Baher Esmat Blog

I attended the 2^ndannual meeting of the CyberPeace Initiative (CPI) that was held in Cairo on 18 Feb 2009. Dr. TarekKamel, Minister of Communications and Information Technology of Egyptinaugurated the meeting with introductory remarks on the developments in theICT sector in Egypt over the past year. Egypt’s First Lady Mrs. Suzanne Mubarakgave a keynote speech highlighting the importance of the issue of cyber safety forEgypt in light of the growth in the Internet use in country and the lack ofknowledge about safety measures need to be taken by users especially childrenand youth. Then there was a presentation by members of Net-Aman, a network ofyoung people that is part of CPI and does awareness raising and training inInternet safety. I was impressed with the presentation of Net-Aman togetherwith the network of parents highlighting the outreach they have done over thepast 18 months. They had provided training for trainers, reached out to schools,universities, libraries and IT clubs, and delivered the message to 100,000individuals from students, all the way to trainers, teachers, and parents. Intheir presentation, they were pragmatic in saying that they still got a longway to go. The following session was a panel discussion presenting the role ofthe national stakeholders, and had representatives from the government, privatesector, and the civil society. I was not quite satisfied with the discussionbecause I heard all the speakers only taking about “protection” and “control”, whilethe initiative itself has other important elements such as “empowerment” and“creativity” which  none of thespeakers have alluded to. And although one of the speakers talked about the“responsibility” of the user with regard to the content she or he is posting onthe Internet, the whole discussion didn’t emphasize the fact that“responsibility” comes from “engagement” and “active participation”, and notvice-versa. I thought it would have been important for such a panel to discuss meansof “empowering” young people with the necessary skills to help them createtheir own content online. I wished if the speakers would have told us that “creativity”had led to the YouTube’s and Facebook’s, which, in themselves, are remarkabletools for “empowering” end users and particularly the young generation.Unfortunately, the time for Q&A was quite short and I couldn’t share myviews with the panel. The last session’s title was “Empowering youth in a safeknowledge society; an international perspective”. As the title indicates, thefocus of this panel was the empowerment element, which I hoped the nationalstakeholders of the first panel would have addressed. Speakers of this last sessionwere representatives of international organizations who came to present thebigger picture of Internet safety in which “empowerment” and “creativity” are keyin helping young people take full advantage of the benefits of the Internet.I’m hopeful that with this combination of the young people of Net-Aman, and thesupport of the Egyptian government, business, and civil society, together withthe expertise that international partners can bring to the process, that thisinitiative can encourage and support the “active” use of Internet in Egypt,which in my view is wider in scope and deeper in meaning than the “safe” use.