The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) that took place this year in Rio de Janeiro was attended by over 1300 participants from 109 countries.

The Forum focused on the following main themes – critical Internet
resources, access, diversity, openness and security. In total there
were 84 events in a 4-day time frame (12-15 November 2007) where people
could participate in any plenary sessions, workshops, best practice
sessions, dynamic coalition meetings and other related meetings. The UN
Undersecretary-General Sha Zhukang explained in the opening session the
scope of the IGF: "The United Nations does not have a role in managing
the Internet. But we do embrace the opportunity to provide, through
this forum, a platform that helps to ensure the Internet's global
reach."
However, the still-present subject of moving ICANN
out of the US influence was brought back to the table by some
participants. Russian representative Konstantin Novoderejhkin asked the
UN to start a group for moving Internet governance "under the control
of the international community." He was backed up by other states,
including Brazilian officials who asked for an independent ICANN.

The U.S. Representatives replied that the present arrangement prevents
"other countries from censoring Web sites by deleting entries out of
domain name directories." Another strong supporter of the status-quo
was Vincent Cerf that explained: "ICANN has existed for eight years and
done a great job with its plans for internationalisation.'' He also
emphasised that the government attempts to control the Internet will
probably fail.
Other important topics were also on the agenda of the IGF. Network
neutrality was seen as an important proposal of the global public
policy. Japanese Vice Minister for Policy Coordination Kiyoshi Moric
considered network neutrality "as one of three key issues that had to
be addressed."

Amnesty International
used the opportunity to renew its call to governments and companies to
make human rights central to Internet governance. Nick Dearden, part of
Amnesty International's delegation to the IGF, explained: "In the 12
months since the last IGF we've witnessed the crisis in Burma, where
the Internet was used to get images and information out of the country
and to mobilize people all over the world to take action. On the other
hand we have also monitored the increase in censorship, filtering and
blocking of websites."
 
IP Justice
identified in their public report of the IGF 2007 three major areas
where this year Forum has proved to be useful: high quality of the
workshops and best practice sessions, world-class technical
capabilities and remote participation opportunities and interactions
& networking opportunities. But it has also highlighted other
subjects that could be improved in the next sessions such as: human
rights and other controversial topics avoided in main sessions,
emphasizing lack of gender balance and exclusion of young voices in
main sessions that were dominated by established players.

Would this be enough to make IGF more than a worldwide conference on
Internet governance? While there is still a long way to go for the IGF
making any recommendation, the Forum has been given a mandate from the
Tunis World Summit on the Information Society entailing a number of
functions that obviously cannot be effectively fulfilled by an annual
conference. This was precisely the issue discussed at a workshop
organized by the civil society Internet governance caucus on
"fulfilling the mandate of the IGF". One simple idea came out, inter
alia, from this workshop, which is to leverage proposals issued from
workshops and other dynamic coalitions meeting, by bringing them to
wider discussion in IGF plenary sessions.

Among such outcomes worth discussing at a broader level, one could be
the joint proposal from the Council of Europe (CoE) and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
to set up a "mechanism to foster participation, access to information
and transparency in Internet governance". As explained by CoE and APC,
"the mechanism should ensure that all the institutions which play a
role in some aspect of governing the internet commit to transparency,
public participation, including participation of all stakeholders, and
access to information in their activities". CoE and APC propose to
consider, as a prototype to such a mechanism, the United Nations
Economic Commission for Europe's Aarhus Convention on Access to
Information, Public Participation in Decision-making.
 
The next year Internet Governance Forum will take place in New Delhi, India and is scheduled for 8-11 December 2008.

EDRI-gram: IGF 2007 – still a long way to effective outcome (21.11.2007) 

Second Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) – Chairman's Summary