NRIs Meeting II


NATIONAL, (SUB)REGIONAL AND YOUTH IGF INITIATIVES
- Virtual Meeting II, 6 February 2019, 15:00 p.m. UTC -

SUMMARY REPORT

About 

  1. The 2nd virtual meeting of the National, Subregional, Regional and Youth IGF Initiatives (NRIs), took place on 6 February 2019 at 15:00 p.m. UTC.
  2. The meeting was hosted by the IGF Secretariat’s NRIs Focal Point. The final, adopted version of the Agenda is attached to this document as Annex A1 and a list of meeting Participants as Annex A2. The list of shared documents is attached to this report as Annex A3.

Summary of key points

  1. The Host opened the meeting by introducing the agenda and asking participants to briefly introduce themselves. The Spanish IGF coordinator requested to add on the agenda a briefing on their internal, structural change. With this addition, the agenda was adopted (Annex A1).
     
  2. Coordinator of the French IGF announced that their 2019 annual meeting will take place in Paris on 4 July, as well as that the agenda is under development through public Call for Issues. It was added that this IGF will aim at building bridges between the Paris 2018 IGF and Berlin 2019 IGF.
     
  3. From the IGF-USA, it was said that their annual meeting is scheduled to take place on 25 July 2019 in Washington D.C. The Call for Topics is open and the results will serve as a base for building the programme. In addition, the IGF-USA briefed that the initiative seeks to engage young stakeholders to organize a Youth IGF process as a one-day long pre-event to the annual meeting. In order to achieve higher inclusiveness, the Initiative is committed to engaging with the wider community in the country and plans to tour the country and visit various areas (NY city, Alaska, Los Angeles and other places in between).
  4. EuroDIG coordinator updated on this IGF’s preparatory process by pointing out that the draft programme of the annual meeting will be published on this IGF’s website by the end of this week after the subject matter experts finalize their analysis. The Wiki Pages that the EuroDIG uses as a tool for community’s collaboration will be available in the second half of February.
     
  5. The Italian IGF updated with information that the kick-off meeting for the 2019 planning process will take place during the next week. The timeline for 2019 will be discussed. The idea is to have a call for Local Host as done last year. The Italian IGF community will discuss also whether to activate a call for issues or to have only the call for workshop proposals.
     
  6. From Portugal IGF it was announced that the annual meeting will be hosted on 13 November. The programme plans to build on last year’s recommendations from the community and focus on the following topics: Online content management (Copyright, Freedom of expression, Multiple content hypotheses); Trust and Privacy in direct online communication without intermediaries in the public and private sector [(e.g. Blockchain), Impact of this technology on the use of the Internet at 5, 10 and 15 years].
     
  7. From the West African IGF, it was confirmed that the meeting will take place in Gambia, Banjul, from 22 – 26 July 2019, along with the West African School on Internet Governance.
     
  8. The Nigerian IGF coordinator noted that the Committee starts working on developing an annual strategy and asked for good practices from other NRIs to be shared. The annual meeting will be hosted on the 2nd July along with the Nigeria School on Internet Governance.
     
  9. The Panama IGF briefed that the preparations for the annual meeting are underway and that the meeting will be in July 2019.
     
  10.  Coordinator form the Colombian IGF updated that this national IGF is currently developing the annual working plan. One of the objectives of this year’s work will be to engage more with various communities across the country. For this reason, a communication strategy is under development as well as a plan to deliver specific training to targeted communities. As one of the positive examples of the Colombian IGF outcomes, it was informed that a state University has offered a formal free-of-charge online course on Internet governance in its curricula. Finally, this IGF is exploring possibilities to host the LACIGF.
     
  11. The meeting continued by sharing updates from the IGF Secretariat, as summarized in Annex A3.
     
  12. The Host reminded all NRIs to submit annual reports to the IGF Secretariat to be shared with the wider community. Noting very valuable content of reports, the Host and the IGF-USA co-coordinator said that it would be helpful for research purposes, to have more consistency between reports in terms of their structure.  It was advised that the NRIs review reporting guidelines in the NRIs Toolkit and invest in a system of rapporteurs that would report out from their annual meeting. The IGF-USA noted that they had a very good partnership with the students from the Elon University that for three years provided reporting from this meeting. These students were specifically trained for this purpose and mentored by senior academics. It was underlined that this is an observation and that the NRIs have full autonomy to report in the way they find as most effective. The French IGF and Colombia IGF followed by explaining successful collaboration their IGF initiatives have with university students as rapporteurs.
     
  13. The host’s updated that some of the NRIs are asking for good practices related to establishing legal structures for NRIs (e.g. SEEDIG, German IGF, Italian IGF).
  14. The IGF-USA co-coordinator added that it would be important to understand the reason why other NRIs pursue for having the legal structure, and what are economic and political consequences of having one. The Colombia IGF inquired if the IGF Secretariat’s accreditation depends on the NRIs having the legal structure and noted that their national IGF functions well without been legally registered. These remarks were followed by some of the NRIs questioning the term ‘accreditation’ and asking the Host to explain if this is an appropriate term to use. The Host explained that the IGF Secretariat runs the recognition process, as per the NRIs agreed procedures, outlined in the NRIs Toolkit. It was underlined that the term ‘accreditation’ is not appropriate, and the term ‘recognition’ should be used to explain the process within which the IGF Secretariat confirms that a particular NRIs structure and process development is in accordance with the core IGF principles (multistakeholder, bottom up, open and inclusive, transparent and non-commercial). This process is not subject to any changes unless the NRIs collectively would request it. It was concluded that bringing the NRIs potential legal structure on the agenda of this call is only due to expressions of some individual NRIs to learn from good practices of other NRIs. In this regard, the Nigerian IGF committed to follow up and share their national IGF’s bylaws. Other NRIs have their bylaws published on the website.
     
  15. As in previous years, the NRIs will aim for organizing the main session, collaborative sessions, coordination session and a booth at the upcoming IGF annual meeting. For this complex process, topical issues of mutual interest need to be defined. It was agreed that the same process as for the IGF 2018 will be followed and that the IGF Secretariat will issue a Call to all NRIs to suggest topics of priority for their communities. The Call will be open until one week before the 2nd face-to-face meeting to allow everyone enough time to submit their inputs.
     
  16. Participants also addressed other ways of the NRIs and global IGF’s cooperation models. The French IGF remarked that the NRIs could work together to contribute to the IGF Best Practice Forums. The Italian IGF agreed and added that webinars could be organized on what is the IGF and how can stakeholders be engaged in the intersessional work. Webinars showed to be a good outreach methodology for this national IGF. From EuroDIG it was said that the IGF Secretariat could gather and display outcomes and examples of impact the NRIs made. It was also added that this regional IGF plans to contribute to feedback process to the UN SG’s HLPDC final report and everyone were encouraged to do the same.
     
  17. The IGF-USA co-coordinator added that raising the visibility of the IGF Village is important and as an example reminded that in Egypt at the IGF, the first lady toured the booth area that resulted in increased media coverage of the meeting. It was advised to follow this practice for the Berlin IGF and revitalize the IGF Village.
     
  18. Due to technical issues, the Spanish IGF coordinator was invited to share intended updates through the NRIs mailing list.


Next Steps

  1.  A full summary report will be sent to the NRIs mailing list, for further consultations.
  2.  Within five working days, the IGF Secretariat will launch the Call for Topics from the NRIs for the purpose of defining topics of mutual interest for defining substantive focus on the NRIs main session and collaborative sessions.
  3. Next meeting: A doodle poll will be sent in three weeks time, for scheduling the next virtual meeting.
  4.  For any suggestions or questions regarding the Report, kindly contact the IGF Secretariat, NRIs Focal Point at: anja.gengo@un.org.

 

ANNEX A1
AGENDA: Virtual Meeting II

  1. Introductions (5 min)
  2. Updates from the NRIs and IGF Secretariat (10 min)
  3. NRIs reflections to their gathering at the MAG face-to-face meeting (15 min)
  4. NRIs integration at IGF 2019: main session, collaborative sessions, coordination session, booth (planning) (20 min)
  5. NRIs contribution to the IGF Intersessional Work and other forms of collaboration (e.g. publications, webinars) (15 min)
  6. AoB

 

ANNEX A2 
MEETING PARTICIPANTS (in alphabetical order):

  1. Alejandra Erramuspe, IGF Uruguay
  2. Ana Baptista, Portugal IGF
  3. Anja Gengo, IGF Secretariat
  4. Concettina Cassa, Italian IGF
  5. Dustin Phillips, IGF-USA
  6. Fotjon Kosta, Albania IGF
  7. Jennifer Chung, APrIGF
  8. Julián Casasbuenas G., Colombia IGF
  9. Lianna  Galstyan, Armenia IGF, SEEDIG
  10. Lucien  Castex, French IGF
  11. Marilyn Cade, IGF-USA
  12. Mary Uduma, Nigeria IGF, West Africa IGF
  13. Olivier  Crepin-Leblond, ISOC, UK-IGF
  14. Sandra  Hoferichter, EuroDIG
  15. Sharon Emptage, Panama IGF
  16. Sorina Teleanu, SEEDIG
  17. Taiwo Peter Akinremi, Nigeria IGF
  18. Vinicius Santos, Brazil IGF
  19. Ying Chu Chen, APrIGF
  20. Zeina Bou Harb, Lebanon IGF, Arab IGF
  21. Zoraida Frias, Spanish IGF

               

ANNEX A3 
LIST OF SHARED INPUTSavailable as a .pdf.