Anriette Esterhuysen's speech at the opening session of the second Internet Governance Forum (IGF) touches on key issues

Veículo: APC.org
Data: 13/11/2007
Assunto: IGF

APC's executive director, Anriette Esterhuysen's well-received speech at the opening session of the second Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Rio de Janeiro on Monday 12 November 2007 urged the IGF to prioritise access. Touching on critical issues such as security, openness, standards and diversity, she emphasized the potential of the internet to contribute to all aspects of human development.

ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN:  Thank you, chairman.  And thank you, Mr. Touré, for cutting some of my speech. It's -- one always prepares something beforehand.  But I think like other speakers and like the chair in his introduction indicated, the internet has enormous potential for contributing to all aspects of human development.  And we in my organization believe it's a public good, and therefore it should be governed as a public good based on public interest principles. And also, this governance should take place in the public domain. We need all institutions and all processes that are involved in governance of the internet to be transparent, to facilitate participation, and participation from all stakeholders, and participation in decision-making, to provide access to information. And this is a very broad -- this does not apply just to ICANN; this applies to all aspects of internet policy and government.

On the themes of the forum, we think there are some key issues.  Some of them have been addressed already.  In the security theme, as was said by the chair, unless you link human rights and the right to privacy and other freedoms to security, you can create a less-secure environment rather than a more-secure environment.  And we urge the IGF to maintain this link. In the theme of openness, we think there are two primary issues to be addressed.  On the one hand, freedoms, freedom of expression, and the removal of barriers to people being able to use the internet in any way they want to.  And on the other hand, standards.  Increasingly, there are standards being made outside of public spaces that have social implications that limit what people can do with the internet.  And the IGF needs to address this. This touches on issues of intellectual property, interoperability between different applications and devices.  And these are things that impact on the cost.  Why should blind people pay more for interfaces to read text because they're blind and because someone owns a royalty on making two applications talk to one another?  This is wrong.

On the issue of access, I think as has been said, it's really vital.  We heard already, five billion people in the world do not have access.  We hear proclamations about wireless solutions, about private sector investment and initiatives driven by governments, by intergovernmental organizations.  And, yet, there are still five billion people in the world without access. The IGF needs to prioritize this. And then on diversity, I think what we would say about diversity is that the key to addressing diversity is, it's almost as an equation, if you put openness and access together, you will have diversity.  If you remove the barriers that are created by rigid, proprietary intellectual property regimes, you will have more creation, more innovation. So let's focus on diversity as an issue, and linguistic diversity, cultural diversity.  But let's remember that by creating more access and more openness, we will immediately, automatically achieve more diversity.

And then, finally, about ICANN.  I think that we would like to commend the IGF for putting critical internet resources on the agenda.  It's an important issue.  But there's also a lot more to talk about other than ICANN.  And I've already highlighted many of these issues.  So while not avoiding talking about controversial issues, let's not let them dominate the space for the next few days, because there are many other critical issues.  And that is why we are here.

Read all of the speeches from the opening session here.