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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>> DANIEL O'MALEY: We should go ahead and get started. We only have an hour.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: Okay. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. And good morning to those joining us online. Thanks very much for participating. I'm sure from sometimes inconvenient hours of the day and night.
I'm Nick Benequista the Senior Director at the Center for International Media Assistance at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, D.C. It is my pleasure to be the moderator today for the session entitled Advocacy to Action: Engaging Policymakers on Digital Rights.
This session is brought to you through a partnership between the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the Centre for Private Enterprise (CIPE).
Over the past six years or so our three organisations have hosted what we call the open Internet leaders fellowship. Forty-one young leaders have passed through this programme, including one of our Panelists who is a current Fellow.
And this programme has provided mentorship and networking opportunities for young activists to engage here at the IGF, Rights Con, globally in multistakeholder discussions and dialogues, trying to ensure that the Internet remains open, interoperable and accessible.
Those Fellows work on a range of issues from data privacy, information integrity, digital economy, civic engagement, though all of them share an interest in protecting democratic norms and values through their work.
So in our small way this programme has tried to fill these multistakeholder discussions with young global activists and it has been a real pleasure to be a part of this and to get to know a generation of activists from around the world.
So I think one of the big takeaways from the experience of working with these young activists has been a bit of a jarring juxtaposition between the existence of multistakeholder dialogue at the global level and the sometimes absence of those multistakeholder spaces at the national level.
Now, the record is mixed, but often I think the young leaders find it disappointing to return home an not have the opportunity to engage on these issues.
Nowhere, I think, is that absence of multistakeholderism more acutely felt than around Parliaments and national Assembly and Congresses, where a raft of legislation around the world is now being developed to govern the Internet and the digital sphere.
And the legislation, you know, there have been nearly 30 countries, according to Freedom House, that have made improvements legislatively in the area of Internet freedom and governance. Those are the exception. The great majority of laws and regulations coming on to the book are not harmonised with international norms and regulations and are doing some damage to freedom.
There is an urgency to engage with parliamentarians. In some cases, of course, those restrictive laws are done intentionally, but not always. So that the engagement with parliamentarians, building knowledge and multistakeholder engagement has the real potential to prevent harms from being done and potentially to help improve the openness and freedom on the Internet.
So this is a realisation that I think we all share at the IGF, the parliamentary stream here is just two years old and we are hoping today, we've brought together an excellent panel of really talented activists who have some real experience working with parliamentarians.
The Honorable Sarah Opendi send her apologies, from Uganda, she has not been able to make it this morning. There is a slim chance she still might. The three Panelists that we have here today will more than, have more than enough experience to get us started on the conversation to how effectively to build multistakeholderism with parliamentarians.
My Panelists, to my right Fernanda Martins, the Director of InternetLab with a degree in anthropology, Ph.D. student in social sciences at the State University of Campinas, a researcher on many projects around gender issues and consultant for organisations such as UNICEF.
Camilo Alfredo Arratia is a digital specialist at Internet Bolivia and Open Internet for Democracy Leader, one of the Fellows I was mentioning. He specializes in global digital inclusion, gender, development studies, he's a former researcher at the government arm, Global Swede 2021 awardee and consultant from Bolivia.
And Liza Garcia, from Media Alternatives in the Philippines, specializes in women rights and ICT. Liza is a board member for the Centre for Migrant Advocacy. She may be known to many of new the IGF community as former co-moderator of the Dynamic Coalition on gender.
Welcome, guys.
Let me start with at the far right with you, Liza. So the digital sphere in the Philippines is governed by a number of laws including the 2012 Cybercrime Prevention Act, the Privacy Act, 2022, the SIM Card Registration Act which was somewhat controversial.
So let's start off with the lessons you can share from Civil Society efforts in your country to ensure that digital rights are rights in the digital realm of respected in the implementation of these laws.
How do you protect human rights when legislation is being enacted?
>> LIZA GARCIA: Thanks, Nick. We all have our share, of course, in making sure that rights are respected in our own respective countries. In the case of our organisation, what we do is look at the digital rights, see how existing laws are proposed, bills affect or may affect our rights as citizens. From there we come up with interventions. If it comes to law, there are several layers of intervention where we can somehow impact the legislation. When a bill is being deliberated, then what we can do is actually come up with a position paper, participate in Committee heres, public hearings being conducted. If the law has already been passed, then there is still a chance to intervene. That is with the drafting of the implementing rules and regulations.
Once it is already a law and it is implemented, there is the monitoring of the law for its proper implementation.
Of course, there are also, aside from the laws being passed there are also policies emanating from other government agencies. For example, in the case of the Philippines, with the, they were coming up with the national cybersecurity plan. Government could always have this consultation with different stakeholders. Since it is also part of the -- the issue is also something that we look into, then we make sure that we are invited and that our voice is heard.
When it comes to certain, especially in looking at certain provisions in these plans.
Yeah. What else? We as a Civil Society organisation, we have been monitoring, actually, and documenting cases of digital rights, especially the violations. For instance, since 2012 we have been documenting cases of online gender-based violence in the country. Currently we are also monitoring developments in the SIM card registration which you mentioned which was just passed.
There is also the national ID system. We are looking at how our rights are affected by the passage of these laws.
Since we have been monitoring them, we have cases, then we have evidence also when we have dialogues and engagements with parliamentarians or, you know, policymakers, then we have some evidence in our hands that hey, you know, this is happening. Can we do something about this?
Those are some of the things that we do. But at the same time it is not just with legislators, with policymakers, we make sure that citizens also know their rights. That they are aware of the even the digital laws being passed and how it would impact them.
We also from time to time go to communities and have dialogues with them, conduct workshops so they know what the laws are and how this may or how these are affecting them as well. Yes.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: That's terrific. I mean, it sound like you are really taking advantage of every entry point that exists within the rules and regulations for participation in the policy process as well as gathering the evidence and holding the discussions to keep an eye on how those policies are being implemented. The consequences of those policies. That sounds like a holistic approach.
You hadn't mentioned the agenda setting aspects of policymaking. One quick follow-up. In terms of who is deciding what pieces of legislation, what issues get legislated and regulated, any experience on getting Civil Society to build the agenda? The legislative agenda itself?
>> LIZA GARCIA: In our case our focus is more on gender and ICT and data protection. We mostly intervene in cases like that.
Of course, when it comes to, yeah, so we intervene in cases like that and we have also -- we also consult with our other partners. They may not be focused on digital rights per se, but, you know, they are working on specific issues that are, that may be impacted by these laws. We work with them as law, consult with them and come up with an agenda.
For instance when we were looking at the SIM card legislation, it has been there since 2014, I think. We were looking at it already. By 2018 I think we came up with a briefing paper. My colleagues from the privacy programme are here. We came up with a paper, it was published, distributed to even the legislators, to some other groups. And yeah, every Congress there is always someone who proposes that bill. It is always there.
I remember in the previous administration it was about to be passed, both houses of Congress already. Approved the bill. So it was just for the signature of the President.
But what we did in Civil Society is we had a discussion amongst ourselves. Are we okay with this bill? What do we do? We came up with a statement. I think there were three of us. They came up with, they were doing an online campaign. One group was doing an online campaign. We came up with a statement and we asked other organisations, partner organisations if they agree with the bill and if not, there is this statement. Maybe you can sign on it.
At the last minute we even submitted a letter to the President who vetoed the SIM card legislation act.
Fortunately during that time, it was vetoed by the President. We were surprised by that small win.
However, of course, things changed during the next administration. It was the first piece of legislation that was passed into law by this current administration.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: Thanks very much, Liza, that's great. You don't win every battle, but you gain strength. Every time you engage in some parliamentary debate I'm sure the networks grow stronger and stronger.
Sounds like a terrific approach that you guys are taking.
Fernanda from InternetLab, so Brazil is known for its experiments in participatory budgeting and governance, in the context of Internet Governance, platform regulation, curious to know if you are seeing the same level of innovation in terms of participatory multistakeholder policymaking.
So how are parliamentarians in your country engaging in these issues? And are diverse perspectives in particular finding their way into the debates?
>> FERNANDA KALIANNY MARTINS: Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Nick, for the invitation and for the question.
It is really a pleasure to be here discussing this theme with you.
Related to Brazil, to be honest, out of Brazil is known for social participation in discussions and related to Internet Governance. When we started this new governance, it was a little frustrating for the Civil Society organisations because in comparison with the Internet governance in 2014, when we had really participation of academia, Civil Society organisations and legislative and executive members, now the context is so different because we had far right governments in the last four years and when Lula assumed the new presidency, we had the pressure of society, we have the pressure of federals, we have the pressure of -- with this context, with the sense of an emergence, it is not the same process. So we have the bill, 2630, discussing the last three years. And now with the new federal government, we are trying to approve this law. This law is fruit of the Civil Society organisation work in the last three years, combating the Bolsinaro government.
It is a good law with some problems, but we don't have the surety that this law will be approved. So it is interesting to think how in Brazil the discussion related to platform regulation can affect all society.
The importance of this discussion now becomes a kind of bargaining chip with the Congress. So when far right Congress, men decide to vote on things related to abortion, for example, or a bill that we were talking about digital people, the President of the chamber said no. If you put this in it, we will vote 2630. So it is a movement so complex because we had in the beginning of the year they attempted the occupation of Brasilia and after that some attacks against public schools in Brazil.
All these discussions is related to all society, not more the experts of the digital rights, as in the case of Marko civil society Internet.
So in this context I think it is important to say that we don't have government consulting Civil Society as a at the were in the past. I think it is an important thing to pressure the government. And when we leave this process to the left government, we have people from Civil Society organisations with the government, to the government. And it is complex because we know these people. We know that they have good intentions and that at the same time we know the complexity of the political structure. So it is a really difficult moment, but a moment which we can hope.
So it is hard, but not too hard as in the last four years.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: Great. Thanks a lot, Fernanda. Three years, that's a lot of work, it sounds like. Can you just, one quick follow-on question. The three years that you put into bringing Civil Society together, can you just say a few words about the scope and scale of that effort? Do you have to travel around the country? Is it a matter of meetings and the capital or a few other cities?
How do you do the work of getting diverse views together on this 2630 bill?
>> FERNANDA KALIANNY MARTINS: Sure. So at InternetLab we are working with some things related to Internet Governance since the last nine years. So when the discussion started we are working together with the coalition of aging, the coalition that has more than 50 organisations in Brazil, in all country.
There we have the movement to try to understand and follow all movements in different aspects of the Congress. And the discussion step-by-step of these laws, of these bills, are discussed. In the case of platforms, regulations, it is important to highlight the role of the federal bill, Luiz da Silva. He is the Congressman of the Left Party. And in his role in this discussion, it was so important to have a parliamentary that is involved with the discussion. And it is not common. We have now the discussion related to intelligence, artificial intelligence regulation in Brazil. And we realised that it is not easy to parliamentarians to understand what is happening, what is the impact of these kinds of regulations.
Because of that, I think the main problem in this discussion, it is okay, the government is aware of the emergence, but we don't -- we can't think just in terms of emergencies. We need to think of the future and the flexibility of this law, this kind of law we need to have.
So I think the point is ten years after Marco approval. We know that self-regulation is not working. And I don't know, in five years we might be saying that the state's regulation was not sufficient. So the challenge for me is how we can learn from what has happened in the last ten years and not repeat the wrongs that we committed in this process.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: That's terrific, Fernanda. I mean, it highlights an important point of, I think engagement for most Civil Society organisations with Parliaments and policy processes tends to start out quite reactionary. It sound like over the last decade you are beginning to develop the networks and capacities to think proactively about that agenda which is fortunate. I think that's probably a privileged position relative to others.
You mentioned an important point which is a great segue to this introduction. You mentioned the importance of having an ally in Parliament at the beginning of the discussions around the misinformation law.
And we are in fact joined fortunately by the Honorable Sarah Opendi to my left here, an Executive Committee member of the African Parliamentary Committee on Governance, APNIC. She is the Executive Committee member on a Committee that is trying to build a Committee of parliamentarians who can champion these policies across the continent. She is a Deputy Minister, Chairperson at the Uganda Parliamentary Association and prior to this she was state Minister for health, for which she received a global leadership award. So I'm so glad you could join us.
Because it is allies in Parliaments willing to work with civil society. Are too rare indeed. So a question for you, Honorable Opendi. We have seen national policymakers exerting growing influence over the Internet and digital governance. You know, policymakers, of course, do represent the public and are held accountable through electoral means. But those forms of accountability are still imperfect in many, in all countries around the world.
It is especially imperfect on an issue such as this which doesn't have a ton of public engagement. So there is a risk, I think, that policymakers may not be serving the public interest in terms of their engagement on these issues. They might be serving other interests, narrow interests, including personal interests.
So what is your advice and thoughts on how to ensure that policymakers in this area are serving the public interest through their work?
>> SARAH OPENDI: Thank you very much, and thank you for that introduction.
I bring you all greetings from Uganda, the Pearl of Africa, and thank you for inviting me to this panel.
I came in when my colleague was speaking about the Civil Society and how it is important for them to engage with members of Parliament. We must agree that as Parliament we play a central role. Between the public, we are than between the public and the executive. And our role as members of Parliament is certainly to make laws, legislative function, but also the function of representation.
And in as much as possible we must be able to speak and represent the views of the public.
But the subject that we are discussing, this digital space, technology is something that we all know that it is important. However, not much emphasis has been made in even creating awareness among members of Parliament on technical matters.
So it is very important since we have the Civil Society, the NGOs, to first and for most as much as possible give the members of Parliament, arm them with the relevant information, the relevant skills so that they can be able then to represent the public interests better.
I have said, we are serving personal interests, narrow interests. True, because even us as members of Parliament, there is a bit of lack of information. Other than us talking about misinformation and disinformation, when it comes to the technical details about Internet and Internet Governance as a whole, we have very few people who can speak up on that matter.
So this is why we came up with the African parliamentary network on Internet Governance so that we can bring together like-minded people to champion the issues of Internet Governance at the country level.
Actually as we speak now, in my country although we have the ICT, the Internet communications technology Committee within Parliament, their role is mainly to oversee, oversight over the government programmes and government policies. But that is not all. We need to engage in advocacy. We need to see the challenges that the population is facing. We need to ensure that Internet is affordable. We need to ensure that even as we speak now in my country, only about 29 percent of the people have access to Internet.
So we need to ensure that when we are even appropriating funds we appropriate adequate funds so that the entire country can be covered. We have areas where we don't have electricity as we speak now. And we have areas where the telecom companies have not been able to invest in.
So not the entire country is covered. There are areas you go to and you are off Internet. So these are some of the things that legislators must do. Appropriate funds, first of all recognize the importance of this digital economy, and know that it has multiple economic benefits to the entire population if they are all connected.
So we also must ensure that as part of the education curriculum this whole technology ICT is told to the children. That is also another challenge. We are a population that are a bit illiterate. We have people with smartphones and they can't use them.
There is a lot of work that still needs to be done in terms of digital literacy. And of course, engagement of the Civil Society, engagement of the government are all important. Other than just legislation, there is a lot that we have to do as members of Parliament. Thank you very much.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm so glad you have been able to join us.
And I have some follow-on questions. We are going to come back to you for sure. I want to turn to Camilo for a moment. He joins us from Bolivia, Internet Bolivia. As I said he's an Open Internet for Democracy Fellow and I think Camilo has an interesting perspective to add. We have been talking primarily about legislation and policy at the national level, but Camilo has taken a different approach, at the municipal level. You don't often think of Internet and digital governance at the municipal level.
You have a strong view on this. Can you explain why the municipality is a good place to engage in Bolivia? It is on data privacy you are working O can you say a few things.
>> CAMILO ALFREDO ARRATIA: Thank you, Nick. Thank you, everyone, for coming. Actually I have been working with Internet Bolivia Internet foundation which is working really well at the municipality levels, local levels. There is no regulation for processing of personal data in Bolivia. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be policies about that at the local levels, right?
We have really good news. I think we have, for instance, in a small municipality in Bolivia, recently they have a policy with digitalisation and data management, for example. And that makes me think that how you can really work in the local level, right?
And then I decide to focus on why. I think I have some reasonable reasons. I think working in the municipality level, the local levels have a very direct and deep understanding of what are the local needs in the communities because they are close to the people. They can work with them. And in these terms after the pandemics and everything we saw in the last years, the digital access, data protection, the Internet usage, gender violence approach have very important things, right? And in the local levels you can also work with them.
Another thing is maybe in some local regulations they can be more faster and more effective because sometimes in the, from a national perspective, for example, there is a lot of more bureaucracy. You have many steps to do it. In local levels you can do a more effective and faster approach and less bureaucratic. And in that sense, the local policy can be even better than the national level, right?
And sometimes I think that would be really easy for the local level to ensure really nice policies in that sense.
Also I think that I have another reason that is about innovation and digital, in this topic at least. I think it provides to be like a pilot. For example, as I mentioned in Coroico, they have the digitalisation of the legislation. After it happened, many other municipalities want the same. They contact Internet Bolivia and want to know what it is about, why they have it. It is impossible to have at the local level, we don't have to wait for the national level. That is a good entry point. They are realising they can do some policy in digital rights from the local perspective. It is possible, right?
Also I think I was thinking about how we have these local digital rights regulations can empower actually some local leaders also because sometimes the local leaders are young usually. Because in the national policymakers usually are not that young as the local policymakers. So these local policymakers, if they are young and engaged in the digital topics, actually they are very empowering about these topics. I think that's very interesting.
Taking again the example of Coroico, the mayor is a woman and she is 30 years old. She is really young and into these digital topics.
I think it was a nice way for empowering her to know about this topic and to talk about that and it was really nice policy.
Now, also I think that it is really, the most important thing can be like the community involvement because I used to criticize a lot some local governments because sometimes like the local representatives in the national policymaking Assemblies, for instance, they usually don't live in the communities anymore. They just decide to move to the big cities and make local policies for them, but from big cities. They don't live in the local cities anymore.
If I am a policymaker, for instance, in La Paz, for example, from a small town but they decide to move to the big city La Paz but they are not engaged in the local municipality, I think that doesn't work. That's why they don't do very good policies in that term.
When you work in the municipality level from the local level, the people are living there, they are with them every day. They can realise what they can do. In that terms I think it is very interesting to work from the municipality local level point.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: That's great. I will go back to the Honorable Ms. Opendi to react to what you said but a quick follow-on question for you.
It seems to me you probably learned a lot about how, what makes people care about digital policy issues. Why, you know, with so many pressing issues in the local community, what convinces people that data privacy of all things is something important?
>> CAMILO ALFREDO ARRATIA: When we were working with internet Bolivia in these local communities, we liked to do some workshops. That is very important because if the people from the communities know about what we are going to do, I think it is a nice entry point to make them like these kind of policies about digital governance. Sometimes people from like small communities, they thought this is really a huge and big issue. But sometimes when you teach them and when they are engaged with the workshops and we try to show them how it should improve, I think they are more engaged.
I like, for example, some Committees we are working for and we are used -- I used to travel also within Bolivia since I work for Internet Bolivia. In Villa Montes, it is a nice community. You can work with these -- as soon as we arrive to Villa Montes they know we are from Internet Bolivia and they approach us and they want workshops. It is nice. We are not imposing, they are asking us to engage in these knowledge projects.
In the communities, the policymakers come, the legislators come and that is really interesting.
And also I think it is very important also that we have, for example, in internet Bolivia, we have a nice organisation partner and she works in Coroico or in Villa Montes all the time and we are present there. It is important that not to be a NGO that come for two or three issues, they know this is not a guy who comes for one or two weeks, three days to do some observation work. They know what we need. That is not a good entry point.
If you come every week or live in the community or you work in different other topics, they will engage with the topics we want. That happened in Coroico, I realised that people are eager to these topics about the digital violence, for example, because we are constantly traveling there and we also helped them with other kinds of topics like youth empowerment, for example. It is really interesting.
Now in Villa Montes in Bolivia, they are in small communities but working in regulation for youth, for example. But they are putting in these youth policies, like the digital perspective because they are young. We are living in a digital era. Now is like the digital perspective is going to be in these regulations and policies.
It doesn't have to be digital regulation. It can be a youth empowerment regulation with youth perspective.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: Thanks a lot, Camilo.
I have one last question for you, Honorable Opendi and I will open up the floor for your questions. Those of us who are sitting behind, please come join the table. It is a workshop. At least where we can see you in case you have a question. Yes, plenty of chairs over here.
So we have heard from the other Panelists, you know, different approaches to engaging with policymakers in the Philippines, taking advantage of the kind of formal structures of participation that the national Assembly there offers for participation. This municipal level engagement that Camilo was describing. And in the case of Brazil, building a strong network of Civil Society organisations in conjunction with allies in the Parliament and in the government over the course of many years to actually be proactively put forward ideas for policy.
I think a lot of the folks here are probably asking themselves: What is the best strategy? I mean, I know it is contextual and it will vary. But what advice do you have for folks on how to think about how to start engaging with policymakers? Bottom up? Start here in this space and bring more parliamentarians? Build more networks? There are many options but what do you think works?
>> SARAH OPENDI: In my view, the way we are structured in my country, in Uganda, is that we have a national Parliament, members of Parliament are elected from the grassroots. But also at local government level we have elected leaders. At the district level and the subcountry level.
But also aware that connectivity is still law and access to Internet is limited. As I said, only 29 percent of the population currently have full access to Internet.
The best way is to engage Members of Parliament. It should be a top-bottom approach. And why I'm saying that is because when you move to the local government level while at the national level we have the ICT Committee, that does oversight over issues of Internet, when you get down to the local government level that kind of Committee is missing. Therefore, it is the members of Parliament who should be the link to the lower local governments.
That's why I'm opting for the top-bottom approach. Also as I did indicate, awareness campaign among members of Parliament is key. Also arming the Members of Parliament with key information is also very important.
We are now talking here about issues of artificial intelligence other than a few members of Parliament reading about it.
I'm not sure that we are even one-third that knows the details about the challenges and the benefits of artificial intelligence. So it is important for the Civil Society organisations, aware that they are also grassroots and they pick views from the grassroots. It is important that they pick whatever information they have and all those other technical information and bring it to the Members of Parliament. And then we can be able to champion this.
But also the other thing is to ensure that at the parliamentary level, actually as we speak now, I am trying to create a parliamentary network on the Internet Governance Forum, a Parliamentary Forum on Internet Governance so that we can have this, away from the ICT Committee, we need to have Members of Parliament who can be champions on issues of Internet Governance.
So this to me is the way to go because then when you have this Forum, which is not the official parliamentary Forum, then we can be able to handle issues of advocacy and deal freely with Civil Society organisations.
That is to me the way to go. Thank you very much.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: That's great. That Forum, a little bit separated from the official policymaking bodies gives the freedom --
>> SARAH OPENDI: Yes, it is away from the usual Committees because their work is structured in a certain way.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: That's a terrific piece of advice. Great.
I would like to open up the floor.
Questions? Also experiences. If you have some lessons learned? Down at the end? Is there a microphone? Is there a microphone in front of you there? I think the camera, they probably prefer that you grab the microphone and be at the table.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. Thank you very much. This is Herman Lopez from the group of -- the Board the Internet Society. Thank you for your explanations. It is great to see different perspectives from the Global South on how to coordinate between a more local level and more national level.
I wanted to ask the Panelist speakers, maybe what, like practical advice should we take when we do that coordination? Particularly I work in many advocacy issues with the Colombian Congress but it is difficult to translate discussions happening in the capital city, Bogota, to other places.
I would like to know in your own experience how you are able to do that. Because sometimes what happens is issues get lost in translation. When they are coming from the local level to the national level, sometimes issues end up changing a lot. But also the other way around. When the government from the national level is trying to do things in the local level, it also changes.
What can we do to preserve the message and preserve the idea that was originally intended? Thank you very much.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: Great. I will take another couple of questions. Yes? Go ahead. Clare?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you so much for the reflections there. I will come in and share an experience from our end. My name is Claire -- I work for the Paradigm Initiative working across Africa promoting digital rights and inclusion. A few years back what we did was we came up with a draft digital rights bill which we introduced within the Nigerian Parliament. We were able to collaborate with some parliamentarians who were able to push forward that digital rights bill.
Unfortunately after, with Parliament, it then was not assented to by the President. I'm curious in terms of how we can collaborate in terms of effective, I don't want to use the word lobbying, but effective pushing for in-laws to be enacted and how that process works. I will also just possibly direct this question to the Honorable Minister, Honorable member of Parliament from Uganda in terms of what the recommendation would be with regard to how we can effectively see the enactment of digital rights enabling legislation in view of that.
Also in other jurisdiction that is we work with in, we have noted as well we have a challenge where we might engage with Members of Parliament, but then what happens is that when a political party has a certain view on something, no matter how much you engage with a member of Parliament, the outcome of that possible collaboration with that member of Parliament might be futile. At the end of the day, even if you sort of in principle agree on what needs to happen with regard to policy, the push-back comes from the political parties that the Members of Parliament come from.
What would be the way forward in that respect?
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: Great. Thanks, Clare, go ahead and introduce yourself.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you, my name is Clare from Uganda. And it is good to hear from the Honorable Minister from Motherland.
Supplementary to what she mentioned about parliamentary forums, I'm really glad she mentioned that they are planning to set up a parliamentary Forum. From experience on advocacy on different issues, parliamentary forums have been very key in educating members of Parliament on key issues, especially but also to help build a group of champions on key issues.
So it is a good thing to hear that they are planning to come up with a parliamentary Forum on Internet issues.
I'm curious, what steps, how far have you gone in reaching that forum.
Also to pick on lessons from my engagement with the Uganda media sector Working Group which is a coalition of stakeholders from the media industry, academia, governments, the media Council and the Ministry of ICT, what we have been doing is to organise sessions where we educate people on different laws that have been passed, even laws that we don't agree with but to sort of like create awareness, create messages and breakdown themes to help people understand them.
So it would be nice to know how far the parliamentary forum setting up process has gone so that we can see how to collaborate and see how to work with the Members of Parliament.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: Thanks, Clare. I want to go back to the Panelists now. There is the mer Han's question about the local and national level. From Nigeria, what happens, how do you do lobbies, what happens when it gets politicised, and Clare, how is this parliamentary Committee -- sorry, this parliamentary forum developing?
So I know many -- yeah, do you want to start with the responses there? And then you guys as well?
>> SARAH OPENDI: Thank you very much. Maybe I will begin with the parliamentary Forum. We are, we have written to the speaker and we are still waiting for a response because certainly the speaker must agree to either being a patron or not. So that is where we are. Otherwise we have membership drawn from different political parties. So we will certainly let you know once we are done with that.
Of course, this has all arisen because of the various engagements or meetings that I have attend the. And I'm busy out here while in country, within Parliament. There is not much work that is being done. It is actually something that I have championed as myself.
Aware that it is quite important to have that advocacy. And of course, moving to my sister, she was talking about the challenges of the politics around some of these bills that come in Parliament in relation to Internet or digital, the digital bills, but I want to tell you that once you have champions, irrespective of which political party they belong to, they will stick to what they believe is right and what should be done. And that is why it is important during this whole process, when you have a bill before Parliament, you need to identify champions.
If a bill has moved through the processes and the President has not assented, when you have people in Parliament convinced that that bill is important, they will still stick to that. In my country we have had bills that have gone to the President and the President has not assented to them and returned them.
The law says when the President returns and Parliament returns it to the President and the President returns it again, and Parliament returns for the second time, it becomes law. For as long as we do not change our position. So the most important thing first is to convince Members of Parliament that the provisions in that bill are correct. And once, but also the population because it is the population that puts pressure also on Members of Parliament. So when they hear all these voices from the population, urging their Members of Parliament to stick to certain provisions or to stick to this law and they want that law, definitely the Members of Parliament will act. Do not just engage the Members of Parliament. As Civil Society also engage the population so that the voices can come from down and put pressure on Members of Parliament and it will be able to move.
Irrespective of the President's position, irrespective of the political party's position, the Members will stick to that bill that they believe is the right one and has majority support from the population. That is my advice. Do not lose hope. If the bill was returned, go and engage the Members of Parliament and on the population to put pressure on Members of Parliament. The other was from the gentleman who was asking how we can move from the national to the local level.
One of the ways is once you have Members of Parliament armed with the necessary information and you have the Members of Parliament like the Forum I'm talking about, then you can engage the population through radios. We have radio talk shows, for example. As Uganda Women's Parliamentary Association we have certain bills that we are working on, like the marriage bill in my area, over 100 years, 1905.
So what we do is to go out. You may not reach every community. But when you get to the different registrations in different regions, you reach out to wider audience, sensitize them so they can understand. You get views from them.
The other is to engage, for example we have local governments in my -- in my country, at the district level and subcountry level. You can equip people with the people so you can me to them. Shows are some of the things that can be done.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: Thanks very much. We are running short on time. I just wanted to give you guys each a couple of minutes to respond to the three questions.
Liza, do you want to start? We are -- Liza, do you want to start? Unfortunately we don't have time for another question. But stick around.
>> LIZA GARCIA: The disconnect between the community and the national level, as I mentioned earlier it is not just engagement with legislators that we do engagement with the community. It is also important. That is one of the things that we do. We have discussions with groups within the community and also I agree actually with the Honorable Opendi that engagement with the local government works because in our case, for instance, if there are certain laws that are difficult to pass, it will take years, years, even decades for some laws to be passed.
If you engage with the local government they can pass policies, this policy, for instance, on anti-discrimination. Some cities have passed this. And yeah, it did not have to pass through national legislation.
There is also the role of social media. Of course, we need to engage individuals wherever, in whichever platform they are. So it is important to engage them in that area, provide them with the information about digital rights issues.
Then we also do some partnerships with different groups. For instance, in the case of we are doing some campaign on misinformation for people to understand what it is all about. We partnered with artists, comic artists. They came up with a series of comics explaining what misinformation is all about and why it is bad for you.
We hold exhibits in different areas for people to understand what it is all about. Sometimes people, it is difficult if you just give them, you have these long research, people won't read that. So the visual thing. If it is short, it is something that they would read.
Also engagement with the media. If you want to hype your issue, go to the media. There is also a wider reach to the public.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: Great. Camilo.
>> CAMILO ALFREDO ARRATIA: We don't have much time. I truly believe in the community level working. I would like just to highlight what Honorable Opendi says -- Honorable Liza says. We should have key champions in some issues, but also I think we should have like municipality or local communities champions in some special topics. That can be a really nice way to work and show all the local communities how some nice regulations could be done.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: Final word, Fernanda?
>> FERNANDA KALIANNY MARTINS: Really good questions. I think one of the challenge that we have is to connect international, national, and local levels. So at InternetLab in the last year because of the elections we had the opportunity to have part of articulation roam against disinformation. This is important because in this articulation we don't have just digital rights organisations but also different ONGs related to human rights in general in the country.
And considering the size of Brazil, we know that it is not enough that people in Sao Paolo or Rio de January are talking about digital rights and the process to regulate platforms and pass laws.
When we work together with CSOs of the country and different fields in the Global South, I think we have the opportunity to pushing for laws, but not only pushing to pressure the big techs, pressure the different companies that are affecting our way of life.
So one example to finalize is the law that we have some Brazil against political gender based violence. We are using all the structures that the state gives us. So, for example, we have a main Forum each year -- not each year. We have an election, and a Forum. And we are trying to approve in these forms some points related to this law that is connected also to hate speech online against women. So we are trying all the time to occupy the structures that exist and create new structures.
I think it is not possible if we don't work together with different stakeholders. So thank you, Nick.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: Thank you, guys. Look, thanks very much to our Panelists today. I have to say this is my first IGF. I'm a little biased but I feel like this panel has given me a little bit of hope. There is a lot of amazing work. It is substantive, very specific. There's real results here.
And for my colleagues at CIPE, CIMA, you can be in touch directly with the Panelists up here. Is there a way to stay in touch with this conversation about parliamentary engagement? How should people -- what should they be looking out for, I suppose? Any final recommendations from our colleagues on how to stay in touch?
>> DANIEL O'MALEY: This is Daniel O'Maley from the Centre for Media Assistance. This is a great panel. I learned a lot listening. If people are interested in this type of engagement with parliamentarians and lawmakers. Come talk to me or Anna. It is a possibility to promote digital rights in the broader context where we know that Internet freedom is slipping. We need to work on all levers of government.
As we were saying, if we use the mechanisms we have and create new mechanisms. Reach out to us. And thank you very much for everyone who showed up at 8:30 in the morning.
>> NICK BENEQUISTA: To those online, thank you as well. We had a good number of Panelists. Round of applause for the Panelists and everyone else. Thanks very much, everybody.