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Comments by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and the Finnish NRI on the Report of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation
- We appreciate the panel’s devotion to strengthen multistakeholder involvement through different areas in the panel report concerning both current work and future developments in order to reflect current and future needs in the fast moving digital development. This would also mean complementing multilateral processes involved to take into consideration the necessary public policy needs to address different concerns through smart regulations.
- Our comprehensive view is to rely on the existing mechanisms, not to create unnecessary new institutions or mechanism and duplicate the work and institutions working already in this area. Instead, we should both strengthen and update them in the areas that are now lacking concrete and productive results. This would require a comprehensive analysis and description of the ongoing work. As one of the experts of internet governance described this: “Multistakeholderism is the language of the future but it still lacks a grammar”.
- We strongly recommend the idea to strengthen the already very productive work of the IGF. While doing so, one should recognize the very important and concrete achievements that the IGF has made this far in the digital cooperation – especially through important bottom up processes involving all the stakeholders and raising the digital awareness among the least developed countries and providing them opportunities to be involved. This is possible through extensive capacity building. For Finland, as a major funder and supporter of the IGF we are very satisfied for the progress achieved especially in the LDC countries progress for digital capacity building and support for their citizens’ awareness and building their digital inclusiveness.
- However, there is a growing need to do more in this area and we should make sure that the IGF has more and stable resources to focus on capacity building as well as other important topics. We support the idea to place the IGF Trust Fund directly under the Secretary-General’s office. We should come up with an arrangement that could provide stable funding and enable long-term planning of the IGF.
- We understand and support the need to develop IGF’s work, as described in the report, to produce even more concrete and well explained recommendations to follow up with actual decision making. All the different stakeholders, including governments and private sector should be able to turn recommendations into actual decisions implemented. That is why we support the appointment of the Technology Envoy as a special adviser to the Secretary-General, who would also hold responsibility on advising the IGF.
- We want to note that the panel report includes very important recommendations on interdependency of peace, sustainable development and human rights. We share the view that digital cooperation and harnessing the potential of new technologies are essential to reach the sustainable development goals. In particular, we agree that digital connectivity, while necessary, is not sufficient to attain the SDGs. It must be combined with a platform for sharing digital public goods, created through a multi-stakeholder alliance involving the UN. Such platform must be designed in an inclusive and human-centric manner, ensuring that the data created and used is managed in an ethical fashion.
- Finally, on child rights we want to note that in the digital societies they include safety, inclusiveness, privacy, learning, playing, free time and welfare, which must be secured both in developing and implementing digital solutions. We also highlight gender-sensitive approach in digital development.
- As a sign of its support to the report of the Panel, Finland will provide a substantial financial contribution to the “follow-up secretariat”, which will be established to consult with key stakeholders and to advise the Secretary-General on the most effective actions to follow.
Source: https://comment.eurodig.org/digital-cooperation-report/comments-by-email/hlpdc-report-comments-by-finland/
Recent Comments on this Site
31st July 2021 at 6:00 pm
There have been some comments about the messages on the WS-16 mailing list rather than being logged as part of the messages procedure. The final result was a list of messages agreed by consensus.
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11th July 2021 at 5:39 pm
I suggest to rephrase more concrete: There must be a global collaborative effort in the form of dialogic regulation between governments, tech companies, and civil society to develop a solution grounded in human rights that will address disinformation and harmful content
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11th July 2021 at 5:36 pm
delete “being”
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11th July 2021 at 5:34 pm
I suggest tp rephrase a bit more concrete: Liberal approaches of governments towards online platforms at there start of the platform economy led to …
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11th July 2021 at 5:24 pm
Although I was the one who mentioned this during the session, I am not sure that we should push for frequency regulation – besides, it is very likely to be be outside our scope
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11th July 2021 at 1:12 pm
NEW WORDING PROPOSED:
One institution ALONE CANNOT solve the problem. Multistakeholder approach IS needed, TO BUILD AN HARMONIOUS SYSTEM WHERE HARD AND SOFT REGULATION MECHANISMS FIND A BALANCE WITHIN THEIR RESPECTIVE BOUNDARIES, MANDATES AND ACCOUNTABILITY MECHANISMS. IN PARTICULAR Platforms have a big stake, and should be required to develop transparent self/co-regulation.
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11th July 2021 at 1:09 pm
propose to add at the end of the phrase: “Those defenses should be strengthened by media education: a field where public service broadcasters have a special role to play based on their remits.
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11th July 2021 at 1:01 pm
This legitimacy needs to arise from clear legislative frameworks in which hard regulation and soft regulations could find an equilibrium, each one with its own specific role and with clear boundaries and accountability mechanisms.
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11th July 2021 at 12:57 pm
[that will address disinformation and harmful content]
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10th July 2021 at 9:16 pm
As I mentioned during the session, I believe we should be careful with using the term ‘content moderation’ in the context of the Internet infrastructure level, as these services are typically very far removed from the actual content. I would like to suggest amending this paragraph to read: “Recent cases show that certain infrastructure providers unwillingly take action that could be argued to be content moderation by suspending services for the platforms in an ad-hoc manner without any transparent policy. But infrastructure services have limited possible options, which tend to be temporary solutions (clearing cache), overbroad reactions (limiting access) or options that open up websites to cyberattack (terminating services of particular users).”
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