Tag: Internet Governance

With the theme of “Connecting continents for enhanced multistakeholder Internet governance,” the ninth annual meeting of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is taking place in Istanbul, Turkey, 2-5 September 2014. Access staff is there, participating in a variety of pre-events, workshops, and high-level meetings.

This has already been a historic year in internet governance, from the NetMundial to the first steps of the IANA transition to the announcement of the modalities for the WSIS+10 Review and the ITU Plenipotentiary ahead. As governments, corporations, civil society, and the technical community assess this changing landscape, we should now add the NetMundial Initiative (NMI), which will hold its first meeting in Geneva this week.

On July 9th, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, its very highest body and one of the top human rights courts in the world, held a hearing on the landmark case of Delfi, an Estonian news outlet held liable for comments posted by users.

From the 10th to the 13th of June, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held the capstone event of its ten year review, the WSIS+10 High Level Event. Two important documents were endorsed at this event, a statement on the implementation of the WSIS Outcomes enshrined in the 2005 Tunis Agenda, and a second document articulating a vision beyond 2015.

On the 13th of June in Geneva, the WSIS + 10 High Level Event (WSIS + 10 HLE) concluded, culminating in the endorsement of two outcome documents, the WSIS+10 Statement on the Implementation of WSIS Outcomes, and the WSIS+10 Vision for WSIS Beyond 2015.
At the conclusion of the HLE, Access joined APC, CDT, CTS/FGV, Global Partners Digital, IFLA, the Internet Democracy Project, IDEA, and KICTAnet in making the following statement.

Access calls on the Executive Branch to seize the opportunity to end the NSA’s bulk telephony collection program this week.

Following 67 days of censorship, YouTube was unblocked in Turkey on Tuesday following a ruling last week by the Constitutional Court that the ban violates freedom of expression. While Access welcomes the Court’s decision, the underlying legal frameworks allowing such censorship still exist.

Outcome document of the global multi-stakeholder meeting on the future of internet governance

Over June 20-27, the AU Heads of State will be meeting where they’re expected to adopt a new Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection. While Access and other partners criticized an earlier draft of the Convention, the rewritten draft has yet to be released to the public, even as it races closer to adoption.

CWG-Internet has the mandate to identify, study, and develop matters related to specific international internet-related public policy issues [1]. An ongoing issue CWG-Internet has sought to address is the question of the role of governments in internet governance. This issue is at the core of a questionnaire sent to all ITU member states on behalf of CWG-Internet on November 22, 2013.

The questionnaire was intended to launch a consultation among governments on their role in the internet-related public policy issues covered in Resolution 1305, the results of which were discussed at its March session. Among the 193 ITU member states that received the questionnaire, 54 were African governments. Responses included specific examples of actions to address internet policy issues as well as opinions on the general nature of the role of governments in internet governance and of the 37 Member States that responded, six were from Africa: Botswana, Mauritius, Morocco, Rwanda, Sudan and Zambia.