Enhancing CSO participation in global digital policy processes: Roles, structures, and accountability

The CADE project, co-funded by the European Union, was introduced by Stephanie Borg Psaila, the project lead from DiploFoundation, as the focal point of this in-depth panel discussion. The project’s objective is to empower civil society organisations (CSOs), particularly those from the Global South, to effectively participate in the development of internet governance and digital standards, thereby actively supporting an open and inclusive digital space that respects rights and promotes engagement.

Key challenges identified during the discussion include expanding limited opportunities for CSOs to contribute meaningfully to digital policy processes, lowering financial barriers such as membership fees for standard-setting bodies, and correcting the currently skewed composition with its overrepresentation of organisations from the Global North. The CADE project seeks to address these issues by providing tailored training to CSOs to improve their skills in internet governance and facilitate constructive dialogue with policymakers.

Abed Kataya from SMEX shared insights from Lebanon, demonstrating the crucial role CSOs can play in advocating for data protection and transparency at the local level. This example highlighted the positive outcomes of collaborative engagement between governments and civil society, emphasising the importance of multistakeholderism.

Radka Sibille from the delegation of the EU to the UN and other international organisations explained how the EU’s substantial support for the project aligns with its strategy to support a human-centric and rights-based digital transformation worldwide. The EU champions an independent civil society voice in international debates and standard-setting, rather than its contributions being subsumed under state delegations.

Olivier Allais from ITU discussed the organisation’s efforts to engage with CSOs, acknowledging the value they bring as expertise in social science and human rights. He outlined various mechanisms for CSO engagement within ITU, such as study groups and focus groups, and admitted that there is room for improvement in inclusivity, particularly regarding study groups.

Jovan Kurbalija from DiploFoundation stressed the need for clarity on the concept of inclusivity and the importance of turning the possibility of participation into reality. He criticised “fake inclusivity” and highlighted the need for genuine capacity development to ensure that local communities, especially from the Global South, are represented in discussions about emerging technologies like artificial intelligence.

The panel also addressed the need to make standards freely accessible, as they are considered a public good. There were calls for major donors to cover the costs associated with standardisation, akin to the open access model for scientific articles. Additionally, the EU and member states are working to push for more diversity and human rights considerations within standard-setting organisations.

In conclusion, the panel recognised the vital role of CSOs in shaping digital policy and the necessity of a multistakeholder approach that includes diverse perspectives. The CADE project represents a concerted effort to overcome the challenges faced by CSOs, focusing on capacity development, tailored training, and strong, effective support for more inclusive participation. The EU’s support underscores the significance of this initiative in the broader context of promoting a human-centric digital transformation globally. Noteworthy observations from the discussion include the recognition of the expertise and innovation existing within the Global South and the need for a cultural shift within policy-making institutions to be more receptive to diverse perspectives.

Into:
At FOROS, we believe that the CADE project will support our members in over 124 countries in increasing their engagement in digital governance. We believe that the diverse voices of civil society cannot be left out of any discussions on fostering an open internet and inclusive digital space that respects our rights. SMEX will be working closely with the partners in the CADE project to ensure that CSOs will be empowered in internet governance, mapping key issues and access to foster meaningful dialogue. We will be delivering tailored trainings to boost CSO skills, especially internet governance, to enhance dialogue and trust with policy-makers. As a member of the consortium, Sarvodaya Fusion believes that the CADE project will empower and enhance knowledge among civil society organizations in internet governance, as well as strengthening and capacitating civil society organizations will ensure a human-centric participatory approach in 5G processes in our region. KICTANet is committed to advocating for an inclusive, evidence-based internet governance policy-making process through the Civil Society Alliance for Digital Empowerment, CADE. CADE has fostered partnerships with like-minded entities to strengthen its impact on internet governance, digital empowerment and policy advocacy. At KICTANet, we are proud to be part of the CADE project.

Stephanie Borg Psaila:
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our discussion on enhancing civil society organizations’ participation in global digital policy projects. processes. The colleagues you saw on the screen are some of the partners involved in a new project co-funded by the European Union, European Commission. So this is for context, the context of the discussion that we are having today. My name is Stephanie Borg Psaila. I’m from DiploFoundation, the lead, the coordinator of the project, together with eight other organizations, which I will talk about a little bit later during the session. But allow me to introduce the panelists for this session. We have Professor Jovan Kurbalija, the Executive Director of DiploFoundation. We have Mr Radka Sibille, the Digital Affairs at the EU delegation to the UN in Geneva with Mr Olivier Allais, Program Coordinator at the ITU. Karolina Iwańska, Digital Civic Space Advisor at ECNL. And we have Abed Kataya, he’s a digital expert at Social Media Exchange or SMEX, as it is more widely known. And in this new project, as you can imagine, the work we are doing is to bring civil society organizations, especially from the Global South, closer to digital policy processes, with a bit of a focus on standard-setting processes, and therefore the work of ITU, ICANN, IETF, and other processes more widely involved in digital policy, IGF, etc. It’s a four-year project, which started earlier this year, but we’ve just officially launched it an hour ago. in the room across. So this is a deeper dive into the issues that we will be dealing with, and specifically, it’s the challenges that civil society organizations are dealing with, are facing in their participation in these processes, what the issues are, and how we get closer to resolving them. So that is in a nutshell the context of this session and I’ll move immediately, I will ask Caroline immediately to share the organization, so her organization’s experience, so from that experience what are the pain points in the participation of civil society organizations, what are the issues that the civil society organizations are facing, so where do we stand right?

Karolina Iwańska:
Thank you very much, Stephanie, I hope you can hear me. My name is Caroline Iwańska; I work at the European Center for Not-for-Profit Law, which is a civil society organization based in The Hague in the Netherlands but working globally, focusing on protecting and promoting civil society and civic freedoms. It’s the final day of this and those of you who like me have been here since Monday have heard multiple times and in multiple sessions how the voice of civil society is crucial for strengthening global regional and national internet governance processes and in particular many sessions throughout this week address the need for civil society input and expertise in the standardization process. However, in practice, there are several barriers to impactful long-term and structural engagement of civil society, and so we have identified three primary issues as part of our work. So first, civil society has limited opportunities for impactful contribution to discussions and processes, and this is due to several factors. For example, there is still a rather narrow understanding of civil society in many processes. and especially in standards bodies that is often limited to consumer groups or trade unions and excludes human rights groups or representatives of people also with lived experience of exclusion, for instance. The opportunities for engagement vary from organization to organization. There are some organizations that have a more developed approach or have been multistakeholder from the outset. Others are at rather beginning phases of embedding structurally civil society engagement within how the organization functions. And also in terms of the link between human rights and standard setting, there are discrepancies across bodies relating to the extent to which they already embed human rights considerations into various processes.

The second issue that we identified is that there is also a significant gap in terms of time and resources for civil society to participate as well as awareness of how various fora actually function and what are the opportunities to engage with them in an impactful way. There are high entry thresholds for many civil society organizations to join these processes, particularly for the technical standard-setting processes, because of the gap in technical knowledge, the complexity of the issues and the lack of inclusive procedures for participants with diverse types of expertise, not only technical expertise. And to some extent, there is also a lack of conviction. I think that civil society input matters in those processes and to what extent it can be effectively taken on board. And finally, many processes are also very lengthy, so that requires constant resourcing and funding of civil society, which is also a big issue.

And last but not least, the third issue I wanted to highlight is that even when there is participation, it is often heavily skewed towards organizations from the Global North as opposed to organizations representing lower-degree countries. And even for IGF, which is very open to civil society participation compared to other internet governance processes, 39% of all civil society participation is from the Global North. civil society organizations come from just six countries, only two of which, Brazil and India, represent the global majority. And there is also a vast dominance of organizations, especially from the United States. So the lack of diversity in global majority voices is even more an issue in fora that are not as inclusive as IGF. So we are very encouraged by the openness that towards strengthening civil society participation that was exhibited throughout this week and that is exhibited in our conversations with different stakeholders and organizations. And we look forward to further discussions about how to achieve that meaningfully in practice. Thank you.

Stephanie Borg Psaila:
Thank you so much, Karoline, for outlining basically what the main challenges that civil society organizations face so far. Some of the issues you mentioned are somehow linked to an issue of inclusivity. And here is where I turn to you, Jovan. Jovan, inclusivity is often used and reused, et cetera. But do we need more clarity on what it means? And how does it perhaps link to what we aim and what our work is over the next few years?

Jovan Kurbalija:
Thank you. Thank you, Steph. Thank you for joining us today. And you mentioned two keywords, and I will add a few more. You mentioned inclusivity and you mentioned clarity. This is very important to have clear understanding what it is. And I’ll mention two more words that will probably will end up with 10 words after this intervention. One is possibility and reality. You have many spaces, including in particular IJF, other spaces which are open. You can join, you can have your say, but possibility is not turned into reality, or it is monopolist. And I think, and I will pose this notion that fake inclusivity is worse than no inclusivity. And I’m speaking about it in a very informed way. We did analysis of all transcripts of IJF since the first IJF in Athens. And you can have, even in civil society, including myself, mea culpa, the usual suspects speaking at many sessions, repeating things, mainly from the global north, mainly from the few organizations. Therefore, the possibility to participate in IJF is not turned into reality for many actors. And we have to, and I, again, like with any things in society, fake inclusivity is worse than no inclusivity, because no inclusivity bring clarity. People tell you, you cannot join this meeting and stay away, then you fight. You try to join. But having a possibility without reality is very, very tricky. And this inspired this project to have the genuine capacity building for genuine inclusivity. And hopefully, when we do a analysis of the IGF in five years’ time, that we have more people from local communities, more people representing voices from the Global South. I made in Japan, I refused to participate in any session because I was all over the transcripts during the previous IGF. I said, let me walk the talk. And you won’t see me at the IGFs and any meetings versus forums anymore speaking, except when Stephanie forces me to come and to join the session with pleasure. Now, what does it mean practically? We have to deconstruct big narratives. Language is very often fluffy. It’s inflated. And people are seeing a discrepancy between language and reality. What does it mean practically? Sometimes it’s a real issue that we help people that they are not afraid of the physical spaces where they meet. Second, we connect what are their concerns to the discussions. You go to the WSIS forum, to the IGF, to any big meeting, and you’re lost after. When I go to IGF, I try to follow the first morning. And already during the lunchtime, I’m next to the bar, and I’m giving up on any. This is the reason why we started the IGF reporting, because I wanted to know what’s going on after the meeting. And that’s it. But let’s see, small organizations, they need to be figures. Hey, by the way, there is a session eight, which is discussing things of relevance for you. And you have always focused understanding what’s going on and the broader view of the general trends. Therefore, this is like a camera. Zoom in, zoom out. Zoom in on your particular concern, but understanding what’s going on in the broader context. And this is another spirit of this project. Therefore, yes, it’s substantive inclusivity. Inclusivity beyond just being another notion in the context of multistakeholder participation. Inclusivity which requires also building our capacity or civil society or non-governmental actors that we understand governments. And then we don’t go into binary views of us and them, us being right and them being wrong. Maybe they’re wrong. I’m speaking generally. Maybe governments are wrong on some issues, but we should not forget that many governments have to take care of quite a complex issue of running society, delivering education, health, food, and other issues. It’s a general statement, but we should also step in their shoes and see how we can become, and with that I will close, how we can become constructive contrarians. Civil society has to be contrarian. It has to bring different perspective. But it will make a more impact for general cause, for everybody involved in the process, if it is. constructed not by self-censorship but by trying to understand how issues can be moved forward with international organization, with tech companies, with governments. I see a great hope for me personally in civil society impact on artificial intelligence because we have to protect local knowledge and to contribute local knowledge to the global bottom-up AI. Here civil society can play vital role in standardization, raising awareness, bringing voices from local communities. This is for me personally, although I’m not running the project, Stefanie is in charge, but I will lobby her to have more say of local communities in the looming artificial intelligence discussions.

Stephanie Borg Psaila:
Thank you very much, Jovan, and in a few minutes we will go to the local context, but I’ll open a bit of a bracket to say two important points that you mentioned are that the doors are open and the possibility to participate is there. What we are doing right now at the start of our journey is to make sure that we identify what the issues are. We are reaching out to civil society organizations on a regional level and on a local level as my colleagues here will explain. But it’s not just civil society organizations that we are engaging with, it’s also the processes, it’s also the international organizations themselves that we are already working with. And this leads me to invite Olivier from ITU to ask him about ITU’s experience in engaging with civil society. and especially what has worked so far and what hasn’t worked so far.

Olivier Allais:
Okay, hello everyone. Thanks a lot for the questions. I can start a bit to tell you about ITU. ITU is the United Nations Special Agency for ICT and we also included the development of global technical standards. Why standards are important? Because they help technology to work together, they help also interoperability that allows systems to work together, they also facilitate my access to market and they also play a role in human rights. This point is quite important. So the standard can play a role in privacy, on freedom of expression, on access to information and data protection and non-discrimination and that’s why standardization is a core function of ITU. It’s gaining increased attention from the human rights community. Before saying what is working and what is not working, I could start also to talk about why civil society activity participation is something important for us. Because it is bringing a new expertise, a new vision to ITU’s development of standards. Inside the ITU, we are mainly technicians, engineers and there is not enough soft science. There is no, we don’t have enough knowledge about social science, about human rights. We don’t have the experience from the field that the CSOs have and so we need to have also this feedback. Something that we have been seeing a lot during this crisis, we need a multistakeholder approach. What does that mean in the case of ITU? It’s to bridge the standardization gap. Because today, developing and developed countries are not participating the same, they don’t have access the same to the standardization. standards that we are developing, and we need to hear the voice of developing countries. We need to hear the voice from civil society organizations to build a standard that they need. We can build quite easily a standard in two weeks only in Geneva, but they are not going to work in other countries, so it’s not making sense, and that’s why we are talking about a multistakeholder approach. And we need also civil society to support the ITU recommendation in two national policy and framework, something important. So when we are drafting recommendations here, they need to be applied at the national level. Also, civil society participation is something important to recall the government from their obligations, and ITU, at the end of the day, it’s their government. We need to underline that the government has an obligation to protect human rights online and offline. It’s coming from a resolution. It’s not me saying that. It’s coming from a resolution from the General Assembly, and so sometimes we need civil society organizations just to recall about that. We need also civil society organizations to recall that the U.S. OHCHR asked the standard developing organization as ITU to include human rights consideration into the standardization process. So here we are talking about inclusivity and non-discrimination. To jump about what is working and not working inside IT, we have different mechanisms. I can give you a mechanism to participate to the standardization process is a study group. A study group is driven by experts, and it is on a consulting process. The difficulties that we have with study groups is that you need to be a member, you need to have a membership, and that means that civil society organizations need to apply to a membership, and depending on the chair of the study group and also the ITU, but mainly from the chair, they can accept or not, and there is a fee. So the fee can be waived also for the NGOs, but to participate to study groups, you need a specific membership. To participate to focus group, and in that case, it’s going to be open, and the focus group is quite interesting at ITU. It’s really to respond to emerging technical topics and challenges, and to standard development. So here the membership is totally open, and we have focus groups like the one ITU-WHO focus group on artificial intelligence, and we have another one, for example, on metaverse. Another thing that can be interesting for CSOs is being part of a country delegation. So in that case, you need to approach your country delegation. your government, and saying, OK, we want to be part of the ITU discussions and be on your country delegations. After the last points, to participate, you can, of course, we have webcasts. We have remote participations. So it’s also something important just to underline for civil society organizations that are quite away from Geneva, and most of them are, of course, away from Geneva. What has worked and what is not, what is working and not working, focus group are working quite well because they are open. Study group, we have to admit that there is a room for improvement to be more inclusive with civil society organizations. And the special case of being part of a country delegation, it’s driven by the number of states. So we are not managing at all these parts. And civil society organizations can talk directly to the delegations. So at the end of the day, we are, of course, encouraging the participation from different stakeholders. Right now, I’m working on building a partnership with OHCHR. It’s quite important for us because we don’t have enough expertise on human rights. And we are in the focus group. We are open to all parties, which can be an interesting entry for the civil society organizations.

Stephanie Borg Psaila:
Thank you, Olivier. I’m happy to hear ITU is accomplishing the issues, obviously, for CSO participation. It ties in with what Karolina was saying in the beginning. So there is obviously an issue to be addressed. It is always good to hear that CSOs are a valuable stakeholder for ITU and, I’m sure, for other organizations. So that part is definitely something we agree on. Obviously, issues of participation, so the accessibility part is not just it, right? As you mentioned, the inclusivity is broader than that, but it is definitely an issue that was a, let’s say, a pain point, it was and it still is. So that’s definitely an issue to be tackled. We mentioned a lot of the local context and here, my colleague Abed from SMEX has an interesting experience to share on how, at a local level, the organ entities, in your case, government entities, are also open to hearing and to include the civil society perspective. So we’ll hear about the opportunities there. So Abed, I’ll give you the floor.

Abed Kataya:
Yeah, thank you, Stephanie. Good morning, everyone. So we at SMEX, we are an organization that gathers and defends digital rights in Lebanon and the WANA regions. Back in four years now, so everyone, every government was in a hurry to launch platforms for contact tracing during the COVID period and also for vaccination, to book appointments for vaccination. But in a local context like Lebanon, so these platforms were passed and were launched, whatever. So they did not, for example, give any attention to the data protection measures, to the privacy policies, to the terms of service. So they just wanted to launch the platforms for the sake of vaccination and contact tracing. So we as civil society organizations, we took initiatives and we took like a step to be, to engage with the government, to the entities also. not only to just like throwing ideas or just like telling them that you’re doing this wrong and that. So what we did was actually, I can say that it was like a mix of both, the confrontation and also collaboration with the government entities.

So first we’ve been doing what we did was basically policy analysis. So the Lebanese government launched like a platform called Impact. So we did a policy analysis for the platform and we discovered that they do not have any privacy policy. And then we urged them to have a privacy policy that reflects the best practices of GDPR, for example, and also to have it in Arabic for the local context. And then we did also technical analysis for the platform to make sure that the data is well protected, the user’s data is well protected because in Lebanon we have a law, we have a law for like, it’s called like e-transactions and personal data protection, but it’s not dedicated to privacy. So what we did is we wrote the best practices and we engaged with the government and the entities, the official government entities to implement the best practices. In addition to that, we relied on public awareness. So also we engaged with the public and we informed them about what’s happening, what’s happening behind the scenes and also what the government and what their platforms are lacking because they should know, the government should be transparent, but they’re not. So we played this role in bridging the gap between the government and the citizens when it comes to the data and data privacy and data protection. And we did a lot of follow-up and advocacy, even with the government entities and different entities, actually the minister. the government, we sat together, we had many discussions, we had many clashes, let me say, but at the end, it all was for the sake of the citizens and the data protection. What I wanted to say from this experience is that engaging the civil society by design and also having the privacy by design would make it easier for everybody, especially for the governments here. I’m talking about the governments and the government entities. So it would make it easier for them to understand what they could not understand, maybe what they could not see, or maybe what they could not foresee. Because we know we played this role, and they were very collaborative, and they were very positive, actually. So we did not expect that to be that positive, to be honest. But at the end, we’ve learned together that the multistakeholderism is something that should be retained, because we help each other, we can help each other, we can support each other, and also we can bridge the gaps, and we can shed light on something that can’t be foreseen by us or by any other entity. So this was a small experience with us on a local level, and I hope that we look forward to this project also to expand our experience and to have better discussions when it comes to multistakeholderism and civil society engagement on a bigger and international scale. Thank you.

Stephanie Borg Psaila:
Thank you, Abed. And we tend to overemphasize the problem, so sometimes we’re too pessimistic, probably, about the issues, right? And we do not spare enough time to see what has really been working, especially on on a local level. So experiences like what you have just described are really important to bring them out, right? And that is why we are working with partners in different regions who are able to work at a local, at a grassroots level, because we want to bring those experiences out. We want to see what has worked there. More or less, I think the issues are quite well known. We still want to make sure that, again, at a local level, we are really understanding what those are, because it is one thing talking about the issues here, even with the civil society present in these fora, right? And it is quite another, going at a grassroots level and reaching out to organizations whom you do not meet in these fora. So a lot of civil society organizations, especially in the global south, are completely cut off from these processes. So again, this is why there is a lot of value in working with organizations who have the local reach and the experience to unearth these issues at such a local level. I now turn to Rathke from the European Union, because the EU is supporting this project. And there is a reason why the EU is supporting this project, and I’m hoping that Radka will explain it.

Radka Sibille:
Thank you very much, Stephanie, and thank you to all the colleagues who came this morning. We as the EU, we are really proud supporters of this project, which is embedded in the EU’s overall strategy to support human-centric and human rights-based digital transformation and open, free, and secure internet worldwide. And the civil society participation and the multistakeholder model of internet governance are an important part of this. So, you know, we are proud to support civil society, especially civil society from developing countries, to participate meaningfully in those international digital standard-setting internet debates. And when I say meaningfully, it also relates a little bit to what some colleagues were saying, that, you know, sometimes the membership of these organizations does not really equal the participation meaningfully de facto, because there are many obstacles that NGOs, even though they are formally members of these organizations, they often face. And so, you know, there was also this suggestion that sometimes the NGOs, in order to be able to speak, they need to be part of some, you know, member state delegation, which is, of course, a nice measure. I think temporarily some countries were allowing that, but we also feel that civil society needs to have its voice for its own rights and be there as civil society. And so, you know, we hope that this project can empower civil society to be able to advocate with authority and as equal partners on issues such as fundamental rights. principles that sometimes could have been overlooked in those discussions that are often happening in very restricted communities, mainly formed by technical experts. And as it was also mentioned, these standard-setting processes take a lot of time. I think in the ITU, one standard can take up to 18 months to be designed. So we hope that this project can also help sustainably support civil society because it’s a three-year-long project, so there will be a lot of time to spread the capacity-building, the understanding, the dialogue with civil society so that they can come more often and be present. But I also would think that in parallel, what would need to be done is to also try to change a little bit the culture of these organizations themselves so that they are more open and welcoming when the civil society comes and tries to speak to them because some of these have been closed within the technical community for quite some time and it’s not very easy, I think, for the newcomers that bring new ideas on the table to make themselves heard. So this is also something that we are trying as the EU and the EU member states to do, to try to speak with these international organizations on what could be done on the inside. And we are very happy, for instance, with the work that Olivia is doing with all the awareness-raising within the study groups of ITU and we hope that we can continue on this. Thank you very much.

Stephanie Borg Psaila:
Thank you, Ratka. And you quite nicely, actually, described the aims of the project that you are doing because there is obviously big alignment in that, so I won’t repeat. I’ll open the floor to questions. We have a few minutes. So I’d like to ask whether you have any comments, feedback, questions. Now is the time. We have five minutes. Two questions. I think the gentleman at the back has his hand up. Can you introduce yourself, please?

Audience:
Thank you. My name is Lars Lühnberger. I’m with GLOCO, the global community. I want to focus on two aspects of the financial barriers. First, I want to confirm Olivier’s concern that the membership fees can be a challenge for a civil society organisation. We found out with one organisation that it’s just too much for us. The other point is that even if the standards are approved and published, the fees for getting them and reading them and discussing them openly is still pretty high, because you have to pay 130 to 200 Swiss francs to get access to an AI standard. So I would call for free access to core standards relevant for ICT, like what was started for the medical device standards during the COVID-19 pandemic, where open access was provided. There’s an analogy, of course. In scientific publications, we all push for open access. It’s probably not applicable for technical standards, but the core ones that are relevant and also to the civil society, they should be open, I would suggest. Thank you.

Stephanie Borg Psaila:
Thank you very much for that. I don’t know if you want to react to that. Yes, we agree on the fee for the membership, even if there is a specific fee for NGOs for developing countries. Considering the fee for the standard is part of the organisation, I guess ISO, you need to pay a fee. ITU is free. Jovan, please.

Jovan Kurbalija:
Thank you for this comment. It’s very practical, which I think our project should push for. Standards are public good, and they should be considered in that way. And the first step, common sense step, is to make it accessible and available to all concerned. Now, there are arguments that the organization spend money and, you know, there are justifiable arguments, but this is something which should be dealt with the major donors, major… that the payment is done, like with open source articles, on the producers. You pay if you want to have open source article, but I don’t think that there should be any restriction when it comes to distribution. Therefore, thank you for that comment, and I think it’s very valuable.

Stephanie Borg Psaila:
And it’s a very practical suggestion, too. Carolina?

Karolina Iwańska:
If I may just very, very briefly comment and add another dimension, I think, for the financial barriers. So membership fee is one thing, but then another aspect is, of course, time that goes into those very lengthy standards, the travel included, right? So we can think also much more broadly about fellowships. I know that some organizations are thinking about that and other kind of more structural funding issues. And then on the publication or access to standards, I just wanted to highlight one, I think, very interesting development in the EU context. So the EU also has the regional standardization body since Senelec, and recently, actually, the Court of Justice of the EU confirmed that those standards have to be made publicly available, free of charge, precisely because of the importance that they have. So I think this is a very interesting example for inspiration for other institutions also.

Stephanie Borg Psaila:
Thank you, Carolina, for bringing that up. The gentleman.

Audience:
Thank you very much for offering a short remark. What I suggest…

Stephanie Borg Psaila:
Can you just introduce yourself, please?

Audience:
My name is Horst Kremers from Berlin, Germany. And during my so-called working lifetime, I also worked with UNICEF, children’s rights affairs, then with the German-Russian exchange service for promoting civil society. society in Russia, doing projects in Volgograd and everything, these kind of things. I want to make that short. Nevertheless, what I see is, and I would suggest that so many United Nations instruments that are declarations, especially declarations and also these programs, of United Nations, most of them, at least since the last ten years, have been so-called all-of-society principle. That is a name in, I think, the formal name in United Nations, upper level, from the President, from the General Secretary also. So also that would be something where we say it’s civil society and the other people say it’s all-of-society. That may be a difference in semantics, but it may be also a factual difference. So that should be made clear, what you say, where there are other terms around, so please make sure if your idea is with the other terms. Then just to take from the United Nations, it was not mentioned here that there is that United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner that is in charge of kind of promoting all that what is called United Nations Human Rights scope. The human rights in digital information are a facet of that. Nevertheless, although this office has some stake in it, it was not mentioned at all, I suggest that it needs to be in the project to talk to the upper level and also to the down level. So there is a screening, I say there is a screening of the United Nations instruments practice where they say, I work with United Nations, UNDRR, Stakeholder Engagement Mechanism on Disaster Risk Reduction. There is also that in all of society principle. In fact, what is done in certain national domains is not necessarily that is what is the intention of the wording. So that is kind of is the intention of the declaration is done nationally, but the intention is a little bit not exactly what we want in civil society terms. So these kind of screenings of different declarations in their implementation is the implementation following these ideas really, that would be something that I highly recommend. It’s a tedious work, I know, but you can address these offices, thank you. Thank you very much.

Stephanie Borg Psaila:
And I think it ties into what you said about the semantics, the clarity on the terms and also what AI can do there.

Jovan Kurbalija:
That’s not necessarily tedious work, it used to be, and the Disaster Reduction Organization is incidentally just two floors above us in the WMO building, therefore we will do some practical steps. But now there are tools that can identify the processes and I think, thank you for helping us to develop the AI model by reference to this. We are in contact with Human Rights Commission and we are in contact with different actors, but your points are extremely valuable that we don’t create another silos and that would be counterintuitive and counterfactual and counter the impact, therefore your comments are well taken, thank you.

Stephanie Borg Psaila:
Thank you Jovan and thank you to the gentleman. We’ll take one last question from the lady.

Audience:
Thank you very much. I’m Anriette Esterhuysen from the Association for Progressive Communications, South Africa. And congratulations, this is a very important project and I think, you know, Just to pick up on some of the things the panel said, and then I have a question. I think I have to commend the ITU, Olivier. I mean, what our organization has done is to become a member of ITU-D, the development sector, and ITU-R, the radio spectrum sector. And in that way, we have been able to participate in the standard-setting process. We’re also part of study group five, which is working on environmental justice standards. But I think what the panelists said, it’s not just getting in, it’s the time commitment that is massive. But I just want to remark also that I think it’s important that the project doesn’t underestimate the capacity of global self-civil society. Global self-civil society does not just have impact at national level, obviously they do, but many do research that’s relevant to global policy debates. But there’s this assumption that if you are from the South, you are relevant to the South. If you are from the North, you are relevant to the North. So I think that is something that also has to be picked up on. And I think Radka’s point about the need for also doing capacity building in the global North or within these organizations, these policy-making institutions, I think that’s an important aspect because they tend to be not sufficiently receptive or they tend to be a little bit unintentionally patronizing to global South organizations. They think that if you’re from the South, you can talk about access or development. They don’t think you can talk about privacy standards, for example. So just a question, how are you going to address that challenge that Radka pointed to, which is the sort of lack of receptiveness from these standard-setting policy-making organizations?

Stephanie Borg Psaila:
Radka, please.

Radka Sibille:
Thank you, thank you so much. And this is really an excellent point. So because many of these standard-setting organizations or especially the ITU are members-driven, so they hear a lot what the member states are saying, we tried within the European Union organize our EU member states in a way to try to push this issue about the need for more diversity and human rights from the member states’ perspective. So at the last plenipotentiary conference, actually, the European Union and the presidency, the Czech Republic, made a joint statement which was signed by 54 countries, so well beyond the European Union and well beyond just the regular like-minded countries. So there were signatures also by countries from Africa, from Asia, Latin America, and the statement said that there needs to be a human rights-based approach to technical standards setting. And they are now trying to build on the membership of the signatories of this statement to try to move a step further with a view to the next standardization conference, which is in October. So you mentioned that your organization is part of the ITU-R, ITU-D, but I would also really encourage you to look into maybe ITU-T, where all these standards are produced, and where the more diversity is really needed. Because if you talk about –

Audience:
But that’s what costs money. We get a fee waiver for ITU-D and ITU-R.

Radka Sibille:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there is also one thing, what the ITU has been telling us, that they sometimes waive the fees for NGOs, but then again there comes the point of the long-term investment that the NGOs need to make in a person trying to follow a process, and staying in Geneva sometimes for three weeks of a debate that are sometimes very tedious. So yeah, we hope this project can make a difference, but we will also not waive our responsibility as members to try to do on our own level the pushing from the inside. Thank you.

Stephanie Borg Psaila:
Thank you very much, Radka. I don’t know whether there was another question from this side. Yes, very briefly, introduce yourself, please.

Audience:
Okay, my name is Nana Wachiko, I’m an advisory board member of the Digital Democracy Initiative. My question specifically goes to Professor Jovan. You had specified about how, or you had mentioned about seeing the regular faces, hearing the regular voices. So my question is, how do we intentionally position new voices? Because there is one thing. to be invited, and one has been there 10 years counting, 15 years, five years, six years, same voices. Do we decline those invitations and suggest someone else who’s a, you know, you might have come across and say, I would like to recommend this person to participate in this rather than myself? Because if the old voices are not accepting the stages, then the people who are, the platforms will start to reconsider. But if the old voices continue to accept all the time, then that could be part of the problem.

Jovan Kurbalija:
Excellent, excellent question. I can tell you what I’m doing. I didn’t speak, I speak at one session, topical session at the IGF in Japan. I didn’t speak at any session versus except Africa. Africa is my passion focus and Ubuntu civilization and AI. And this is what I’m doing. When they approach me, I say there are some other people. I usually suggest other people. That’s an individual approach. I would say institutional approach should be to make efforts to identify other voices. And I can tell you, and back to what Anriette said, and it’s not just a simple thing. You have fascinating people in the Global South. People who, somebody who brought internet to, I don’t know, suburb of Nairobi without any infrastructure for me, frankly, is much, much more impressive than somebody working for open AI or MIT. With all due respect, that’s real expertise and real innovation. Therefore, we have to change, and I hope this project, at least I will push, to reframe the discussion, what Anriette mentioned, and not to have usual knee-jerk reaction. Global South needs access. Let’s help them to have access. No, and it’s not only because of the respect of the Global South. It is about respect of all of us. Ubuntu philosophy, which we discuss in one of these sessions, I am because you are, is in the core of artificial intelligence development. Therefore, by the digging and discovering other philosophical, religious, and practical traditions, we, I inverted commas, I’m originally from the Balkans, which is in the middle, we in the Global North will basically also help ourselves and regain global dignity in discussion. Therefore, that would be the overall spirit of the project. And on the practical thing, I do what I can, but I think we should push organizations to do something. If you are at the 10 sessions at the IGF, okay, reduce to five, and have a drink in the bar, and have something around you.

Stephanie Borg Psaila:
Which is what we will do after the session. Very good. So what is left for me to say is a big thank you, first of all, to the EU for supporting our vision, which also aligns with the EU’s own aims. To briefly mention the partners of this project. So it’s Diplo together with ECNL, Forus International, CIPESA in Africa, KICTANet in Africa, Sarvodaya from Sri Lanka, Social Media Exchange, SMEX, the Pacific Islands Chapter of the Internet Society, PICISOC and Karisma from Colombia. So thank you to the partners. Thank you to our panellists. We’ve scratched the surface. A lot of work is ahead of us. Stay tuned for the updates on the project website, CADE project.org. And thank you so much for participating in this discussion and also for the participants who are following us online. Thank you.