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This year’s Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the 9th Annual Meeting, was held on Sep 2-5, 2014 in Istanbul. Its main theme was agreed as “Connecting Continents for Enhanced Multi-Stakeholder Internet Governance” and the sub-themes were policies enabling access, content creation, dissemination and use, internet as an engine for growth and development, IGF and the future of the Internet ecosystem, enhancing digital trust, Internet and human rights, critical Internet resources and other emerging issues.
Internet Governance Forum (IFG) is an annual event which was established by the World Summit on the Information Society in 2006. IFG serves to bring people together from various stakeholder groups as equals, in discussions on public policy issues relating to the Internet. The IGF facilitates a common understanding of how to maximize Internet opportunities and address risks and challenges that arise. At the annual meetings delegates discuss, exchange information and share good practices with each other.[1]
This year’s Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the 9th Annual Meeting, was held on Sep 2-5, 2014 in Istanbul. Many participants from different stakeholders; government, intergovernmental organizations, civil society, technical community, private sector and media participants were gathered from all over the world. 1291 remote participants also joined the meeting through the remote participation platform. There were 60 remote hubs organized around the world, with an estimated number of 1852 attendees.
In parallel to IGF 2014, Internet Ungovernance Forum was also held on Sep 4-5, 2014 in Istanbul Bilgi University. The aim of the Internet Ungovernance Forum was to get the people’s right attention on the most urgent problems of the internet and to create a space to raise the voices of civil society initiatives, activists and common people conversely to “multi-stakeholderism” format of IGF. During the event, many worksops were organized such as Future(s) of the Internet, Internet safety & Child abuse, Internet Censorship during the Arab Spring anf ways to Circumvent them, etc. and the attractive sessions about Internet and Human Rights in Turkey, Cryptoparty, Solidarity Against Dispossession in the City and on the Internet and Citizen Journalism and Alternative Media were realized with the great interest of the attendees.
Admittedly, the most attractive speaker of the both forums was Neelie Kroes who was also representing the European Commission. Her main focus was collaboration of many stakeholders and expanding Internet access globally and the maintenance of the Internet as a global, open and common resource and non-discriminatory access to knowledge, and as stated by Neelie Kroes in her speech, trust is the key for achieving greater accountability and transparency in the multi-stakeholder internet governance model. She also called for permanent status for IGF saying it must move to next level problem solving. At the Internet Ungovernance Forum, she gave a speech, “Freedom is No Laughing Matter” on the state of free expression in Turkey and made striking explanations with regard to freedom of speech.
Neelie Kroes and European Commission published press releases regarding both Forums. You can read these attractive press releases through the links below:
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-14-513_en.htm
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_STATEMENT-14-272_en.htm
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-14-576_en.htm
Internet Governance Forum and Internet Ungovernance Forum were really very important events for Turkey where the internet censorships are really in high level.
You can watch the video recordings and the session reports of the IGF 2014 through the link below:
http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/igf-2014
For the details and the video recordings of Internet Ungovarnance Forum:
https://iuf.alternatifbilisim.org/
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