The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> ASTHA KAPOOR: We also have one we're waiting for from Kyoto from the paradigm commission. And I'm from a tech firm based in Bangalore. What we are looking to discuss today is this idea of global south solidarities I know that some of this was discussed earlier at RightsCon as well and we're looking to build on some of that work.
And also discuss issues that are common between different parts of the global south and ask the next set of questions of what these to be done, again I know that this is happened once before so I have updates on that discussion.
Two main ones the first is that data privacy Brasil has advertised for the role of a digital librarian who will work with organisations like all of ours.
To help curate knowledge online. And they will be the single point of contact to help understand what are the issues so if you, for instance, have a question around hey, what is happening with data governance in India then you can pose the question to the additional librarian who will send to you a set of readings the idea is to make sure we're not all recreating the wheel, we're not all, you know, asking the same questions in different kinds of words. And make sure that, you know, we can all have a space where all the different knowledge that we produce can be curated, organized and also disseminated. So, there's been a call for applications and data privacy Brasil and the initiatives are trying to bring that together. The second announcement is that since the Costa Rica event, the, again, Data Privacy Brasil has been in the process of organizing a fund for research initiatives in the global south and that's what I wanted to start off this discussion with is because we have been going back and forth with Rafael and Bruno to understand what this is and what it can do and not do and we'd love to get some thoughts from this group to understand that when we think of research and the global south and if you had a small amount of money I think it's 8,000 dollars, to do a piece of research, what do you think would be a valuable way to apportion that money and we use this question as a way to also uncover what the major issues are that we want to focus on and where we see the conversation moving. Nathan.
>> Nathan: Hi, everyone, I think you can hear me. This is a great opportunity for us to discuss how to engage in a global southern perspective so as she just said we have these initiative on the digital librarian that will play a key role for the ‑‑ these organization of digital information regarding digital rights. And soon maybe we'll have this chosen person that will be this digital librarian and I think it would be interesting to hear from other people. That are here. So we can think on how we start to engage or how to strengthen our engagement between global southern countries and global southern organisations. I'll pass to mic to you Osama.
>> Osama: Hello, my name is Osama from Pakistan. I wanted to talk about internet governance in the global south and I think it really stems from securitization of the internet itself. And I think we really need to pick on a set of principles that the sort of lay the groundwork of okay what, is the purpose of the internet.
And what do we envision? What are the threats that an open internet that we see in the global south right now? There's a lot of investment in surveillance technologies that really undermine the basics of the internet. So, for example, you have throttling ‑‑ internet throttling, internet shutdowns and then there's also the issue of trying to bring in regulations what the companies are doing and imposing those sets of regulation on social media and internet companies that then overall undermines your freedom of expression and privacy rights on the internet. So looking at that sort of, you know, the landscape that we see as we have it today, how ‑‑ as the global south, how do we envision the internet? So are we going to allow big players that have their political issues to overshadow how we look at the internet? So, for example, the Chinese firewall or with the Russia Ukraine invasion we've seen how much of the internet is censored so you can't get information from other countries just because of political conflict that's going on. And because of that we're seeing the borders of the world being reflected on the internet and the whole point of the internet was to connect the world in a way where there are no borders. For me it is a question of how do we get rid of these borders that we are starting to build over the internet and that are really strengthening. So, your experience of using the internet in one country is very dissimilar to the use of the internet in another. And I think that's fundamentally the problem with how a lot of the states are moving towards digital authoritarianism and changing the experience that we have. So I think, you know, keeping these in mind, it'd be useful to go forward and think of how do we strategize and how do we build solidarities where people like us who believe in an open internet can sort of push for the internet to remain so.
>> Would you like to say something? All right. Are you guys participating? Come.
>> ASTHA KAPOOR: It's so interesting. I don't know why we're doing this on the mic now. But what we've been seeing in India as well and I would love to hear what's going on in Brazil is that we see that the internet, as you rightly said is both being used as a way to exclude people so internet shutdowns, but also because there are people who are not connected, et cetera. So in all kinds of ways access is being limited. So you know we have a state of unrest in eastern part of India. The internet has been shut down for many, many days and so that changes the way people access information, that changes the way people understand the situation that changes the way the government or certain groups can control the narrative. Because that organic potentially dangerous leader of the internet is called. What also happens is and again you said this is that digital technologies are also used to create mechanisms of surveillance.
It's a double‑edged sword. In some instances, I was reading somewhere that Syrian refugees coming into the borders of Europe, their phones are actively snatched and broken down because no one want to hear the stories that they have been chronicling. How do we grapple the head around these divergent ideas of the internet and what it can and cannot do and then the second question I guess ‑‑ oh, small disagreement with you is you said people's experiences with the internet are dissimilar which they are in your journey in some ways but they are also similar in the way that harms are perpetuated. Uber drivers across the world are suffering similar kinds of harms it doesn't matter whether you're in Paris or in London. So while I ‑‑ or in India, right in the protests that Uber drivers have been doing have similar language globally. Their ability to clean rights is very different in Europe because of the GDPR than other parts of the world. So there is I think like a lot of significant nuance that is required. The idea of solidarity with home and what experience I think is really important to think about. I don't think that we could have solidarities with some countries in the global south that don't experience internet shutdowns. That is very peculiar to us so I think that the global south experience is extremely valuable but then to nuance that solidarity is also going to be quite interesting and maybe the research work can help do that.
>> Just some issues you brought. In Brasil actually we don't have internet shutdowns. Gratefully but we do have sometimes some apps are blocked for criminal investigation or something like that, you know, it already happened to Telegram and WhatsApp in order to ‑‑ because of some judicial orders to block the app so they can comply to the investigations and open cryptography to have access to messages. So we do have that. And we are in a context in Brazil that we are seeking the platform regulation since January basically. And we ‑‑ it's a comprehensive bill that will try to regulate a platform and it's being a very hard process in Brazil because there are several conflicts of interests between civil society and private sector, for example, that doesn't once ‑‑ the same thing and they have to arrive in a consensus. Which is hard. And there was I think an episode in Brazil where big tax, they invested money and people and stuff to do lobby with ‑‑ or advocacy strategies within the legislatives, the parliamentaries to try to push the regulation build from their side and I think it's worth mention that now ‑‑ the president in Brazil, is seeking to look towards the decent work theme so it's an agenda for Brazil right now especially within the G 20. And platform regulation has a close relationship with this agenda for workers so we are looking to that also in privacy Brazil and try to work with this ‑‑ also with this agenda in the G 20 focus groups that they have. And I think one last thing we should start to discuss is to understand what are the spaces, institutional spaces where we can discuss and address these kind of issues. Because we have some different organisations, such as the ITU or even the IGF or other organisations or other multilateral organisations that share such themes and I think it's worth to understand how can we build collective knowledge to work or to act within these spaces and to understand how can we engage with these spaces I think it's a very interesting question for us to start here.
>> ASTHA KAPOOR: Some new people have walked in which is great. We are talking about what are global south solidarities and what are the institution space to enact these global south solidarities. There's a mic over there. It'd be great if you could introduce yourself.
>> I think some of the platforms that we see in opportunity for, you know, work and collaboration platforms such as, of course, the African Internet Governance Forum but on a global scale for being here as well the IGF but also there are a number of convenings that are happening with us within the African continent such platforms include one that we particularly convene which is called the digital rights and inclusion forum. We've made use of that platform in the past year we did a good collaborative effort with privacy Brazil and we're hoping to continue to engage to share experiences and draw from each other's contexts as we see I think there are a number of commonalities there for us. We've ‑‑ I think, two weeks ago there was another forum for internet freedom in Africa as well which was a good platform as well to be able to engage. And there's always room I think for us to be able to, you know, streamline what are the spaces that we can make the most impact in terms of changing policy and in terms of as well pushing for data governance and for us, what we've seen is useful as well is being able to, you know, put out even joint statements or joint submissions. We've collaborated with organisations as well such as privacy Brazil, Aapti to put forward a response in regards to the GDP process. That's something I will highlight is, you know, as an open sort of, like, remark. Yeah.
>> ASTHA KAPOOR: That's super interesting and important to identify certain opportunities like you brought up the GDC is certainly a big one in which we all have something to say and the process has been quite consultative and you mentioned G 20 and we're rolling off an Indian presidency to a Brazilian one to South Africa. There's a strong troika which can be different leveraged to embed some of these conversations. I know we've been talking about digital public infrastructure and, you know, picks and UPI which is the Indian version of, you know, of a payment protocol that come up all the time. I think it's just the start of D 1 but several day zero panels were talking about technologies developed in the global south and how they can be brought into the world and a foreign alternative to, you know, the ideas of big tech that exist globally. So there's things to chew on. What I would love to move the action into is that I would love to understand if there are best practices of harnessing solidarities that you identified in your work if you think organisations and movements have come together to create institutional financial architectures I guess. And how do we learn from those? I will go to you.
>> Yeah, thank you. As we know, there's some regions that are super, you know, there's a lot more solidarity, so, for example, when we look at the African region in Latin America we see a lot of events and coordination happening. But I think unfortunately in Asia, especially South Asia, a lot of the political issues between the governments don't allow civil society groups to convene locally other than say, in Nepal or Sri Lanka we've had a few convenings but other than that, when you look at the issues if you're talking about India I can replace India and Pakistan and it would be the same issues even when you look at the legislations in Bangladesh and Pakistan they mirror year. With the global network initiative we've seen because the membership base has been growing there's been a lot of space and focus on, you know, especially global south across global south so there's an Africa focal sort of group loosely then there's Latin America and Asia and a lot of types we sit together to discuss these things so that's super key and important. And then of course at RightsCon and IGF there's often convening such as the one we're having but we also need to look at the issues with it. Take today, for example, IGF, one of our panelists was not allowed in the country because of immigration issues then we look at the timing. It's 8:30 a.m. here which means in most of the countries that we come from, it's either, you know, 4 a.m. So crack of dawn. So how do you organize a session for a region without keeping into account the time area they're in.
So barriers need to be looked at and critiqued in order for us to go forward in a way that's productive. And then we also need to look at issues of access so how many people are voice there's the global south are able to become a part of conversations such as these? You know, it takes a lot of privilege to be able to travel to conferences and make submissions, get the visas in time, get your bookings, et cetera, and then online participation. There's, you know, restrictions and that as well so I think the approach has to be holistic so that it's representative. But at the same time, I think it's important that we also start to not let states lead these discussions. It needs to be a multistakeholder approach so for looking at what states are doing a lot of it is oppressive towards the majority of the populations and I think civil society needs to adopt a similar language to be able to deal with states and to be able to negotiate. So that power can come from solidarity and I think that's what we really need to crack.
>> ASTHA KAPOOR: Perfect thank you for saying that both from the structural as well as the functional issues. This is a networking session, so you don't really have to listen to us. If you guys could come up front, that will be amazing. We'll hand you a mic to introduce yourselves. Not to put everyone on the spot but that would be great if we put you on the front. I know this slot is early so maybe they'll give us a bit of time to get warmed up and stay in the room. So we're just trying to understand both commonalities, differences and how we can mobilize for action in the context of the global south. We have with us Data Privacy Brasil, I'm from the Aapti Institution, Bolo Bhi from Pakistan and we are looking to see what we have on our journal.
They have a digital librarian who will hold all this knowledge there the global south and make sure we can hear about it. Reach out to this person and say hey, what's going on in this world and they can send us reading materials. They're also launching a fund to do research on some of these questions and that's what we're also trying to understand that we're both ‑‑ what kind of problems do we want to uncover and then also how do we want to come together and the harsh realities of the fact that we can't travel very easily. So, yeah, so just wanted to pass the mic around. Please introduce yourself, explain your anxieties.
>> Good morning. I am from Bangladesh. I am a senior lecture in law. And human rights you can say. So I think I'll just enter into the room and try to understand what you are actually trying to say but access to knowledge is one of the problems we have been facing in my country particularly as a law professor in Bangladesh.
And I see online resources, for example, the research papers are not accessible to them and they were burned by the firewalls. And there's a site hub which I frequently use and I find it's quite useful and thanks to that lady who has actually brought it in for us but what about sharing the knowledge? I mean, how does the knowledge ‑‑ in the north and south be alleviated? I don't know any specific concern here to learn from everyone, from you. Thank you very much.
>> Hello, everyone, I am Fernando from Brasil. I am one of the directors at the lab.
And we are close to Data Privacy Brasil so I will be there the next conference in November.
And I am here meet you better and act change more about global south and the challenges that we are facing in the ‑‑ at this moment. So, nice to see ‑‑ nice to see you all.
>> My name is amici. I work with energy and most of the time I'm working for a start‑up and there's a start‑up providing primary information from all over the world.
So, we have more than one thousand associates. We are collecting actually the information, the primary information about lots of social issues. And then it's because we need to ‑‑ we think that everyone in the world, all people need to master have the information to think by themselves, that they have the real democracy. And we are trying to have ‑‑ to create a platform of people, sorry, I would like to ask the question about the Brasil, you talked about that you, I'm sorry, what was your name? Sorry. You said that it was difficult to have the consistence, to have the platform, to create the platform between civil society onto private sectors and I think you needed to manage. So I would like to know what was really the difficulty that you thought ‑‑ that you felt and how you managed to build.
>> Actually I didn't work with specifically with the legislative process related to the platform regulation but what we could see in the Brazilian case was that there are very high conflict of interest between big techs or other platforms from Brazil. For example, we have a very big delivery platform in Brazil called iFood. That has a close relationship with the workers movement. What the ‑‑ the demand from the platforms. We have is situation in which there are very distinct interests that they ‑‑ might have to be handled. So we can built a comprehensive and a good regulation for platforms but this was the scenario in general. A very strict and high conflict of interest between several societal sectors, for example, from civil society or private sector and there were interests from government agents too. So there is this chaotic scenario to try to build the regulation. I would like to just add one thing that you said related to barriers. To trying to engage in organisations or something like that. We'll be launching on Friday morning report. Regarding ‑‑ it's called voices from global south and why we interviewed some activists from global south to understand what are the institutional spaces that they are willing to engage or comprehend as fruitful spaces for engagement for a global south organization and IGF was one of the spaces but they also highlighted some issues related to financial support, to attend these conferences, because most of them are held in the global north so there is this travelling issue. Or visa issues that might happen so in this report we were able to gather all this information through interviews. We chartered these spaces and what are the pros and cons of each one and how to engage in these spaces to on Friday morning on the human rights and standards panel, we will be launching the report and we will be available in English so I think it'll be more accessible for most of the people, thank you.
>> ASTHA KAPOOR: Thank you, you want to comment?
>> From our own experience in engage with the private sector it's a thing we've tried to achieve in terms of a good working model of engaging with the private sector. When we try to engage they are usually reluctant is a good word to use here to be actually on the table, be in the room for us to have a conversation around the issues that need to be addressed especially when we're looking at policy and how policy needs to be developed in a way that best suits fundamental rights and freedoms. And what we've ‑‑ found to be more useful is to, you know, sort of like, have closed door meetings with a few actors but also we've stepped up to invite the private sector to be involved in the regional convenings that we host, and we can safely say we've got a few probably a couple of, you know, big companies that, you know, supportive in terms of showing up and being part of this conversation but I think definitely we share I think the same sentiments that have been already raised here that it's a bit tricky sometimes. Maybe perhaps being an issue of business expediency and trying to operate.
And trying to make sure that they're aligned with the government. But we continue to push back and call for even transparency with regards to how the private sector engages with the government.
And we found that very useful but also just, you know, touching on the earlier conversation around, you know, the discrimination, what I call the discriminatory practices that push away certain groups of people particularly from the global south to participate in certain platforms that ideally would be useful and meaningful in regarding the global south this is something we experienced at RightsCon and we are here at the global IGF and things already mentioned are things that cannot be here because of some of the things that we're discussing so how do we go forward and ensure that whatever processes that we're discussing is being useful and meaningful. I mean platforms that are actually accessible to everyone so that we are able to bring our voices together. That being said, looking at the financial aspect of things, that's another form of exclusion because what we are saying is we want to be able to form, you know, critical mass or a critical movement that, you know, pushes back against the violations that we're seeing, different countries within the global south and how can we become more and more efficient together because I think definitely what we've been doing so far together I think it's showing that there is definitely force and there's definitely strength in, you know, in achieving what we want to achieve as a global south because we understand our experiences better. We've got lessons that we can share with each other. And definitely we can leverage on our expertise so that we're able to do great things together. Why do I say that? I think definitely there's something that you've already mentioned about, you know, the research element of things where we say we can pull together, you know, the great work that we've done and through that research are able to actually map if there are any, you know, any golden threads that we can pick out from there and draw learnings and be able to make critical recommendations learn from Latin American, what's happening there, bring it into the context perhaps of southern African jurisdictions and be able to apply that and shape what we want to shape and apart from research and that knowledge base that we're trying to, you know, put together, we also are being able to sort of like, see how we can continue to elevate even growing organisations on the ‑‑ not just on the continent but within the global south. To be able to grow in the digital right space and having a solid fund that we're able to, you know, be able to assist those worth coming up. I think it's something going towards what we want to see. The environment that we want to see and internet governance that we want to see within the global south so that we're able to sort of make steps towards overcoming some of our barriers and the things that we're facing every day.
>> BOLO BHI: Sure, yeah, you spoke about your engagement with the private sector and our experience in Pakistan when there's a convergence we work together quite well, so, for example when the state's trying to bring in new legislative proposals that obviously do not suit either civil society or companies, so there's a lot of solidarity with the companies as weird as it sounds and I think that's a good model to also look at because sometimes when private sector and civil society joins forces and the state has to backtrack a bit. So that's something I wanted to touch upon. But overall, what it sounds like is we have good research. We have good ideas and they're all coming together which is very, very encouraging. So I'm very glad that Paradigm and the Brazilian organisations, organisations from India are getting together and I think this is the sort of regional solidarities and conversations that need to be built on. What we need to focus on now is how we can use this research for advocacy and how can the advocacy be most effective knowing what we have and using what we know. How do we push this forward? And I think just coming up with, like, a joint advocacy would be really, really amazing. Where we have the research, you know, that you spoke about where the global south activists are talking about, okay, these are the issues so what next.
And I think also sort of excites me because it shows that we have some backing of, you know, knowledge and now we're moving forward as to how to communicate with states and I think that is really what the focus needs to be on.
>> ASTHA KAPOOR: Absolutely thank you so much. There are so many different points of convergence and also now clear strategies to move from research, well, first from making knowledge accessible, creating new knowledge and then figuring out how to expand and disseminate that knowledge to a joined advocacy agenda and I agree, I think sometimes the idea of technology is so interesting that you make strange bedfellows. Sometimes you're aligning with the private sector and sometimes with the state.
And I think flexibility, nimbleness and the commitment to, civil society is really, really critical. I want to move to the online attendees. I know it's been a long runway to get there. But I wanted to go to the online moderator Jacqueline to see if she might be able to take a few questions and comments?
>> JAQUELINE PIGATTO: Hi, everyone, I'm sorry, I'm not able to turn on my camera today.
But we have no questions or comments yet. I would just like to thank everyone who is in the room. This has been a very interesting session and also I would like to comment on data privacy Brasil about this contribution that we made at the beginning of this year to the global judicial compact of the U.N. we made this contribution with civil society entities from India, with the Aapti Institute, with the paradigm initiative and also with partners from Latin America so I think this was a huge step for us in this global south solidarity that we are discussing and I totally agree with the last speaker regarding the participation that we must have on advocacy especially in relation with government representatives because we are seeing that a lot of this processes and issues that you guys brought today like surveillance, internet shutdowns, censorship, these are being mostly discussed in multilateral spaces like we have this committee on cybercrime happening at the U.N. and we have so little few spaces for civil society to participate so I think that's very far for us to contribute together like we did. And still try to engage but looking at the representatives from our governments to try to engage more effective in this process. So that's my comment for now.
>> ASTHA KAPOOR: Great. Thanks so much Jacqueline and everyone else online. We have a little Slack channel to continue this conversation. Write to one of us and we'll add you as I mentioned earlier the call for applications for the additional librarian for this global south solidarities is already out.
And we're in the process of reviewing those resumes and making sure that we have one person who we can all go to to ask all our deep questions around where is this in the digital universe? And somebody who is going to curate all our work and make sure things are organized and do the hard work that librarians don't the second part of this is the idea of the fund which I think many interesting opportunities in that have come up. What we're also going to do is try to map where similar initiatives are. Because based on this conversation we learned there are indeed solidarities and errors being done across the world to bring different types of organisations in the global south and on around different issues. Together. So, you know, we're going to do a little bit of that landscape and then come back to this group with a clear agenda. I know that the fund will be launched and announced in November in Brazil which is lovely but, yeah, and thank you so much for being here. And for engaging in this very early morning conversation. We will see you guys over the course of the next few days and hopefully to keep chatting about this. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: (Applause).