[EuroDig Interview] Nino Gobronidze, Georgia

Nino Gobronidze is from Georgia and has graduated from Central European University this year. She took the European Capacity Development Programme in Internet Governance and is part of the team coming for the EuroDig next week in Geneva.

DIPLO IGCBP: Nino, how was the capacity development programme? What did you like more about the eLearning experience?

NINO: The capacity building program with Diplo was a great learning avenue. Several factors contributed to its success. Participants from different countries and backgrounds, professional and friendly tutors and interesting program all together created a formula of its success. It was my first distance learning course and it left me with a will to engage in this type of educational programs more in the future. As I mentioned already the program was very interesting and well scheduled, it had various components from which I really liked the chat sessions and research phrase. I really enjoyed this distance learning course and truly regret that due to my other studies I could not devote my time to it properly.

DIPLO IGCBP: Tell us more about the current situation in your country: what do you see as the main challenges ahead? What are the main topics of interest for you in Internet governance? And how do you expect to touch these issues on the EuroDig?

NINO: As I have mentioned it before, Georgia is a country where internet governance issues are not paid proper attention and most probably it is due to the low public awareness. Youth can be one of the main player in this direction but for it, it needs to be aware of the issue. The existing educational environment does not give an opportunity for internet governance education; therefore I think that this conference will be a great chance for me to get more knowledge, more ideas which will help me to plan future activities in this field.

Along with the low public awareness, the independence and role of internet service providers could be marked as a problematic issue. In 2008, during Russian-Georgian war, Government by its oral decree ordered the Internet service providers to block the Russian websites. Since the role of internet service providers is theme of one of the workshops this issue might be addressed during conference (although for that session I have other priority JJ).

Another challenge came into the surface during the war as well, when the Georgian websites became an object of cybercrimes. This event might be a good discussion topic for Workshop addressing cybercrime and cyber security.

In addition to all stated above, issue of privacy along with technology developments is problematic as well. The views and approaches of participants will be interesting.

DIPLO IGCBP: What are the professional and research projects you would like to continue over the next years? What type of people would you like to be connected to for these goals?

NINO: After I return to Georgia I would like to continue my work at NGO, because I think it is an avenue from where you can really make a change especially in the field of Human rights. Along with other issues, mainly the human rights one, I think I would love to engage in some activities related to Internet governance, in particular the public awareness ones.

Awareness is low among representatives of governmental agencies, civil society, Internet service providers and just ordinary citizens. So, I think it will be a good idea to organize some type of workshops, distance learning course which will give them the basic idea of what the internet governance is. For this type of activities, I would appreciate help from side of Diplo and youth representatives who do the similar activities in their countries.


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This interview is part of a series with participants from the European Internet Governance Capacity Building Programme. Diplo IGCBP stands for Internet Governance Capacity Building Programme and you can find more on our Facebook profile, the Internet Governance Capacity Building page on Facebook or the Twitter for Internet Governance