The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> LAURA O' BRIEN: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the final day of the IGF. We're grateful for you all for joining the early event. On how technical standards can shape connect item and inclusion. I'm Laura O'Brien, moderator today. I'm going to hand it over to Rasmus Lumi for opening remarks.
>> RASMUS LUMI: Thank you very much.
Welcome everyone to the morning session here. It addresses the standards. These standards are the backbone seamlessly across bordering and in the interoperability of the networks and expansion of the affordable digital services. From undersea cables to data transmission protocols, standards underpin the systems that make the Internet work. But the infrastructure is only as strong and as just as the process is behind it.
Too often they operate without standards and leaving choices that shape our future. Models that reflect the digital community. In the statement of 2024, the approach to digital policy. It shows what happens when it is paired with openness and connectivity. The cybersecurity infrastructure and we must ensure that standards evolve. Not just to meet technical needs, but to align with border goals like Human Rights, sustainable development, and global corporation.
Let's use the space today to explore how we can make standard settings more equitable, collaborative, and future ready. By doing so, we can help build the digital ecosystem that's not only connected, but inclusive, secure, and truly global. Thank you.
>> LAURA O' BRIEN: Thank you, Rasmus. Our session today will delve into how open and interoperable standards can bridge digital divides, enhance connectivity, and ensure ask security councils to vital services in underserved regions. We will be focusing on the critical goal of standards and global communication infrastructure undersea cables. We have bodies like the ITU, IEEE, WEC, frequently open with limited stakeholder engagement. Our discussion will highlight the barriers and produce strategies for greater transparency, accessibility, and representation.
We'll also examine how aligning Human Rights, digital inclusion, and Sustainable Development Goals can support the WSIS, driving a more equitable and secure digital future. Through expert insights and dialogue, the panel aim aims to chart more open and representative ecosystem that works for everyone.
In terms of the format, we'll do one round of questions from the panelist. Then we'll open the discussion for more of a Q & A and close with remarks from the panelist. To my right, I have Mr. Divine Agbeti, the director‑general of cybersecurity authority of Ghana. I have Stephanie Borg Psaila, Director Of Digital Policy for Diplo Foundation. To my left, I have Natalie Tercova, chair of the ALAC, ICANN founder. Then there's Alex Walden and Rose Payne from partners digital.
We'll dive into it with my first question to Mr. Divine. How can open and interoperable technical standards help bridge the digital divide? Particularly in underserving regions and among marginalised communities.
>> MR. DIVINE AGBETI: Thank you very much. I'm honoured to represent Ghana on the important roundtable on o the role of technical standards and more inclusive for the digital future.
On behalf of the Ghana's journey, we see the Internet as an instrument that impact rights including the sustainable development. Especially the technical standards to bridging the digital divide and lower the cost of connectivity and technology adoption, especially in underserved communities. We have seen this a lot throughout the country and I'll come to that especially in our financial inclusion activities. It forces competition by allowing multiple vendors to operate and forcing affordability opinion it also enables local innovation and adaptation.
Such as African language in mobile application and digital platforms. For some time now, the financial institutions in Ghana many years ago we only had a traditional banks. That cuts away about 80% of the population who were farmers, women, and trades men who never had access to bank account or never thought there's a need for that. Then the considered technologies and interoperability came in.
Locally, we were able to develop the mobile applications and introduce what we called mobile money applications. Interestingly, it is not only in Ghana. It is across the continent. When you go over to east Africa, you have Un Pesa which is there and we work with the mobile networks to establish these.
In the aspect, everyone is able to put in smaller court and transfer money and walk to the vendor and put money into your own mobile wallet and also transfer money to people across the country. As a result, especially in the mobile money, there's digital financial services. It is the inclusion in Ghana. Today, I can gladly say that even me in person I don't see the need to walk into a bank. I sit even right here in Norway. I'm able to transfer money to my mother who is right in the village and also be able to transfer from the mobile wallet account to my brother's bank account no matter where he is. This is the way the technical stands can help support digital inclusion.
>> LAURA O' BRIEN: Thank you very much. That's very helpful to have the perspective not only from Ghana to see the regional and bring in the financial institutions. That's great and very helpful to kick us off on the discussion today. My next question is to Natalie. What are the main barriers to inclusive participation in global standard setting processes and how can they be addressed to ensure more diverse stakeholder engagement?
>> NATALIE TERCOVA: Thank you so much. If I would look at this through a lens of someone who is focus on the NGO service within the various roles that I have in the community and focusing on the interest, I would say it is very important to mention that these standards, technical standards might sound distant or abstract to many of the people. They do shape the way we communicate. This is very important to start with the standards really do affect all of us, everyone.
But, everyone isn't usually in the room when everything is being said and done and talked about. We can see in environments that are not open and accessible, even if you want to for everyday users or public interest advocates. We can just talk about the main barriers; right? I would say the main thing is lack of awareness. Typically, you are not invited.
There's no advertisement for all of the discussions are being held. There's no increased participation or opportunities for the end user communities. Much of the work has just been done behind a closed door. Of course, once something goes wrong, then we start to take the discussions again as an open thing. Try to resolve what was being done.
However, then, of course, it is harder to somehow change it. There's now the growing recognition how the standards are just not neutral and they can just embed values or affect Human Rights in a way that we just don't think about. We don't even invite the people who can pin point and tell us in advance well, this is actually not right decision. This is not the right way to go.
Once this is all being said and done, this is way too complicated to go back and change it. Definitely, if I want to be difficult, not that I want to, just to make the points of the negative things, in order to change in the overcome, I would suggest strongly that we try and do our maximum to have all of the conversations and be open to different stakeholders when we're having all of the initial discussions, so also the process is much smoother and eventually cheaper.
So, it provides space and open seats who advocate for end users who noel the realm of the human beings and can help us overcome the obstacles at the very beginning. This can be observing roles or designed seats for the type of people and stakeholders. Then, of course, all of the processes tend to be let's say very technical. I just want to mention the language barrier. We don't usually think about. We mainly in the day job apart from all of this, which I love to do. I know sometimes we can have the regular ender like grandma. I also want her to understand what's being done.
How come these can actually affect her in her everyday life, even though it doesn't seem possible? So that also being able to translate what is being discussed and also technical standards at the level for the everyday end users is crucial. Oregon even if we invite them, they are intimidated. They just don't understand and they don't want to feel just dumb. They should not be in the room, because they are not the engineers. Eventually even if you open the seats, they will just not come. Also take a step back and try to be more open, more inclusive by design as we discuss. Thank you so much.
>> LAURA O' BRIEN: Thank you, Natalie. That was helpful to get the historic perspective and the main barriers such as lack of awareness, the fact that settings are strongly technical, and the knead to center on and advocate for the end users. I really appreciated that. Perhaps I could piggyback off a little bit more on what could be the solutions? I know you offered a little bit of perspective on that in terms of observing rulings to the inclusive participation and global standard processes. How can we address these to get more diverse stakeholder movement?
>> NATALIE TERCOVA: Thank you very much. Of course, apart from the dedicated roles, another thing is usually to be part of such communities or just committees themselves, same as you have to pay certain fee like membership fee to even enter the environment and be able to meanfully participate. Of course, if there's a financial barrier, this should be something that we consider from Civil Society and usually do face the barriers when it comes to finances.
I would also advocate and focusing on some form of vulnerable end users, such as the youth as well. We can see many organisations they are now forming youth panels, also bringing these perspectives of generational wealth that will be affected by all of the standards that will be just now these days. Also bringing these people to the same room and what we see as challenges. We already have some fears. Sometimes when I have the conversations with young people or vulnerable group of end users, such as People with Disabilities. All of the groups can merge. We tend to forget that. We can have young People with Disabilities or people with regions where connectivity is just a real issue.
These are these people have additional obstacles and barriers. Which is bringing them in without creating the barrier of language, the barrier of membership, fees, and all of these that could really help. Of course, just being able to promote when these things are happening. Also maybe enables them from the participation. Sometimes we can see that once let's say the first draft is being adopted, then it can be open for public comment or comments from all of these that could be just in the specific roles seated at the table. That could be something that would be helpful eventually.
Then, of course, overall awareness and try to bridge the technical and hard‑to‑grasp document to the end users to focus more. That's the ideal recipe to overcome some of the obstacles.
>> LAURA O' BRIEN: Thank you, Natalie. I appreciate how you took the focus more broadly on the end user and narrowed it down to the youth, Persons with Disabilities, and looking more about the vulnerability aspects. Of course, we're all facing, you know, many barriers? Terms of access to processes from the financial perspective, but also I think there's ways of overcoming that. I appreciate your option on the virtual participation. We've seen that work very well in different hybrid modalities. It is good way to engage the stakeholders from all over and bring them into the processes. Thank you.
Next, over to Stephanie. In what ways can technical standardisation and maybe with respect to the digital technologies, communication infrastructure, data trance mission, network compatibility and security, which is quite a bit, be better aligned with international Human Rights law and contributed to digital inclusion and advance the Sustainable Development Goals?
>> STEPHANIE BORG PSAILA: Thank you. I will answer the question by rewording it. Technical standard can contribute to the inclusion and advancing the SDGs by being better aligned to international Human Rights. Turn that a little bit around. Building on what they say. There are multiple, everyday examples of how technical standards are bridging the digital divide and the designs for the financially related solutions. There's a similar example. The other has engaged millions to access banking and social well-being and through the know your customer, it has reduced the onboard for financial services.
Another example is the use of wide space standards in some countries in Africa. That has enabled broadband to the rural areas using what Natalie has said. It is accessibility standards. The web content for Persons with Disabilities. Just taking three examples. There are many, many, many more. Obviously, we need to ensure that these technical standards are aligned with Human Rights law. It is ‑‑ I will be stating the; right? To prevent the harms, the discussion needs to take place. It is very difficult to solve. I'm also reflecting a little bit on what Natalie just said regarding the solutions. We're the lead partner in a project. CADE, Civil Alliances For Digital Empowerment.
One of the things we've done is we've mapped the barriers for inclusion and participation, focusing on Civil Society from the global majority. We went deeper in the sense that we look at some of the main standardisation in each of these forums; right? What are the specific barriers? We went a little bit granular to identify, for instance, what are the issues at ITU? What are the issues at the ITF and ICANN. some of the issues are the same, quite specific to the forum. What we really believe and are working on is for there to be finally some structured changing coming from the top to solve the issues. You mentioned the membership fee. It is a non‑starter for CSOs; right?
How can we hear the need for Civil Society voices, when the door is shot for Civil Society? Certain barriers are literally a non‑starter for CSO. Let alone being able to speak the same language, and understand what we are saying. We're trying not to approach it in a let's say in a naive way. There are aspects that Civil Society leads also to look at and to be able to let's say help themselves and help the cause. One of the issues that we are working on one of the aspects is helping Civil Society and helping end users why they need to be in the room.
If I mentioned these are the everyday things that matter. The CSO and the organisation, they also need to be made aware their contribution is essential. What is being decided and what is being developed and later implemented in some of these spaces that we're mentioning affect them directly on the everyday network. I'll stop there. Thank you.
>> LAURA O' BRIEN: Yes, thank you very much, Stephanie. That was very helpful. If you can, maybe elaborate more on some of the issues that you mentioned specifically within the ITU and within IUTF. Would you be able to do that?
>> STEPHANIE BORG PSAILA: Yes, yes, of course. We have the mapping study published on the CADE web site. Essentially, there are issues that are, like, quite similar. For instance, for the ITU, there's the famous membership cause. To be a sector and member to participate. There's some let's say not exceptions but other stakeholder groups that are able to access ITU and the discussions and why not Civil Society. Right? For me, it doesn't make sense that you have huge, huge membership fees or CSOs and the inclusion, the exceptions; right? They are still very, very difficult to let's say tap into, because of the conditions that touch them.
Within ICANN, there are perhaps the decisions on where the face‑to‑face meetings are held. What we're suggesting is that the location takes into account, for instance, small island states which are, for instance, in the Pacific and in regions which normally are in their automatically inaccessible, because of the huge traveling costs.
So, perhaps, a change in how the rotation takes place. At the IGF, how about the real‑time interpretation; right? We are not saying 1,000 different languages; right? We had the lightning session the other day. We looked at the languages that ‑‑ I'm seeing a couple of people smiling. Probably they were part of the session. But we had this experiment; right? The finding the languages which are the most common rather than English in the whole space where we organise this lightning session, only one or two persons were English native speakers; Right? English was their mother language.
The rest of the participants it was not; right? Interpretation to enable, for instance, there are huge, huge communities in Latin America which are interested in the work of the IGF. But the language is a barrier. Why not include Spanish; right? In real‑time interpretation. It is granular issues like this; the formatting has identified and related.
>> LAURA O' BRIEN: Thank you, Stephanie. I think the mapping exercise and looking at specific bodies is helpful for us to all understand the specific issues within each body and ways to address that. Bringing back to the international Human Rights law aspect of the question and the discussion today, I think the joint statement from the Freedom Online Coalition that Rasmus mentioned in the beginning on technical standards could be really influential in trying to address and bridge those barriers having a bunch of governments committing to the principles from a Human Rights perspective is really helpful in advancing and moving forward. Thank you for all of the suggestions. My next is roles.
What role do technical standards play in the security, reliability, and interoperability in the political infrastructure line the subsea cables which is an interesting topic? How can international cooperation and partnerships strengthen their gaffe governance?
>> ROSE PAYNE: Great. I'm Rose Payne. I work for Global Partners Digital. We work to ensure that laws, norms, and standards that govern technology are right and perspective and created with an open, inclusive, and transparent manner.
As a part of that work, we've worked in multistakeholder venues like ICANN and multilateral venues like ITU and so glad hear what Stephanie and Natalie have already said. We have run projects to bring global majority and Civil Society into technical standard setting for the previously. I think just to pick up on what Divine said as well, I got into this first of all through the kind of financial inclusion as a lever for digital inclusion. I'm always really happy when someone mentions mobile money.
Bringing those kinds of organisations to technical standards setting also helps from actually a technical point of view. They can bring the point of view to end users when are in low resource and low connectivity environments who also maybe using all of the technology.
In addition, as we've heard, the role of the Human Rights organisations, specifically, is that they can help unpack the impact of protocols with standards on the end user. And on the functioning of the open safe Internet. I do bring it back technical community. That does thrive the adoption. I think it is beneficial for everyone. Just before I move on to subsea cables, I want to note that while some of what I say aligns with the focus on Human Rights, actually I'm mostly drawing on research which I've done previously, including through a fellowship for the Internet society.
So, technical standards are obviously really vitally important. Subsea cables. They need to withstand a really harsh environment that are under the sea. They are vital to the functioning of our society as they carry some 95 to 99% of all transnational data. They are built and owned often by a consortium of different companies and they need to make land in at least two countries, if they are connecting and transnational. And to at least from the landing station whether they connect with the networks. All of the points of connection of what makes the standards so important. The position is also necessarily a matter of public record. Ships or people carrying out seabed activities need to know where they are, so they can avoid damaging them.
So, this kind of combined criticality and vulnerability makes standards really, really important. Yeah. I want to give a shout out to the UN. They released the recommendations. I think the intense geopolitical environment, it is worth highlighting the role of standards not only in inclusive and intolerability, but also in raising trust. Not in the least. They increase reliability. But I think that question of trust also kind of reveals the limit of technical standards, if you like. One of the main threats to cable is cable cutting.
I would like to highlight that it seems that has been rare. Deliberate and malicious. It is difficult to establish malicious intent, because, you know, ships may not ‑‑ they maybe commercial ships that have been on the cable that have been cut. I think the geopolitical tensions are raised in the risk. I do want to give a shout out here again to technical standards. They can help gather the information needed to support resilience and feed information. I'm particularly thinking about geospatial standards that helped bring together different types of data that can be used for critical foundation.
There's a limit to the effectiveness when it comes to malicious actors in the area. Here it is the multistakeholder partnership. At the limits of the technical standards and policies, you hope they provide protection. I think, you know, a lot of these cables are international. However, the frameworks when it comes to cables are quite out of date. The UN was made a long time ago. There's been a lot of efforts updated. The UN framework which governs the kind of international seabed. And. Yeah. What does this kind of attempts to update the framework have been slow. It was established in 2024. There's a bit of a policy gap. I think that also because cables are owned and operated by the private sector.
But they are critical infrastructure for many countries. This means that the responsibility may fall in the private sector, the responsibility for protection and trying to previous cable cutting is a little bit less clear. Countries are trying to overcome this by forming smaller alliances. I think NATO has set up an undersea infrastructure coordination cell. Navies are working together to try to prevent or at least track cable cutting. It is just a really huge challenge.
I suppose my point here is we need cooperation not only between technical standard‑setting bodies, but across Civil Society. We can't afford to get it wrong. A single damaged cable depending on where you are in the network. Some countries may only have one cable that connects them to the global Internet. Congo has experienced, for example, complete backouts due to primarily natural disasters.
Repairs are expensive and slow. It means that countries can remain offline for quite a long time. I think in the situation they are at today, the foundation for exercising a lot of lights. There's freedom of expression and access to information and right to privacy through accents to the Internet, that's a serious, serious problem. We have yet to go back to the question of language.
I think having in some meetings where people are discussing technical standards related to cables, there's really a fundamental disconnection between the way the governments talk about them as best kind of geopolitical challenge and the way that technical standards are discussing the kind of protection of capabilities. They get in the way of their work. I think the translation between different parts of the different communities which are involved in protection and governance of cables is really, really important.
>> LAURA O' BRIEN: Yes. Thank you, Rose. It is helpful to narrow in on the undersea cable topic. The data is always mentioned about the 90 to 95% of the international data comes from undersea cables stands out. I think you got to the issue about the trust component. In the space and in the discussion that we're having. I really also appreciated that you mentioned, you know, you brought up the international legal frameworks with relation to undersea cables. I'm not a part of the body that you mentioned, I've been doing my own research on the topic, having previously worked in the realm of international law of the sea.
But, I do think, yeah, the point that you also concluded on about the disconnect between governments and the way they talk about subsea cables and the technical standards and seeing geopolitics as a way they want to shy away from is something that we need to delve in, especially from the Human Rights perspective that you highlighted. Thank you for the insights.
Finally, I want to turn to Alex. We've heard a lot from Civil Society and academia and the private sector has a huge role in this. I think you'll offer some insightful insights on how ways that the private tech tour works to ensure there's the human‑rights‑based approach throughout all of the stages of the standard development process. Over to you.
>> ALEX WALDEN: Thanks for being willing to be in the conversation today. It is one of the topics that I love most. It is one of the topics where we have so many alignment across stakeholder groups. There are lots of areas for improvement. I think we generally have a lot of alignment about need for continued investment and focus here. Maybe I'm going to do a lot of underscoring what other colleagues have said. Maybe just to highlight a few things.
The importance of the role of the private sector most importantly is to continue to invest in connectivity and infrastructure and interoperability among those things. That's something that we are doing heavily, obviously, Google is a major investor in particular in subsea cables around the world, looking to ensure there's increased connectivity everywhere from Japan and Australia. That's very important to us philosophically and for the business. That's a really important area of alignment where the private sector is aligned with government and Civil Society and communities in wanting to ensure that we're bringing connectivity to everyone, everywhere.
The sort of important second piece related to that is to ensure that we are committed to Human Rights and implementing Human Rights frameworks in the ways that we are thinking about doing all of that work. So for us, we are involved in places like the freedom online coalition and the global network initiative, and have commitments to the UN guiding principles on business and Human Rights.
Those are important baselines for understanding how we should think about the high level principles and also, you know, more granular ways that we should be thinking about how Human Rights exacts ‑‑ there might be human right impacts as outcomes of some of the technical standards and the ways that we're thinking about expanding connectivity. Ensuring that we're thinking about human rights in the context of the all of the work that we're doing.
Sort of maybe separate but related point is ensuring that we're engaging with the stakeholders throughout the process. They are, you know, I think we're always talking about how technical standards. There's a lot of framing that work is neutral and, of course, it is not. There are always ways in which it can be impacted, positive or negative. We need to ensure that it is not just folks who our technologist in the conversations and not just governments and companies, but we have rights, experts at the table helping all of us understand what the potential externalities of any standards might be.
The last thing I'll say on this is just companies as we're wanting to ensure that we have a seat at the table for the conversations. We have an obvious and important role in investing and innovating is making sure that we are always advocates for our colleagues in Civil Society and Human Rights experts in particular to be at the table and advocating to increase barriers to entry for all of the stakeholder group that is others have been talking about. I'll stop there. Looking forward to other comments. I think as we have a seat at the table, it is important for us to reinforce the importance of rights and the importance of all of the expert colleagues being at the table to contribute.
>> LAURA O' BRIEN: Thank you, Alex. That's helpful to understand the private sector perspective, linking it back to the work that you are doing with the UN guiding principles on business and Human Rights. We do appreciate when companies try to advocate for Civil Society and others to be at table. It is important that we keep doing that in the spaces especially. That concludes the round of questions with the panelist. I would like to open the floor to anyone in the room. If you have any questions, I also understand that we have those online. If you are online, feel free to submit a question. We'll have a way of getting it back to the panels. Okay.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi. I'm with the Internet society. I think this topic is super relevant. I won't touch on anything about the buddies, but particularly on the work related to the ITU sector conferences. We understand there's a barrier to participate there. That's why we are trying to work with our community trying to be the link between the information happening in the meeting last year and for the work in telecommunications, and our colleagues and debriefing the community, taking the committee and trying to be the bridge.
We are going to ‑‑ we are doing the same for this year's world telecommunication conference. My invitation at this point more than a question, it is an invitation to strengthen the declaration with different organisations. If you are interested in getting involved in the world, in the work related to here. If anybody has the conferences next year, all of the sector conferences, woe would really love to work there. We know that we need to reach the gap regarding the work in the ITU. Either with our chapters and the organisation. We are really happy. We are going to go after the session. Thank you.
>> LAURA O' BRIEN: Anyone want to quickly comment on that?
>> STEPHANIE BORG PSAILA: One of the Internet society partners that we are leading. I'm happy to take the conversation forward.
>> LAURA O' BRIEN: Yeah. Please introduce yourself.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm having trouble with this thing. Anyway. I'm somewhat disappointed with this panel. Because you managed to put together a panel about how do technical standards shape connectivity and inclusion and did not include a single person who works with technical standards. As far as I can tell. So this is one of the fallacies that I've seen multiple times in the attempts to so‑called bring Human Rights into the technical. Civil Society groups seem to have the idea they can affect things by standing outside and shouting in. Let us in, let in.
Well, the door is open. You are not listening. As a technologist, I'm an unabashed technologist, I'm part of Civil Society. I'm part of the people who care about Human Rights impacts, because I'm a member of Civil Society. So this false distinction between the technical community that doesn't care and the Civil Society that cares about all of the right things but happens to not understand the technology. This is false. This is not something that is good for progress. It might be that we should focus on ensuring that the technologist can know about the Civil Society impact. Of course. But don't expect that being outside and shouting in will help.
>> RASMUS LUMI: Thank you. If I can hear myself echoing. Thank you. I completely appreciate your point. I will just say that what I was trying to mention albeit very briefly, we have taken Civil Society into the bodies. There are challenges. I'm not going to pretend there aren't challenges. We're not saying they weren't welcomed. There are challenges about translating. The technical experts working with standards and finding a way to indication is a bit of a challenge sometimes. A lot of it is about capacity building on the Civil Society side.
Perhaps just to pick on what you said, we should be doing capacity building to publicise more about what we're trying to do to talk about how we can be helpful to your work. I take that on board.
>> STEPHANIE BORG PSAILA: Actually, from language we are trying to avoid this precisely describing Civil Society on outside shouting in; right? Because that language in itself is already a barrier. But what Rose said, I agree with Rose completely, its a distinction. The word that we do every day. If I'm not working in standards, I can't call myself a technical person. This is the same, vice versa. So the categories, right, I think they are very much connected to the work we do on the everyday basis. It is only natural that I call myself, for instance, a lawyer if I'm working on laws; right? I think the main ‑‑ one of the main issues is understanding each other; right?
Again, it is not a matter of people who care and people who don't. They have the project and, for instance, bringing CSOs closer to the conversations. And helping the people leading these conversations understand Civil Society. We're trying to act as bridges; right? To literally pull down the walls. A lot has been done already. And in the mapping report, far from being, you know, compilation of barriers, we've outlined also some of the really, really good practice that is are happening in some of the organisations that I mentioned. So at ITU, there are definitely good examples to be models across the board. We bring those out also. It is those models that we now that some of the models work.
For example, realtime interpretation. We have that here at the IGF; right? We know it works. It is because these spaces are already implementing some of the issues that we're saying. Hey, why don't you try the issue? It has helped people to get together and understand each other more. Definitely not trying to ‑‑ not, you know, the compartmentalisation beyond what is natural, that we are trying to avoid. But definitely, what you said, taken over absolutely.
>> LAURA O' BRIEN: I know Natalie wanted to come in as well.
>> NATALIE TERCOVA: I just have a little comment. Thank you for saying what you are saying. I totally agree. I don't like the distinctions. At end of the day, we are all using the Internet as end users. Just being in the boxes makes no sense. Honestly, I'm a perfect example of a person who has completely random background having psychology degree and the media studies degree.
But, then just organically be interested in some of the aspects that I was researching, I was like, oh, actually, I need to understand the Internet more and more different aspects of the issues. I was low key and slowly educating myself. I started whispering outside. Can you let me in? I have some ideas. I need to learn from you inside. I'm one of the people who somehow managed to get in.
I can name and highlight the obstacles that I faced. I just want to say it is definitely possible to be inside as you use the metaphor. To be in the room. But it can still be quite bumpy road. I'm more than happy to be here. I feel like we can all agree it is definitely possible. It is the way it should be. But still it is not the smoothest way. I would say this is just my comment for you. Thank you so much for saying that.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm a professor at the University of Alaska. Just to the previous point, I note from the process for the is daunting. It is also disappointing to the various bodies that you are talking about. None of them are in the panel. Thank you for the interesting debate. This is, you know, you are certainly raising some interesting questions. I certainly agree about the need for inclusion of people from a broader range of backgrounds in the various standards development bodies. On the IGF side, I know they've spent efforts trying to include connectivity. It has various forums since 1992. There's efforts going.
I am, however, concerned that this panel is grouping together the various standards bodies and acting as if they all behave somewhat the same. The models for participation and the membership fees or lack thereof in the different standards bodies vary tremendously. The ability to access the final standards is wildly different across the bodies.
There are certainly some valid criticisms here. Not outlets. But there are also perhaps some overly broad statements that have been made which are not representative of all of the standards bodies. I would encourage you to focus your criticism such that it is actionable and the people developing the standards and the people running the standards bodies can actually help address the problems. Rather than making overly broad statements. Thank you.
>> LAURA O' BRIEN: Thank you. I noticed that we're at time. I would like to take the opportunity to highlight three of the main takeaways that I've notice the from the discussion today. The first involves the barriers. We discuss language barriers, membership fees, a lack of transparency, and the Q & A portion also highlighted the understanding each other and including each other and bearing in mind how the barriers are different across different various bodies.
I appreciate the last comment to acknowledge there are different in various settings. The second is to build capacity amongst the various stakeholders, government, Civil Society, technical community, private sector. We're disconnected on many fronts. The geopolitical contact that we're in does not help in understanding the different perspectives and bringing those to the forefront. In order to ensure there's ask security councils and meaningful inclusion and participates of all stakeholders, we must ground discussions in international Human Rights law and center international human rights. On the final takeaway, I want to highlight the freedom of online coalition 2024 that Rasmus mentioned in the introduction was instrumental in bringing the standards. We should be using that in the processes.
I want to thank you all for joining the discussion today. For listening to the panelist. I want to thank the panelist for their engagement and their expertise on topic. I look guard to a future discussion. Thank you.