The 16th annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting was hosted by the Government of Poland in Katowice from 6-10 December, under the overarching theme: Internet United. The Forum brought together participants from different stakeholder groups and some of the most prominent individuals in the global Internet governance discussion from across the globe. The Internet & Jurisdiction Policy Network hosted a Town Hall on December 7, 2021 and a Workshop in partnership with ECLAC on December 9, 2021.
The Town Hall provided stakeholders with an update on the work of the Policy Network in 2021, in particular, the release of I&JPN Toolkits, resources for policymakers and practitioners seeking to develop better policies for the digital era, the knowledge mapping efforts of the Network including the Internet & Jurisdiction and ECLAC Regional Status Report 2020 and Cross-border Digital Policies for Africa Project, as well as the I&JPN report “We Need to Talk About Data: Framing the Debate Around the Free Flow of Data and Data Sovereignty” and work of the Datasphere Initiative currently being incubated by the Policy Network.
Order of Speakers:
• Bertrand de La Chapelle, Executive Director and Co-founder, I&JPN
• Ajith Francis, Senior Manager, Policy Programs, I&JPN
• Frane Maroevic, Director, Content & Jurisdiction Program, I&JPN
• Elizabeth Behsudi, Director, Domains & Jurisdiction Program, I&JPN
• Robert Young, Legal Counsel, Canada Department of Global Affairs
• Wolfgang Schulz, Director, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society
• Brian Cimbolic, Vice-President and General Counsel, PIR
• Martin Hullin, Director of Operations and Knowledge Partnerships, I&JPN
• Laura-Theresa Krüger, Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany
• Edwin Fernando Rojas, Senior Economic Affairs Assistant, United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
• Adil Sulieman, Senior Policy Officer, Infrastructure and Energy Department, African Union
• Lorrayne Porciuncula, Executive Director, Datasphere Initiative
• Andrin Eichin, Policy Advisor International Relations, Swiss Federal Office of Communications
The I&JPN Town Hall brought together over 60 stakeholders from the Internet Governance Forum.
The key takeaways from the session included:
• When stakeholders work together under a common and structured methodology to address cross-border digital policy challenges they can produce concrete results.
• The translation of resources into multiple languages is crucial for spreading international policy intelligence and should be encouraged and emphasized.
• There is a need to change the narrative on data and consider new innovative ways stakeholders can cooperate around data governance.
Check what stakeholders said during the Town Hall: