Internet Governance Forum 2015: Five More Sessions with I&J

Engaging in the UN Internet Governance Forum

The Internet & Jurisdiction Project participated in the Internet Governance Forum convened by the United Nations on November 10 – 13, 2015, in Joao Pessoa, Brazil, where it organized the workshop “Transnational due process: A case study in multi-stakeholder cooperation”. In addition to the workshop convened by Internet & Jurisdiction, Bertrand de la Chapelle and Paul Fehlinger were invited as speakers at five different sessions.

Main Session — Setting the Scene

Bertrand de la Chapelle was a speaker at the Setting the Scene session, organized to provide an overview of hot topics of the eight main sessions of the Internet Governance Forum 2015. Bertrand de La Chapelle was selected to speak about the main theme, "Cybersecurity and Trust." He observed that the jurisdiction issue has now become a main topic on the global Internet Governance agenda and called for multistakeholder action to preserve the global character of the Internet. Mr. La Chapelle's speech starts below:

Workshop — Implementing Core Principles in the Digital Age

The governments of Brazil and Germany invited Bertrand de La Chapelle to speak about how to move key Internet Governance principles moving forward. The session focused on the question of how to implement core principles like democracy, accountability, human rights and due process in Internet Governance. Mr. La Chapelle stressed the need for developing cooperation mechanisms between the different stakeholders to operationalize core principles in working policy frameworks.

Workshop — When Governments Hit "Like" on the War on Terror

Paul Fehlinger was invited to speak at the workshop titled When Governments hit ‘Like’ on the War on Terror. The workshop revisited efforts in various countries to combat terrorism online and analyzed the impact of adopted measures on human rights. Mr. Fehlinger emphasized the importance of multistakeholder cooperation to develop appropriate and balanced solutions that can work in the transnational online environment:

Workshop — Building Internet Observatories: Approaches and Challenges

For the first time, leading Observatories in the Internet Governance space gathered at the Internet Governance Forum. Paul Fehlinger stressed the historic nature of this gathering. The I&J Observatory that was launched in 2012 to provide expert-input into the Internet & Jurisdiction process and is one of the longest-running Observatories in the Internet Governance landscape. 

The workshop posed the question how different Internet Observatory projects can create synergies, avoid duplication of efforts, and foster cooperation in order to positively impact capacity-building, education, and policy-making in Internet Governance. Mr. Fehlinger stressed the need to work together to take advantage of the data gathered by the various observatories to ensure the Internet governance debate moves ahead on the basis of solid evidence.

Session — Birds of a Feather: A Network of Virtual Working Spaces for Internet Governance?

On November 13, 2015, Bertrand de La Chapelle and Paul Fehlinger moderated a Birds of a Feather (BoF) meeting, an innovative format to place new issues on the Internet Governance agenda. This short session titled A network of virtual working spaces for Internet Governance? gathered actors interested in exploring the feasibility of building a network of high-performance connected virtual meeting spaces for Internet Governance working groups. It explored how to best take advantage of the dramatic lowering in costs of bandwidth, flat panel displays, and image compression. The session covered how a joint effort by technology providers, international organizations, and civil society networks could help build a series of connected local hubs providing high-capacity teleconferencing for use by multistakeholder initiatives. Such hubs could also be leveraged to facilitate remote participation in numerous meetings, including the Internet Governance forum.