>> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Good afternoon everybody.  Am I audible?  The mic is not working.  I can use another mic. 

Hi everybody.  Lots of greetings and meeting long lost friends.  I think the idea of IGF that space.  But we have sobering business to deal with this afternoon.  Of course, like everything that is political and has an opportunity on the horizon, we will deal with it with the sincerity that it requires. 

   So welcome to this event organized by the Global Digital Justice Forum and IT for Change.  Just to set the context, and more people are coming in, so please do take the seats around the square table or the round table. 

   What I would like to do is just make a few initial remarks before we start with our exciting panelists.  I want to quote the UN Secretary-General and the characterization by the Secretary-General of how we are coping with not just the digital divide but an unfolding data epoch, and we are also besieged by the developmental divide.

    We also know that the gains of connectivity are skewed and, at some point, we thought that the access debate was over, it isn't yet, and in an era of the digital infrastructures and public goods, we are all the more confronted by this question of access and connectivity divide. 

   We also know that a few transnational corporations are able to embrace the digital revolution.  In the previous session in this room, we heard references to how, in certain parts of the world, cloud infrastructure used by governments is actually someone beholden to corporations that are transnational corporations, so the inequality of digital economy presents urgent challenges and these are not just challenges for those who already connected, but these are also challenges for those who may not ever be connected but whose lives will be indelibly impacted by the digital revolution.  So the actions we need to take are about the democratization of benefits of digitalization, the governance of digital resources, and to make digital policies that can capitalize innovation that accounts because very often, in a world of patent thickets and sleeping patents and all of that, we see that innovation is often held hostage to the way in which intellectual properties operates in the digital space. 

   So the Ultimate test, I think, is the public and social value that digitalization can create and the human freedoms that it can expand, so if we can do just these two things well, we would have done it.  Globe digital compact is one such opportunity. 

   I think we do need to carry consensus that is possible to build around the global digital compact forward.  It's not easy to build consensus.  There are people around the table whose business it has been to build consensus all their lives, so we really count on their experience both civil society and from the UN system trying to really galvanize the voices that can hold the bottom line. 

   This session is organized because we want to listen very carefully to the devil in the details.  So we need to locate and listen carefully to the devil in the details, the voices that are saying the same, but are coming from extremely different standpoints.  Words like trust, which were discussed in the last session very, very beautifully, very evocatively, but we do not mean the same thing when we say freedoms, when we say trust, when we say openness.  We all mean different things.  It's very important to start there from these imaginaries but go closer to the norms, ethics, pathways of digitalization. 

   Of course, when this WSIS happened and I had the privilege to be in those spaces to watch, listen and learn, it seemed like human rights were really very important to protect.  They continue to be important, but in the context of structural injustices in the world, we also think there are emerging anxieties around the geoeconomics of data and AI.  The question of are our institutions ready?  Are they anachronistic?  Are they anachronistic.  Can they mediate social justice?  So we are at very critical juncture. 

   The session actually is a series of questions and it's in a very interesting format that I was part of some time ago in the University of Western Australia.  It worked very well.  It was for a thematic conference on tech crimes.  So, you know, this was build it, break it, and fix it. 

   So the first round, which is build it, will the answer the question as to why is the U.N. Global Digital Compact critical to address gaps in digital cooperation?  What is its promise? 

   The second round is the break it round where we have to get real.  We have to really look at this proposition and seek if we can at all build it.  The Second round will be a set of propositions that are really where the rubber hits the road, so to speak.  What are the gaps in U.N. Global Digital Compact?  Is it really transformative?  Is digital justice even possible in this world?  We are talking about the climate transition and challenges confronting us and, similarly, the digital transition. 

   And the fix-it round has, it's a moment of pause.  Step back and say, these are people with vision, people with optimism, who will bring it together and say, how can we make the U.N. Digital Compact a powerful basis for a global democratic digital governance paradigm?  How do we realize the spirit of WSIS? 

   I was discussing with Anriette this morning and we agreed that the agenda, the Geneva and Tunis agenda, was very, very precious, it's important to keep it with all its flaws because it does articulate the need for an inclusive people-centered, development-oriented information society in the data and AI age.  It didn't anticipate, but we may add. 

   Without ado, I would like to suggest that this is the format.  We will have five speakers per round.  First round is the build-it round.  It's very hard for us to play to a certain script, but try and keep to the building, the breaking, and the fixing so in that posturing, maybe we can actually be able to turn out better sense hopefully, and in this room, there is, I think, all the intelligence that is needed. 

   So I would like to invite Ambassador Amandeep Singh Gill, who is the tech envoy to the U.N. Secretary-General, to build it.

   >> AMANDEEP SINGH GILL:  Hello.  Okay.  Thank you.  Very nice scene setting.  I love idea this of, I think with children, you might have seen Thomas the Tank or Bob the Builder.  Can we build it yes, we can.  What are we building in the Global Digital Compact?  We are building a shared vision, a global framework for digital governance that is negotiated by governments, but is open to participation by regional organizations, the private sector, and civil society. 

   So the process has an intergovernmental bias in a sense with stakeholder input, even the product that is open to multistakeholder commitments and participation.  And with this global framework, we are attempting to address some of the challenges that you mentioned.  Loading the entry barriers to digital governance for more countries, more civil society participation, more of the private sector beyond the usual suspects, beyond big tech, to participate and then shape together.  There is that opportunity that we are trying to build. 

   We are also trying to build and shape a transition away from solutions orientation to ecosystems and infrastructures for digital development.  Let me just pause here because I think this is very critical for digital justice.  If we just stay with the connectivity paradigm, all we need do is bring the 2.6 to 2.7 billion who are unconnected online and good things will follow. 

   All we need do is look at specific problems and use digital technologies to solve those problems.  We will have progress, no doubt about it.  There's plenty of evidence out there what want connectivity, especially broadband connectivity, does to economic growth, social participation.  But we will not get the kind of acceleration we need to cover that 85 percent deficit on the SDG.  15 percent, we are on target.  85 percent of the goals and targets, within those goals, we are not on target, so we need a big boost.  That's not going to come from the same paradigm. 

   We are building a shift in paradigm focusing more on digital public infrastructure that creates those inclusive innovation spaces focusing more on capacity-building, networked approach to capacity-building, as the SG put it his policy brief, creating 1 million digital champions for the STGs, a quarter million in Africa, focusing more on data commons where data flows, data comes together to drive progress on the SDGs, not just better measurement of where we are -- that's critical.  You can't be navigating blind in this.  You need to know where you are -- but also, data for the SDGs where data used in a transformative way to innovate for the SDGs. 

   There is also this aspect of guiding, steering the digital transformation which, as you put it, has to expand human freedoms and has to create that public social value.  For that, the policymakers need to feel that they are in charge of this digital transformation.  Civil society needs to feel that they are not being left aside.  They also have agency for how things are shaping up, so we need to create those blueprints for this transformation that help the policymakers and other actors in the space get more agencies over the digital transformation. 

   Those are some of the kind of paradigm-shifting build elements.  And most crucially, if we look at the space where there are risks, where there are harms, whether they are coming from traditional digital sources of those risks and harms or some of the emerging sources, generative AI, for instance, we need to put in place guardrails.  We need to put in place effective mechanisms.  Again, As the SDG has suggested, a human rights mechanism more proactive in terms of how legislations are shaped, more proactive in terms of how public sector interprets the law, regulatory frameworks.  Also the suggestions around regulators capacity and how e-safety commissioners and others should get together regularly to exchange experience to raise the bar on accountability, and equally on data protection, so those kinds of

data-related guardrails related areas are essential in this building exercise that we are up to. 

   Lastly, I would just like to spend a minute on artificial intelligence, which is really best case for what we are building.  If the architecture that we are putting together, if these action areas, alongside these commitments we are putting together, are not able to handle this latest manifestation of digital innovation, it's not working.  Therefore, we need to make sure that apart from the different very important conversations that are going on, the G7 Hiroshima process, the GPay discussions, UK AI summit, that we make sure that all the other countries who are not participating in those conversations have a space where they can also shape how the governance of AI happens, and for that, the secretary general is creating an advisory body on AI, a multistakeholder globally representative advisory body, that will look at the emerging landscape of risks and opportunities that look at the current landscape of governance, what are the gaps there?  Is there a scientific consensus almost IPCC-like we can build around risk and challenges?  And is there some role in terms of not just the U.N. role, but perhaps an institution, network institutional role for the international governance of AI? 

   There is the industrious space, codes of conduct,  certification schemes, various self-regulatory approaches.  There is the national regional regulatory space, the AI Act, the legislation, that's in the parliament in Brazil, so on, but what is the kind of international level orchestration that could be put in place?  That's an important building block in the collective build-out exercise that I attempted to sketch out. 

   Let me just conclude by saying that this cannot be the task of only U.N. secretary.  Cannot be the task only of member states.  They'll have to play the leading role.  This Building exercise has to be truly multi-stakeholder.  All stakeholders have to participate and we have to cocreate this together.        Thank you.

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY: Thank you so much.  If I might just break the order of build it, break it, fix it, because you have very limited time and a lot of people might just want to ask you questions.  I gather you have to leave in about 20 minutes, is that right?  So since we have the pleasure of your company here and if there are questions to the ambassador, we could probably take three questions.

>> WOLFGANG KLINEGESSER:  May name is Wolfgang Klinegesser.  I'm a retired professor from the University of AUS.  I'm really impressed by your approach that you say we have to go beyond connectivity.  And I think the internet was always an enabling environment and the focus would be of enabling individuals, enabling smaller and medium enterprises for, I think, to create environment  where we can really bring the activities from the ground into tradition, processes to the forefront. 

   I think this is really important fit so we go beyond this just to, you know, count how many people are on the internet, and it's not enough.  Education, skills, all of these are, I think, key issues which has to bring in the forefront and has to be based on human rights declaration and UN quota and I think this is a good approach. 

   I have concrete questions, some problems with procedure, how to develop the Global Digital Compact You said in your introduction that it's mainly a intergovernmental process, this multi-stakeholder involvement.  The question is how? 

   We had the experience in the Tunis negotiations  where was the question was, have non-state actors have is access to the negotiation rooms have the right to speak.  Can they present proposals, comment on several articles, and things like that.  For me, this is still unclear because the experiences from the G5 consultations are that we had everybody could say everything, but there was not an impression that input from nonstate actors have really an impact on the governmental reactions.  And we have to have some safe procedures in place, which we guarantee that the input which is so welcome when you always say the multi-stakeholder has to be on the forefront, but how you can make sure this impact has really input. 

   Thank you.

>> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Thank you one online and one more, so online first.  Online first.  Can you unmute and speak?

   >> NANDA NEESH:  I'm Nanda Neesh.  Hello.  I hope you are able to hear me.

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  yes. 

   >> NANDINI CHAMI: I'm Nandini Chami, IT for change.  My question is, how can the Global District Compact address the gaps in identified in the implementation of the WSIS outcomes over the years, and how do we see what is coming out of it linking with the WSIS review especially in terms of the enhanced corporation agenda and related issues?

   >> LUCA BELLI:  I will be very brief because I will have time to speak about this in the third part of the session.  I am Luca Belli.  I am professor of the FGV Law School. 

   And my question is, with regard to the implementation, I already a had very good discussion with Amandeep about this some months ago.  I keep on having this curiosity about how this de facto will be implemented.  Let me explain my point.  I think that something emerged in a very eloquent and telling way from the experience of the past 20 years, also implementation of the WSIS on the Tunis agenda and all the commitment, sometimes what is put into paper in the project of a summit or a process, that does not correspond to the reality of implementation. 

   If we Take the definition of internet governance where all the stakeholders join hands and collectively define principles, rules, norms, and procedure, it sounds fantastic, but then we don't consider it in practice.  There Might be some stockholders whose enormous economic or political interest is sabotaged of this joining hands and collectively defining norms, procedures, and rules. 

   So my question is, is there any thinking about how to create guardrails and safeguards also with regard to the potential, I don't want to call them bad faith actors, but actors who are not interested in having a Global Digital Compact.  Actually, they have a huge economic or political interest in the sabotage of this kind of initiative.

   Thank you. 

   >> AMANDEEP SINGH GILL:  Very thoughtful questions.  To start with Wolfgang's question about how do we ensure continued multi-stakeholder participation in the negotiations phase? 

   So I think one is what happens inside the room, and you're absolutely right.  Having transparency, having different stakeholders in the room somehow so that they can see what is going on, and having the opportunity to shape that as well.  Whether you lobby governments, your individual governments, governments of places you come from or others, that is important. 

   Equally important is the opportunity around the room, like intercessionally, for instance, for the cofacilitators to sit down with different stakeholders, listen to them and take their feedback on, what do you think about this stuff, just as cofacilitators have been doing so far.  Summing up, they sat down with the different stakeholders, consulted them, took their feedback. 

   So we have to be creative and we have to be constantly inventive to enlarge the space because we are stuck with a structure that is intergovernmental by design, but we've succeeded creatively with this forum for instance, the IGF.  Even there is a recent example, the negotiations with the chemical industry that our colleagues, UNEP facilitated. 

   So they found some creative ways to engage in industry and enhance their accountability to find a space between hard norms and self-regulation.  That space was invented, in a sense, so we'll have to keep doing that.  And we will need your cooperation so that we can have the dynamic inside the room and outside the room all through the process. 

   The question that Nandini asked about the gaps that are there, in the Secretary-General's policy brief, you see a chart in which different forums are put there, IGF, WSIS forum, CSDG, those are kind of in the driving seat. 

   That chart also allows to you to see some gaps like misinformation, disinformation, which is not a big deal at that time.  AI, again, is not a big deal.  The human rights element, it has been there from the beginning, the people-centered aspect, inclusion aspect, but the kind of things we've seen since social media platforms became those multi-billion user platforms, they were not anticipated at that time.     

   There are some gaps and those gaps are the ones that we need to consider as we look at the build-out of the GDC, as we look at WSIS+20, how do we address those gap?  Is it repurposing existing forums?  Tweaking their mandates?  Is it just as we are seeing now with the AI space, the creation of this advisory body, that there is room for initiatives.  I'm not saying forums.  I'm saying initiatives actions that kind of addresses those gaps.  Nandini, that's an exercise that is already on the way. 

   We have to be sophisticated and nuanced about it and there is a lot of sometimes misinformation, disinformation about this, that this is somehow centralizing, it's pulling things to New York, and things like that.  And I've been at pains to emphasize it's exactly the contrary.  What we are trying to do is pull together the insights, the outcomes of different forums so that people who attend them have a whole of government perspective.  So nationally, also, when policymakers go back and implement, there are no gaps. 

   We're talking not only of gaps at the international level, talking gaps at the national level where sometimes regulative capacity is completely missing. 

   Fortunately, the countries who can afford an e-safety commissioner, data protection commissioner, a competition policy, enforcement regulator, and so on, the many in which these functions are actually inside the ministries, there's a conflict of interest.  You're not up to date with what is required. 

   Those are the kind of gaps at the national regional level that we also need to look at.  We need to kind of create incentives so that those gaps are resolved.  This is a kind of mutual learning, international learning, that needs to be facilitated so that building should just not be kind of an empty building.  It has to have that fluidity, exchange, that allows that learning to take place. 

   On Luca's question about bad actors, what can I say?  I mean, I think the good have to be more active.  they have to be more proactive.

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Thank you so much for that.  So we move on and without delaying because we have limited time and we have four other speakers. 

I would like to invite Ambassador Regine Grienberger, cyber ambassador from the German Federal Foreign Office.

    >> REGINE GRIENBERGER:  Thank you for structuring this discussion in this specific way.  I would have preferred to be in the fix-it part, but of course, you cannot choose.    

   What I'm speaking from government point of view, more explicitly also from an MFA point of view, foreign affairs because diplomacy is the turf where I feel most comfortable.  Some things that I say when describing how we try to help building GDC, of course, more normative than what has actually happened.  Purpose it's also my wishful thinking that it should work out like this. 

   First thing that, for me, is important to state is that this is the moment to acknowledge that the digital gap, digital divide exists, and it actually has affects on achieving the sustainable development goals. 

   And the trend is increasing and this gap is increasing.  This gap ever growing.  If you imagine AI quantum computing, the metaverse, it is even more increasing.  You can expect it's even more increasing in the future.  It's also really the time to reorganize our forces, our energy, and try to, try again to bridge this digital gap. 

   If you look from a local perspective, for example, German perspective, of course, we are industry 4.0 giants in digitization, but also public administration digitization dwarves, so if we are completely only moving in our national domestic environment, we dot see this gap or identify the gap in a different place. 

   The first thing that I learned and I would like to stress here is when you speak about the Global Digital Compact, you have to move from the local, national level, to a global level.  This is really worth it and this will also help reaching the sustainable development goals. 

   This means also involving stakeholders, nongovernmental stakeholders.  I mean for Germany, think for Europeans, this is already in our DNA, but of course, it's still necessary.  Then Germany facilitated regional consultations for Amandeep in Kenya for the African region, in Mexico City for Americas, and in Delhi for the some Asian countries.  This was not only to help you prepare the Global Digital Compact but also to collect more context from the regions for this discussion.

  We had, in the consequence, we had a more informed discussion also in Germany and in Brussels for Europe, although we didn't have European consultations in the same way that we had it in Nairobi, for example, but we had a more informal, informed discussion about what the GDC is about. 

   I suspect that if we would have had the regional consultations with Africa, Latin America, so on before we prepared our European contribution to the Global Digital Compact, this European contribution would have looked differently because of when, as it is, it is very Europe focused and we should have reevaluated our contribution under this perspective under, what does it do and how does it work on a global level? 

   The third element I would like to stress is what we don't have enough and what we should do more is cross-regional dialogue.  I would like to give you an example where I think this makes absolutely sense. 

   For example, if you look at the top 10 AI companies in the world, there is not a European company among them.  There is not an African company among them.  When we think about how to shape global governance structures to govern AI, I think Europe, Africa have a lot in common and we should touch this issue in our cross-regional dialogue across all levels and, of course, with nongovernmental stakeholders. 

   The fourth element, so I mentioned already the global district compact is about global challenges, so it has to be a compact on the global level.  A regional solution is not enough and will not help reaching sustainable development goals. 

   The real unleashing potential of digital transformation can only work if we do it in a global scale, which also means, of course, that we have to find ways to mitigate the risks that come with it and also the risks, like climate change, are risks on a global level and not a national or regional level.    

   The joint basis we have for this, of course, the UN Charter and the Human Rights Charter, but the digital compact has to do something else.  It has to specify how these documents from an analogue time apply to the digital age, and then also how governments can commit to these principles. 

   My fifth point is what should be in the global digital compact, except the referring to these basic documents, foundation documents of the United Nations. 

   I just was, this morning, in a meeting with Declaration of the Future of the Internet group.  There are five principles there.  I think a lot of people also that are not adhering to these initiatives can commit to these principles.  It is protection of human rights, caring for a global internet, inclusive and affordable access, strengthen digital trust, protecting the multi-stakeholder internet governance structure.

   As a last point, what I would like to have in the Global Digital Compact is also a strategic and fixed role for the Internet Governance Forum, for this forum, as a place to negotiate internet governance also in the future

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Thank you so much, Ambassador.  I think that it's already building up and, hopefully, some of the points that have been mentioned will be taken to the next round.  I particularly want to note the point that you made about the need to really look or relook at the way the human rights charter requires dearticulation on the basis of the strengths and its abiding and enduring kind of importance of human civilization, what does the age really mean?  I think that's really important but sometimes can get contentious. 

   I would like to invite the Dr. Shamika Sirimanne, Director, Division on Technology and Logistics from UNCTAD.  Everybody in the room is quite familiar with the pathbreaking unit particular in the form of the collectible, which I suggest to everybody download of tapes, which is Digital Economy reports. 

   Thank you very much for joining us.

   >> SHAMIKA N. SIRIMANNE:  Thank you, Anita.     

   Delegates, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity.  I don't want to take too much of your time so let me cut out half of what I'm supposed to say, but let me emphasize a few things. 

   You see online, other technological revolutions and this is why we're in a very special place because the digital technologies move very fast, number one.  Also, all technologies are converging toward digital.  Used to be take a photo.  Olden times, it was a chemistry.  It is now digital, so all of that stuff, you know, everything is moving, like there is a convergence happening. 

   Because of that, the opportunities that are opened up, and especially for developing countries, are there only for a very limited period of time.  If we cannot capture the benefits, these technologies move on.  There are enormous benefits from the digital technologies towards, in fact, all SDGs.  We talk about education, we sometimes criticize ChatGPT, but there are enormous things that we can do for the education system sector in developing countries.  We can use this technologies for health, manufacturing, agriculture, you name it.  All SDGs.  So the potentials are enormous. 

   One of the things that we hear in the CSTD, this is the United Nations Commission for Science and Technology for Development, is the focal point of system, the UN system, on the science policies, STI conversations, and increasingly here when we have the ministers coming, the annual meeting, that they are quite concerned that this digital technological revolution is yet again to bypass developing countries.  There's a real concern.  There's a real concern, the minister is asking us, do we do with AI?  Everywhere I go in countries, what do we do?  AI revolution coming to us.  Do you have experience of other developing countries using this?  what kind of national strategies we need to build? 

   There are an enormous amount of questions that are coming out on this technology side.  Just AI is one thing.  All other technologies too.  I just want to say it is not just access to the internet.  It is not just the digital divide, as we said, but the issues that are raised are much more complex and difficult. 

   Access to internet is one thing.  I think both of you mentioned, it's not just access.  It's also the quality of this access and affordability of this access.  If you look at the least developed countries and they pay exorbitant amount of money for data. 

   In ANTAD, we work on the preparedness of countries for the digital economy and we find that participation in the digital economy is not just about access and even the quality of access and the cost of access, but it's also the whole regulatory environment. 

   Like, for example, if I want to have a platform and sell all of my stuff, if, in my country, there is no privacy and no data protection laws, which is the case of 50 percent of the LDCs, I don't think any of you are going to put your credit card and start buying from my platform.  It will not happen. 

   So these things, it's another aspect.  All regulatory and the framework.  The skills, it's not just the skills to use the telephone.  You need some form of calling skills to prepare your platform and to get things going.  These skills don't exist.  These skills don't exist in the least developed countries. 

   So this other -- among that, one of the other things that's coming up in CSTD is about the whole aspect of data for development.  In fact, CSTD will meet at ministerial level in April.  One of the themes is data for development. 

   Thank you, Anita, for giving a shout out to Digital Economy report.  at ANTAD, in our Digital Economy report 2021, we called for a global data governance approach so that data can cross borders with trust because are not going to have to international trade and international transactions and international economy if your data cannot cross borders. 

   We said we need to build interoperability.  There was a question asked.  There are big players.  Yes, there are big players.  90 percent of the platforms are owned by just two countries, US and China, so there are big players.  They're not going to give up their data governance system, so we need to develop to this interoperability to the data governance system.  At the moment three, there are three data governance systems.  There is very much the public sector.  Data government system of China.  There is very much the laissez-faire private sector-driven data governance system for the US.  We have the European unions, GDPR in the more human-centric data governance. 

   I don't think none of these groups are going to give up on their data governance systems just because they depend on their political and development aspirations, so we need to build interoperability. 

   Yes, we know that data is good for private sector, I mean, there is an economic value, but there are situations where we need to have data-sharing too. 

   I think, Ambassador, you mentioned climate change.  These are issues.  when we developed the vaccine for COVID-19, it was just because the data was shared very quickly across borders that we managed to understand and develop it. 

   We need to have data-sharing principles when we talk about it.  We need have the whole data privacy security standards, at least common standards we all can agree.  We need ethics.  I think, Amandeep, you talk a lot about the whole AI and ethics. 

   I think this, as we're all saying here, this cannot be done just by governments because you need to -- if you're going to do AI ethics, you also need the industry sitting with you because they are the ones who understands this.  And you need civil society organization because I think every struggle begins -- I mean, honestly, in activism, you need a greater toolbox of this world in this data discussion.  So it has to have a global and multi-stakeholder approach to data. 

   So let me conclude saying that all is not lost.  I think we have the GDC process to push forward some of these ideas.  Please don't forget the WSIS+20 because WSIS is coming to an end and the principles that you, or the aspirations that you agreed to 20 years ago are very much, they are unfinished business.  Inclusive, people-centered information society we have not seen, so please also feed into that process with a lot of vigor because it's an undertaking the evaluation part of the work that we'll be doing as the ANTAD secretary for CSTD, the ITU, UNESCO, we are all here to talk about WSIS too.  So I appeal to you is push many ideas through many of these so we will converge towards the GDC and the summit of the future and we get somewhere.  That's how we can build it.

>> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  I think the key takeaway is struggle.  So we shall.  Thanks so much. 

   We move now to Alison, Executive Director of Research ICT Africa.

   >> ALISON GILLWALD:  Thank you so much, Anita, and Ambassador Gill and colleagues for the input. 

   I guess we all want to be in the fix-it stage, but I think actually the foundational session is very important not least of all picking up some of the points that are being made. 

   To really highlight the kind of planetary challenges that we're facing, these are no longer ICT sectoral challenges.  They not infrastructure challenges.  These are really global problems that we're facing, but also to deal with some of the appropriation of some of the concepts that we're using.  I think it's an important part of this process that we return to them and we understand that implications that we are speaking about are actually going to affect the whole of humanity. 

   I would like to remind us of the Secretary-General's, when he spoke in 2020 of the need for a new social contract for a new era.  I think that's important if we're approaching this from social and economic justice point of view.  He described digital transformation one of two seismic shifts that would shape 21st century.  Of course, the other being climate change.  Both, he contended, would widen inequalities even further unless urgently addressed on a planetary scale. 

   The Secretary-General's identification of the need for a Global Digital Compact to underpin our common agenda to erase these negative trends and collective and collaborative renewal of the social contract anchored in human rights and gender equality to rebuild trust and social cohesion with people need to see reflected in their daily lives. 

   Highlighting the centrality of digital inclusion in contemporary society, the Secretary-General called for a social digital compact which should include updated governance arrangements to deliver better public goods and usher in a new era of universal social protection, health coverage, education, skills, decent work, and housing, as well as universal access to the internet by 2030 as a basic human right so all citizens have a say in envisioning countries' futures. 

   I'm mentioning this because we were part of a peer review process for the African Union's Economic Commission for Africa -- I'm sorry.  The UN's Economic Commission for Africa working together with the Africa Union, and I think the reflections are there to make research, Africa's research, but very much continental reflection and the importance of African voices in these conversations and their absence significantly up to now. 

   I think this intervention is required more than ever.  I think the layering of advanced digital technologies over the existing inequalities that we have, which are already reflecting underlying structural inequalities, is exacerbating inequality.  The compounding effects of digital inequality on existing inequality was highlighted by COVID-19 with a majority of people in Africa unable to mitigate the associated health and economic risks through digital substitutions of the access to work, school, to banking, and even to food.  Those at the intersections of these multiple inequalities, including gender, disproportionately succumbing to this disease and the economic fallout and being least best positioned to prepare for economic reconstruction. 

   In the African countries surveyed by Research ICT Africa during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, showed that despite the pandemic driving the growth of digital economy globally, the pandemic widened inequalities between those who had internet access prior to the pandemic and those who had access after. 

   This highlights the underlying wicked policy problem that we face of the digital inequality paradox.  It's exactly this paradox, the social, that the Global Digital Compact needs to address. 

   This digital inequality paradox is no longer just that connectivity one where those who are connected and those are unconnected, the gap grows there.  This is really to deal with the issues that are colleagues have already spoken about, the complexity of this and shifting from a notion of digital divide, infrastructural issues to dealing with the issue digital inequality which are much more complex. 

   The paradox lies as more people are connected, digital inequality is amplified, but this is not only between those online and offline in the case of voice or basic text in our old environment.  It is between those who have the technical and financial resources to use the internet is to transact actively, to produce and prosper and even contribute to the wealth of their nations to those who are barely on line using tiny bits of data intermittently from time to time. 

   Addressing these challenges, we argue in our submission to the Global Digital Compact that we need a governance environment that looks at global regulation of digital public goods.  One of the key public goods is, of course, data, but underlying that and far more fundamentally, it is also public statistics. 

   We absolutely don't have the data to assist how far we are.  We think we're 85 percent of the SDGs, for Africa, we simply don't know.  We simply don't have that data.  It is this concept of public goods and digital public goods that I particularly think has been appropriated and used and misused from its classical sense as a rationale for public regulation.  I think even in the use of the public goods component within the Secretary-General office, it's set been up as a public/private enterprise essentially to access open data. 

   Digital public goods is far more than open data or public data.  Although public data is really the basis for this.  Without reliable data, there's little way of knowing the progress being made toward these various targets including the SDGs and the ICT targets that underpin them, and it makes it impossible to assist our progress generally. 

   The current digital indicators used for Africa and, in fact, the global data on issues such as gender inequality are based on very patchy data extrapolated from a few data points from the whole continent. 

   To move beyond high-level descriptive statistics that conceal the real determinants of inequality, national representative macro studies are required to extrapolate this data and build an evidence base, and this needs to be informed by an intersectional inequality approach that can assess the impact on class, race, gender, ethnicity, and importantly, in relation to digital access location, rural and urbanist a major determinant of this. 

   Also, the kind of data we have, it presents these groups as highly homogeneous groups whereas we know there's enormous heterogeneity in these categories.  It's not all men and women that are equally or unequally access to these services.  It's really only through the more granular data that we can identify these multiple or intersectional aspects of inequality. 

   The diversion of donor and multi-lateral agendas from regulation of affordable and universal access and digital public goods, such as internet data,  cybersecurity, to only resourcing the research of advanced data-driven technologies, big data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence is, in fact, exacerbating this digital inequality paradox where we still have the rhetoric of addressing digital inequality, our resources don't have multi-lateral going towards the data and AI, data-driven technologies. 

   So it's really important that if we are going to address digital inequality in the information era, we need to address this issue of accessing data.  I think the important issue here is moving in this framework for governance of digital public goods is shifting from a purely social justice perspective, human rights perspective, to looking at a perspective that is actually also cognizant of the needs for economic justice. 

   I think we need at the moment, we are looking primarily at individualized first-generation rights preoccupied by Privacy Act.  it's important obviously.  We don't want to lose that, but we really need to look not only at the uneven impact, uneven distribution of the negative impacts of these data-driven technologies, but we seriously need to look at the uneven distribution of opportunities associated with these enormously powerful and potentially important technologies. 

   At the moment, I think that is not adequately on our agenda because there is the sense that we simply cannot regulate these big tech companies operating at a global level.  We've abdicated some of the responsibilities for the economic regulation that can happen in the underpinning infrastructures, et cetera.  And importantly, of course, now data. 

   Just to say that while the compact covers a number of key areas, we have argued that it's actually the  between these different policy areas.  The broader digital ecosystem that needs to be addressed in the compact.  Although we speak about the need for digital indicators and the need for them, then we speak about the invisibility, the lack of representation and discrimination of people as outcomes of algorithmic business, it's actually the linkages of that.  We aren't unable, no matter how much we try to have right-spaced, ethically-designed big data sets, we can't unbias it.  There simply isn't the data to unbias it with half the world's population.  Half of Africa's population, at least, is not even online. 

   So the linkages between these underlying digital inequality and the manifestations that we see in the inequalities is completely different. 

   Perhaps lastly, we must close off, I think we can't be saying the same things we've speaking about.  WSIS, you were there, Tunis and Geneva, we've got to do things differently.  We cannot be continuing to do the same things using the same policies and hoping that we have different outcomes.  It's not just a supplies side structural issue.  We have to focus. 

   All the evidence we have from our surveys is that the challenges are now not infrastructural.  They're the old human development challenges.  Determinative of whether you have access to the internet or not is education and the associated economy of income. 

   Until we actually address these underlying human development challenges, no amount of high-level governance and ethical designs are going to address these problems. 

Just at the last point, to emphasize very strongly that, Gill and others have been, this is no longer a sectoral policy.  It cannot be dealt with by a single ministry, a Ministry of Communications.  Need transfers of policies that will address the education challenges at the same time they're addressing higher-level science and technology and engineering requirements that we need for data science.  

>> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Thank you so much.  I think it's very hard-hitting and I think it links also back to what Luca said, little bit about being in this kind of bind, but it is abdication.  There is a political abdication.  That is something that is completely untenable. 

I have been singularly unable to keep time.  I think there's one more speaker online, then we can probably decide that we will regroup in a certain way, so over to you, Renata, who is the head of Open Knowledge Foundation.  Can you unmute and we'll just check?  We are able to hear you.  Over to you, Renata.    

>> RENATA AVILA:  Hi.  What you see in the background is Lake Atitlan in my country.  As I was hearing all of this previous speakers, I was thinking of the reality of a country like that, a country both in the most vulnerable countries in the world and countries facing economic, political, societal troubles at the moment. 

We had a map and we would see, would be able to visualize all the red spots, all the points in the world right now live in this unprecedented unrest.  We will take it into account when we think about global fora, when we think about global initiatives. 

 So the two points that I want to address in this bill session is we need to build this Global Digital Compact taking into consideration that there are countries that, according to predictions of the IMF, are about to collapse because of that.  There are countries, according to all the predictions of climate, that are going to suffer in the near future catastrophes that they cannot prevent because they don't have the resources do so.  So with that in mind, I know that it is a rather pessimistic approach, but this is a realistic approach that we need to take when thinking about the Global Digital Compact. 

We need to understand that people come into the room will be coming with all of this baggage, with all of these problems.  When you talk about ethics and principles and sophisticated systems of governance, the people there in the room will be thinking of, so  am I going to fund this if most of my budget goes to pay debt from the creditor's countries.  It is again a problem of nice words, nice declarations, that end up in nothing but words because you do not define in advance how it's going to be possible for countries in the global south to fund this. 

In building the idea Global Digital Compact, I think that institutions like the IFS should be involved and creditors' countries should be involved to give us answer to that and say maybe we will pardon the debt of countries that are in this struggle that are so behind in digitalization, and that money will be allocated instead of been paid by the countries every time to develop the robust digital infrastructure that is needed.  That requires political will, of course.

The second thing that we need to be aware of when designing this idea of Digital Compact is power dynamics.  Are we going to invite in the room and give an additional layer of power to the most powerful actors we have on the planet earth at the moment, and by those, I refer to the big tech companies?  This is constant and constant and constant discourse of, we need to invite them at the table.  The problem is that many times in many countries, they own the table. 

Sometimes, in some situations, they have gone so far to capture think tanks, capture academia, capture civil society, and so on.  When designing global digital compact, special attention should be paid to tame the power of big tech and not to be just like low hanging fruit for them to shape economy, the future of our digital society. 

One quick example of that is skills.  Of course, it is very important in this to address the unmet promise of knowledge equality and skills, but what we are doing through the cooperation, between private sector and public sector on skills development is just to prepare the workers that will be useful for them and to keep them the monopolies growing, we have a problem. 

The another aspect that is very, very important to address and to bring in as well is to remove block, like when we saw climate crisis, we were very aware the blocks on sharing knowledge and sharing capacities and sharing infrastructure.  We still have with that 20th century, still have a 20th century copyright system.  We still have a 20th century patent system that is not enabling cooperation in the way that we need. 

I think that issues like intellectual property should be addressed at this Global Digital Compact.  I know those are not like the sexy topics any more.  The sexy topic is AI.  I think if we do not address the  problem of global north, global south inequalities in terms of access to knowledge and access to patents, we will be like far behind and we will never meet the goals of saving the planet and connecting the disconnected. 

Last, I think, the issue of geopolitics and the role of the press.  I think for the Global Digital Compact to be successful, it would be incredible to involve from the first stages global and local representatives from the media because many times the narrative is shaped in a way from not complete awareness of the processes or not complete technical knowledge what's going on in the digital sphere. 

I prepared a quick presentation because one of these build it, fix it, this dynamic that I read was to make it visual.  I would like to share quickly how I see it and how I see that we can meet the goals in a second.

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Renata, can you wind up in a minute?  Is that okay?

   >> RENATA AVILA:  Yes.  It's going to be very, very quick. 

   So ideally, our Global Digital Compact will fix knowledge inequalities and will be a power balance act without replicating exploitation and extractivism. It will advance people's rights and involve the people in shaping it.  It will be a reproducible impact as a result.  It will unlock the possibilities of technology fast.  That's why I mentioned removal of the patents blockage.  It will bring people together.  It will bring other fora, but avoid new extracted dynamics and participation watching, tokenism, people who do not really shape the process.  It will be sustainable for the people and for the planet.  It will be generative, and it will not underprivileged communities will be on the receiving end, it would activate the creative power of the individuals and communities and I think that's what purpose is.  The social innovation layer should be taken into account and will be rooted in the local, but interoperable, and hopefully will have exponential impact and dissemination. 

   So I guess that with that and knowing that it was very little time to unpack all of this, I think that that Global Digital Compact that says how are they going to fund these, does not depend only on voluntary contributions, but on serious commitments from the countries of the global north to the global south, a Global Digital Compact invites, interconnects the financial issues and the climate issues and the knowledge and equality issues and bring them to the same table, a Global Digital Compact that recognizes and addresses meaningful acts that imbalance of power that big tech companies bring and the dynamic that they cost when they are like the person with equal power in the room with civil society, if that is addressed, I think we have all the elements for a successful Global Digital Compact.

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Thank you so much.  If we only had changed the World Trade System, IP system, and entire debt paradigm just about forty years ago,  I think we would not been here and we would have certainly been able to reap the aspirations of the WSIS.  Now we have compounded issues. 

   With your permission, what I could do is take on some very fierce and more hard-hitting statements from the breakage round and why perhaps all the aspirational and pragmatic statements from the first round of speakers may need to be subject to some kind of skepticism.  We could do like five to six-minute input from each of you, then you have a half-hour slot for discussion.  So I would like to open up the next round right away so that we can take input, and then break for a period of discussion. 

   Over to you, Helani, from LIRNE Asia.

   >> HELANI GALPAYA:  Thank you.  Anita, you remit to us to act within the particular one-third of this, so let me try to do this because you can say on the one hand, on the other hand, but let me just stick to the one hand. 

   I think GDC was damned if you do, damned if you didn't.  There were great consultations.  People were flown across the world.  People are still flying across the world on this.  It was, for the skeptic, a great way to spend government money and civil society money on private sector airplanes.  Could we not have done this whole thing with a lot more online consultation and written these statements?

   Certainly, looking at the current March 2023 or May 2023 draft, it looks like this is the stuff that certainly civil society has been talking for 10, 20, 30 years, so could we not have done it for a lot cheaper and the money, particularly let's say some government spent on this, could it not have been spent actually on bridging the digital divide, getting the right kinds of institution set up in our countries' developing capacity of government. 

   Second, a lot of the process involved keeping civil society in one track having consultations, government, another track, and so on, then regional civil society.  I think that was absolutely important because there was a lot each group had to say and not all civil society is alike.  Sometimes the process didn't really recognize that all civil society was alike.  It brought us together as if we all wanted the same thing.  I think there's enough nuances.  But now, the issue is how, the real sticky points.  Forget within civil society.  It's how the challenge of negotiating  between civil society and sometimes private sector and government is going to take place. 

   At this point, it looks Amandeep and the team are somehow going to sit and use their brain cells to do this.  I think that's really poor form to not keep the rest of us informed as to what the next steps are because that is the real negotiation between civil society, who is perhaps at one extreme and other parties.  And that is, I think, really important in terms of implementing next steps, because otherwise, civil society could have gotten together and written this statements by ourselves, right?  So that's the real challenge before the September Global Summit.  And that has to be a long, structured facilitated process. 

   Third, it calls in the current draft for funding commitments from governments, donors, multi-laterals,  Et cetera.  The situation right now in certainly Southeast Asia, some Southeast Asian, countries some Latin American countries that Renata referred to, and very soon, African countries, is that we are facing a kind of inflation-driven, Covid-driven fiscal squeeze every dollar coming in is going to food, social safety payments, water, electricity.  Nobody is going to ask and negotiate for digital-related funding, right?  So who is going to pay for this is the fundamental question we have. 

   The poorer the country, poorer -- IMF bailouts, mine included.  Several of my neighbors about to go into.  Some Latin American countries in the 20-something round of IMF bailout.  What are we talking about in terms of funding, if not for very basic necessities, and governments are not thinking about ICT digital as basic necessities. 

   So what they're doing, either ignoring ICTs or wanting an AI plan so they can create jobs.  And when some funder comes and says, well, you need to think about rights, quickly cut and paste from a European policy that's completely unimplementable with the capacity and the money that we have. 

   In terms of funding comes the big question of taxation.  There's a big question about global digital taxation.  This is a place where a global compact could really come into play because as normal global conversation about how we somewhat equitably share the benefits of large global technology where the user base are from the majority companies, but the companies are elsewhere.

   This global compact mentions none of this, and instead, the global south countries are sitting looking at OECD proposal, which is looking multilateral but one big country that we shall not name, has no interest in participating and is delaying the whole negotiation multiple UN proposals which are all meant to be bilaterally negotiated between tiny countries large countries, which is never going to happen, or individually coming up with digital tax regimes, right?  Which the global companies are going to die if they have to comply with one rule Nepal and one rule in Sri Lanka.  So the Global Digital Compact does not address this fundamental issue of taxation and it's related to financing. 

   The last point I want to make is that this is presented as something that is led by nation states in a multi-lateral system, and we do need functioning multi-lateral systems with significant multi-stakeholder participation.  That is as it should be.  But setting this in a multi-lateral system that is dysfunctional is a fundamental problem.  Where is the accountability? 

   We talk about stopping internet fragmentation in one of the pages, the current draft.  So who is going to hold accountable the country that runs the largest firewall in the world when they are doing so much more to fragment the internet than anybody else. 

   Let me offend everyone including my country which just came up with an online safety bill which is nothing but curbing speech of people they don't like and speech they don't like.  This is equal-opportunity offense. 

   So where is the multi-lateral system accountability for holding their own members to account?  I mean this is going to be another dysfunctional UN Security Council which can't stop millions of people from being killed.  That's a much more important thing.  What are we thinking about in digital governance?  How are we going to hold rogue nations to account and there are many.  Not even going to talk about companies.  Renata talked about companies.

   I'll just stop there.  Thank you.

[applause]

>> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Yes, I think it's sufficiently broken. 

I would like now for Ale Costa Barbosa, Fellow for the Weizenbaum Institute and also someone who is a member of the Homeless Workers Movement - Technology Sector from Brazil.  Would you like to speak from there?  You have inspiration from your predecessor.

>> ALEXANDRE COSTA BARBOSA:  I think I will do a bit more breaking it after that one. 

So first I would like to thank Anita on behalf of IT for change and the Global Digital Justice Forum for inviting me to such an important debate that show influence and activities of the IGF in the following days.  I hope I can break it in a way I contribute to fixing it. 

With honor, I am speaking as a coordinator for the Homeless Workers Movement - Technology Sector in Brazil.  Housing movement accounts for roughly 30,000 people.  From a button-up approach, it has been doing, in practice in the territories, some of what the GDC is promoting for, such as meaningful connectivity, the digital public education, and decent digital labor.  I invite all of you to join our session to learn more about our work. 

Closing in the gaps in the UN Global Digital Compact, I don't think civil society organizations find the process legitimate, but I would like to highlight two key dimensions on GDC substance, sustainable digital public infrastructures and AI and labor. 

GDC alludes to sustainable digital public infrastructure, but it should be more precise about sustainable DPI.  There is so multi-stakeholder census around this definition.  IGF could enable this.  Instead, it reinforces interoperable open accessible DPIs, but supported primarily through actions of multi-lateral organizations, which is supported by big tech-related, big foundations have shaped what DPI is in practice. 

The G20 had different tasks that force us to promote digital public infrastructure at the last meeting in New Delhi.  If you look closely, you'll see they had a different definition of DPI.  Internet pioneer Ethan Zuckerman defines infrastructure as a set of technology and systems for the healthy functioning of society.  Nevertheless, the G20 synthesis document restricted it to digital ID, payment methods, platforms for consent-based data sharing.  It is really important, but it is not enough for that, at least for a majority of the world.  The GDC must consider digital public infrastructure as a general purpose or essentially infrastructure or platforms even if sectoral. 

As mentioned by colleagues in the first round, a multi-level approach is necessary although it is missing.  Searching engines work at a global level and social media as well.  Health care, education, social protection platforms work at the national levels.  Why don't multi-lateral organizations foster that development.  It calls for action on digital technologies for education and social protection, but it could be more explicit on digital infrastructure for education, for instance. 

At the municipal or ever lower levels, mobility, house rental, food delivery, and labor platforms should be considered, so why not create data infrastructure and human rights-oriented policy frameworks to promote local sustainable innovation? 

Including developing countries in the digital economy through digital connectivity infrastructure, capacity-building, and access to technological innovation is important, but it's also not enough.  Digital and data economies are utterly dependent on substantially concentrated cloud economy being 2/3 of its market shared on Amazon, Microsoft and Google.  Look at IBM and Oracle combined account for more than Alibaba and Tenson, so solely antitrust at the local level will not solve the problem. 

This vailed extraction enables these companies to build parallel private networks which has been considered a threat to internet fragmentation by the policy's network.  So if we intend to level the playing field and promote data for development, why is data infrastructure not considered digital public infrastructure.  Even with technology, the big players will not give up on data governance. 

Again, GDC claims for sustainable DPI, as evident by the policy network on environment report, GDC's policy brief should have mentioned the carbon additional footprint.  The document also says the potential of digital technology in tracking supply chains, but does not refer to the digital technology supply chain itself.  What about the satellites, the fiberoptical cables, the transmission towers, disregarding internet telecom related infrastructures.

Moreover, to talk about digital technologies, we must consider cultural exchange extraction in Democratic Republic of Congo link to in Bolivia or even gold in the Amazon rainforest as to ensure social, environmental, digital justice. 

AI regulation and governance debate must include labor discussions notwithstanding the GDC references the application of labor rights acting partnership with the international labor organizations. 

At the G7 summit in May, digital technologies ministers committed to fully discussing diverse generative AI aspects called the Hiroshima AI process aforementioned.  Nothing on labor.  The same is true within the G20 and in the policy network on artificial intelligence in IGF.  Until when?  Why not consider it? 

In the Brazilian scenario, the multi-stakeholder public consultation on platform regulation held by the Brazilian internet steering considered among its four pillars, decent work.  Some issues have multistakeholder consensus such as algorithm control, transparency, democratic labor platform development governance.  It still lacks attention to micro-workers' role in developing AI systems.  That's not to mention the impact of digital AI on the workforce.  If we do not think of workers-led AI governance, like the Hollywood writers one, we will not see improvement in livelihoods, but the opposite. 

Dear colleagues, I am too optimistic to believe that novel proposals for the international division of labor come out of the Internet Governance fora, so is GDC really transformative?  No.  Unfortunately, it is not yet, but it can be.  Otherwise, I hope none of us would be here.  The Internet Governance Forum is crucial for achieving the SDGs.  However, if IGF anticipates those critical dimensions, only if IGF anticipates those critical dimensions, it will likely succeed in meaningfully contributing to the road map for the digital cooperation.

To conclude, with humility, allow me to echo President Lula's statement during the United Nations general assembly a few weeks ago.  The UN's broadest and most ambitious collective action aimed at development, the 2030 agenda, could turn into its biggest failure. 

Thank you, Anita.

>> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  (Mic muted)

I move over to the next speaker, Nandini Chami, online.  Deputy director of IT for Change.

   >> NANDINI CHAMI:  Thank you, Anita. 

   Today, I will be speaking on behalf of IT for Change as well as the Global Digital Justice Forum, a network of development organizations, digital rights, groups, trade unions, feminist organizations who have been working together to advance the cause of digital justice and specifically engaging in the Global Digital Compact process in this regard, and IT for Change is also a member of this group. 

   And just without much ado, just to kind of continue to break this, I think a lot of this task has been completed already.  So when we look at the Global Digital Compact from a global south perspective, I think that there are two major unresolved concerns and some of these concerns have come across multiple times in the public consultation that were held in the GDC process especially from civil society groups in the south. 

   So the first concern is that this was also discussed in the last round, that when you look at like the global digital governance seen 20 years after the WSIS, they say that there is a particular vision of the democratic multi-stakeholder vision of the WSIS all these years and we are ending up in a world where see the digital governance space captured by a few powerful transnational corporations and dominant states and the bad actors, so to speak, discussed in the first session.  So in a world where the complexity of digital as a crosscutting transversal policy issue has only grown, if we are not able to fix these institutional arrangements question even after the Tunis, now the institutional challenge is only growing and offered in the Global Digital Compact right now adequate to this, and I believe the answer is no, and I just get to that in a moment. 

   The Second major concern is that, today, we all know that data governance directions are extremely important and as was, again, mentioned in round one, it's not just about privacy and personal protection, but it's about how do you govern cross-border data flows development sovereignty for all countries in the digital economy?  Here too, I believe Global Digital Compact falls short. 

   So just to get to slightly more detailed peek of both of these issues, let's take the question of institutional arrangements for global digital justice as proposed by the UN Secretary-General in his July 2023 policy brief. 

   We see that the policy brief has like two things.  One is the Constitutional of tripartite digital policy space.  The digital cooperation forum in the longterm short term, and in the long term, the proposal is to establish a global commission on just and sustainable digitalization. 

   If you take the case of the Digital Cooperation Forum, many examples are invoked most strikingly the in ILO mechanism and the membership of private entities in the ITU and there is a proposal that the Digital Cooperation Forum should be new tripartite dialogue modality for follow-up on the GDC commitments by states, private sector, and civil society.    

   Unfortunately, there is no ground norm clarifying the rights and duties of these stakeholder groups or the process through which nongovernmental stakeholders are going to be nominated to the proposed Digital Cooperation Forum's policy table. 

   There is the idea of inviting small and medium-size enterprises as well as startups representatives bodies at this policy table through a quota, but just by the tokenistic representation, would that be sufficient and neutralize the agenda-setting power of big corporations?  This is something we should think about. 

   And this point has already come up.  The status of the Digital Cooperation Forum vis-a-vis, the WSIS consensus is unclear.  How will Internet Governance Forum and the Digital Cooperation Forum stand in relation to each other, and the Digital Cooperation Forum is planned as the enhanced corporation mechanism that never set up after the WSIS, how will the legitimate public policy space and duty of states to work for economic and social development in the new digital paradigm be secured by the GDC process?  

   Coming to the longterm proposal of the global commission on just and sustainable digitalization, this body is imagined as an enabler of multi-stakeholder cooperation between state civil society and private sector in all futuristic issues of inclusive and sustainable digitalization which is the connectivity plus, plus, we've all been talking about, and the key formula that is mentioned for this is to move beyond traditional interstate cooperation to a new network multi-laterallism.  But in this new network multi-laterallism, again, without a clear separation of the rules, responsibilities and the powers of state and nonstate actors in the distributed decision-making, this will just end up like leading to, again, consolidating the capture of global digital cooperation arrangements and the governance debate powerful by powerful big tech actors, which is a problem we have been facing for more than 20 years now. 

   Coming to the second issue of the directions for data governance, the Secretary-General's policy briefs says that the convergence on principles for data governance, that is to be negotiated in a separate process, the Global Data Compact, date and timeline for which are not mentioned or raised now.  This evidently means that the most contentious issue in global digital cooperation, which is about the jurisdictional sovereignty of states to exercise controls cross-borders flows of their citizens' data resources and deal with associated implications for human rights, national security, trade, competition, taxation, and overall internet governance will remain unresolved.  And we already know from the ANTAD digital economy report, that the lack of news on this issue entrenches the exacted neocolonial data economy that we are already unhappy with. 

   Coming to a final set of points, I think that in the new institutional arrangements for global digital governance, I completely understand the point that we can't back to an anachronistic past, but somewhere, we have sit and think about the Tunis vision because we are not able to understand how to make democratic the multi-stakeholderism work.  And if we are leaping into a new network multilateralism face without actually thinking about the institutional checks and balances, we are actually ending up with old wine in new bottle adage goes. 

   Coming to the governance of data, we all agree that shared multilateral vision on the access to and use of data is lacking today, and we all know what the cross-border data flows question is not just about privacy and personal data protection, so how are they going to talk about developmental sovereignty as the collective rights of peoples to determine how their aggregate data resources are utilized and enjoy their rightful claims and benefits of data-enabled knowledge? 

   From my perspective, the Global Digital Compact is broken on both these counts, and if we have to fix it, we have to fix both of these questions of institutional governments' deficit and the very, very urgent challenge of looking at development, sovereignty as data sovereignty. 

   Thank you.

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Thank you so much.  That's very important, to think, to connect all the issues that were pointed out.  In all of the economic fault lines globally, we see questions around sovereignty coming back. 

   I would like to now call upon the next speaker from Africa, Megan, from Afronomicslaw Kenya.  Megan, you're also on line.

   >> MEGAN KATHURE:  Thank you, Anita.  I hope all of you can hear me. 

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Yes, we can.

   >> MEGAN KATHURE:  Great.  Thank you.

   So I'll largely share two gaps of the GDC brief.  I would like to begin by stating that there's an often recited position that the historical choices with respect to internet governance, I believe, have enabled big tech rise and achieved the current digital regulatory and the postmulti-stakeholderism process has achieved little for global digital constitutionalizing.  So by the policy brief by the United Secretary-General on the GDC emphasized the need to reshape the trajectories of digitalization and human dignity. 

   Its gaps risk entrenching the digital regulatory dilemma.  So on of the gaps in my view of the GDC include, one, the brief fails to acknowledge notion that rights are protected by the fulfillment of duties and that merely expecting states to refrain from certain actions may not be enough.  On this ambit, briefing of a series of proposed objectives and actions of member states, the mission that member states commit to a laundry list of actions in seven thematic areas. 

   For instance, member states expected to commit to avoiding blanket internet shutdowns, which will run counter to efforts to close the digital divide, and also, members states are expected to come together with technology developers and digital platforms to reinforce transference and contribute to measures in AI systems.  However, there is no mention of how such commitments from states will be attained and, therefore, there's also a failure by the brief and the GDC to take cognizance of the power of big corporations to set agendas to their favor as we've seen in the AI system of late. 

   They do appear in the European AI Act was influenced by big tech corporations.  Therefore, to be effective, the Compact GDC must go beyond taking their commitments from states and corporate actors and should ensure or come up with a regime of how consequences for inaction by both states and corporate actors, sorry, consequences for inaction may be levied on both states and corporate actors.  This ultimately requires dealing with the inequality of digital governance head on.

   The second gap in the GDC will relate to the idea of it is a failure of upholding poor human rights holistically, so the brief does not uphold human rights adequately in the sense it does not capture the indivisibility of human rights and, therefore, fails to put the economic, social, and cultural rights on the same footing as civil and political rights.        

   The digitalized work precarity in the gig economy, for instance, coupled with incursion of big tech into the health and agricultural sector, for instance, are threatening individual and community's right to health, the right to education, and the right enjoy the benefits of scientific progress, and so on internet shutdowns, for instance, not only undermines the connectivity divide, but also the right to education.  For instance, students relying on remote education and other economic and social rights. 

   On a related note that Nandini has also mentioned is reduction of data rights to the singular agenda of individual privacy and personal data protection of which this ignores the economic and social and cultural rights implicated in data value chains. 

   So those will be my main contributions in terms of the gaps of the GDC. 

   Lastly, to make a point on the possibility of digital justice, it is worthwhile to know that it is possible with pursuing digital justice by obtaining a just digital future requires a radical shift of our social politics where equality and economic policy to distribute the benefits of technology equally are made primal and the inequalities brought by digital capitalism, intellectual monopoly, and rent extraction are overhauled.  To attain global digital justice, The GDC needs to learn also from the ill-fated versus mandated to complementary process of enhanced cooperation. 

   Over to you, Anita.

>> ANITA:  Thank you so much, Megan, for all three enforcing points that were made earlier.

Is Dennis in the room?  Yes, hi.  Co-hosting rights, is that possible?

        >> DENNIS REDEKER:  Wow.  That was a lot already a quite a bit of breaking.  I think I'm the last one in the row.  I'm a researcher.  Dennis Redeker, University of Bremen in Germany.  I'm not really  southern perspective on this Global Digital Compact.  But I'm trying to let the empirical evidence from recent studies speak for itself.  This is why I brought a few slides.  It's not too long, not at all.  Do you see that?  Wonderful. 

        When thinking about a Global Digital Compact a while ago, I thought one puzzle that I have is in spite of the consultations, in spite of many people being drawn into the process, regular users, regular citizens as much as policymakers here in the room, I felt it's not clear to me what people actually want and think and, particularly, who they want to be at the table, who they want to be particularly listened to in the consultation, so I put this on a larger survey off around 17-and-a-half thousand people in 41 countries and I asked these questions. 

        I had to, if I asked questions about a Global Digital Compact, I knew I couldn't ask about complex detailed questions of the consultations because people will not be attuned to these kind of questions and they might not have an opinion. 

        I asked three questions essentially.  The first is, who should ideally provide input into the writing of the Global Digital Compact to the UN?  Then the question, who do you think, in reality, provides input into that process?  Thirdly, I asked people about the kind of principles on kind of a basic level.  What are the most important things for you?  Privacy from expression, what should be in there?  If anything, what should taken care of by this process?

   This survey, as I said, 41 countries, six different languages, ran in November last year to March this year, and this is online-based, recruitment through social media.  Only social media users, Facebook and Instagram.  We can talk more about limitations, but that's a different forum. 

   The first question I had was, who should actually have input in this?  Surprisingly, technical expert were asked most for.  60% of the respondents said technical expert.  Academics, about 50% of the people said that.  Senior citizens, about 45% approximately.  40% civil society and NGOs.  National governments, 35%.  Businesses, only 20%.  So only 20% of the people think that businesses should be listened to what the Global Digital Compact consultations take place. 

   And if you just compare this to what people think who actually gets to say something, people say, well, technical experts get a say.  Academics are not being listened to.  Citizens are not being listened to.  Civil society isn't being listened to.  NGOs are.  National governments are not being listened to surprisingly.  People think that businesses are more listened to than they should be according to their own normative presences. 

   So I found these results a little bit interesting and I think it does bring something to the table when it comes to about breaking the GDC or the consultations because it seems there's definitely a mismatch between the general populations in the countries are looked at and what is going on. 

   These are desired principles that people wanted to be included and most included, security for children online.  Security of privacy online.  Fighting hate speech online.  Protection of intellectual property, interesting also, online.  Greater cultural and linguistical diversity.  And you can see it actually going down there in the least often, open source, open data, and so on. 

   Two small slides actually here.  There are obviously differences between countries.  If we look at the principle of no censorship that we have.  A lot of countries where this is strongly emphasized, Latin America, for example, in the survey, Eastern Europe, but not so much in sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast Asia.  When we look on the other hand, greater cultural and linguistic diversity as a principle for the Global Digital Compact, we see particularly sub-Saharan Africa has a strong emphasis on that relative to other countries, but it's also quite emphasized in Latin America. 

   That's it already.  Thank you very much.  Funny disclaimers.

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Thank you so much, Dennis.  Clearly, I think experiences of what to build and how to fix may be very contextual, but why it's broken might perhaps have a very slender and beautiful  narrative.  I think that comes through. 

   What we can do is take some now for comments so that if there are people from the first round and the round who may want to weigh in on the comments from the room, then we could direct those.  I request everyone to keep your comments short, but please contribute to breaking and building, and then maybe the WSIS stuff in the room will fix it. 

   Any questions online?  I guess everyone is ready to go fix it.  Timothy, are you still there?  There's a comment here.  Anyone online that wants to comment?  Renata, go ahead.

>> RENATA AVILA:  Hi.  Just a very quick comment on the digital geopolitical aspect.  I think that breaking it is very important because, currently, there's a lot of tensions among the big powers basically playing up from the mental role in tech concretely.  US and the tensions with China, and we have Russia and so on and so forth.  I think that for the global digital compact to be effective, it truly needs to engage all the key actors.  I think that BRICS is going play a very interesting role in this.  And it will be a pity not to connect the efforts of G20, OCD, and so on, with the efforts of the G77 with the efforts around BRICS and the efforts of the 20 vulnerable. 

 I think what would be like very, very important is to welcome everyone at the table regardless of the political tensions that the world is going through.  The other thing is to, I'm bias here because in Latin American, to leverage on Brazil's historical leadership, which will be like the next year at the G20, presiding at the G20, but it's also the force behind the revival of BRICS to be the connecting point at this fora, the civil society in Brazil that is so powerful.  It might be like a key when both in the breaking process and the fixing process of this multilateral moment.

   Thank you.  Go ahead.

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Thanks Renata.

   Go ahead.

    >> DENNIS REDEKER:  Thank you for this comment, Renata. 

   Indeed, Brazil is leading the G20 meeting next year, and as follows would be South Africa, so pretty much related to the BRICS agenda.  And I think we must play a really strong role in shaping the buzzword off this IGF, which is digital public infrastructure.  You can be pretty assured that it will be on there like protesting in front of the  meeting. 

   Also, probably going to take place, we can further discuss during this IGF, if it's going to take place, the Net Mundiapolis 10, I think, is going to be, can really a good, really important meeting also to shape the GDC and the summit of the future, and so on. 

   I would like just to make a comment really briefly as well.  I think a good aspect of it is that you it's mentioning the need of instituting public education for digital literacy, but I think it's missing something like concrete good examples of that, like I'll be really glad to hear from our interview from internet governance, schools, coordinators, or even in sessions during this IGF, of really concrete programs for teaching multi-participatory digital literacy in public schools in accordance with the Abidjan principles.  I say this because we are doing this in the homeless workers movement in partnership with public schools in Sao Paulo and some follow-up.  I'll be glad to share that.  If I had time, Dennis, I would like to hear more about the profile of these respondents.  I think it was interesting to see how they're concerned about children rising.  It's really good outcomes.  You see people are somehow aware of the risks of digital.   Thank you.

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Are we then set to move anybody online that wants to come back?  Thanks Renata.  For those who can see this, Renata's little one there.  Yes.

   Already the fix it.  I guess you have to speak.  I can't.  Yeah. 

   I think from pragmatic to scepticism to hope, Renata, thank you.  So we move to the final round.  And, Anna, are you here already?  Yes.  Thank you very much.  We hope that you will tie everything together.  Ale said that maybe people know it all, so that is very important segue to go into. 

Ana Cristina Ruelas, senior program professionalist from UNESCO.  Welcome. 

   >> ANA CRISTINA RUELAS:  I don't know if I'm the WSIS one to fix this, but I'm happy to be in the fix session because I think we had at UNESCO really aim with our work to try to fix some of the issues acknowledging that, actually, there is no one only actor that is able to solve all of these issues that you have already mentioned, but we are aiming to actually think how this multi-stakeholder approach will actually look like when it comes to, for instance, dealing with digital platform governance systems and how we manage to balance and create a balance between freedom of expression, safeguarding freedom of expression, access to information with the dealing with potential harmful content such as information hate speech or conspiracy theories that we are seeing that is scaling online. 

   So I want to start very quickly saying that UNESCO has been working since a year ago with a set of consultation, a broad consultation process on guidelines for the governance of digital platform, and actually, this is one of the elements that will inform the Global Digital Compact and the sum of the future in 2024. 

   Why does it inform?  Because we're aiming here is to try to create a document that will guide the process of global awareness of digital platform acknowledging that when we talk about governance, we are talking about a coherent system where different regulatory arrangements can coexist, meaning that there's self-regulation.  We acknowledge that there's coregulation, and there's a statutory regulation has to happen and that has to safeguard, in any case, freedom of access and access to information. 

   We don't want regulation to become a new layer of exclusion or discrimination because we know that there is regulation that is happening in different parts of the world that doesn't even mention or acknowledge freedom of expression even though they are trying to regulate content. 

   We know that there's regulation that does put in this straight in their core human rights approach and that is happening there and it creating divisions and it is creating a huge layer of exclusion in our point of view. 

   So these this guidelines are very much focused on the structures and processes for digital platforms to identify potential harmful content.  It tries to create a knowledge that these governance systems is dependent of a multi-stakeholder participation. 

   And I have to stop here because I have heard a little about what does it mean, multi-stakeholderism.  And actually, during the consultation process, it was one of the questions that we made because we wanted to know what civil society, what is role that civil society wants to fill in when it comes to a whole regulatory cycle, not only in participating in regulatory processes, but then in the monetary and evaluation, in all of the process of regulatory cycle.  And one of the things that we realize it is that it is a conversation that is mostly break, there is silos conversation where regulators talk to each other once that policy has been approved by the legislators, and then regulators never talk with the companies.  The Companies never talk with the regulators, not with the civil society.  There's a whole set of tension with the different actors. 

   One of things we're aiming for at the next stage once the guidelines are approved is to try to convene and create an unregulatory or a framework off network, off network, where regulators, civil society organizations, companies, media, academia, think tanks, can participate in this cause among what are those indicators from the global regional local level that have to be observed when it comes to governance of digital platforms. 

   So for instance, there's many regulators that have told us, and I have a question here, that they never participated in their Internet Governance Forum.  They have never been part of this and they are now given the responsibility to attend to all of these issues and they haven't even discussed about like what are the different layers of the responsibilities of each one of the companies, et cetera. 

   Right now, in another session, the companies were saying, we never talk with the regulators and we are being regulated.  So it's a problem of breaking the silos and also creating a discussion where other thing that regulates mentioned is that we never talked with civic society.  Civic society talks with the policymakers, but then we don't understand what the different problems that are happening when regulation comes into place.  If we understand how it is being put in place, what is the effect it's having on other things, then we could do something. 

   So creating networks for us is a key issue to identify potential follow-ups, potential way to identify how governance of digital platforms could work.  And when I say networks, we never think about a global network.  Or we can think about a global network, we need to go button down and understand there will be always local indicators that will be very important follow up and they will be prioritized in one country and then regional indicators would be prioritized in other regional countries. 

   For instance, in Africa, there were many specific comments about making sure that mechanisms were translated in languages of the people because right now, it's not possible to access those recommendations.  And other countries say we need to focus on vulnerable marginalized communities. 

   So I think what I mean with this, what I want to think about this, is that, for us, fixing it means to actually giving meaningfulness to the word multi-stakeholder because we say it a lot.  We mention it a lot.  When it comes to an actual question of what does it mean in actual action, like with a specific action to follow, each one of the actors doesn't have an actual answer. 

   So what we want is, as UNESCO, after launching the guidelines, to convene all of you to participate and to work together to define specifically how to actually start defining the word multi-stakeholderism in the ordinance of the digital platform, but more specifically, in the awareness of the digital platform in the local, regional, and global level. 

   So that would be my presentation.  Thank you. 

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Just to be a little bit mischievous, I think we should ask maybe somebody from the break-it group to ask a question to Anna.  Are you convinced by the answer?  She didn't want to give answers to everything, but she did speak about, she addressed Renata's point about participation watching. 

   Renata, Are you convinced?  Is she there?  Nandini, go ahead, please.

   >> NANDINI CHAMI:  Yeah, I have a question.  I think Renata also has a question because she raised her hand now.

   As to my question to Ana, I completely understand that, you know.  Multi-stakeholderism has kind of become an empty signifier and we need to accord meaning to it, but in the current way that we have like treated this multi-stakeholder arrangements and gone about it, how do you think that we can pin down the responsibility on corporations so that multi-stakeholderism doesn't become like, you know, a way by which, especially in the context of information integrity and internet of trust and the UNESCO process, it just can't be that platforms make like, lose like commitments.  It can also be that we just like treat it as a national problem for states to regulate transnational platform corporations at the global level.  How do we build a, how do we hold powerful transnational digital platforms responsible for like enforcement of human rights and we ensure they don't enjoy impunity?  What are some of your thoughts on how can we fix that going forward? 

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Renata, do you have anything to ask?  I think you should go ahead, Ana.  She may be busy.

   >> ANA CRISTINA RUELAS:  The guidelines are very clear about the need for the platform to comply with five key principles.  Acknowledging that many regulations, as I mentioned, target the users and not the companies.  I think it is important, when I mean by users, criminalize the user's content and they do not touch the companies at all. 

   So one of the things that we want is to actually make sure that companies are transparent, are accountable, perform due diligence, empower the users through tools and providing tools, that relates to a lot to meeting information literacy. 

   I want to come back to that a little bit because, actually, it's very interesting, this part of consultation relating to meeting information literacy. 

   The fifth is they align to human rights principles.  And the guidelines say that even if it's whatever kind of arrangement, regulatory arrangement, there should be check and balances and there should be accountability meaning enforcement, that companies need to be subject of enforcement in case that they don't comply with the five principles.  They need to comply with these five principle and any kind of regulation bear in mind that these five principles should be in the court of any kind of regulation. 

   Definitely, in the guideline, we are clear, we understood from the consultations that the role of civil society, of academia, of media, it's a different role that is not related.  It's a role that makes companies be accountable, but the role of government is also to enforce the accomplishments of the compliance of the digital platforms. 

  At the same time, the role of the civil society, the media, and the academia is to make governments accountable to make sure they are not using regulation to go against freedom of expression and access to information, but actually to identity potential harmful content and to create a trustworthy place,

   That would be my response.  Thank you.  And it's great to see Renata.

>> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Thank you so much.  From the WSIS now, questions about corporate responsibility and accountability have transmuted into very urgent questions about corporate culpability and liability.  I think there is a need to move the vocabulary and then fix it, so on that note, Anriette, take it away. 

>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN:  This is very, very difficult because we're so good at breaking it, that I think fixing it might actually not really be possible.   Am I allowed to say that?  I'm not actually.  Anita asked me to do this.

I think that I would agree with everything that the breakers said, but I think do we have the luxury of just breaking and not fixing.  I think we don't.  I think especially after spending all of that money that Helani was talking about, some of us -- by the way, Helani, not everyone was flown around the world to be part of the GDC consultation.  A lot of us had to do it online with very short cutoff points if you were not a member state. 

I think we've got to take step back backwards.  I think this is what my plea would be to the tech envoy office, to the organizers, co-facilitators, and Summit of the Future.  Take a step back and really look at what principles do we already have in this digital space and what norms are there?  Are they being complied with?  If not, why not?  We have norms on responsible state behavior, the group of governmental experts norms.  Those norms are intended to create more trust, more predictability in the relationship between states and the behavior of states.  What is happening with those norms?  They date back, I think, to 2011. 

Let's look at the WSIS principles.  Take a step back as well and see what has worked well from the Geneva declaration and WSIS outcome documents.  What are the principles in those documents that still hold people together?  Notion of people-centered development, for example.  Of ICTs as a driver for addressing poverty, for more inclusion.  Let's look at that as well.  Let's look at whether we need a digital compact that is not really about digital, but about people and how people are affected by digitalization, and what the consequences are of this emerging, evolving relationship between society, our natural environment, and technology.  I.

I think there is some of that in the GDC and there's some overarching preambular comments that talk about looking at the big picture.  When it comes to the compact and what we are supposed to expect to see in the compact, I'm not sure that that's reflected. 

I think we also need to take a step back and look at evidence.  I don't see the digital compact, for example, really being informed by the state of digital inequality.  It deals with connectivity, it deals with access in a very, I feel, rather tokenistic way.  Maybe if the digital compact can really seriously look at the impact of social economic equality and its manifestation in the form of digital in equality and how that actually undercuts everything that we are trying to do to create a better world through digitalization. 

When you have -- I've just recently been in Nigeria.  In the last three months, 140 million Nigerians, I think, is research ICT data, Anita can speak to that, were not connected to the internet.  Many of them actually have an internet connection, but they can't afford or might not have the devices, yet Nigeria is a country that's investing enormously in digitalization. 

Where is this investment going?  Digital public services.  Why invest in digital public services if you have not yet invested and people actually being able to have access to them. 

I think a lot of taking a step back, looking at evidence and prioritizing.  I think the GDC could actually benefit from take one problem that we understand, such as digital inequality, and putting a more granular set of targets around that. 

And another thing I would recommend to fix it is to work in a very complementary way.  With World Summit on the Information Society and with the WSIS+20 process. 

Amandeep was not here, I think, but he used a really beautiful analogy in this session on gender.  He talked about how the SDGs, WSIS, and the GDC are like an orchestra that can all work together and play beautiful music, but orchestras don't always play beautiful music.  Orchestras can also make very sort of quite dissonant music if you don't have a clear manuscript or a conductor.  So I think it's good metaphor that you really have work with it. 

 I think the other thing, a lot of you have spoken about the consultation process and I think here, again, I mean, I think if you're going to look at something like AI governance, it struck me during the GDC process, that Hollywood actors and writers and their strike had a clearer take on the challenges of AI than that UN did.  I think maybe that's what happens if you bring workers into the conversation, bring the people that are actually organizing an industry level, people that are affected by AI.   So I think again here, it's a way of not putting the AI first, it is an important issue, it's absolutely significant that the GDC does address it, but address it in a way that puts people at the forefront, that will then follow from there that you consult people that are actually working on fair work and workers in the gig economy and workers in AI. 

I think that's something else I would recommend to fix it is to be more tech neutral.  There's a sense, I think, in which the GDC is responding to very much to a narrative that has been created by big IT companies.  They create the narrative of the power of tech, but also create the narrative of the danger of tech.  The GDC is very much, I think, responding to that.  What the GDC should be doing is really responding to the narrative of inclusion, of equality, of accountability, and of good governance. 

Now, taking looking at those issues and looking at AI in relation to those is very important, but I think it would open up a way in which the GDC at the moment is looking at AI, which is, in fact, an application of technological innovation that has been with us for a very long time.

When it comes to the multi-stakeholder participation, there's emphasis on that, but I would think that the GDC could really learn here from the work of CSDD, the ITU, the WSIS process, and many of us national level, that you have to actually be more inclusive.  You've never going to have effective conversations about climate change and technology if you're not actually working with the environmental sector and environmental rights defenders both from the level of people that are at community level defending forests from being destroyed by miners or illegal farming to people that are doing advocacy and analysis at a global level. 

I think there is an opportunity here where the GDC, because it's new, because it's fresh, not emerging from and internet governance process, but from a sort of broader governance process, it could actually open up stakeholder participation to make it more granular both at the community-based level but also at the advocacy level. 

Similarly, with issues of trade, of financing, of indebtedness, these are all issues that impact on digital public infrastructure, for example, on the capacity of states to invest in infrastructure that can be resilient, that enable inclusion.  Here again, I think if the GDC can open up who talks to who about what, I was saying to Anita when I prepared for this, I have been looking at data in Africa.  Currently, African countries are spending on average more on debt servicing than on public health. 

Now, if that's the status quo, how are those governments ever going to be able to actually effectively invest in inclusive digital public infrastructure and addressing digital inequality? 

So if we don't address the cycles of indigenous, and the way in which the global financial system operates at the moment, we're not going to see any change and what happens at the GDC level will float on top.  I think that's another fix-it.  Actually draw down, look at what we want to get out of the GDC, but look at it from an ecosystem perspective.  What do we need to do in terms of public sector, governments having the capacity and resources to effectively implement?  What do we need at the level of civil society being able to effectively hold governments accountable. 

What do we need at the level of changing how we regulate corporations, market regulations that creates more market entrance as well? 

I think there's a granularity there that is absolutely missing.  And I think if we don't have that, we might be able to get consensus, but will we get value?  I think that is the thing. 

I think that is actually probably where I will end.  I think, Anita and everyone, I would say we have an imperfect system in the World Summit on Information Society follow-up and implementation, but it actually has, it's grounded in many respects. 

We have the work that CSDD has been doing and UMTA has been doing on the digital economy.  There's actually really good data there, on how small and medium enterprises, for example, are either enabled or disabled by how digital markets are regulated.

We have data from human rights organizations and from UNESCO on the impact on woman journalists, for example, of certain online practices. 

We know, as Helani has said, the dis and misinformation legislation is silencing dissent and freedom of expression. 

We also know that community voices are not effectively included in many countries when it comes to addressing community-centered connectivity.  We also know that current business models are not succeeding in terms of the access market.  We know that the mobile operators have reached a kind of ceiling in terms of extending access.  So what I would like to see with the GDC is really just using the Summit of the Future, using resources of the UN and the broader community to work with this data. 

This will be my last point.  I think, Dennis, your data is very interesting because I think that's why it's such an opportunity for the GDC to fix its approach to multi-stakeholder participation by not using it as a brand, not reducing to be tripartite, but actually opening it up completely and bringing in the technical community. 

It's interesting because I do think there's a tendency sometimes to think of the technical community as being aligned with the corporate sector.  Sometimes it is, but often, it is not.  And I think absolutely we cannot do digital governance effectively without bringing the technical community into the table, not just as part of civil society or government or business, but as a stakeholder in their own right, and that applies to the research and academic community as well. 

Thank you. 

>> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Thanks Anriette.  I think the more I think about it, prioritizing is so important, but we also know that so much of our future is tied to the digital and choices we make and the strategy we do now might have cascading impacts.  That's under the paradox in the context of digital inequality paradoxes, how do we actually address the policy paradox.  I think that is quite important. 

I wanted to propose a small change in the order of speakers.  Going to replace a speaker.  Nan Suttisome from Engage Media is replacing Rishab Bailey who was going to speak to us.  Rishab is unable to join us, therefore, Nan, just in about 24 hours, has kindly offered to come on board. 

What I want to suggest is she has what she says is a very well-defined bounded agenda to talk about.  Therefore, what I want to do is she wants to flag issues about digital trade.  I just want to request you, Nan, to come in and speak to how the connections between trade and digital rights play out and if you think they are fixable at all.  So over to you, Nan.

   >> PRAPASIRI "NAN" SUTTISOME:  Thank you so much,

Anita.  Let me share my screen. 

   Hello everyone.  You can see my screen, yes?

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Yes, and we can hear you.

   >> PRAPASIRI "NAN" SUTTISOME:  Perfect.  Hi everyone.  My name is Nan.  I'm a human rights project coordinator at Engage Media.  We're a digitized advocacy group in Southeast Asia.  I'm here as part of the Digital Trade Alliance. 

   I want to speak to you briefly about using this trade agreement, namely, in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for prosperity, or IPEF.  I like to use this as a concrete use case to illustrate how corporate interest captures the internet governance space.  Not only that, the IPEF also highlights the geopolitical aspects that come into the dynamics and how this plays out.  This FTA in particular is understood as a reactionary attempt by the US to balance another FTA, namely, the ORSEP that is dominated by the Chinese government influence. 

   The IPEF involves 14 countries.  The US, India, some countries in Oceania, most of Southeast Asia including Japan and East Asia countries as well.  As such, the US Government chairs all chapters of the negotiations and controls the text of the IPEF.  This is expected to conclude by November 2023. 

   Unlike other FTAs, the IPEF will not only offer market access and GSP privileges, so signatories, namely, the Global South, will not receive the trade benefits other FTA may offer.  The text, the digital trade chapter is not available, making it difficult for nonprofit organizations and other stakeholders to participate in the process. 

   Quickly extrapolate this FTA, it's first important to note that the US, Mexico Canada, FTA or USMCA

is explicitly cited as the baseline for the commitments in the IPEF.  And why is that important?  It's because the USMCA is widely regarded as a pro big tech agreement. 

   What we have observed in the USMCA is that corporate interests are very well captured, in particular, big tech in terms of digital trade.  Similarly, in IPEF, 69% of US trade advisors represent large corporations in their trade associations.  And this agreement is commonly seen as favorable in the interest of big tech with the US trade reps themselves who have solicited advice from big tech on digital trade provisions. 

   Some of the alarming issues include, I'll go quickly on this, if, like the USMCA, IPEF will have enforceable cross-border data flow requirements, domestic measures aimed at enhancing privacy and security of data as well as measures providing for regulatory access to data could, therefore, be affected by this provision such as that in Thailand where I'm from, the Personal Data Protection Act in 2022, which was modeled after the EU's GDPR. 

   So it has multiple, a few implications.  First, it makes it difficult to introduce any domestic measures for cross-border data transfers, and while there may be exceptions to this in the agreement, there are very narrow and scope of necessity and proportionality requirements, which are very high bars to meet. 

   In the ultimate analysis, such provision could help data flow to countries with weaker data protection standards or accountability mechanisms. 

   Another issue it will aim to establish safeguards against forced source code disclosure as a condition of market access.  It will aim to establish safeguard against any algorithm disclosure in particular. 

   Many countries in the global south right now are developing regulatory responses to the use of algorithm and/or AI, one; two, regulation is ensuring transparency and accountability over how algorithms and software in general work.  And with the safeguard, if this comes into play, it will restrict various tools available to a state to promote competition, fairness in the digital economy.  Preventing such disclosure in the future may lead to also algorithmic discrimination in areas like employment policies, insurance policies, or search engine rankings which will have the effect on the competitiveness of smaller businesses in the global south. 

   Now, I'm sure everyone in the room are aware of the dangers of AI, so this lack of transparency in source code disclosure algorithm will limit the ability for independent and exon verification of how a software product works, which can be essential to limiting the risk arising from the use of this software and the black box problem with AI. 

   Secrecy of algorithm goes against the developing regulatory census on the use of AI tools.  For example, the OECD's AI policy observatory, as well as a number of the proposed laws that seek to ensure predeployment verification of software and AI. 

   To capture it all, the codification of the USMCA, if it will be adopted in future trade agreement, number one, the free flow of data cost will limit the ability for countries to implement at localization norms.  The inclusion of this clause would allow for continued flow of data to the global north where it would be subjected to its relatively lower or freer standard data protection and accountability mechanism. 

   Provisions restricting access to source code and algorithm will also limit the ability of regulators and independent entity to scrutinize software products prior to their employment.  In particular, when the global south right now are in the process of developing regulatory frameworks concerning AI, this restriction will seek to preemptively limit the ability for states and regulators to implement public interest or consumer interest regulation in the digital space, so ultimately, codification like this will limit the regulatory options available to the signatory countries in the future to implement regulations over digital ecosystem. 

   Now, in the spirit of fix it, I'm not sure if my presentation fit into this, but first and foremost, I think that the GDC mechanism should aim to promote regulating data and technology in public interest realizing that digital comments is a global public good, and aiming to establish international security standards and cross-compliance recognition frameworks of design, testing, and certification to ensure the safety reliability and trust of critical infrastructure, and improved security around through technologies includes, but not limited to, for example, privacy protections and grievance request mechanism. 

   FTA negotiations should also put forth an agreement on how to define different types of data, which can then be used to create rules on data governance. 

   In addition, another issue with labor rights, with integration of algorithm digital labor and gig economy ensuring the GDC should aim to ensure that workers in digital industries are protected and have access to fair employment conditions including issues related to gig workers and the right to organize, that should be the top priority. 

   Last but not least, fair taxation on global companies, so ensuring that the so-called big tech pay their fair share of taxes in countries where they operate, which can contribute to funding essential public services and digital infrastructure in the global south.  Mechanism to amplify nonprofit and stakeholder voices to also be at the forefront of all digital trade agreement. 

   The IPEF has a list of stakeholder listening session, which is a mechanism for CSO to, participate, but it's not as meaningful as you would like it to be because negotiations is secretive and so we just end up with civil society actors listening to each other in the room. 

   With that, option, we have to address how we can make this more a meaningful contribution and engagement so that digital trade agreements can be more responsible. 

   And as the USMCA codification will likely become a trajectory in digital trade, it calls for robust mobilization to push back against the interests of big tech and ensure that consumer and user interest can be protected as well as their rights. 

   And I would like to end my presentation here with the report by our colleague Repab for understanding the IPEF and its intersection with internet governance. 

   That's about it for me.  Thank you very much. 

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Thank you so much.  I just wanted to say it's only getting more complicated, so for the last voices, I think, we count on your power, but we also remember Shamika's call to not give up and continue the good struggle. 

   I think one important thing that comes out of Nan's articulation, that it's not just the narrative around the GDC, but sometimes I think where narrative lies is not where the politics lies.  So maybe we will go away feeling happy that everyone was equally unhappy with the GDC, but the trade wars will be fought differently at a different place, so the whole questions around localization, public interest, scored capacity, and the exploitation of the comments for extractivism will remain.  Therefore, the questions arises as to, without letting forum shopping by the powerful, how do you ensure coherence in the multilateral system.  That questions always existed, but I think it's sharper. 

   So don't go away everybody.  We have the smartest voices in the room, the penultimate and ultimate.  So over to you, Emma, global coordinator for the Alliance for Universal Digital Rights for Equality Now.

   >> EMMA GIBSON:  Thank you so much.  The complexity of this issue is increasing, isn't it, as we go on with the session. 

   I definitely don't have the whole solution to fixing the GDC, but I have got part of the solution.  at the Alliance for Universal Digital Rights, or AUDRi, we've been considering your central question of how to come up with a set of principles that guide our digital future so that it ensures justice for the majority world. 

  This time last year at IGF, we launched our nine principles securing our human rights in our digital world.  Since then, we've really been building on that working with a really wide range of organizations from all over world including in the global majority. 

   what our partial solution is that GDC has to be feminist if it's going to work, and feminism benefits everybody.  Yesterday, we launched a new set of principles, there seem to be a lot of principles around, these are ten, these are feminist principles for the global digital compounds. 

   We launched these with over 50 other CSOs mainly from the global majority in partnership with organizations like APC, Digitalis, Digital Rights Foundation in Pakistan policy, in Uganda, and also two UN agencies. 

  We launched it to an audience of member states including the US, Chile, Finland, Germany, Iceland, who all talked about the need for a feminist approach to global internet governance.

   I thought it may be helpful today if I talked you very briefly through the main headlines of our ten principles.  The basic premise is that the core principles for the Global Digital Compacts of openness, freedom, and security are going to be met, they need to be infused with intersectional feminist perspective to ensure that the ongoing digital transformation of our economies and societies can usher in an agenda-just world. 

   Principle number one is that any digital future must be grounded in existing human rights law.  Many people have said that already including Professor Ambassador Gill, and also rooted in an intersectional approach, which promotes the rights of women and girls in all their diversity and people facing multiple and intersectional forms of discrimination because we don't want digital technology to widen the equality divide. 

   The Second principle is that the agreement must guarantee freedom from technology-facilitated gender-based violence, which there is an epidemic at the moment and it's stopping many women and people from diverse genders and sexualities from taking part in society and it's undermining our democracy. 

   Our third principle is around promoting the rights to freedom of expression, privacy, and peaceful assembly, which the UNESCO have been talking about as well.  This includes the right to encryption, online anonymity, and the prohibition of internet disruptions that don't comply with human rights law. 

   The fourth principle is about ensuring universal affordable, accessible, and safe internet access for all, which many people have talked about.  This includes something that one of our speakers earlier talked about was creating and sharing content in your own language, which is really important. 

   The fifth principle is around demanding strict action against harmful surveillance applications and high-risk AI systems. 

   Number six is about expanding women's participation on leadership in the tech sector and in digital policy-making, so if you want this new tech to actually work for us and make our lives better, we need to be in the driving seat.  That means that women in all of diversity need to be involved in the design of new technology, leading tech companies, but also being involved in decision-making at national and international levels on governance, regulation, and technology development.  This is going to include supporting more women and girls into STEM subjects, but it will also require more involvement of women in democratic processes. 

   Number seven is around prioritizing strategies that reduce the environmental impact of new technology.  I was really pleased to hear and Anriette talk about the need to involve environmental organizations in this process.  We know that the impacts of climate change are not felt equally around the world.  Women in developing countries are most likely to be disproportionately affected.  Machine learning is incredibly energy intensive.  There's also going to be a greater impact on water use, so AI's contribution to climate change could be very significant in the future.  And states are going to have to be much more proactive in setting limits on how much carbon new technology can produce. 

   Also, minimize harm from the extraction of natural resources to fuel this new technology, which again falls disproportionately on a small number of nations often on indigenous land and countries recovering from a history of being colonized. 

   I'm almost there.  I'm on number 8 now, which is implement measures for states and transnational corporations to ensure data privacy on governance and consent, so the protection of people, their personal data, is the bedrock of a lot of these other principles that have been mentioned by other speakers.  Many states don't yet have privacy and data protection laws.  And measures to stop transnational companies from exploiting our data are not in place, also been talked about already.

   Number 9, the 9th principle is around adopting  equality by design principles and a human-rights based approach through all phases of technology development.  So algorithms that make decisions about us are discriminating us every day with no accountability for the harm caused. 

   I was really concerned by our previous speaker talking about how some trade agreements are actually going to make this situation worse because they won't provide the transparency of the algorithms that we need, which is why we need human-rights based approach and equality by design principles baked into the development of algorithmic decision-making systems prior to deployment.  This means things like gender rights impact assessments, which brings me to the final principle, which is around setting AI safeguards to prevent discriminatory biases.  Safeguards must be put in place to make sure that gender stereotyping and discriminatory biases not translated into AI systems.  The standards need to be developed in consultation with those who are being harmed already, so you need to talk to us. 

   And at a minimum, we need transparency and relation of data sets, their sources and uses and how that data is being applied in algorithms. 

   That's it really.  It's not the whole solution, but we think it's really an important part of fixing the global digital compact.  We were so pleased to hear some of governments at our launch event yesterday talk about, agree with us about the importance of a feminist approach.  Some countries have already got feminists foreign policies, which really help with this. 

   So if we set all of this, get all of this into the Globe Digital Compact, it stands a chance of making the GDC a powerful tool for democratic global digital governments. 

   Thank you.

>> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Thank you so much, Emma.  Also feel, from your presentation and Ale's, that there is this need to invert the question sometimes and say, all the talk about digital public infrastructures, what about the quasi-publics that are controlled by the private?  Why aren't we asking them to open up and make their data sets public.  Questions like this hidden in the narrative that are often sold to us. 

Luca is here.  He's extremely jetlagged and, therefore, we hope that the stream of consciousness from him will fix it.

   >> LUCA BELLI:  Thank you very much, Anita.  I'm also aware of the time.  The only thing that stands between us and dinner and at the same time, the last speaker after two-hour-and-a-half being here.  I will try to be provocative so that people can wake up a little bit.

   My name is Luca Belli, Professor of digital governance and regulation a FGV Law School.  So what I'm going to say is very much informed on the research and thinking on how digital governance mechanism work and how can they work effectively or not.  And how regulatory framework work and how they can work effectively or not.  Full disclosure, over the past year, I've been building for five years a project called CyberBRICS where we analyze the digital portion of the BRICS countries, so a lot of work, I'm going to say is going to say is based on how also these very large emerging economies have tackled some of these issues. 

   I have three structural challenges that we have to face and three potential remedies that we could use, but I'm not sure we will use.  Let's start with the structural challenges.  The first one is that, and I'm also building on especially what Alison and Helani were saying because there were some good comments there that I want to expand. 

   First, structural challenge.  We have, when you analyze digital governance, which is what the kind of framework that Global Digital Compact aims at addressing, you know very well that it's extremely fragmented, not only geographically, which is something we have stressed, but also thematically, and that is an enormous structural challenge because you only have regulators that deal with competition and speak only amongst them.  You have regulators that deal with telecommunications and speak only amongst them.  You have regulators that speaks only about data, not in all countries, and only amongst them.  We don't have platform regulators, we don't have AI regulators, although all regulators wants to be some of them. 

   Now, this means that it's extraordinarily difficult, inherently almost impossible, to have a strategy that is holistic and that can work in practice because you have face this enormous fragmentation. 

   Even if you have a very good strategy, then you have the second structural challenge, that is, you might have an extraordinary relevant political and economic interest that will play against your strategy and this has already been raised, but let me stress that there has been, over the past, over the pandemic period, enormous, almost indecent profits from five or six corporations and no one has ever taxed that profit, no one, because there is only one country that doesn't want it to be taxed, and that is an enormous political and economic interest that you have to face.  I will come back to this towards the end. 

   If you have to regulate AI, and everyone agrees with AI has to regulate, there is even one specific CO that does road shows in Latin America pontificating about how we need international regulation on AI, but then at the same time, we will regulate based on risk and we will limit your profit, they are, no, we don't want AI regulation. 

   You may be all aware of the fact that there is an ongoing going effort at the Council of Europe to do a treaty on AI, the US already made it very explicit that it will, for them, only apply for the public sector.  If AI is developed by the private sector, that specific treaty is not even worth the paper it's written on.  I'm sorry to be so blunt, but here, maybe some time we start to wake up a little bit.  

   The third structural challenge is the fact that, systemically, I don't think I've used the best possible term before when I made my question asking about bad faith actor because it's not bad faith.  Most of the multi-national corporations are publicly-traded corporations.  This means that the executive have a legal obligation, a fiduciary obligation, to prefer the shareholder interest to anything especially that is not binding by law.  It is simply, it's not naive to think that large multi-national corporations will privilege human rights to shareholder profits because every three months, every quarter, they have to meet shareholders and tell them we have increased costs -- we have reduced costs, we have increased benefits. 

   It's very interesting also what happened after the pandemic or after this enormous indecent profits has been not redistribution of the profits, but firing of at least 10% of the workforce because shareholders were annoyed because the enormous profits could not be kept, so of course, it had to be reduced so tech corporations started firing people. 

   That is a systemic challenge we have because those who have the power to decide have not only a marketing incentive, a fiduciary obligation to increase benefits and decrease costs, and here we enter into the possible -- there is also a very good study that I wanted to mention by Suba Ulla and colleagues on multi-national corporations and human rights violations in emerging economies because a map more or less 200 corporations that have subscribed to the global compact, not the digital one, the global compact, showing that 90% of them engage in human rights violation even if they have specific commitment to the global compact because they have a duty to do so.  If their shareholder want to be pleased, they have to increase profits.  So that is something.

I have nothing against these specific corporations, but that is something that one has to consider to be pragmatic and to find solutions. 

   So first, how to tackle the lack of systemic approach.  So we start to see, the only, let's say document that gives us an idea of what is happening with global digital compact is this brief, this policy brief that was released in May, and I think they make a good effort of doing an initial systemic approach.  Mapping the principles, mapping the potential actions, and mapping what fora exists, but that is a very embryonic approach and needs to be complemented also with kind of good practices if you have to use to implement those actions and to implement those principles.  This is nonexisting so far.  I hope it will come with the following phases of the Global Digital Compact. 

   Hear my second point of suggestion is to actually learn from the IGF as a good platform for suggesting solutions.  What actually nobody seems to remember is the mandate of the IGF is also to recommend things.  So if you taken the agenda, paragraph 72G, it explicitly states that the IGF should recommend issues to the global stakeholders and this has never been done because people think that recommending means imposing. 

   Identifying good practices and recommending them doesn't mean that IGF will say all the governments of the world must follow this example.  It simply means that IGF or any other people, person, entity, that recommends something is saying these exist.  You should consider it. 

   A lot of people travel to fancy places every year to discuss solutions and maybe to recommend them, so try start mapping them and proposing them as potential solutions.  There is nothing controversial in it. 

   Last but not least, if we want to have Global Digital Compact that is meaningful, we really have to focus on implementation.  That does not only means suggesting good practices should be followed, but also the metrics that should be used to analyze if they succeed or not, and something that, if you study China and you study big tech, you start to understand they do it in pretty much the same way, is understanding which kind of facilitators and obstacles exist.  That is the greatest point if you want -- the greatest difficulty or advantage if you want to implement something, knowing what will go wrong and try to address it, and knowing who could be helpful and try to address it. 

   That is actually something that paradoxically we can learn from big tech because sometimes that has become a joke, sometimes a sad joke with friends.  I mean, I'm not sure which list is longer.  If the list of potentially disruptive new businesses that have been acquired by big tech of the least of brilliant friends working in academia or civil society that have been hired by big tech, but at some point, you have to understand that if you have to implement a medium or longterm strategy, to have identify what are the obstacles and are the facilitators. 

    I was a little bit frustrated today when I asked Amandeep today if they had a plan for it, because the answer that the good faith actor have to do more, I'm not sure if is the most effective to achieve an effective Global Digital Compact.  I hope I've been enough provocative, but I see people sleeping, so I'm not sure. 

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  No, no.  We are.  we just want to wear the politically correct face in the IGF.  That's all. 

   Thank you so much to everybody.  I just want to take like, since we have 15 minutes to go before the room is closed and shut, I just wanted to know if there are people in the room who have thoughts to fix it, to build it, any way?  And I know that Renata wanted to make a point, so maybe we can start with Renata, and in the meanwhile, I can bring the microphone to anyone that wants to contribute.  

   >> LUCA BELLI:  I forgot to mention.  As I'm sure that five or six multi-national corporations, global corporations that have earned these very hefty profits from the pandemic are extremely, extremely committed to the global digital complex. 

   Something one may ask them so to make a voluntary contribution or, let's say, 30% of their billions that they have earned because people were obliged to use their services for two years, to finance all the nice things we have said or nice ideas we can have.  That does not require taxation by anyone.  And as they are fully committed to the Global Digital Compact, I'm sure they will accept.

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Certainly.  Renata, just a second.  There is somebody who is online.

>> ANTONIO TETE:  Thank you so much.  The reason I asked to speak is because I have to leave very quickly.  I am Antonio Tete from UN.  I am the PR for UN.  I'm one of the cofacilitators together with my colleague here from Sweden.  We came here specifically to listen to you, and one of the things which you have to make clear is that there is no digital compact now.  We are just compiling all the ideas so that there is an intergovernmental discussion, and later on, we'll come up with a Global Digital Compact. 

   We have heard consultations widely.  We have heard so many deep dives in every of the eight areas, and we and heard from different people.  We heard special sessions for the civil society itself.  The reason why we came here is, at the end of the day, nobody is happy with what is going on, and that is why we came here to say, can you narrow it down so that we see the issues and ones which I think should be part of compact or which can contribute to the compact, so they are given to us because next year in January, we are going to come and sit down together with everybody to make sure that we can use these kind of ideas that you're giving us as part of the discussion with the member states.  There might be three member states we are discussing, but given what you have compiled already too much, but you came here specifically for the IGF, for the people who are participating and especially for your team for you to narrow down and give us something in writing so that all your ideas and what you think is very, very important. 

   The reason is because technology affects everyone.  It affects the way of life.  It Doesn't affect one or the other.  It affects all of us.  Whether you're in education, whatever business you are doing, it affects all of us. 

   I want to hear from everyone, but I want to make sure that we did it in an organized manner, in a way that you can bring your ideas, put them together and say, this is our position.  Which do you think can contribute your discussion so that we take them into accountant and that will be more proficient in terms of doing things because we would be unhappy with the some of things, but if we don't do it right, then you find we don't have a way of discussing with our colleagues who are not here who didn't listen to you, and it's very, very important for us to be able to capture exactly what you think that can be included.  That's why we're here listening. 

   Actually wanted to be at the back so I can listen and take notes.  But I think I thought it was very important for to us tell you that if you put something in writing, it will be helpful for us because it would help case to argue and be to able to convince people.     We heard what you said, but if you can help us, I think that would be useful.  Thank you.

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  We're grateful for you to give us an opportunity to submit this in this writing.  Maybe the three-hour discussions, we will be able to generate a report, as Anriette had suggested, in the morning as well, and we'd be happy to share that with you.  And if your co-chair from Sweden wants to speak.  Would you like to?  Thank you very much for being here with us.  

   Renata, you go, and after that, Anriette and Alison. 

   >> RENATA AVILA:  It's very quick and a specific point.  Funding.  If we achieve one thing as civil society, it will be that the Global Digital Compact is formed together with a fund with mandatory contributions from the richest countries in the world and from the richest companies, voluntary, because we have no legal mechanism to make that happen to be mandatory. 

   I think that all the waste, we will waste a long process that will end only in principles that then will not be applied because of lack of resources, so if we can do one thing united, like the poorest country in the world and the civil society is to work together for the Summit of the Future to make the big announcement, the big headline of this effort is that substantial money is committed to increase the capacities, to increase the ability, and to make, not only worse, but worse transform into actions into proper public digital infrastructure localized in the countries that need it the most. 

   To fix it, include a financing mechanism to make all of these nice words translated into actions.

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Thank you so much. 

   Anriette.

   >> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much. 

   What I wanted to say is partly in response to what Luca was saying about the original mandate of the IGF was to facilitate, well, inter-institutional.  I think that's one of the very important aspects of it.  And also recommendations. 

   I think one of the reasons that we are not doing well enough in this IGF space and what we have at the moment is a multi-stakeholder ecosystem is that we don't have certainty and it's very unpredictable. 

   I think that this is something else I think that the GDC can do, take away that element of, will the IGF continue?  Will it not continue?  Obviously, that is a decision of the WSIS+20 process.  If we're going to strengthen these processes, make them more relevant and more inclusive.  We need to be to know that they're not being used as political footballs by member states or UN agencies or in internal territorial issues within the UN system. 

   These processes are not as strong as they should be, they're not as inclusive as they should be, but they are the best that we have.  I think I really facilitated in the recent letter from the co-facilitators, I got the message that in a sense we are getting, because it will take years of evolving and continuing to strengthen these places. 

   One thing as civil society we have to be careful is just set our own terms.  I think the GDC consultation processes required us to respond to what was given to us.  I think we possibly did not do enough to fill the gaps.  The IGF MIG as well.  For two years, it created a thematic structure based on what was given to it by the GDC process or the digital cooperation process.  That's good, it wants to be relevant, but in that process, you could actually be missing exactly the same things that this other top-down process is missing.

    >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Like taxes.

    >> Thank you, Anita.  Thank you first very much for inviting us to this very informative session.  I heard a lot of very interesting, insightful, and also useful comments.  I think some of the points may be also good for us to take into account in the WSIS+20 review. 

   I forgot to introduce myself.  I'm working for Shamika.  Shamika is our director, so we are servicing the UN Commission on science, technology for developments.  CSD, in short, is conducting WSIS+20 review in order to provide inputs to the general assembly which is going to conduct the WSIS+20 review in 2025.  I would like to invite this group to participate in the WSIS+20 review because some of your points are very relevant to WSIS+20 as several speakers have mentioned. 

  We also need to look at what are there now in this world, whether there are working, why they are not working, or how we can do to make them work better so that we can achieve the WSIS vision of inclusive people-centered and development-oriented information society. 

   The CSD is going to launch its open consultation which is multi-stakeholder consultation on the 10th of October in this house, in room E, from 3:15 to 4:45. At the same time, we have also circulated a questionnaire together with other key actors UNESCO, ITU and UNDP. 

   We also invite you to fill out a questionnaire.  It's available on the IGF website, the questionnaire, and they will be taken into account in preparing our reports.  The report is going to be discussed at their two annual sessions of the CSD.  One is next year, April, CSD.  The other is in 2025. 

   Then after two discussions at CSD, we are going to present a report to the general assembly in 2025 for its review.  So I really encourage this group to participate in the CSD WSIS+20 the review because you have offered very insightful comments and points and messages that we can definitely consider in our WSIS+20 review.  Thank you again.

   >> NIGEL CASIMIR:  Yes.  My name is Nigel Casimir.  I'm from the Carribean Telecommunications Union, which is an intergovernmental organization.  I did come in late so I'm not sure if this specific comment was made before, but in hearing the gentleman's comments about the structural shortcoming with regulation, I am aware that the ITU has a fledgling attempt at regulatory collaboration, which they are calling the digital regulation network which they launched at the Global Symposium for Regulators in May of this year.  It's probably something that should be taken into account.

   >> Thank you.  In the first phase, I wanted to say something about the fix it we raised in the beginning.  Some of the issues we raised in the beginning were raised in the fix-it session, we're still not addressing what fundamentally has to be done.  Still dealing with some of the problems and maybe not sufficiently what the solutions are. 

   Just in response to constant reference about using what we've got and how relevant WSIS still remains, relevant IGF remains, I think these are important continuities.  They're significantly because we still have the same problems.  I think it's really important in referencing those that we commit ourselves to doing something differently.  We continue to identify the same problems and speak about the same kind of neoliberal market reforms and the dominance of certain sectors, the assumptions of the best value creation is out of private sector create, value create, these kind of things, so I think we really, when Ambassador Gill speaks about this need to be a paradigm shift, the paradigm shift is not a institutional changing of deck chairs and institutional arrangements.  We have to something far more fundamental.  I think the problem is what are our rationales for governance?  We're continuing to use the rationale for governance there were around traditional commercial supply side regulation of resources in the allocation of our resources, and we need to really challenge that.  We need to start looking at the demand side and value that we need in our resource allocation. 

   If we're serious about building public value, if we're serious about economic justice, then we've got to be looking at those.  That is how we get to commons.  Not about carving out a little bit of space that the commercial sector doesn't want for a little bit of wifi or something.  We need to really address those fundamental issues. 

   So there are structural issues at the governance level that Luca has very eloquently addressed, but we're still not dealing with the structural inequalities that we're got that make all this digital inequality manifest.  If the Global Digital Compact wants to make a significant paradigm shift, that is where the paradigm shift needs to come is in the rational rationale for local governance and regulation. 

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  Anyone else?

   >> UCHIRO ABE:  Thank you for your informative discussion and comments.  I'm Uchiro Abe, Japanese randomly participating in this workshop. 

   After listening to the fruitful discussion, I realized that the process, the fixing the process of the GDC is quite important because we have the expression in Japanese that this is just a rice cake painted in picture.   We cannot eat it even it looks delicious.  So we have to make it through a real process. 

   I have one question.  So maybe the GDC should be like an orchestra with beautiful music, but we need a conductor, and who should be conductor in this process?  Maybe it will a target of a political battle, or like that, but it is very difficult.  I would like to hear the recommendation from IGF about what should be play the conductor.  Maybe only one, but who several conductors for the process.  

   >> ANITA GURUMURTHY:  This will need, I think, an entirely another zero day event.  It's an institutional question, and as Alison said, it's only partly institutional.  We also have a name for the report.  "Not Just a Little Bit of Wifi." 

   We want real rice cakes. 

   Just to say thank you to everybody who had co-constructed this dynamite coalitions that we're involved.  Thank you, Dennis.  Thank you, Luca also the Global Digital Justice Forum, and to all of you who so readily gave up your time and sat here and came back after your other commitments, and to our surprise visitors, the co-chairs of the GDC. 

   I wanted to also say that the thing that struck me when I read Amartya Sen's The Idea of Justice, was that never, never should we make the mistakes of going behind the idea of justice.  We must understand the idea of injustice.  Then you have done your job. 

   In some sense, I think the session was very instructive because all of us contributed to cocreating the pool of ideas of what we don't want.  I think for long, the wise people of world have told us what is necessary to fix.  It's not rocket science at all.  We know it and we know the political economy of anti-solutions and the right way.  I think we should build public value when we probably go to the report in the next stage. 

   I would like to request all of you, if you would maybe reach out and, if you would like, to please send back your comments.  That would really help.  And the IGF does a marvelous job of the closed captioning.  It may not always be accurate so it would be nice to have your comments. 

   Thanks to everybody and a round of applause.

   (Applause)