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One of the outcomes of the World Summit on Information Society
(WSIS), which took place in Tunis from 16 to 18 November 2005,
was the creation of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The
main purpose of the IGF is to discuss a wide range of issues
related to Internet Governance. Convened by the UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, the IGF will act as a neutral, transparent, democratic
and multilateral process for multi-stakeholder dialogue on
Internet policy issues with the participation of government,
private sector, civil society and international organizations.
As
decided by the Tunis Summit, the IGF is expected to be development-oriented
in order to take care of the concerns, needs and expectations
of developing countries. Accordingly this year's overall theme
is "Internet Governance for Development", with an
agenda structured along the following broad areas:
- Openness:
Freedom of expression, free flow of information, ideas and
knowledge
- Security:
Creating trust and confidence through collaboration
- Diversity:
Promoting multilingualism and local content
- Access:
Internet Connectivity policy and cost
The Prime Minister of Greece, H.E. Konstantinos Karamanlis
opened the meeting in the morning of 29 October 2006. The
UN Secretary-General is represented by Mr. Nitin Desai who
is his Special Advisor on Internet Governance and Chairman
of the IGF.
Africa is represented by high officials, including ministers
from Egypt, Senegal and The Gambia and senior experts on Internet
policy and technology issues. At the opening session, the
Minister of Communication and Information Technology of Egypt,
H.E Tarek Kamel, who is the current Chairperson of the African
Ministerial Conference on ICT delivered a speech. In his statement,
the minister highlighted his country's status on ICT development
issues and underlined the "need for strong multistakeholder
partnership as emphasized by the African Preparatory meeting
held in Cairo in September 2006, organized by the Egyptian
Government and ECA".
Other officials who took the floor at the opening session
included Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary-General of ITU, Viviane
Reding, Commissioner for Information Society of the European
Commission, Guy Sebban, Secretary-General of the International
Chamber of Commerce, and Vint Cerf, one of the designers of
the Internet.
In order to build capacity of African countries on Internet
Governance policy issues for the preparation of the Athens
Forum and beyond, ECA organized a training course on Internet
Governance for African Policymakers in Addis Ababa in July
2006. Forty one (41) African Anglophone, including Permanent
Secretaries, Diplomats, Directors and Advisors from Angola,
Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Libya,
Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan,
Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe took part in
the training course.
It is expected at the end of the Forum that rules governing
appropriate enabling legal, policy and regulatory frameworks
that preserve openness would be re-emphasized as one of the
key founding principles of the Internet. Measures related
to cybersecurity, and how collaboration between stakeholders
can improve trust and confidence to combat phishing, viruses
and other forms of cybercrime as well as spam and issues related
to information and network security would be put in place.
Strategies to build a multilingual Internet to promote multilingualism
in the cyberspace and development of local content to facilitate
access to populations from developing countries would be identified.
Various barriers to access that people face in terms of availability
and affordability including connection costs, national policies
that influence the spread of the Internet in developing countries,
and the role of open standards in facilitating access would
be discussed and solutions proposed.
ECA
will also be working in member States as part of the NICI
process to strengthen policies and strategies on cyber-security
as part of IG activities at the national level.
The
IGF, which is attended by over 1,200 participants, is expected
to end on 2 November 2006. The second IGF will be held in
2007 in Brazil, the 3rd session will be held in 2008 in India,
while the 4th IGF will be organized by Egypt in 2009.
ECA organized the meeting of the African Group on 1st November
at 17H00 under the chairmanship of the Egyptian Minister of
Communication, to exchange views on IG issues and discuss
the way forward.
The website of the IGF meeting is: www.igfgreece2006.gr
. For more information, please contact: mfaye@uneca.org.
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