INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM OPENS IN RIO DE JANEIRO

 

RIO DE JANEIRO, 12 November –- The second meeting of the Internet Governance Forum opened today in Rio de Janeiro, focusing on the themes of critical Internet resources, access, diversity, openness, security and Internet for development.

“The United Nations does not have a role in managing the Internet,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his message, delivered by Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Sha Zukang.  “But we do embrace the opportunity to provide, through this Forum, a platform that helps to ensure the Internet’s global reach.”

The Forum “may have no power to make decisions,” Mr. Ban said.  “But it can inform and inspire those who are in a position to make them” (for full text of the message, see Press Release SG/SM/11272-PI/1810).

Adding his own remarks, Mr. Sha said the Forum was a unique opportunity for all interested parties to develop, under United Nations auspices, an innovative dialogue “freed from the constraints of negotiating a text.  The Forum is also unique in that it brings together people who normally do not meet under the same roof,” he said.

Development had been one of the key priorities throughout the debate on Internet governance, Mr. Sha said.  “The Internet is capable of delivering economic opportunities for all.  But much remains to be done.”

The new economic opportunities that the Internet offers had a link to the social world, particularly in terms of freedom of expression and free flows of information and ideas, he said.  The social production of content, the widespread input from individuals into the media and the instantaneous distribution of such content were reshaping the way people saw and understood events around the world, bringing greater understanding between the world’s peoples.

Sérgio Rezende, Brazil's Minister of Science and Technology and the Chair of the meeting, said the Internet embodied the spirit of compromise, cooperation and participation.  “Without this spirit, the Internet loses its potential,” he said.

Internet governance should be representative and balanced, increasing global trust in its functioning, and thus leading to its further development.  It was a universal public interest good, and its management should be equally universal.

The Internet was essential for education –- thus the need for universalization of access.  The digital divide was a factor in the current increase of inequality, and digital inclusion was the objective for a fairer, more balanced world.  Developing countries should intensify their efforts to make people more computer-literate.  This year, Brazil would make about 10 million personal computers available, and digital inclusion programmes sought to ensure that 140,000 public schools had access to the Internet by 2010, most of them through a broadband connection.  The proposed Charter of Rights of the Internet would contribute to guaranteeing access to knowledge.

Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Brazil's Minister for Strategic Affairs, affirmed two “strategic principles” that should guide a new institutional design of Internet governance.  The Internet should be non-hegemonic, with “no preponderant influence by any State”.  The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) had played a “vital historical role” in the development of the Internet, but should now yield powers to a more inclusive and less controversial organization.

The second principle, Mr. Mangabeira Unger said, was limitation of State influence of the Internet.  To increase its transparency, there were alternatives of governance involving greater participation by global civil society.  “The movement of change must start to make the Internet a tool for liberating the imagination,” he said.

Speaking on behalf of the European Union, Portugal's Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education Jose Mariano Ago called for “new forms of open management of the Internet”.  The organizations that managed the Internet, especially ICANN, had shown an unprecedented capacity of response.  Such flexible and dynamic models could be improved and should continue.  Governments should guarantee the independence of the Internet-managing organizations, especially of ICANN, and guarantee their balance and international openness.  “It would be going backwards, and this would be unacceptable, to go back to old forms of multilateralism applied to the Internet.”

Paul Twomey, President and Chief Executive Officer of ICANN, said the Forum was about “bringing together people to talk, review, discuss, and hopefully envision solutions to some of the issues that are before us”.  The most important item on the meetings agenda was access.  “Our discussions here will mean nothing to someone not able to get onto the network in the first place.”  The challenge now was to bring the next billion people online.

ICANN, like other Internet organizations, was committed to the multi-stakeholder and open way of doing business with anyone.  “Anyone, from Governments, the technical community, business and civil society, can participate freely, either in person or virtually,” he said.  ICANN had a participative community of up to 20,000 people around the world involved within its very narrow mandate of technical coordination for the Domain Names System and Internet Protocol addressing.  “I would like to issue a personal invitation to all people here to join that community, to participate as you wish and desire, and to help with their work and its evolution.”

South Africa's Minister of Communications Ivy Matisse-Casablanca called for a development-oriented information society with full participation of all interested parties.   Jainder Singh, India's Permanent Secretary at the Department of Information Technology, warned that the Internet could lead to growing exclusion.  While India was a leading country in the information technology sector globally, the benefits of the Internet revolution had “not fully percolated to the everyday life of the common man.  This is particularly true for those in the rural areas.  Inclusive development is an imperative.”

Gilberto Gil, Brazil's Minister of Culture, said “governance” meant those negotiations and political processes required to come to minimal agreements.  “Access for all to the knowledge generated by humankind is the only condition for us to have justice and safety.  We are becoming aware of the fact that the intensity of conflicts increases as systems of deprivation increase for populations and territories.  The Internet must be a territory for all, an area of public coexistence for the exercise of this new citizenship.”

During the four-day meeting, some 1,700 representatives from some 90 countries, as well as from the private sector, civil society and the academic and technical communities, will address as equals the topics they themselves selected.

Workshops will address issues such as the Domain Name System (DNS) Security Extension –- a technical standard that could improve the security of the global DNS; the ongoing transition from Version 4 to Version 6 of the Internet Protocol; upcoming challenges for both security and privacy; and fostering freedom of expression on the Internet.  According to Reporters without Borders, at least 64 bloggers and cyberdissidents are in prison in 13 countries.

Best Practices Forums will range from national Internet policy, privacy, consumer protection and the protection of children.

The current 11 “Dynamic Coalitions” -- groupings of like-minded participants -- are expected to advance their agendas.  Launched at the first meeting of the Forum in Athens, they address the issues of spam; privacy; open standards; access and connectivity for remote, rural and dispersed communities; an Internet Bill of Rights; linguistic diversity; access to knowledge; freedom of expression and freedom of the media on the Internet; online collaboration; gender and Internet governance; and a framework of principles for the Internet.  Other Dynamic Coalitions are expected to be launched at the meeting.

Private-sector participants include Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco Systems, France Telecom, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia Siemens, Sun Microsystems, Verizon and Yahoo.  Civil society participants include Amnesty International, the Association for Progressive Communication and Save the Children, among others.

The Internet Governance Forum is an outcome of the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, which took place in 2005.  In the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, Governments asked the United Nations Secretary-General to convene a “new forum for policy dialogue” to discuss issues related to key elements of Internet governance.

The Forum is not a decision-making body, but a space for dialogue for all those involved to discuss Internet governance issues.  There will be no negotiated outcome, but the meeting will seek to create an open dialogue among all participants on public policy issues relating to the Internet, and create new dynamics between participating institutions.

The first meeting of the Forum took place last year in Athens.  Next year, the Forum will convene in India and in 2009 in Egypt.   Azerbaijan and Lithuania have both offered to host the final meeting in 2010.  Subsequently, the Forum's mandate will be reviewed and possibly renewed by United Nations Member States.

For further information, please visit http://www.intgovforum.org (Official United Nations website) or http://www.igfbrazil2007.br/ (host country website), or contact Rolando Gomez, at (55 21) 78 99 6382, email:  rgomez@unog.ch; Edoardo Bellando, at (55 21) 78 99 6386, bellando@un.org; Valeria Schilling, at (55 21) 22 53 2211, email valeria@unicrio.org.br.

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For information media • not an official record