The Internet Governance Forum opened on December 6 in the Mexican city of Guadalajara. It is the 11th such forum and the first under a renewed mandate of the UN General-Secretary. The mandate commits forum organizers to hold the event in the spirit of openness with equal participation of all stakeholders, including civil society, public organizations, the public sector, the IT community, businesses and the academic community. The forum has brought together over 3,000 participants, and its agenda includes over 160 meetings. The Coordination Center for TLD .RU has sent a delegation.
The Guadalajara forum faces the difficult task of moving from commitments to real action with concrete results. Forum participants are discussing issues of making the Internet available to those who do not yet have access. The next billion Internet users are expected to come from Asia, and they will use mostly mobile devices. At the same time, the Asia-Pacific region is plagued by serious infrastructural issues. Mountainous and island nations have far fewer opportunities to develop infrastructure, which puts them at a disadvantage in terms of Internet access and prices as compared to the rest of the world.
Participants in the IGF 2016 meetings and sections note that one of the top priorities is to provide Internet access to all people on Earth. This will boost the economy in all countries, and expand possibilities for all users. However, the majority of the world's population is still poorly educated and is thus limited in the use of cutting-edge technology, web content is poorly localized, and the IDN is developing at a slow rate. It is therefore important to emphasize the development of an accessible and intuitive interface between technology and users. The role of educational projects aimed at promoting digital literacy is hard to overestimate. Such projects should be implemented by both state actors and civic society institutions, including public organizations. Almost all experts speaking at the forum agree that the Internet community has no other alternative going forward than to involve all stakeholders in the process of building a common future. Infrastructure should be constructed not only by nation states, but also businesses, and the IT and academic community, with all parties acting in concert. People and their needs, not technology, must come first.
“Many people ask about the real role of the forum in Internet governance," Director of the Coordination Center Andrey Vorobyev said. "The answer is simple: in 2015, the UN adopted the sustainable development agenda until 2030, which identified 17 key goals, including action against hunger, poverty, climate change and so on, with 169 associated tasks. These sustainable development goals, or SDGs, cannot be achieved without Internet technology being used more often by more people. This forum seeks to establish dialogue between all stakeholders with the aim of furthering these goals in harmony with other UN initiatives. The Internet plays an important role in achieving the SDGs. The future coexistence of various populations is based on the art of dialogue. The global Internet Governance Forum is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot being done to make this dialogue possible, which the Internet community doesn’t always see. Regional and national IGFs contribute to inclusiveness. A crucial topic at the Guadalajara forum is the involvement of young people in Internet governance. This global trend will reach Russia in the form of the 8th Russian Internet Governance Forum, which will be held in 2017 at the Innopolis University, and which will be attended by university delegations from many Russian regions.”
The IT community is constantly and rapidly developing. People living in the era of IT must be prepared to use new technology, and to become familiar with ever newer products and services as the IT landscape is changing daily. The fear of IT technology in many countries, especially rural areas, is a substantial hindrance to this.
