Commonwealth Internet Governance Open Forum, IGF09-Sharm El Sheikh

Location: Nile Valley Room, IGF09, Sharm El Sheikh

Panelist:

Joseph V. Tabone, Chairman CIGF
Anthony Ming, Commonwealth Secretariat
Alice Munaya, KICTANet
Fred Ruth Murray-Bruce, Nigerian Communication Commission
Jahid Jamil, Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center, Pakistan

Joseph V. Tabone:
Mr. Joseph opened the the forum with a key note address about Commonwealth Federation & Commonwealth Internet Governance Forum. He highlighted the role of CIGF for the future of IGF and the purpose of the travel bursary to the 18 CIGF Travel Bursary recipients.

Tony Ming:
Mr. Ming described the structure of Commonwealth Federation by describing the representation of 2 billion people, 53 countries in Commonwealth and most importantly highlighted the representation of 30 % of the world population and most importantly the youth consists 50% of it. He explained the shared value of governance, human rights & collaboration in Commonwealth. He also briefly described origination of Commonwealth Connect in 2005 at Malta and how CHOGM endorsed the revolution of report prepared by a coordination committee, which resulted in the creation of Commonwealth Connect by following the principles of share, learn & improve. He mentioned that how IGF would be instrumental in finding the gap in telecom & IT infrastructure and providing inputs, as well the role as the enabler for digital divide. He mentioned that the Secretary General(CW) has created a new strategic advisory committee by bringing Mr.Kiran Karnik as the head of it and emphasisingacclerated multistakeholderism.

Alice Munaya:
Ms. Munaya explained the transition of East Africa's participation in IGF and Kenya's virtual support for the continuation of IGF beyond 1010 by conveying their interest to host the IGF2011 at Keneya. She highlighted the importance of :
Cost of internet access
Broad band policy
IPv6 transition process
Harmonisation of equipments
Fred Ruth Murray-Bruce:
Ms. Murray explained about the West Africa's participation in IGF and how Nigeria proactively taking forward IGF. She mentioned that IGF is about accessibility to capacity building and Commonwealth has greater voices than the individual countries and thus upheld the values of sharing & collaboration.

Jahid Jamil:
Mr. Jahid elaborated, how the Commonwealth & the SAARC countries can share knowledge ,best practices & know how to the respective countries and about Pakistan's progress in ICT policy & regulation. He highlighted the pain areas regulation & governance.

Audience:
The audience shooted very interesting questing across all aspects of Internet in perspective of child abuse, security, regionalism, lingual, digital divide and governance.

Conclusion:
Among several issues & discussion the some of the points that got importance's and the voices:
Digital divide seems to be common in every where irrespective of demography & geographies.
Capacity building programme required
Accessibility
Security