FINAL TRANSCRIPT
EIGHTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
BALI
BUILDING BRIDGES ‑ ENHANCING MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER COOPERATION FOR GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2013,
9:00 A.M. ‑ 10:30 A.M.
WORKSHOP 171
GENDER AND INTERNET GOVERNANCE ROUNDTABLE
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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>> JAC SM KEE: Good morning. I think we will just give it another like five minutes before we start. It's a bit early in the morning, so if that's okay. This is very early for me. I'm not a morning person. 9:00 p.m. is when I'm at optimum peak. So I would like to also invite discussers to please join us in the seats in front. But this is just to give a little bit of an introduction, because this is a round table format, there will be spaces open during the session for other interventions and other people to also provide input. It's not going to be ‑‑ we have a lot of speakers, but they're not going to be very long intervention, more like, you know ‑‑ lightning inputs.
Okay. I think we're all here and ready to start. First of all, hello. Welcome. Good morning to the Gender and Internet Governance roundtable. Welcome. A roundtable is where we try to get as many inputs as possible on the particular issue. We thought it was nice to have a session that looks at the gender emulation to also, again, the different areas related to Internet governance.
What we've done is we've divided this session into four different areas which is around access and development, then public participation on the Internet and Internet governance principles and safety and freedom. So each of the speakers will be speaking at each of the different areas. We've asked the discussers to answer some of the questions. One is what are some of the key gender‑related issues on Internet governance in the area that you'll be speaking on? What can different stakeholders do to further integrate and mainstream gender ‑‑ gender concerns in existing work on Internet governance? As well as sharing some initiatives an best practices among stakeholders.
So we would like to start the day with a clap, because that's always good for energy; right?
(Applause.)
>> JAC SM KEE: As you can see, we have a lot of people. We're asking for inputs from three to five minutes, speedy lightning inputs. We will stop at each of the different breaks to clarify or get further information, or if you would like to also make an input on that particular session, then you will have a space to.
This session is organized by APC ‑‑ Internet project, as well as the Human Rights Commission of Indonesia.
We have at the table, Anja. Anja will be helping to moderate discussion, run around the table. So I'm the one you have to watch for.
Okay. So without further ado, maybe we can start with a quick, just before you speak, you can give an introduction to yourself: Who you are, which organization you are representing, and then your times up.
So let's start on the issue area of access and development. And we would like to start with Sheryl.
>> SHERYL MILLER: Thank you. I would just like to say thank you to the organizers of this panel for inviting me to speak on this important topic. It's an honor to be up here with so many experts. It's a real pleasure to be with the audience in the Bali. My name is Sheryl Miller and I'm the director of International Public Policy and Regulatory Affairs for Verizon Communications. So today I really wanted to discuss a few of the initiatives that Verizon and some other businesses have been doing to help improve the areas of access and development.
Access I really see as being the first step. It's two‑prong, first it's really the physical connection in your environment. And second it's removing any barriers that would prevent you from being able to use the Internet. At Verizon we've been working on the physical side to push out access to our technology. The United States has some very remote areas where they're hard to reach and hard to service. So we've been partnering through various programs with smaller providers to make sure that anyone within the United States who wants access to our advanced technology services can achieve that.
On the barriers front, one particular barrier that we've been focusing on has been education. And we have really been trying to partner with different organizations to encourage women and young girls to pursue careers in the ICT sector and to engage in science and technology careers.
One recent program that we did in conjunction with the US State Department that we're proud of was called Tech Girls. And a group of young women from the Middle East and North Africa came to the United States from various countries, they were ages 15 through 17, and they partook in a 2‑week program. The first week they took some very interesting courses on coding in New York. And the second week they participated in a job shadowing program. Companies like Verizon, Microsoft and others participated, and it really gave them insight as to what we do on the policy side related to Internet governance, some of the key issues that our company is struggling with and so on.
This is not just something that we are pursuing in theory; it's something that our company has fully embraced. Six out of our eight most senior VPs who are engaged in Internet policy are actually women in our company and it's something that we're very proud of to have these female leaders that are doing important work in this field.
The second area I want to talk about really quickly is development. At Verizon we have a new program called Powerful Answers. And we really believe that our technology has the power to be used to solve some of the world's most pressing issues, whether it be health care, education, energy conservation. These are issues and some models that we're formulating to really be looked at in the developing world and we're actually working on some programs right now in health care.
One is actually called the Children's Health Fund. And what it is, it's actually a big ‑‑ it is leveraging cloud technology aimed at assisting children who are impoverished, or perhaps don't have proper medical insurance, or living in homeless shelters throughout the United States. The bus shows up at these shelters or schools or other areas where these children need access to health care. They enter the bus and they're able to have a dialogue with a doctor who is in remote location somewhere else in the U.S. and actually receive a diagnosis. So it's really been improving health care for these kids. We have seen some great success.
We are also working on this in another way, actually in a partnership with the Swinfen Charitable Trust, and University of Virginia, and India and the Philippines. Again, it's leveraging biotechnology in the health care sector to address some of these issues. So I want to close by saying, it's so important that women have a voice and have a role in this space. And the technology, it keeps evolving and we try to keep innovating and so it's great to see so many people here that are interested today for discussion and dialogue. So thank you so much.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you.
Oh, this is much louder. I have a really loud voice. I don't need such a loud mic.
>> NNENNA NWAKANMA: Oh, I'm tweeting.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you. It's really great to hear when private sector is doing much. And much difficulty in getting access and infrastructure ‑‑
The next person we would like to invite is Nnenna.
>> NNENNA NWAKANMA: I will say gentleman and ladies, because I can't see the gentlemen. Hi, guys. Oh, okay, that's four. Six, seven, that's good.
Good morning, my name is Nnenna. I work with the World Wide Web Foundation, part of what we do is the web index. We try to measure, as I say yesterday, the health and the performance of Web about 80 countries. And what we do, as in ‑‑ this is what we do is to set up a list of measures, ask critical questions that will help us find answers. And one of the questions ‑‑ some of the questions ‑‑ there are a lot of questions I can tell you, but I want to share some of the critical questions that have to do with gender. And one of them is to ask countries and gender experts in analyzing web access to find out to what extent the government has prioritized support for increased access to the web for women and girls. It's not just general access, but how do women and girls ‑‑ how are they supported to get access? How has this ‑‑ how is the web ‑‑ how has the government prioritized support for increased training in how to use the web for women and girls?
One thing is to be able to use the web, but one other is to be able to train to know how the use the web better. To what extent do girls have equal access to training and how to use the web relative to boys? Because it is very easy to say, oh, there's a training center, anyone can go and get trained. But actually do we put in place the measures to motivate girls and women to go to such places to get that needed training? Is there an official program that support the training of female government employees in web use?
You find out, you go to many administrations, there is a secretary that is most often a woman, but the other women, we don't see them. So they train just one woman, but the other women are in the background and they're not sure they can use that. I have actually been to such places. I will spare the name of such countries because they have official delegations here. And I ask the women, you have a computer?
Yes.
But you don't turn it on?
No, it is only for photo purposes.
So when the minister comes, he stand by one side of the computer. I stand by the other side. We take the picture and send it to donors. After that we cover the computer again, I don't use it. I don't really know how to use it. So we need to factor these in.
To what extent are there women in positions of leadership in the ICT field? And now I can quote this government because I'm going home and I can face the minister any time In Cote d'Ivoire where I live. And the minister has said, there is no single woman in the directorship position in the ministry of ICT in Cotes. That's the country where I live in. We don't have any women leader in the top director's position in that country. You must find out what it is in your own country.
To what extent is the web used to expand access to information about reproductive and sexual health rights and services in the main local languages? I just came from a two‑week trip going across the Sudan and the Sahara part of West Africa, going from Cameroon to Nigeria to Burkina Faso speaking to local women and local women farmers. These are people who need reproductive health information. The question is how is the Internet used to give those messages to the people need it, especially in local languages? Have you thought of it? So what we're talking about, women, gender, it's not just the women you see here, but it's the women down to ground zero, if I can use that word in this sense.
I don't know how many more minutes I have, but we have more questions about the use of Internet in sexual violence, domestic abuse. How does the Internet come in as a tool for the safeguarding the well‑being of the woman everywhere? So when we're talking about Internet governance and gender Internet governance, it's not just those who have access to the Internet, it's actually how we use the Internet to take care of the global rights and the well‑being of the purse of that gender that is not male. That is my own gender. Thank you.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you, Nnenna. That's a great segue way to the next thematic area we'll be talking about, which is around public participation. Women's rights, the public participation on the Internet and what does it mean in terms of how does it impact on their rights? Say, for example, economics, social political well‑being. Before we go that that section, I would like to open the floor for five minutes for any intervention, discussion, questions, something in particular you would like to comment on the issue area of access and development.
I see one over there.
>> BISHAKHA DATTA: Thanks. I'm Bashaka, from India, I was actually taking notes. So one is on the point of, you know, the first one about access, I just want to say two things. One is that what used to be the gender gap in the pre‑digital world in what we call stem fields; which is science, technology, engineering, and mathematics has now rolled over into an overall gender gap in the digital age, right? And one interesting thing is that, you know, from the point of your openness, many of us are called open source projects precisely because they're open, but if you look at the gender gap stats on open street map, three percent of open street map contributors are women, which is very, very low. If you look at the gender gap stats on Wikipedia, it is between 10 to 15 percent of contributors are women. So we have to examine the concept of openness through the lens of gender.
Is open source, open cultures, are they really opening it up for everybody, or are they just opening it up for a particular set of people? Yeah, and I don't think they're sort of against each other, but I think there's something to be talked about there.
The second point also that I wanted to make is about access point and sort of trying to, you know, bridge the digital divide and get women in. You know, sometimes it's not just gender; it's sometimes gender plus other barriers. So, for instance, I train a bunch of rural women journalists in India who are Hindi speaking to use the Internet. They come from a region of the country that has poor electricity, et cetera. So there are obvious barriers. But the biggest barriers they face on the Internet is actually language. When they try to do a Google search in Hindi, they find one‑tenth that we find in English. So some of our interventions have to think about language in relation to gender and ‑‑
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you, Bishakha.
So the question of regionality is very critical when we think about any issue related to gender.
Is there any other questions from the floor or clarification?
No? Okay.
So very good. So move on to the next section, which is the rounds, women's rights to public participation. I'd like to start with Anita.
>> ANITA: Yeah, okay. I thought since I'm speaking again this afternoon, that is also for public participation, I will probably speak about that concept then. But here I think since it's a very critical and important roundtable which pertains to ‑‑
>> JAC SM KEE: Sorry, can you introduce yourself first?
>> ANITA: Yeah, I'm Anita ‑‑ which is based in India. I'm involved in field‑base programs ‑‑ and doing research. We also work on areas other than gender. Of course, if you work on gender, then you work in all areas. But we also consciously focus on national governance, e‑governance, national public policy, and education and ICTs.
So I thought that we would ‑‑ I would really introduce something that I think is important when we talk about the IGF and gender, and gender analysis. We begin our analysis of the way in which we, as feminists, view our politics and how it may be important to pause for more than a moment and take stock of what may require soul searching. Part of this comes from a comment that I read in the analysis of the 2‑person report cards, gender report cards. When I saw this phrase repeatedly in many sessions, that gender was not discussed over notion of women and women's rights didn't come up because, quote open, "It was not seen as relevant and therefore, not raised." Quote closed.
So partly, I think we live in a world where it's hard for people to make the connection between, for instance, broadband access and women. You know, what does broadband access have to do with gender? Partly I think also it may be a struggle and, to be harsh, a failure on the part of people who should be doing this kind of public education and the marketization of knowledge.
As to why does broadband matter, is it based on gender? Why does Internet governance matter in the debate on gender?
‑‑ philosopher political science from Europe said this very beautifully. "We live in times of factory ice creams, alcohol‑free beer, and feminism without women."
So perhaps we need to ask ourselves if the state of Internet governance, you know, the dominant governance is indeed a place where there is feminism ‑‑ marketization of women and women's rights. So the question before us is, if the personal is indeed political, how do we make the political personal?
And Bishakha gave me a beautiful word this morning over breakfast which is, where is the anger, you know? And I think in most other spaces we confront this raw emotion of anger, activist anger. And I think we somehow seem to have traded it off for other benefits.
And I'll quickly wrap up, but it might seem like I'm positing this very enigmatic question, I do have analysis. I don't think enough time to go over it now, maybe in the discussions.
The thing is, how do we ‑‑ I think we are not only talking today about what is it that we're critiquing and what is our agenda, but how is it that we are moving towards the politics of representation. What are we talking about and who is talking about the people that we think we're representing, and therefore, who we are, what our frame is, and what is being visiblized and what is being silenced? I think this is important. Perhaps we will come later in the discussion time on issues of the uncritical embracing the feminist of notions of ‑‑ so what have we traded when we have done this?
And to end with a quote from Nancy Fraser, the Coming of Neoliberalism ‑‑ Feminism in the Coming of Neoliberalism, which is her latest collection of essays. What she says is, at issue here are the procedures of staging and resolving conflicts over injustice. How are claims for redistribution and recognition to be adjudicated, and who belongs to the circle of those who are entitled to raise them? So she says, other than the political roles among fellow citizens, it is important to also look at what she calls meta‑political injustices which arise when the position of political space into bounded qualities miscasts what are actually transnational injustices as national matters in that case affected noncitizens. And in our case, people who may not even be connected to the Internet are wrongly excluded from consideration. So I'll stop here.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thanks, Anita. Great set of questions around representation ‑‑ thank you for ‑‑
So the next people I would like to call upon is Siti Noor Laila who is the ‑‑ Indonesian Human Rights Commission. And Camilia ‑‑ will be translating.
>> SITI NOOR LAILA: (Speaking through an interpreter.)
Good morning, excuse me, I would like to speak. As a woman, sometimes I think there are ‑‑ how I can sit here and talk about gender and Internet, and even right now the ‑‑
And since 1993, the issue at the head of ‑‑ is always male dominated and usually it's like the local famous activist who is man.
And right now, I'm here sitting as a support head of the ‑‑ rights as a woman. And I came from a small province ‑‑ coordinator from all of the previous coordinator.
In this case, I would like to tell you one of the case in a conflict area in Indonesia, how people use the e‑mails of women or surrogate, maybe picture of a woman as a code for ‑‑ conflict among others, for example.
In this issue, the picture of the dead body of the woman serve to gather to the other village to fulfill the conflict and then on that, there is comment that all the other ‑‑ the guys from the other village rape this woman until ‑‑ and they did it violent until she died.
And, actually, this photo is being used to politicize the reticent on different ethnicities to Balinese people. And the effect is hundreds of houses was broken ‑‑ or burned.
In this case, we also ‑‑ there's a place ‑‑ this is about a similar occasion of how women should get access for health.
There's also a place in Indonesia how are ‑‑ being blocked by the government of Indonesia at this moment.
In this case we can see how the government is not implement the consistency on the regulation media.
One of the result of the Asia and ‑‑ meeting is they mentioned that if any government block at the local website, they have to publicize the ‑‑ which is blocked. But it's not done by ‑‑
In this case, our ‑‑ on human rights is supporting ‑‑ woman who through ‑‑ who prosecute under the court, under law process so that we can go for justice.
At this moment, the issue of Internet rights or governance is not in our agenda yet, especially in we are talking about Internet and gender issue.
In this case, after IGF, I would like to bring the issue of Internet and gender issue as one of the agenda in the ‑‑ Commission on Human Rights in Indonesia. Thank you.
(Applause.)
>> JAC SM KEE: And the next speaker is Valentina.
>> VALENTINA PELLIZZER: Such definition of expression of how women's body ‑‑ anyway. Valentina Pellizzer, I find myself as a feminist ‑‑ I will use as a ‑‑ I'd like to talk about public participation the case that we have ‑‑ we were focusing on women and on the social network because we think, we know how it works. You know, in past they had to pretend at least ‑‑ at least 30 percent of women. This is the only way they ‑‑ but they would not spend a Euro, a dollar campaigning for the women. They are just a number. They change every election. So we thought let's help women ‑‑ the only space that women can manage by themselves are the social media; so the Facebook, the Twitter, we will maintain and try to support their participation.
The campaign went well from a knowledge point of view because we understood that all the women that were using Facebook, Twitter is not so much, they were immediately, of course, a part of because their Facebook was also a private space where they were talking about their lives, maybe some parties. So it was used as a source to promote that. And plus we have to compete with these election, because this is what is happening. Whenever there are women on a public space competition, offline or online, there is always a ‑‑ hijacking the information.
I think the reason why it's important is that we have right to public space and the public space online, if it's a big social network, or it's a blog, it's the actual space. We cannot ‑‑ populate with representation, because it is improper. We need to populate the space with different representation or representation to allow ourselves our values. But it's a space that we have to continually fight for to consolidate. Because it's a space that reproduce the same time the ‑‑ and diminishing and policy making ‑‑ if we find in the public space.
So we are there. Women are there. Young women are there. When I see young women has challenges because they don't know how to use the tools. But it was proved that was a clearly space where discussions can happen, where people can interact one to one. So I think that we are already there, we just need to continue to make the space available. And we need to make understanding, but, yes, the agenda is a women issues. But women issues has to become issues of everybody because women's are the only minority that have a majority in the world.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you.
I think we should clap. Come on.
(Applause.)
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you for the great intervention. Sounds like the first two in the beginning, even as we're trying to figure out how to increase women's access to the Internet and to benefit from all of the potential opportunities that the Internet and the governance provides, there are all of these other issues that's coming in from representation, to ways to limit women's public participation online, and all of the different strategies from to violence to minimizing of your value, to just ‑‑ and so on and so forth.
I would like to now open the floor for another five minutes for any interventions or questions.
>> FRANCISCO: Okay. My name is Francisco. I've done quite a bit of work on ICT for development. I've work for the United Nations for many years. Later on I was in the Cardenas, and right now I'm a private consultant.
I want to pick up on something that Anita said, which was that gender was not talked about because it was not relevant in a particular meeting that she attended. I'd like to bring a quote from a person called Jackson Katz. He said, "When we act as if white people don't have some sort of racial identity, as if heterosexual people don't have a sexual orientation, as if men don't have a gender, then the dominant group is rarely challenged to even think about its dominance."
I'll give you an example, and it's an example that goes to what was brought up earlier before by the West African colleague, which is the issue of women's access to broadband. Cyber cafes. Cyber cafes they are, you know, throughout the world they are probably the place where most people start learning how to use Internet. And yet, you know, I have done many studies on cyber cafes and time and again people find, and I've seen studies many times, they mention in passing that there are more women than men. What is amazing is that nobody has studied how systematically this problem is throughout the world. There are very few countries in which that does not happen. Never take an opposite policy as a policy issue, you know. This is something that needs to be taken up by both the dynamic and the policy ‑‑
Why am I here? I'm here because of ‑‑ because of my daughter, because my daughter not too long ago sent me a message saying, you know, about impact suggesting that men need to get involved. So I'm just going to touch, I just want to make a quote, again it came from the Mr. Katz, and it says, "We need men, more men with the guts, with the courage, with the strength, with the moral integrity to break our complicit silence and challenge each other and stand with women and not against them."
Thank you.
(Applause.)
>> JAC SM KEE: And we also would like men to realize that they we have genders.
>> ANGELA: Hello. I'm Angela ‑‑ women rights view based in the Philippines.
I think a challenge of being ‑‑ is being pushed by most of our part of the same speaker. I think in other movement, this is about the ‑‑ as feminists, as activists, I think we have solidified, what do we need in political participation. But political participation doesn't necessarily mean, I think what they were saying about system being just women, but for us who ‑‑ plain sure what we makes visible, what Anita was saying about making it visible. I think as women, as feminists, as Internet activists, we have to make sure we have our role to influence those who are in power, what to make visible. What do we mean by gender and Internet rights? I think that's something we have to explain. We put meanings. If the meaning is lost somewhere else, we have to take it back again and put meaning to it.
>> ANDY: Hello, my name is Andy, I'm going to translate for our Indonesian colleague. So.
>> (Speaking through interpreter.) So good morning. My name is Tapur (phonetic), I am from ‑‑ I belong to Alliance ‑‑ Women's Alliance of ‑‑ with HIV and Aids of Indonesia, and I represent my organization here.
So I tell you we want to raise our main concern that we need this Internet at the space of information and also as an access to help, as help how processes for taking care because we have ‑‑ an RFC, this is not only with drain one or two days, we have to drain it for all or most all our life. So we need this space as a source of information also.
Actually, since I'm the activist from Bali, and who raised this HIV and Aids issue, I only heard the information from mouth to mouth and it is not very clear because it's not ‑‑ have one source that could be accessed by our groups, something like that.
So actually, as an activist, I really worry and concern about this information because we know that the stop of the RFC medicine is only for two or three years. Again, but what about for the nation, or even more than that. Five? I feel very worried and scared about this, maybe it's not only me and other people in Indonesia also feel about this.
So, actually, I also raised the other issue that now we are concerned about our next generation who got HIV and Aids because our children and next generation also have this kind of issue and we would like to know the information on the Internet also can provide the RFC medicine to our next generation.
So I think that it is very important for us to raise up and I think that this forum is very important to know what ‑‑ which kind of information can be best to us.
>> JAC SM KEE: I will close the session for now. I know there's more comments that want to be made, we will have it after the next group, just sort of managing the time. Thank you for the very important information about political will and commitment from a range of people and the critical right to have ‑‑ right to information that actually impacts on so many levels, especially those most marginalized ‑‑
>> NNENNA NWAKANMA: I've been tweeting from this platform and you can read with me here. I got a tweet from Pam Club. You tweet ‑‑ you're invite to LS Family Safety Network ‑‑
So I have a lot of people following us online and I'm really grateful that these Indonesian women are here. We love you. Thanks.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you, Nnenna.
So before we close the section on public participation, we got this actually providing Internet for this section and we will move immediately after that into safety and freedoms, because really they are kind of a little bit of the official categories anyway; one relates to the other. So, Nika.
>> NIKA: Yeah, I'm Nika, I'm from Pakistan, and I work for an organization called ‑‑ Foundation. Sorry for my voice, it's due to sore throat. It's not sexy as always.
So I will bring up a couple of instances from Pakistan which actually shows that how these incidents, actually hindrances the public participation of women online.
We have 20 million Internet users in Pakistan and we still don't have any study or research where we can find out how many Internet users are in Pakistan. According to an industry study, woman make 14 percent in Pakistan labor force in the IT sector. And I would like to mention some of the reason that why we don't see much woman public participation in the online space in Pakistan. Some of them are inadequate access to the technology, high cost of access to equipment, restrictive cultural stereotypes that discourage women from engaging with the technology. And we have very few female tech savvy role models and mentors.
Here I want to mention one recent unfortunate incident where two teenage girls have been shot dead in an apparent honor killing in the north of Pakistan after a video was circulated showing them dancing in the rain.
So, I mean, you can see that how using technology or access to ICT is, you know, is so complex for a woman in Pakistan that, you know, they just recorded a video and somehow the video was circulated in the neighborhood, and then in the village. And then the family actually decided to, you know, to honor kill ‑‑ to kill them just because of their honor.
Another incident I wanted to mention that how laws and regulations are used ‑‑ are being used in Pakistan against the families to use this online space to share their opinion and views. One of the families just a couple of months back ‑‑ no, I think a year ago, she mentioned harassment incident on Twitter about one person who is a lawyer in Pakistan. And that person actually used a defamation law against that feminist to file a defamatory suit against her that how she's actually defaming me in the online space.
So, we actually in the developing countries, I think we need to see that how not only the cultural stereo types, but how these laws and regulations are using against ‑‑ are being used against the woman who are taking place, who are reclaiming this space. As Valentina said, we have to reclaim the space. This is the space where we can share our views and opinions. We don't ‑‑ like developing countries in Pakistan, we don't have much spaces where we can share the discourse; right? where we can start the discourse. So this online space give us that freedom where we can share our opinions, views. We can start, you know, discussion around our liberty rights. And our liberty is something, you know, very risky in countries such as Pakistan to talk about that.
But how the openness or the people who, against them, opinions are being shared use these regulations and laws against families and women human rights defenders. So I think collectively we need to think about how we can ‑‑ how we can, you know, make this space useful and, you know, how to make the movement strong to, you know, to give support to the families and woman human rights defenders in the countries who are using this space for ‑‑ for sharing their opinions and use.
Thank you.
>> JAC SM KEE: I would next like to call upon Shehla.
>> SHEHLA RASHID: Hi, everyone. Good morning. My name is Shehla Rashid, and I am ‑‑ I work on Internet policy in India. Currently I'm looking at intermediary liability, but in the past I have worked with the Internet Democracy Project which conducted a study on online abuse faced by women on public platforms such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, et cetera. And I'll share only the key findings from the study, one to focus on, which is developing nonlegal strategies to the Internet.
So just quickly, what kind of ‑‑ so which women get abused online? Which ‑‑ who are the women who receive abuse online? So we know this issue of online abuse, it gained importance when online abuse faced by popular demand, so to speak, came to the floor. We did this study precisely to scratch beneath the surface and find out whether it's only popular women who receive abuse online or is it not so popular women as well? Indeed, popular women receive more abuse, yes. But women who are not so popular Internet, the abuse they face is ‑‑ it's not very well recognized and also they don't receive a lot of support. So when a women who doesn't have many followers on Twitter is facing abuse, she doesn't have many people to sort of support her.
Number two, what are the various layers of abuse? So I'll explain it in this way. Number one, you receive abuse online just because you're a woman. Number two, you receive more abuse if you represent marginalized identity, which could be lower cost ‑‑ lower classes, so‑called lower class, non‑hetero ‑‑ of sexual orientation, religious minorities, physically challenged or marginalized in other ways. So that seem to, you know, generate an additional layer for abuse.
Third, on top of that, if you're talking about outwardly feminist topics, if you're talking about women's rights that seems to generate additional abuse. If you're talking about specific topics which may be inconvenient to certain politicians or certain ideologies, it seemed to add to the abuse.
So when the study found out that there was a striking similarity between the Internet and the street, so having said all this, you don't have to really do anything online to receive abuse. You just have to be a woman. So just like on the street, you don't really have to do anything to be harassed or stalked or stared at, you just have to be a woman. So that was one striking similarity between the Internet and the street that the study found.
And so what are the strategies that women use to deal with this kind of abuse?
So these varied across different profiles and one woman could also use a mix of all these strategies. So the law, resorting to the law, at least in the particular case of India ‑‑ I'm not sure if I mentioned, but all the participants, all the interviewees in the research were based in India. So in the particular ‑‑ okay.
>> JAC SM KEE: One more minute.
>> SHEHLA RASHID: So the law, resorting to the law did not figure as a key strategy. Women did not go to the police, not very often, at least the women we interviewed did not. So the ability to use a mix of nonlegal strategies, which could be, number one, ignoring the abuse. Number two, moderating comments. This allow if someone leaves an abusive comment on your blog, you can choose to ‑‑ I will not read it or you can edit the thoughts or leave it out altogether.
Third, blocking abusers. Number four, reporting abusers. Number five, looking for and finding support. So, for example, if I receive an abusive tweet, I re‑tweet it with perhaps the expectation that other people will back me up or, you know, call the abuser out.
Number six is naming and shaming, which is also similar to re‑tweeting. Number seven, taking the trolls head on; that is trying to reason with them or deal with them. And number eight is self‑censorship. Actually, Bishakha pointed out that censorship is also harm. It's not a strategy, it's also harm that is caused by online abuse.
So I would like the floor to also discuss or share their strategies on dealing with the subjects in these instances, because we have been trying ‑‑ most of our focus has been on developing non-legal strategies and that's what I would like everybody to focus on.
>> JAC SM KEE: Appreciate it.
Our next speaker is Gayathry Venkiteswaran.
>> GAYATHRY VENKITESWARAN: Thanks, Jac. Good morning. I'll first start by saying, Anita, I don't know if you remember, but we met in Heidelberg. So I would say she's kind of my guru to some of the issues about Internet governance. So I hoped I learned something.
But today I'm here representing the Southeast Asian Press Alliance. It's a regional network freedom democracy group in Southeast Asia. I know a lot of groups have media as a communication strategy, but I believe that is one of the last items on the list. And I think that this is probably one of the challenges where the issue of mainstreaming gender and also mainstreaming Internet governance is a problem.
So, I said to Jac that I think I have more questions than actually trying to answer, but I will share two key issues that I think we see and that we may be interested in other groups also raising the questions and also doing research.
Number one is I think the use of the technology, or the advent of the technology has definitely allowed for more women to be able to become content producers in environments that are safe for them. So I'm talking about journalists. I'm talking about bloggers, citizen journalists. So it does give an opportunity to work with environments that are safer for them. But at the same time, it also presents its own kinds of threats, whether there is dependance on the technology, the exposure that individuals face.
So there is that advantage, but at the same time it has its own challenges.
One of the questions that I think is ‑‑ or I think it would be interesting to ask is with time has it become safer for journalists, women journalists or journalists from quite vulnerable positions? So I'm talking about groups like indigenous communities. Has the Internet actually made it safer for them to work? So, for example, in the past, you know, you had to have face‑to‑face interviews or phone interviews, but now if you could use e‑mails, social networking tools, does that remove the element of harassment, intimidation that does exist in the more physical space? So we do hear about women who have to cover political issues, and when they have to interview some of the politicians, you know, you get a lot of sexist remarks. Sometimes they say, oh, you want to interview me, come to my room, I'll be there, come at ten o'clock at night, you know.
Now, if you replace that with the technology, do you then remove some of the threats? We're not sure. I think it would be very interesting to find out if there is a benefit or whether it actually introduces new kinds of harassments and intimidation. So I think just listening about how the study that you have shared that you have other kinds of, you know, harassment. So I think in the context of the media, it would be interesting to see how journalists are able to do their work, particularly the bloggers. So I wish we were doing the research, but we are not.
However, I am happy to share that there is an ongoing survey now by the Institute for New Safety, together with Asian National Women's Media Foundation and UNESCO. It's an ‑‑ it's a regular survey that they do in terms of safety of women journalists.
One of the questions they have in the survey is whether they do face intimidation or harassment online or in terms of visual rights. So at least that question has been put in, into the survey. The results I expect to be released on the international data in violence against women November 25th. So I hope it will be there in time. I'll be very interested to see what it is.
But I think that maybe we can speculate, just looking at the cases in Southeast Asia where we see a lot of bloggers, many of whom are women also facing challenges. So I think it would be very crucial for that.
Just another point I wanted to sort of flag, we do have this publication, it's a bit of a pitching, we do a fellowship program every year. This year we chose the topic of Internet governance and freedom of expression in Southeast Asia. So we were happy when we needed to pick the judges for the selection, they were all women. Four out of the six professional candidates, two of whom are here, are women. And a number of women were interviewed in their countries, Burma and Singapore. And I think it's a very important narrative for us to say that they are experts and also knowledgeable people on the issue of Internet. So it's not a best practice per se, but I think we are very proud that we are sort of adding on to the sort of discussion.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you. Thank you for talking about different opportunities that we are creating.
I'm going to shake up the format a little bit and I'm going to just continue to the next section of the thematic area and then manage the time quite strictly. So I will literally walking in front of you and going ‑‑ taking the mic away. And then we will have 15 minutes at the end just to have a bigger discussion.
I would also like to hear from other people from other stakeholders, those people from the private sector, from the government, or from the technical and academic community, it would be great to hear if you as well.
So the next panel issue we would like to look at is given that all of these issues are emerging from ‑‑ integrate and the criticality of actual decision making and opportunities and political commitment, what are the Internet governance principles and processes that need to guide this process given that we're here at the IGF?
And I would like to call upon Anja to please start this conversation.
>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you, Jac.
I'm here from the Internet Democracy Project in India. It's a great pleasure to be here and also I'm fond of a room that is quite full, which is very heartening. I think we're being pessimistic of where we're going in Internet governance, perhaps sometimes we're overdoing it.
The issue that I wanted to talk about in particular takes off basically from the comment Anita made earlier about representation. Multistakeholderism is a model for Internet governance that kind of brings all stakeholder groups into governance together has been criticized a lot because the representation of marginalized group in a model that where basically people select themselves has always been fairly ‑‑ I think we have to be really careful, though, not to simply push for more diversity instead. What you see at the movement is governance, especially from the western world, often harp on diversity, but do that at the expense of actually strengthening participation as such. So they claim that they are developing multistakeholderism, but as long as multistakeholderism doesn't kind of live up to its promise, which is that of shared decision making, more diversity does not necessarily mean more impact. And so I think it's really important that we not forget that and not let one go at the expense of the other but that we keep the two together. We need some standard participation impact on real decisions at the same time as we keep open the realization that we need to bring in more people and think about how to do that.
I also briefly want to move then to the question of so how do you structure that? Because I think that's one of the core questions in this. We need to think of a system to actually organize participation if you don't just want diversity to be there for the sake of diversity. In the big debate about of Internet governance, so far you have to ‑‑ the U.N. is going to take over the Internet camp and everything is fine as it is camp. I think for marginalized people, for people without voice or power, neither will do. What we need to move towards instead, rather than having one new Internet body that will solve all the problems that exist related to the Internet, which is a place, an open issue all over the world, what we need instead is a decentralized model where we try to draw as much as possible on existing processes. This kind of streamline more how the participation in these processes can work.
When one looks at what other processes we could draw, you have, for example, division access lines which come out of the World Summits on the Information Society in 2003 and 2005, which also gave birth to the IGF. In the actual alliance, there is already a lot of Internet governance. So we would say instead of starting a new body, we need to build on this existing model and kind of try and spread out participation as much as possible so that people don't know exactly where an issue is going to be dealt with and what the outcome is. And we believe that in governance in general you've always seen that for people with less voice, more decentralized governance with very clear outcomes has a much greater chance of actually having an impact. So we propose that even to promote gender issues in Internet governance, this is the model that we should follow here as well.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thanks, Anja.
Given that, I would like to pass the microphone on to ‑‑ who is from UNESCO to tell us a little bit tell us about UNESCO's initiatives in this area.
>> Thank you for everyone. I'm very happy to be here and hear all the interesting cases and opinions here.
As our speaker said, the United Nations has always been taking a very strong initiative to promote women and girls' rights and gender equality. United Nations ‑‑ development goals and now we are reaching the end of this millennium plan or according to the reasons consultation process to envision the 2015 agenda.
The gender base is unique qualities very, very widespread, which means it should continue to be prioritized to the 2015 development agenda.
And specific to UNESCO, gender equality has always been our global priority. Actually, I only have two global priority. One is Africa. The other one is gender, which means that we are administering, whether our education, culture, whether communication human rights, we have a strong gender component. Our Director General is a woman, the first woman Director General in UNESCO in the history of 60 years. And we are striking a balance in the UNESCO staffing. And also, most importantly, we are administrating gender in all our programs, even when we ‑‑ teams like to have 50 percent women participants and speakers at every event.
And specific, even last year, at the UNDP, they have adopted a gender indicator in the human development context, which means there was a women's position at the governance there should be a very important index to measure the level of development in any country.
I have seen such a development in terms of awareness. Still, it lack behind compared to our expectations. We still have so many other cases happening every day in every part of the world. And I'm very happy just now to heard that the safety project which has reached the equal medium issue stakeholders, exactly the project I've been working on since last year. Our researcher has done a global survey interviews with ‑‑ under online safety for those bloggers and journalists who have a strong perspective to have one area to focus on gender issues which need research.
So specific to UNESCO's work, I also want to announce a very important global initiative we are going to do in December. From 2 to 4 December in this year, we're going to hold the Global Forum Media agenda in Bangkok, again, in Asia. We like all of you to go there to bring a more strong element on the Internet and ICPs because this forum is called a media agenda. Media's notion has been renovated, but still many stakeholders, meant to be the traditional media regulators and lawmakers. And still we also need to update the ideas, how to make more ‑‑ okay, I'm finishing now.
So now the concept paper current under working is that output is going to make a global alliance on media and agenda. You can all check the Google global forum media and agenda UNESCO. Everything is there. We ask for your partnership and we can go to sessions and go to speak. Mention go into the community center action.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you. That's quite an interesting initiative that you really can participate in many different levels, as well as agenda and organizing.
So the final speaker I'd like to call is Marianne Franklin from the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition to tell us about what sorts of the things that can guide us.
>> MARIANNE FRANKLIN: I thank you very much.
My first comment is ‑‑ ah, yes. When you listen to some of the cases here you realize that not all law is good law. So that's my first caveat. We have developed a charter of human rights and principles for the Internet and that is drawn from other important precursor and parallel initiative such as the APC Internet rights charter. This one, of course, doing that has put itself in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and all other UN international law and standards, which include, of course, women's rights.
So human rights are women's rights, as we know, and Internet rights are also women's rights. But when we talk about rights, it's very difficult sometimes to get down to basics. And ‑‑ reminds us, we have to go down to ground level. So all these cases remind me very much when I look over the current charter which we are looking to not only promote and launch in its current version now that we have it in good old fashioned hard copy, but to think about where to go next with it.
Then in our second ‑‑ in clause two, of course, it talks about the right to nondiscrimination and Internet access, use and governance. And it is here that there is an explicit mention of gender equality. Not explicit enough to my mind because, as always with these documents, you need to find a phrasing that is inclusive, but also not too vague. So my point is, this is an invitation for people in this room to help us with the next stage of the charter to provide feedback for where these parts of this larger document, 21 clauses, where you could imply, you can say that women and gender issues are implicit. They are mentioned. They relate to every clause. However, I feel some of these things need to be made a little bit more specific. And that's where we need your help.
This charter is a framework from which we can actually build discussion and talk to law makers and talk to regulators, and say to regulators, this is how the online environment affects everyday life and how everyday life itself can help us create concrete examples of how better law can be made because again, not all law is good law. And we're looking for good law, fair law, proportionate law. The rule of law is not an absolute instrument and this is the work we have ahead of us.
Because my final point is with the charter here now in a clear concrete form ‑‑ I'm amazed at how effective putting things on paper actually is, even though it's dead trees. We try to be environmentally sensitive. But this allows us to translate this particular document and have it feed into these law making processes. But the thing about participation that Anita and Anja have brought up, our own reflection on our own representation or politics, who are we speaking for? I'm speaking here for the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition and the wider community that represents. But I'm also thinking of my younger women students with whom I work from Indonesia, from Malaysia, from Kazakhstan, from Turkey, from parts of the United Kingdom where there's severe economic deprivation, from all over the world and to get them to understand that everyday issues are not a simple matter of assuming your law makers will do good. We elect our governments, but we need to call our governments to account.
So the very important stakeholder needs to be brought into this scenario, we hope through the charter because it's a legal document, we hope, on our government. So there we go, that's the job ahead of us.
Don't know if I made much sense, but thanks very much.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thanks, Marianne. I think that's the intervention we've been looking for for a while.
Quick, quick intervention here.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I'm ‑‑ from University of Public University Indonesia. I want to know because of ‑‑ I hope that we have a more mature dealing with this effort in the map accessibility because to have the information and education and also employment, this is important, especially for girls, for the parents, for the mother who take care of herself, yeah. Only herself who ‑‑ who then ‑‑ thank you very much.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you very much for raising that question.
Another comment.
>> Yeah.
(Audio difficulties.)
>> (Speaking through an interpreter.) Actually to see that we got openly got harmful and violence because of our difference rendition through the Internet site because we try to campaign our rights, our stages through the campaign and then we got this violence from our families, from our colleague or friends, even its from the government. For example, one of the cases like our ‑‑ another colleague website is ‑‑ our website is being blocked until right now. And there is no reason why then the website starts being blocked.
Actually, we openly also got violence and harmful from the people who was as morality and religious statement because they openly judge us of our difference, sexual orientation. And also even they are trying to ‑‑ what is this? To access more of our ‑‑ they're trying to ‑‑ what is this? Yes. The society that using morality and religious openly harmful and violent, even if they are so much, so deep about their extras in sexual.
(Audio difficulties.)
>> ‑‑ Internet body, going around this venue of the conference, trying to be like Ambassador as a woman and Internet. And we as the feminist network at IGF right now is trying to prepare a statement and how we profess that originally from association is putting back women into the domestic area where right now our struggle is trying to support women's leadership and women's representative at Internet Governance and Internet Rights. That's it.
>> JAC SM KEE: I think there's a comment from the back. I see a few more standing up. Okay. One more ‑‑ I'm going to hold here because you've already commented.
Is there anyone from a private sector stakeholder or government that would like to intervene as well?
No? One, two. Okay. The gentleman at the back.
>> DANIEL: Good morning, everyone.
My name is Daniel, from Uganda. Representing ‑‑ The problem in Uganda is one about government ‑‑ it's also about individuals in society. For instance, we're using Facebook, Twitter and Skype to interact with other people. Also a network from Facebook, but also individuals outside area are using Facebook. The communities ‑‑
For instance, a few months ago there was a Facebook page, open it up, under the name ‑‑ exposing a person, where they were from, where they live, and what they do with their friends, where they hang out. So this were just individuals, not the government. And now the government is also proposing a law, a bill, which is good for people access the Internet, because they're proposing that if ‑‑ data allows for data to be downloaded to the service, they're going to pay 10 million schillings, and also go to prison for five years. I think this will say ‑‑ all Web sites because they wouldn't want to go.
Also the initial ‑‑ for instance, our website was ‑‑ sometime in February. So these are some of the issues these communities are facing in Uganda. Also the issue of access among the communities is also a very big issue. If we are trying to ‑‑ allowed to use, just in case they ‑‑ problems, but again, access is a problem because the cost is very high for someone to understand.
Thank you.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you.
>> CHOQUI: Hi, my name is Choqui, I'm from Malaysia. I am a journalist. A question, not so much a comment to Anja because she mentioned something about a kind of model for the multistakeholderism. I just want to know if there's any example. Can you give me an idea to how it was done? Thank you.
>> JAC SM KEE: Anja, would you like to quickly respond?
>> ANJA KOVACS: Quickly, huh?
>> JAC SM KEE: Quickly. 30 seconds. How would business action line work?
>> ANJA KOVACS: The business lines already have dedicated areas to work on various issues. There is a dedicated area for action line, but under action line you have a whole bunch of issues. So, for example, privacy comes under C5, action line C5, which is titled Security, that happens to be the ITU, which some people wouldn't be too happy about it. But privacy also comes up in various other action lines where it is UNESCO.
So our proposal would be that these agencies work together to start a multi‑stakeholder dialogue around the issue of how privacy is best dealt with globally to fix a very well defined agenda and then decide how to move forward. The actual solution in terms of moving forward needn't necessarily be multistakeholder in the sense that the group can decide, for example, a treaty is the best way to deal with this. If a treaty is indeed the best way to deal with this, treaties are being negotiated by governments, and that should probably stay like that.
But the group would be responsible for kind of setting out to modalities, the kind of bases within which governments need to work. So in that sense the chances that the treaty will actually have an outcome that everybody agrees to are much bigger. So that's one example, but you can do this for each issue. And for issues that don't have a home yet in the business action line, the current working group on enhanced cooperation that's kind of looking into how government can improve Internet governance, can map the remaining issues and look at various other kinds of processes that already exist and kind of push to take these things forward through them. The Brazil ICANN Summit and this IGF that a lot of people have been talking about is another example of venue that could be used to do this.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thanks, Anja.
All right. Is there any final comments?
Yeah. Real quick.
>> To action line review, Anja's comment, we review all ‑‑ particular where review of non‑media ‑‑ aspect ‑‑ now I must admit in the past 10 years, the agenda problem ‑‑ but the last time ‑‑ is that more combined to follow different strategy as opposed to ‑‑ and then should be really but also promoting the Internet and this is agenda.
This is a concept that won't have agenda to ‑‑ principle. That's not a multistakeholder ‑‑ but also in terms of accessibility, component when resource and skills.
And also, in terms of the human rights ‑‑ openness, we can have agenda for more women's views, women's interfaces. So that's all there. I wish you promote ‑‑
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you. I will have to close it because we're going to end soon. But before I close, I just wanted to quickly bring up some of the things that were discussed.
First of all, thank you very much to all of the discussions and everybody on the floor for your participation. I just want to have a clap.
(Applause.)
>> JAC SM KEE: This has been a very, very rich and multi‑faceted discussion. Really, quite clearly, Internet gender and Internet governance is not something we can cover in one and a half hours. There's many different aspects. And the first key issue that was raised is the whole issue around intersectionality, that you can't really look at gender without looking at how this cuts across all the areas of disability, of sexualities, of economic empowerment, and so on and so forth. And that we need to cast a gender lens on any kinds of initiatives around, including women's access. And we need to bear in mind that intersectionality is a big issue around it. There's many different ways to look at it from infrastructure, to policy, to education, and there's roles that everybody can take. And this is where the political commitment and will comes in; right, from everyone. So from the private sector, from Civil Society, from professional human rights institutions and so on.
And even as ‑‑ and clearly, sorry, I'm jumping a bit everywhere. But clearly, access to the Internet has a huge role to play in impacting women's rights and full enjoyment of our rights, actually.
As far as multistakeholderism, and this has been especially discussed in terms of people who are marginalized in terms of their sexuality and also in terms of religious minority and so on, but even as you are going to these spaces and occupying it and enriching it with our discourses and perspectives, there are strategies of silencing that's happening from violence, through the use of law, to defamation and so on.
Sorry.
>> AUDIENCE: (Off microphone.)
>> JAC SM KEE: Naming and shaming.
And what is necessary is not just good laws. In good laws is grounded by human rights principles, but also mechanisms and structures that enables greater participation of women into all these different things and we've discussed some of these. It's actually quite great.
And I would like to encourage you, if you're interested in continuing this conversation, it doesn't stop here. We have Gender Dynamic Coalition meeting on Day 4, in the morning of Day 4 at 9 o'clock again, I think. Please check the time table, we could be lucky, it could be 10:30. Please join us at that meeting so we can talk about this more. It's really a strategizing meeting so we can discuss in greater detail.
At 12:30 today, there will be a book launch, Gender and Information Society book launch that looks at all the areas around Gender and Information Society. And the thematic focus this year is on women's rights and gender. Some of you will be able to extrapolate a little bit more on their thinking in this area. So thank you very much. The meeting is at 11, Jac.
>> NNENNA NWAKANMA: The meeting is at 11, Jac.
>> JAC SM KEE: Yes. So day 4, 11:00. So please join us. I know it's Day 4, I know the beach is calling. But, you know, it's only one half hours and there will be huge ‑‑ you'll feel really good after that. You'll be like, yes, I've done something.
So thank you. Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
(Session end 10:34 a.m.)
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