?Last week, the United Nations held its ninth Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Istanbul, Turkey. This year's event attracted more than 2,500 attendees from across the world. Attendees included government ministers, diplomats, chief executives and Internet entrepreneurs, civil rights defenders, scholars, engineers and other stakeholders in the global Internet community. Their one-week task: to engage in discussions about the state of the Internet and its future.
The IGF is a truly unique global forum in this respect. Its multi-stakeholder discussions play a vital role in ensuring that the Internet continues to evolve in the global public interest. The annual event has been staged since 2006 to discuss global issues related to Internet access, use and administration.
This year the IGF considered many complex policy issues, such as net neutrality and the transition of oversight of key internet functions away from the US Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration division to the global multistakeholder Internet community. The forum also addressed key questions such as cyber-security; privacy; cultural and linguistic diversity; and policies for enhancing access, growth and development on the Internet in small island developing states.
After a week with more than 80 workshops on access, human rights, and governance structures on the net, some creatively amended this year's theme from "Connecting Continents for Enhanced Multi-stakeholder Internet Governance" to "Connecting Communities for Enhanced Multi-stakeholder Internet Governance." From the workshop topics to hallway conversations, one thing is clear, no group wants to be left out of the global dialogue on the Internet's future.
Caribbean presence
Representatives from the Caribbean featured prominently at the event, leading panel discussions, sharing experiences and contributing meaningfully to the global dialog. Regional groups like the T&T Information Society Chapter and the Caribbean Network Operators Group hosted special works addressing the unique challenges and opportunities of Small Island Developing States in areas such as broadband deployment, technical capacity and basic Internet infrastructure.
The Caribbean's presence at the event is a positive indicator of the region's growing influence on global Internet stage. This is testament to the work of organisations such as the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, whose Caribbean Internet Governance Forum pre-dates the global forum by a year.
In fact, the Istanbul IGF took a page out of the CTU's playbook. For the first time, the Global Forum committed to co-ordinating and advancing solutions to identified challenges. Caribbean representatives and others proposed this change at previous IGFs. Now, the UN body will be seeking to link its annual global IGF with other regional and national IGF initiative that have emerged in the last ten years. It will also aim to pick up and explore further issues at the invitation of other organisations and fora.
For all the progress, however, the IGF initiative still faces profound new challenges as the global divide widens over the future of the Internet.
Internet revolution
Syracuse University (US) Prof Milton Mueller, giving the speech for civil society at the IGF's closing ceremony, referred to vision of freedom of a new people on the net articulated in The Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow.
The excitement surrounding the IGF came from the "feeling that we are building some new kind of political community, maybe even revolutionary forms of governance," Mueller said.
And while he said "multi-stakeholderism" (the term current used to describe the all-inclusive process) is a "lousy label" for a revolution, the key issue about it is that it "elevates transnational non-state actors to the same status as governments."
Calls to improve the IGF were also came from the European Union Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Making her last appearance as a Digital Agenda Commissioner, Kroes asked the IGF "stop talking, but act."
United Kingdom Foreign Minister Ed Vaizey made an appeal on the same lines, while Macedonian Minister for Information Society and Administration Ivo Ivanovski said he was amazed that ministers of education, science and culture were absent from the forum.
The road ahead
Whatever its shortcomings, its core mandate remains a valid as ever; to ensure that all communities, be they in developing countries and small island developing states, or in the advanced digital economies, understand and embrace the value and benefits of collaborating and contributing to the Internet's growth and stability.
The forum is evolving and expanding in tandem with the dynamic changes taking place in the global Internet and across global society. Meanwhile, the task of support the growth of the Internet as a driver for development and as a force for good across the world is never quite done. There remain communities to empower, policies to develop, stakeholders to educate, Internet exchange Points to deploy, cyber-threats to address, users to protect, local content to create, and research to conduct on how the Internet and our actions are impacting human society.
In defining the way forward for the IGF, and for the Internet itself, we are on a moving platform, trying to hit a moving target. A new generation of users is emerging and countries and organisations are jostling for space, respect and power in the emerging order. New regions and communities are making their voices, view and priorities known. And the IGF is richer for it. Now more than ever collaboration and networking are key. However, the core principles that defined the success of the Internet still apply.
The increasing levels of participation and interest bear witness to the unique place the IGF now holds in the Internet's eco-system. Safeguarding the integrity of this mandate is not the responsibility of any single entity. Instead, in keeping with the tradition of the forum, it is the global stakeholders themselves who will hold the charge to review the IGF's role and function, and to identify the priorities for its further evolution.
Bevil Wooding is the chief knowledge officer of Congress WBN, a Caribbean-based international non-profit organisation, and the founder and executive director of BrightPath Foundation, a technology education non-profit organisation. Reach him on Twitter @bevilwooding or on facebook.com/bevilwooding or contact via e-mail at: technologymatters@brightpathfoundation.org.