake news.

And a head of Government actually showed a picture of a giraffe in the midst of these forests and we don't have giraffes in the Amazon Region.  This is a very specific biosphere and we need to guarantee freedom of opinion for everyone on the left and on the right side of the political spectrum.  This is what this is about.  This is what is important for us in Brazil at the moment.

And the problem that we have in Brazil must be understood by both Brazilians and people abroad.  We need to listen to everyone, and I think that that's a major issue on the Internet.  You only listen to one side.

[ Applause ]

>> MARIANNE AZER:  I see this connection, I see that I am a connection by myself.  I have a technical background, and I'm a Parliamentarian, so this made life easier, so I would say rather like a recipe, to open the channels with other fellow Parliamentarians who are not technical.  There is, like, a news digest about what happens in the international and National level that I sent on wiki basis to my fellow Parliamentarians.  And I was surprised that even those who do not care a bit about technology started interacting on a personal level and getting to ask me like the best practices for something, so started opening the appetite of other Parliamentarians that our world of technical stuff is not a bad word.  It's a live word.  This is the first thing.

The second is, once there is this appetite, we have to use it and I guess in every Parliament there is a possibility of giving training to other Parliamentarians, and we are never too old to learn, so by making some cooperation where with the training the Institute of the Parliament for example we can give training sessions to fellow Parliamentarians to understand more.  Those who have good appetite will join the training sessions.

And the third step will be forming a support group of people who are like advocates for our world, our digital world.  These people will be responsible of opening the appetite of other people, and the circle continues:  Appetite, awareness and training, forming a group, and that's it.  This will help so much when there are laws or any new issues to be tackled in the Parliament, to find a good group that has formed good ideas, and up‑to‑date policies to tackle these issues, so I think this is the best practice that we can have.

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  Thank you very much, in particular for these practical solutions, so there are concrete things that can be done, so we have a few people that have been waiting for quite some time.  You need to go to the microphones those who want to speak because there's no microphones here but there's four or five in the back so please go and line up.  The first one was the gentleman on the right.  Please.

>> Thank you, Thomas.  We are a pilot project Workshop on Wednesday with 20 colleagues of all the Parliamentarians participated and shared the views on deployment of Internet standards that would make the Internet safer immediately for everyone once deployed.  The question I want to ask have been answered by Ms. Azer and Ms. Escobar.  We started the conversation with five concept recommendations that I will not reiterate but we came up thanks to you with a sixth one that there's a profound need for the technical community and policymakers and Parliamentarians to learn what their worlds are about, and that the technical community translates their protocols and standards in language that you can understand, but because policy actually is also made in a way, in the technical standards, that there needs to get interaction going and my question was how could we arrange that but I think the both of you gave some excellent examples how to do that so please start working together to reach that.  Thank you very much.

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  Thank you.

>> MARIANNE AZER:  Thank you.

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  Let's move on.  We have about 5, 6 minutes left so let's move on to the person in the middle that has been waiting also for quite some time.

>> Thank you, Thomas.  My name is Vladimir, and I'm a Member of Parliament in South Africa.  We have an ICT Forum in place for the Parliament in the past 10 years.  Currently we are busy implementing paperless Parliament to try also help people get involved with Internet connection between members, et cetera.

The mandate has also been expanded in June 2019 to include artificial intelligence in our law‑making processes.  We believe in an open source society where there should be Internet available for everyone.  But with that, there should be accountability from Government side, with the safeguard of individuals' data.

Legislation should be put in place to safeguard our people, as this abuse from outside can be a huge threat in all countries.  Artificial intelligence in the fourth industrial revolution is also exciting, and it should help us all through health, education, as well as with good Governments, and we also now hope as we've seen the launch of the contract of the Web by Sir Tim Berners‑Lee as a good start to create good protocol and guidelines with universal trust moving forward.

And I thank you for this IGF Government Forum this year.  I think it was super.  Thank you.

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  Thank you, as well.

The lady on the right from our side.

Excuse me, we go around so please let the lady go and then ‑‑ thank you very much.

>> Thank you, Thomas.  I wanted to propose a dialogue with the Brazilian Parliament.  As part of the IGF community I very much appreciate the presence of the representatives hear as well as their interests in the Internet Governance topic.  But as we take a look in the Brazilian politics there has been some misleading recent developments such as the termination of National participatory bodies and councils and other spaces for civic engagement.  Also the concerns mentioned by the Parliamentary guarding Freedom of Expression are indeed important as our press faces daily attacks from the Government and whoever criticizes the President can be framed as a fake news creator, or disseminator.

But given our experience hear Carla my question would be how you would see the Brazilian Parliament Building Bridges between the Government and Civil Society and fostering our participation and collaboration?  Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  Let's allow her to give a short answer but don't try too much, to go into too much international politics.  This is something that you can do hopefully we will continue at lunch or whenever.  Let's try and remain on this.  Thank you.

>> CARLA ZAMBELLI:  No problem.

Well, there are a lot of bodies and councils that were closed and there were many investigations launched.  We have a problem in Brazil, and we've had it for years.  For many years, the people have been deprived of a lot of things because of corruption.  We don't have terrorism.  We don't really have any home‑grown problems.  We have a lot of resources, as many as you might imagine, but what we were lacking was something that is absolutely essential.  We had the most fraud, theft, billions that were stolen from the people, and then we had all these councils of NGOs, but in fact, they were doing nothing.  All they did was pursue their own policies and interests.

I am an ordinary MP but I'm on Facebook, and I'm also on Twitter, and I can give you a figure:  27 million reactions are on Facebook.  I have 40 million followers on Twitter.  This is happening in Brazil because the press is not doing its jobs which is to provide information.

So if we have guaranteed freedom of the press, then this information won't be trusted by the people.  The people are reading this information but they don't believe in it, and so they come to us, to the MPs to get better information, more specific information.  What we're seeing in the press is very different from what we're seeing in reality, but this is really not what we should be debating here, so I'm happy to talk to you during the break.

>> Thank you very much.  My name is Masani Couroni.  I'm an MP from Niger, and I'm very happy with the way this Forum is going, but nevertheless, I have a few points of criticism.

The language barrier is an obstacle that should be reduced, because if you want to encourage MPs and then only give us one or two minutes then that's a problem because MPs, well, they talk for a living so they need to be able to talk for longer.

Secondly, with regard to the language problem, I'm from a French‑speaking country.  I work in a Parliament where we also speak ‑‑ where we're also working with ECOWAS and others and on the 17th January 2020 we'll be hosting a Conference and we've been doing quite a lot but all of the discussions I've been taking part in from the 25th until yesterday were all in English and there was no interpretation available.  My English is extremely bad and I think it's extremely unfair so if you're talking about trust how do you want to build trust, how do you want us to trust you?  And I think this is really unfair and I any the MP from El Salvador made this very clear:  We need to have a Steering Committee that will prepare for the IGF 2020, so we need someone who takes this issue on board.  Thank you.

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  We'll go one mic by mic and please try to be short.  We have, like, one minute left so we can take two short interventions.

So please be short, thank you.

>> Hello?  Yes.  I'm Safari from DRC.  I want just first to thank the German Digital Agenda Committee for this initiative and would like to ask them to take the lead, the lead that to make this first event where the Parliamentary have Access Now on the discussion to make these things continue even for the further session on giving the ownership from the top level of the IGF Secretary, and also to make a follow‑up:  How those Parliaments are doing back home?  As we say what will our Parliament be to have to do back home?  And on my point of view I think I'll hope in the next future, I'll also become like Jimmy Schulz in Congo and making also a Digital Agenda in Congo but for this we have to make it not on country by country but it should be a thing that is global and to make sure that all the Parliament are going on the same direction, maybe not on the same speed but on the same direction.

And for this, I'm requesting the German Digital Agenda to take the lead on this.  Thank you very much.

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  Thank you.  I'm hearing from the organizers that we have a little bit more time so we can let you get a few more.

Let's go to the mic over there.  Please go ahead, thank you.

>> Thank you.  My name is Pamela Maassay, Member of Parliament, East African Legislative Assembly from Tanzania.  My questions to the organizer is we've heard a lot about the issues we can bring us together, which one of them is to bring the Inter‑Parliamentary, to do the Inter‑Parliamentary dialogues.  Also we need the intercountry dialogues, but the big question is:  We're going to do the dialogue with the people who are not really aware of the digital Internet.  I really suggest that the IGF can come up maybe with a specific program which can be sent to the countries and to specific institutions so that they can understand what really IGF is doing, and what is the main target for both of us, so that we can reach the main goal.  Thank you.

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  Thank you.  Just before giving the floor to Arida just one remark:  On the requests, these ideas are very good.  There's one thing that is of course needed to make them happen, which is money, and this year's host has, as you know, took a little bit of money in the hand to make things happen that maybe before have not been possible so we need to find ‑‑ and the IGF is voluntarily funded by some Governments, some private actors and it is helpful if you as Parliamentarians go back to your countries and allow your Government or ask your Government to actually spend money on platforms of dialogue for digital ‑‑ for understanding because a lot of times, politicians and also CEOs say, well, these fora where people just talk are not important because no decisions are taken so why spend money on this?

And dialogue is the first step to come to reasonable decisions, come to a peaceful understanding so it's important also the message that you as Parliamentarians can bring home and say we need to invest in this kind of dialogue.  We need to support the IGF and other fora so they can deliver the services that we would all wish it to deliver.

With this, let me give the floor to ‑‑ .

[ Applause ]

>> Hello?

>> Thank you very much, Thomas.  My name is Christine Arida, and I work for the Egyptian Government, and I would like to start by thanking the German Government, the German Government and the German Parliament, for bringing in Parliamentarians to this IGF.  I am so proud to see many Parliamentarians from our Region, from Africa, from the Middle East, and from Egypt of course.

One thing that I would like to bring to the attention of Parliamentarians who many have expressed is their first time to be at the IGF, I want to draw the attention that there is a network of over 100 of National, regional, and Youth IGFs that happen on a grassroots level in the different countries, and the different regions, and this network has been identified by the report of the UN Secretary‑General's High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation as a strength of the IGF.  I hope that Parliamentarians can go back home to their regions and connect with those networks, and maybe enforce them, support them, and bring the voices back and make connect the dots into the global IGF.  Thank you.

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  Thank you.  Just one information, National and Regional structures are not formally linked to the IGF but you find all the list of those that are exist on the IGF web site with the contacts, so you can get to them.  Just a quick ‑‑ .

>> MARIANNE AZER:  Just a quick reply:  Thank you, Ms. Arida and I want to share with you a secret that without Ms. Arida, I wouldn't have been here, because she's the one who told me about the IGF and encouraged me and did all the link, so I thank her very much.  And this is a real model of working together between the Parliament and the Government, so it's a live example.  Thank you.

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  Thank you for this example.  The gentleman in the middle, thank you.

>> Thank you very much.  I'm an MP from Chad and I'm also Chair of the Committee for new communications, and also for human rights and freedom.  I am extremely pleased to be here and I would like to thank the German Parliament for inviting me to attend this IGF.  I also welcome the initiative that this panel has taken to launch or to create a Steering Committee.

Just like my colleague, I would also like to express a few points of criticism.  We're extremely aware of the language barrier.  It is a true wall.  It is something that separates us.  The entire IGF was held in English and we did not receive any documents in French, and we had very few sessions with interpretation.

Also, of the past two months, my country hosted an IGF in Chad, and 54 countries were represented with more than 2,000 representatives, and I would like this Forum ‑‑ I would have liked this Forum to be included in this Berlin IGF, because it's very important to see what the African countries have already done, and it's important to give these African countries access to new technologies and I have a few questions that I would like to ask.

Is the digital divide really something that has been closed yet?  In 2003 we discussed the digital divide in Geneva, in particular with the Least Developed Countries, the LDCs.  What about the countries in the north?  This is my second question, is it true the countries of the north and of the south are really on a par when it comes to greater inclusion?  Because I think that there are still many challenges remaining if we really want to talk about total inclusion.

And this is a challenge that needs to be addressed not only by African countries, but also with the help of the international community.  As one of the representatives said today, 30% of Africans have access to the Internet, and I think equality with regard to education, for instance, and also with regard to access to electricity, to the grid, these are challenges that can only be addressed at the international level and of course, if you go to major African cities, then we do have access to electricity, but that's not true for remote regions, rural regions.

In Chad, we also have a major problem with terrorism.  We need help in order to be able to address this challenge.  Because these attacks are causing havoc, in particularly in the Least Developed Countries.  I would like to thank you once again.

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  You are encouraging us to pursue these discussions.  We will continue these discussions and I would now like to give the floor back to the moderator, to the main moderator.  I would like to thank you.  We haven't had enough time address all the individual issues but I would still like to thank you.  We also talked about Jimmy and he was a good friend of mine, and we talked at the IGF ‑‑ thank you very much.

>> ANDREA THILO:  Thank you very much to everyone.  It's great to see you here in the room, and I would like to thank all of you.  I'm not a Member of Parliament.  I'm only a journalist but it's really been very moving to follow this discussion.  This is something that I will take back.  Well, thank you very much.

[ Applause ]

Thank you very much Thomas Schneider for keeping the fire and holding the fire during this discussion.  Thank you for your strong contributions from the various countries.  Thank you very much.

And I hope we are still connected with remote hubs out there, and people that are still connected with us online.

And for the last panel, before lunch, I'm now very glad to hand over the microphone to Professor Dr. Wolfgang Kleinwächter, from the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace, and in a couple of minutes he will bring on stage Manuel, as a Member of the German Parliament, so the question is the presentation and the discussion of the Parliamentarian messages?  So please enjoy.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWÄCHTER:  I'm one of the old IGF veterans, and my duty is to guide you through the final part of the session.  International policymaking is always done in an open and transparent way, but bottom‑up, and we have tried to summarize the debate you had the last couple of days among Parliamentarians in a very brief document which is called messages from the meeting of Parliamentarians participating in the 14th UN Internet Governance Forum.  This is not a Resolution, this is not a Declaration, and as we all know from the Internet world, guidelines and messages are adopted more or less by rough consensus, so that means it's a broad understanding and not everybody has to agree with every single word if you support the main message.  It's called message, and as I said, it's not a formal Resolution or Declaration, and because we remember Jimmy in many of this fora here the proposal was made to call this "messages," the Jimmy Schulz Call, and I have a very personal memory because it was to IGF in Nairobi in the year 2011, the first where Jimmy participated and the idea that sometimes Germany will host an IGF came up out from this very first meeting and he was the very first German member of the Parliament who came to an IGF and mobilized others including Manuel Höferlin, who will guide you through the final part of this document.  This document has three parts.  The first part is the chapeaux and then references to the document and final parts includes operational paragraphs which include also the proposal made just in the discussion to continue the work in form of an IGF group of Parliamentarians.  The Chapeaux has one main key point and that is the Internet is a controversy issue and if you want to move forward you have to balance conflicting interests.  I think this is really the main message, balance.

Balance is this key word and we have issues in the so‑called four baskets or buckets of the Internet world:  Security, economy, human rights and technology and whatever you do you have to balance the various interests and conflict things.  I think this is the main starting point for Parliamentarians and I think this is not new for your people sitting in the Parliament that have to find compromises and that means to balance conflicting interests.

The second part of this document is a references to 6 different other documents and Forum.  There's no need to reinvent the wheel.  We discuss Internet Governance since nearly 20 years, or even more, and there has been achievements and if you want to move forward you should build on this what has been achieved.  The Internet is a layered system, and what we have to do now is although to accept this layered approach to Internet policymaking, and we should build our next steps on this what has been achieved.

And this is mainly the Tunis Agenda which is a very good document.  This is the NETmundial Declaration which came out from multistakeholder process in the year 2014 and has described a little more in detail what the multistakeholder approach is.

These are Resolutions by the United Nations which have declared and this is supported by all the 193 Member States of the UN, that international law and human rights are relevant both offline and online and I think this is a really a big building block for our activities in National Parliaments in the years ago, and this is also an interesting building block, is the many reports we have from the various commissions.  Thomas mentioned the report by the High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, which was established by the UN Secretary‑General, so there has been commissions established by the International Labor Organization on the Future of Work.  The lady from El Salvador mentioned the Global Commission on Stability and Cyberspace.  We have a lot of ideas, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel.  Let's use the existing documents and for you as Parliamentarians, the work of the international Parliamentarian Union the IPU is of special importance.  That means you can use this international network if you move forward and the IPU has renewed its report on the so‑called e‑Parliament which has a lot of good ideas and innovation, what you can do as Parliamentarians and this is also relevant for the Sustainable Development Goals, which has been adopted of the United Nations, and there's a special reference to the SDG number 9, which is directed to the issue we have here discussed.

This is the framework we have, and if we look forward, we see already for in next decade some milestones, the next big thing will probably be the document which is under discussion for the 75th anniversary of the United Nations.  This could become an important guideline where you can bring a lot of ideas to the international level, and then you can benefit from this in your National discussions.

There will be in the year 2025 a WSIS Plus 20 Conference and probably this will become like a world Internet Summit because the world was different 20 years ago and when we come together in the year 2025 to review the outcome of the World Summit, this will be another big thing, and then in the year 2030, we have to look back what we have achieved with the Sustainable Development Goals.

And the third part of this document includes the operational paragraphs and I ask Manuel to come to the podium and to guide us through these five paragraphs and then we can adopt by acclimation the Jimmy Schulz Call.  Manuel.

>> MANUEL HÖFERLIN:  Thank you, Wolfgang.  Dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, last year in Paris, I participated in the IGF for the first time.  It was a year where I really felt a part of it, this year, not in Paris.  Jimmy Schulz for a long time was the only Parliamentarian from Germany who participated at the IGF, and as told, he came back to us and told us from the IGF, and he really was on fire every time and said it's a great meeting.  We have to join this.  We have to be a part of the IGF.  And so last year, in Paris, I first understood what he told me, and it's a very special place, the IGF, because people from all over the world come together, from different views, from different parts of the world, parts of society, and they're talking about the future of the Internet and learn new things every day, and all of it with an open minded culture of conversation, as you know, as you are here.  And sadly as you all know Jimmy Schulz passed away on Day 0 of the IGF, and we remembered him in the opening, and he's part of a lot of meetings and speeches here.

In the conversations with the Parliamentarians especially on Wednesday, we had a meeting first with the ICANN board and after, with UNCF and we had about 40 minutes between these two meetings and all the Parliamentarians who were first meeting there just stayed in the Ram and we talked to each other.  Some of you were there.  It was a great spontaneous meeting and in that meeting, we developed the idea to call this Parliamentarian outcome Jimmy Schulz Call, and I don't want to read out these five points, you all can read but especially I want three of the recommendations of the Jimmy Schulz call.  We Parliamentarians want to enhance international cooperation and the exchange of the best practices among National Parliaments.  I think it's important and you heard it from the colleagues, I think it's a great picture to see it as let's be Jimmy Schulz going home and tell our people what the IGF is, and to light a fire in our countries, so that we maybe come back with more Parliamentarians to be a part of this multistakeholder meeting every year somewhere in the world.

[ Applause ]

Yeah.

We Parliamentarians want to integrate the multistakeholder approach when passing legislation governing the Internet in our Parliaments and that's also important because we can take a part of this culture here of the IGF back in our Parliaments and our Parliaments are very different.  We have different culture of talking to each other in our Parliaments and we have, let me be, say it friendly, we have free and we have more free Parliaments and free and more free speeches possibilities in the countries so maybe we can take this culture of the IGF back in our countries and back in our Parliaments to enhance the talking about free Internet and the future of the Internet especially.

And lastly and most importantly to Jimmy I know it and most of us who know him personally know that we Parliamentarians want to work towards an informal Parliamentary IGF group and we bring together Parliamentarians from all over the world on future IGFs and I say, we started here at the IGF at that idea and maybe we can enforce it in Poland the next years and that would be a great thing.

And let me respond to one thing:  The IPU and other organizations are often limited to a special count of persons who are in the Delegation.  Here at the IGF, everybody can come here and to every IGF, and it's also in some countries a question that not every Member of Parliament who is part of the opposition has the possibility to come to international conferences.

Maybe it's normal, quite normal here in Germany, not always.  Sometimes it's limited to two Parliamentarians, and then these two Parliamentarians are the two Parliamentarians of the two biggest parties in the Parliament but in other countries it's not normal so it's a good idea to have an open space where Parliamentarians from all over the world, doesn't matter if they're a part of the Government or a part of the opposition, can come here, can come to the IGF meetings in the future and talk about the future and the freedom of the Internet and that's I think that would be Jimmy's idea, that the IGF includes Parliamentarians of all of the parties and all different thinkings and ideas in that multistakeholder process in the IGF.

Thank you especially you Parliamentarians and all the participants at this year's IGF, and I also want to thank the hosts and the organizers, and me as a part of the opposition to the Government, of course, who spent a lot of money to make this possible.  Also to invite the Parliamentarians all over the world, the letter was signed from Wolfgang Schleiper and Jimmy Schulz, the head of the Digital Committee, but all these letters have to be set out and everything needs money as told, and thanks to the Government of Germany to make this also possible and I think with this call we did something great today and I'm Jim sure Jimmy would be pretty proud of us and thank you for being here and see you next time.  Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWÄCHTER:  Thank you and goodbye.  Goodbye and see you next year.

[ Applause ]

>> ANDREA THILO:  Thank you very much.  Thank you all for your long time attention today.

We have a lunch now until 3:00 in the afternoon, and we will be bringing it all together in the form of a heart at 3:00 on this stage, so enjoy the rest of your day.  Thank you very much.