Baher Esmat Blog

Last month the Internet Governance Forum concluded its 2^nd meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Attended by more than 1300 people representing governments, international organizations, civil society, businesses, and academia, the IGF is yet facing the challenge of attracting participants from the developing world. IGF Rio has built upon the same format and thematic program of its first version in Athens in 2006, yet the topic of Critical Internet Resources (CIR) was a new theme on the agenda. 

Although the issue of CIR has generated a lot of controversy and hard talk, the discussions were short of substance as they were mostly focused on ICANN, its role vis-à-vis the management of top level domain names and IP numbers, and the role of governments at ICANN. Some participants from developing countries were frustrated that the discussions did not address the “critical resources” per se and commented that issues pertaining to infrastructure such as international bandwidth and Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) are, for them more “critical” than domain names and IP numbers.

It was clear that the issue of Access remained central to the agenda of the IGF. Various workshops discussed typical issues like infrastructures in developing countries, IXPs, public-private partnerships, etc. Yet, there was a particular focus on the next billion new comers to the Internet, how they could get there and what change they would potentially bring to the Internet. Some discussions also noted that Access should not be restricted to connectivity as it had a direct link with other areas like multilingual content, flow of information and privacy. The issue of facilitating access to people with disabilities was also addressed and seemed to have gained some ground through the discussions. 

On Diversity, more discussions were about cultural diversity, multilingual content, and localized applications, as the majority have realized that Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) was only a tiny part in this area. Some have also contributed to the area of standardization and the importance of coordination and collaboration among organizations and groups involved in linguistic standardization. Another interesting topic was related to spoken languages that were not written and sign languages that were not spoken and how to preserve those languages on the Internet.

On the theme of Openness, there were topics that gained more ground of discussion like child protection and Internet Rights. The online safety community managed to get the child protection aspect heavily on the agenda. Through the various sessions that addressed the topic, it was pointed out that the issue of child protection rather needs collaboration between various stakeholders. So for instance while a network of volunteers is necessary to pinpoint and report on child abuse sites using technical solutions developed by the industry, governments should work on developing and implementing the appropriate legislations. On Internet Rights, the Dynamic Coalition on the Internet Bill of Rights proposed that this topic should be one of the major themes in future IGF meetings. A joint statement on the same topic was declared by the minister of culture of Brazil and the undersecretary for communications of Italy in which they proposed to hold a preparatory meeting on Internet Rights before the next IGF meeting in Delhi. 

The theme of Security has more or less built upon what was discussed in Athens. Discussions were mostly around the legal, business, and technical dimensions of Security. While addressing the need for enforcing legislations in order to combat cyber crimes, some have raised concerns with regard to human rights and privacy. The Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime was mentioned in many discussions, and it sounded like a model that some countries might consider.

Other topics that could potentially expand in future IGF meetings were those related to Internet Rights, access for people with disabilities, and Web 2.0 / social networking. The latter raised some debate during the Emerging Issues session. In terms of processes, there were views that the process of setting up the IGF Advisory Group should be more transparent. 

Overall, there was a general sentiment that Rio was a step forward from Athens as the discussions were more profound and controversial issues (i.e. CIR) got tackled. However, people left Rio thinking about Delhi and wondering where all this would lead to. The Delhi meeting will be held on 8-11 December, 2008, and its first preparatory meeting will take place in Geneva on 26 February.