DiploFoundation will participate in the third Internet Governance Forum, to be held in Hyderabad, India, from 3 to 6 December. With support of partners, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), this year more than 30 professionals from developing countries - successful participants from Diplo’s IG Capacity Building Programmes - will take part in the IGF meeting. In addition to actively participating in sessions and workshops, the fellows will organise and participate in number of interesting side events, including reporting from the sessions, presenting their research work, debating on controversial IG issues, simulating global negotiations, and more.
The programme of Diplo activities at the IGF is available here.

28 November 2008

The 2nd International Conference “Keeping Children and Young People Safe Online”, took place in Warsaw, on September 18-19, 2008.

IGCBP08 community member Agnieszka Wrzesień, project co-ordinator for the Saferinternet.pl - Polish Safer Internet Node, was the chair of the Organising Committee representing Nobody’s Children Foundation.

The conference brought together representatives from the education sector, NGOs, law enforcement, government and industry. It addressed a wide variety of issues relating to children and young people’s safety online, such as cyber bullying, social networking sites, child safety and mobile phones, and online gaming. The conference raised awareness of the new challenges and opportunities in fighting Internet threats and helped sharing best practices across different sectors.

IGCBP08 community member Thiago Tavares, who has been leading the work against pedophily in Brazil also attended the conference after the IGF Open Consultations in Geneva.

Paper abstracts of the conference are available here.

26 September 2008

On September 16, 2008, the final Internet Government Forum (IGF) Open Consultations prior to the Hyderabad IGF concluded with very positive outcomes.

Markus Kummer, executive co-ordinator of the IGF Secretariat, highlighted the support of the IGF Secretariat towards its partnership with DiploFoundation: "So this is basically a very positive programme which gives us capacity, and at the same time it gives the fellows participating through the programmes, gives them capacity when they return back to their country."

Another highlight during the open consultations was the release of a statement on the proposal for IGF hubs read out by Olga Cavalli (IGCBP07 participant) on behalf of the Remote Participation Working Group. In addition, the Wikipedia initiative also had a statement read out – this is an initiative undertaken by DiploFoundation community members to post a comprehensive Wikipedia entry on the IGF.

19 September 2008