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ICC BASIS response to the report of the UN High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation

Introduction

The International Chamber of Commerce welcomes the contribution of the UN Secretary General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation to the global multi-stakeholder dialogue on digital issues through its report “The Age of Digital Interdependence.

We note with appreciation the recognition in the report of the enormous potential ICTs and the Internet have in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals, fighting inequalities and catalyzing inclusive growth. We particularly welcome the acknowledgement in the report that multistakeholder collaboration is essential to maximizing this potential.

ICC has been following the work of the Panel since its inception and we welcome the opportunity to continue to engage with the global multistakeholder community to provide business perspectives on the report’s recommendations and the governance approaches discussed therein.

On behalf of its network of 45 million members in more than 100 countries, ICC and its Business Action to Support the Information Society (BASIS) initiative is pleased to offer the below reflections of the Panel’s report. We also offer a number of illustrative case examples of projects led and/or supported by business worldwide, aimed at furthering the spirit of the Panel’s recommendations.

Reflections on the Panel’s recommendations

An inclusive digital economy and society

1A. We recommend that by 2030, every adult should have affordable access to digital networks, as well as digitally-enabled financial and health services, as a means to make a substantial contribution to achieving the SDGs. Provision of these services should guard against abuse by building on merging principles and best practices, one example of which is providing the ability to opt in and opt out, and by encouraging informed public discourse.

ICC supports this proposal. We strongly believe in the transformative power of information communication technologies (ICTs) and the Internet. They act as major catalysts across all pillars of sustainable development (social, environmental and economic). For these technologies to reach their full development potential, they must be accessible, affordable, and relevant to the needs of all citizens.

Connecting the unconnected is not just about access to mobile, Internet and new technologies. Meaningful connectivity also requires a focus on adoption barriers including creating an enabling environment for the creation and availability of locally relevant content in local languages and addressing digital literacy skills gaps. Consumer readiness can be slower to change than infrastructure deployment, with low literacy levels and gender inequality acting as the main barriers. New divides are also looming between those ready and equipped to embrace digital transformation and those unable to do so.

ICC strongly believes in multistakeholder dialogues to develop public policies that promote rather than deter investment in technologies to enable new applications and services (especially in hard-to-reach areas). Policymakers can benefit from close cooperation with business and other stakeholders to ensure that legal, policy and regulatory approaches maximize the Internet’s developmental opportunities and avoid unintended consequences.

Policies should stimulate sustainable investment and deployment of Internet networks and industries, and services that create demand for those networks. Policies and regulatory frameworks should support innovation, investment, and competition, including the protection of intellectual property. Standards should be designed to facilitate interoperability. Efforts to foster locally relevant content, improve cultural and linguistic diversity, and bring access to all global citizens, particularly to those in developing countries, should be supported.


Illustrative projects in support of this issue led or supported by the private sector:

Microsoft’s Airband Initiative grew out of an initial desire to help provide Internet access to the estimated 19 million people living in rural communities of the United States without access to high- speed broadband connections. Through this initiative Microsoft partners with equipment makers, internet and energy access providers, and local entrepreneurs to make affordable broadband access a reality for communities around the world.

Telefonica, Facebook, IDB Invest, CAF (Development Bank of Latin America) launched Internet Para Todos (IpT) Peru, an open access wholesale rural mobile infrastructure operator which aims to help bridge the digital divide in Latin America. The goal is to bring mobile broadband to remote populations where conventional telecom infrastructure deployment is not yet economically feasible.

Amazon’s Project Kuiper aims to provide affordable high-speed, low-latency broadband connectivity worldwide with 3,236 satellites providing service to the unserved and underserved globally. The Kuiper System is also looking to help bridge gaps in coverage by complementing the efforts of terrestrial fixed and mobile carriers and reaching some of the most remote and hard-to-reach areas. In addition to increasing the reach and functionality of broadband offerings, Amazon plans to support terrestrial operators by providing backhaul services. With the Kuiper System, Amazon, directly and in partnership with terrestrial operators, works to help close the digital divide and unleash opportunities for learning, employment, entrepreneurship, communication and economic growth.

The Walt Disney Company and Triggerfish, Africa’s leading animation studio, partnered to help support the development of relevant local content, that in turn impacts Internet growth. In 2016, ABC Studios, The Walt Disney Studios, and Disney Channels came together to support The Triggerfish Story Lab, a public-private initiative in South Africa led by Triggerfish Animation Studios and South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). The goal of the Triggerfish Story Lab was to identify and support the next generation of storytellers in the region. The Triggerfish Story Lab provided a unique opportunity to discover Africa’s next generation of storytellers, particularly storytellers from historically excluded and underrepresented groups, and provided an opportunity for their work to find an audience across the globe. Triggerfish Animation Studios selected four features and four TV series for development as a result of the Triggerfish Story Lab.

The Alliance for Affordable Internet brings together businesses, governments, and civil society actors from across the globe to deliver the policies needed to reduce the cost to connect and make universal, affordable internet access a reality for all. A4AI proposes a “1 for 2” affordability target (1GB of mobile broadband priced at 2 percent or less of average monthly income) to be tailored to a given country or region.


1B. We recommend that a broad, multi-stakeholder alliance, involving the UN, create a platform for sharing digital public goods, engaging talent and pooling data sets, in a manner that respects privacy, in areas related to attaining the SDGs.

ICC supports continuing efforts by all stakeholders (individually and collectively) to promote greater cooperation among existing organizations, including private sector-led, multistakeholder and intergovernmental, not the creation of new entities to facilitate such cooperation or processes.

Cooperation on digital issues is a method of operation, an on-going activity and an organizational culture that is not only open to but proactively invites, collaboration between stakeholders. Such a culture is guided by the common vision of employing ICT for social and economic development as well as the objectives of information sharing, awareness raising and, where appropriate, coherence in work programmes and continuous follow-up.

In order to continue to make progress on such cooperation, we recommend:

  • Strengthening and opening up existing processes, to support well-informed and better-equipped deliberations.
  • Promoting open, accessible and timely procedures for information sharing among all involved institutions and actors, in order to raise awareness, explain opportunities and cross-link initiatives and thus increase the participation and engagement of all stakeholders.
  • Including all stakeholders to facilitate and increase their participation and entertain their proposals and contributions, particularly those impacted by the results or those responsible for or necessary to their implementation, including at the national and local levels.

1C. We call on the private sector, civil society, national governments, multilateral banks and the UN to adopt specific policies to support full digital inclusion and digital equality for women and traditionally marginalised groups. International organisations such as the World Bank and the UN should strengthen research and promote action on barriers women and marginalised groups face to digital inclusion and digital equality.

ICC supports this proposal. ICT improves efficiency, enhances coordination and improves the quality of information gathered and shared for development planning. At the same time ICT can give women and traditionally marginalized groups access to basic needs such as healthcare and education.

However, these benefits are dependent on women and traditionally marginalized groups having meaningful access to ICT, which can either be facilitated by efforts to address access and affordability, encourage the creation of locally relevant content, skills development and security improvements or impeded by the lack of these.

Sustained efforts are needed by the global multistakeholder community to overcome such challenges and continue to bridge digital divides. Policies that can help support inclusion and ICT-enabled growth should take into account both economic and technical constraints as
well as normative social and cultural barriers faced by women and vulnerable groups.

Programmes through partnerships can help realise the opportunities that ICT can offer by boosting skills, equipping women and traditionally marginalized groups with digital devices
and providing training that helps them teach their respective communities how to make the most of these tools.

The private sector plays a pivotal role in investing in Internet-related infrastructure and delivery of a wide range of ICT services. Business also contributes to encouraging access through capacity building and education initiatives, promoting innovation, creating locally relevant content, and supporting public-private research and development partnerships, where businesses work with other stakeholders.

We note the valuable work carried out by UN Women and the UN Global Compact in developing the Women’s Empowerment Principles.


Illustrative projects in support of this issue led or supported by the private sector:

Amazon collaborated with the California-based Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired to create a new feature, Show and Tell, on Echo Show devices that helps blind and low vision customers identify objects. Utilizing machine learning and computer vision technologies, Show and Tell serves as “eyes” for object recognition and improves the lives of visually impaired customers.

Microsoft has created and made available a wide range of curriculum, content, and programs to support the needs of all learners across the digital skills spectrum — from foundational digital literacy to computer science education. For example, Microsoft supports Women in Cloud, a community-led initiative supporting female technology entrepreneurs, within which Microsoft’s Cloud Accelerator Program helps women-led companies start and build their businesses.


1D. We believe that a set of metrics for digital inclusiveness should be urgently agreed, measured worldwide and detailed with sex disaggregated data in the annual reports of institutions such as the UN, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, other multilateral development banks and the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD). From this, strategies and plans of action could be developed.

ICC supports this proposal. Such statistics are already collected by international institutions and we support further communication and collaboration between all relevant institutions to share information, raise awareness and ensure the statistics they collect are fit for purpose.

There is a need of reliable, consistent and gender-disaggregated data extending over several years and encompassing several regions in order to inform accurate, evidence-based policymaking.

Human and institutional capacity

2. We recommend the establishment of regional and global digital help desks to help governments, civil society and the private sector to understand digital issues and develop capacity to steer cooperation related to social and economic impacts of digital technologies.

ICC strongly believes that when governments work together with other stakeholders, significant progress can be made in raising capacity, knowledge, and understanding of the issues. Policymaking and outcomes can also be improved in many instances due to the inclusion of business, technical community and civil society in the assessment of policy issues and solutions. This inclusion can lower the risk of unintended consequences and increase legitimacy and adoption.

At the same time, digital issues span across a wide spectrum, and are often intertwined with other specific policy issues (from education to finance, from technical standards to social policy). Therefore, it is crucial that capacity building activities are well targeted and focused and built on subject-matter expertise. The private sector supports numerous efforts by UN agencies and others to raise awareness and build capacity on various subject matters. Efforts to improve communication and information-sharing about and among such initiatives would be welcome.

We would, however, call for further work and impact analysis to assess the benefit of a general policy help desk and explore how existing efforts could be strengthened.

Human rights and human agency

3A. Given that human rights apply fully in the digital world, we urge the UN Secretary- General to institute an agencies-wide review of how existing international human rights accords and standards apply to new and emerging digital technologies. Civil society, governments, the private sector and the public should be invited to submit their views on how to apply existing human rights instruments in the digital age in a proactive and transparent process.

ICC agrees that rights people have offline must also be protected online, in accordance with the rule of law and international human rights legal obligations. Undue restrictions on freedom of expression and access to arts and culture using communications services and the Internet can diminish their usefulness, dampen the exchange of ideas, undermine public accountability, and reduce innovation and commercial opportunities. At the same time, frameworks must recognize that rights cannot be exercised without limit where they infringe on the rights of others. Much exemplary work has already been carried out by other entities including the Council of Europe and the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, which can inform future work in this area.

We agree furthermore that the perspectives of all stakeholders should be invited and considered, especially when they are impacted by the results or they are responsible for their implementation. We are looking forward to working with and providing business input to the work that the UN Human Rights Council and the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights has commenced in this regard. We recommend ensuring that special procedures, preventions, and peacebuilding-related offices are effectively resourced and fit for purpose in terms of analysis, communication, and swiftness of action in a digital age. We furthermore encourage the OHCHR to deploy resources to raise awareness and build capacity of companies and the general public on how fundamental HR instruments can be applied and interpreted in the digital age.

We note the work carried out by the United Nations Global Compact and by the Global Network Initiative in this area.

3B. In the face of growing threats to human rights and safety, including those of children, we call on social media enterprises to work with governments, international and local civil society organisations and human rights experts around the world to fully understand and respond to concerns about existing or potential human rights violations.

ICC supports efforts for multistakeholder collaboration and public-private partnerships to understand, respond to and prevent and detect potential human rights violations online.

We note the work carried out by the European Commission to create a Better Internet for Kids.


Illustrative projects in support of this issue led or supported by the private sector:

The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) convenes major technology companies to prevent terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting digital platforms. In May 2019, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft jointly announced their support for the Christchurch Call to Action to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online and published nine steps that each company will take to implement the Christchurch Call.

The Mobile Alliance Against Child Sexual Abuse Content was founded by an international group of mobile operators within the GSMA to work collectively on obstructing the use of the mobile environment by individuals or organisations wishing to consume or profit from child sexual abuse content.

Orange provides various tools and materials to help parents and children make good use of technology. The Supercoders initiative has so far allowed over 30,000 children to take part in coding workshops in 20 countries. These workshops, aimed primarily at children aged 9-13, aim to provide a playful, fun and educational insight into the online world, and showcase how children can play an active part in shaping it for themselves. Orange is also a founding member of the EU’s Alliance to Better Protect Minors Online, and of the ICT Coalition for Children Online, aimed at helping children and teenagers to make the most of the online world and to deal with potential challenges and risks.


3C. We believe that autonomous intelligent systems should be designed in ways that enable their decisions to be explained and humans to be accountable for their use. Audits and certification schemes should monitor compliance of artificial intelligence (AI) systems with engineering and ethical standards, which should be developed using multi-stakeholder and multilateral approaches. Life and death decisions should not be delegated to machines. We call for enhanced digital cooperation with multiple stakeholders to think through the design and application of these standards and principles such as transparency and non-bias in autonomous intelligent systems in different social settings.

ICC supports multistakeholder cooperation and policy dialogue on development and deployment of AI and other emerging technologies. Governments should consult with stakeholders when reviewing the adoption of new technologies to consider whether existing regulation facilitates adoption or whether new issues may arise that would require a different policy response.

These technologies have the potential to be used in a variety of ways for societal benefit and strengthening the global economy. As today’s technological advances are happening dynamically, only flexible, globally-consistent, and market-driven policies will continue to fuel innovation. With an improved understanding of how the technology operates in practice, policymakers will be in a position to better determine which policies may be most appropriate to avoid unintended consequences and remove barriers or constraints to innovation.

We note the valuable work carried out by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in developing Principles on Artificial Intelligence, adopted by 42 countries and supported by the G20.

Trust, security and stability

4. We recommend the development of a Global Commitment on Digital Trust and Security to shape a shared vision, identify attributes of digital stability, elucidate and strengthen the implementation of norms for responsible uses of technology, and propose priorities for action.

As the world’s largest global business organization, with a long history of developing globally recognized applicable rules by convening experts and practitioners, ICC considers it essential that businesses and governments have a shared understanding of how to conceptualize cybersecurity risks, impacts, and responses. While governments and business have different roles in addressing cybersecurity, they are mutually reinforcing.

Multistakeholder collaboration can boost understanding of and help build consensus on the ways in which existing international law governs state behavior online. These exchanges reflect learnings on the evolving threat environment and help promote a holistic approach to cybersecurity risk management.

The private sector has supported, collaborated on, and launched initiatives to promote norms for responsible uses of technology, such as the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise, the Cybersecurity Tech Accord or the Internet Society MANRS initiative, to name a few. We will continue to support such work going forward and will support information sharing and cooperation among such initiatives.

ICC is following the ongoing work of the GGE and OEWG and we are looking forward to contributing private sector views and expertise. Should work on a Global Commitment on Digital Trust and Security be carried out, it should be coordinated with the aforementioned efforts to avoid duplication.

Global digital cooperation

5A. We recommend that, as a matter of urgency, the UN Secretary General facilitate an agile and open consultation process to develop updated mechanisms for global digital cooperation, with the options discussed in Chapter 4 as a starting point. We suggest an initial goal of marking the UN’s 75th anniversary in 2020 with a “Global Commitment for Digital Cooperation” to enshrine shared values, principles, understandings and objectives for an improved global digital cooperation architecture. As part of this process, we understand that the UN Secretary-General may appoint a Technology Envoy.

ICC believes that digital cooperation is best achieved when understood as a method of operation, an ongoing activity and an organizational culture that is not only open to, but proactively invites, collaboration between stakeholders. In practice, this translates to a multistakeholder approach to policy and regulatory decision-making and a holistic consideration of policy issues as they relate to ICT, across the entire ICT ecosystem and at all levels of decision-making from local to global.

There already are an array of mechanisms that operate on these principles inside and outside the UN umbrella, intergovernmental, multistakeholder, or private-sector led, such as the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the Broadband Commission, the OECD Committee on Digital Economy Policy, the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise, the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) and numerous others.

We recognize that further efforts must be made to more widely promote and adopt such a culture. This requires broader awareness raising, information sharing and capacity development. At the same time, it would be counterproductive to engage in such activities without building on the existing ones, so as not to further confuse or divert the attention of the international multistakeholder community from effective projects in which they have invested considerable time and resources.

A governance model fit to promote this culture of cooperation and coordinate activities to support it, must be:

  • Multistakeholder: all relevant stakeholders (governments, business, technical community, academia, civil society) should participate, engage, and contribute to the discussions and decision-making.
  • Bottom-up and distributed: an open and inclusive participation model fosters not only legitimacy and credibility, but also is flexible to rapidly adapt to changing technologies and issues and avoid unintended consequences.
  • Transparent: decision-making processes should be consensus-based, clearly indicating how decisions are made and how multistakeholder input is reflected in such decisions.

The IGF+ model presented in the report embodies these characteristics.

Undeniably, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has served as a pioneering example of cooperation among Internet governance stakeholders since its inception. The IGF’s invaluable feature as a venue for discussion and non-binding outcomes provides a “safe place” for stakeholders to test new ideas and unveil potential solutions. All participants benefit from an exchange of different viewpoints. With its emphasis on inclusiveness, the IGF also has enabled under-represented stakeholders from developing and least developed countries as well as a new generation of youth to engage in Internet governance discussions.

ICC and its members have been long-time supporters of the IGF, benefitting from the free exchange of ideas and informal relationship-building this Forum provides, rather than being tied up in extensive negotiation of specific textual outcomes. This has enabled thoughtful discussion and dissemination of best practices for the express purpose of enabling more countries to realize the economic and societal fruits of digital transformation.

There are many lessons learned from the nearly 14 years of the IGF’s operation that should be implemented. During this time the Forum has not only advanced diverse and critical thinking but has also been successful at building community. The global IGF and its many national and regional initiatives (NRIs) have propagated cooperation and improved technical knowledge. They have brought together different stakeholders – nationally, regionally and globally – to share information and progress on their respective work, address policy matters in an open setting among a wide range of organizations and stakeholders, and produce intersessional output in the forms of best practice material and policy insights focused on a question or challenge.


Illustrative examples of digital cooperation at IGF:

The IGF provides a unique opportunity for all stakeholders to:

  1. Share knowledge: For example, at IGF 2018 in Paris, The Walt Disney Company worked with the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF) and the IGF’s Best Practice Forum on Local Content to bring together stakeholders to highlight the importance of locally relevant content when it comes to Internet growth. The groups organized a successful panel at IGF with a wide-range of stakeholders represented to discuss programs and policies that support the local creative economy. The diverse array of panelists included representatives from the Internet Society, an award-winning filmmaker and director from Nigeria, representatives from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a Colombian government official, a representative from the Association of the African Broadcasters AUB/UAR, a producer of reality TV shows, documentaries, and drama in the Ivory Coast, and a representative from the Telecom Operators Association of Georgia. These individuals were able to come together and teach attendees why local content is important and how it can be economically and creatively bolstered through well-conceived policies and projects. After the panel, FIAPF showcased the Nigerian film, Kasala. Its director, Ema Edosio, presented the film and talked about her experience in developing the original screenplay and in creating a film that authentically reflects the experience of many urban youth in Lagos, Nigeria’s teeming capital.
  2. Bring key stakeholders on board: For example Amazon first became seriously engaged with the Internet and Jurisdiction Policy Network following the presentation of their valuable work during IGF 2017 in Geneva
  3. Develop innovative projects: Microsoft’s Airband project was sparked at IGF 2011 meeting in Nairobi where an early demo and discussion led to the project’s first trial. Telefonica’s Internet Para Todos project was inspired by the IGF’s intersessional work on “Connecting the next billion”.

The IGF is indeed a tried and tested mechanism for cooperation on Internet governance issues that should be preserved and further leveraged. The extension of its mandate for a further 10 years during the UNGA WSIS+10 review was a clear recognition of the merits of this Forum and a compelling endorsement of the current distributed, bottom-up Internet governance process. The strength of this mechanism lies not only in its open and inclusive participation model, and the legitimacy and credibility that the model fosters, but also in its flexibility to rapidly adapt to changing technologies and issues.

However, awareness and importance of the IGF remains inadequate outside Internet governance communities. A conscious effort to increase IGF awareness needs to occur through all resources available and the IGF, as well as the NRIs, should strive to raise better awareness of their discussions and better market their existing outputs from the past years. In addition, specific and targeted action is needed to ensure the participation of governments both from developing and developed countries.

The Cooperation Accelerator and Policy Incubator proposed in the report could potentially retain the brainstorming, sharing of best practices, and other informal aspects that we have come to value from the current IGF. Unfortunately, budgetary structures already curtail aspirations by the IGF Secretariat and the Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) to develop a useful and accessible online archive of outputs that not only would include materials produced by IGF intersessional work, workshops and plenary sessions, but also house useful and relevant academic research on digital economy issues. This raises questions about how the Accelerator and Incubator would be staffed and equipped to convene a balanced roster of stakeholders and expertise.

Stakeholders, especially those from developing and least developed countries, face considerable financial barriers to participate in the annual IGF meetings and the year-round preparatory meetings and open consultations. We note the intention of the proposed Help Desks to break this barrier but would appreciate further clarity about their implementation in practice. It is, for example, unclear how the Help Desks would “coordinate the capacity development activities provided by other organisations,” particularly those unaffiliated with the UN.

Efforts to expand and strengthen the financial foundation of the IGF will be vital, in order to enable the Forum to expand its existing mechanisms to fulfil the functions required by a comprehensive global governance framework for digital cooperation. To address these limitations, we recommend the following:

  1. Raise the IGF’s profile
    In the past, IGF benefitted from high-level representation of a Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General that facilitated advocacy and diplomacy and served as an important ambassador for the IGF. A suitable candidate from the community of experienced and insightful stakeholders should be sought for this position to be renewed to help strengthen and improve the IGF.
    Other alternatives to increase visibility of the IGF as a viable global platform for digital cooperation should be explored, including oversight of the IGF by the Office of the Secretary General.
  2. Improve the IGF’s funding
    The IGF needs to broaden and stabilize the pool of its financial resources, including gaining more direct support from the United Nations in terms of fundraising to establish adequate long-term funding. This would provide the IGF Secretariat with sufficient resources to prioritize IGF topics of relevance to the community, ensure adequate documentation of policy discussions and best practice recommendations, and communicate its materials effectively.
    More stable and increased funding would support many of the goals outlined in this report. It could be used to not only establish a base for IGF operations but to also advance topics and issues over several years. It can also help develop website capabilities that would enable more effective archiving and retrieval of Internet governance-related materials and provide more opportunities for remote participation by those unable to attend in person.
    In addition, stable funding resources are needed for trialing the various new functions recommended by the Panel to strengthen the IGF, such as the policy incubator or the policy observatory and help desk.
  3. Call for better marketing of existing IGF outputs
    The success of the IGF does not lie in textual outputs but rather in the open interactions of stakeholders, who all participate on an equal footing and are not constrained by the pressure of a negotiated outcome. The IGF is already producing a tremendous amount of important outputs (Chair’s Summary, main session and workshop summaries, intersessional output documents, collaborative partnerships, etc.). In addition, the multistakeholder dialogues themselves are valuable outputs: policymakers can gather many insights from the exchange of information and experiences on Internet policy issues that take place during the IGF. Capturing and promoting these exchanges successfully could increase their reach beyond the IGF session participants.
    There is a need for a more concise and organized style of reporting from IGF sessions, supported by a work plan to identify, gather, and better market existing outcomes and outputs of the IGF
  4. Streamline the IGF’s agenda
    In order to better enable dynamic participation at the IGF and year-round access to the work products and outcomes, building a focused and manageable agenda is the first step. This does not mean reducing the diversity of subject matter but rather applying increased rigor to setting the IGF’s programme in an effort to reduce redundancies of topics and avoid duplication.
  5. Encourage collaboration with other entities
    In order to raise wider awareness of the IGF, its mechanisms for cooperation and existing output material produced, closer collaboration is needed, especially with entities that are already engaged with audiences typically underrepresented at the IGF. The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the Telecommunications Development Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-D) could be potential partners along the way.

5B. We support a multi-stakeholder “systems” approach for cooperation and regulation that is adaptive, agile, inclusive and fit for purpose for the fast-changing digital age.

ICC believes that multistakeholder cooperation for Internet governance is essential for furthering the progress and ensuring an inclusive, people-centered Internet that can attain the WSIS vision beyond 10 years. Furthermore, the use of multistakeholder practices can be key driving forces in empowering inclusive and sustainable growth. This is why ICC and its members have been long-time advocates of multistakeholder processes at national, regional and international levels alike.

We welcome the strong emphasis on multistakeholder cooperation throughout the report and hope this will contribute to the spread of this model throughout the UN system.

Source: https://comment.eurodig.org/digital-cooperation-report/comments-by-email/icc-basis-response-to-the-report/