You from UNESCO headquarters in Paris, and I'm really to escape from the light.
Can you hear? Yeah, so I'm very pleased to be here with you today, and thank you so much for the warm welcome, and it was really, really interesting to follow the discussions that you've had yesterday and this morning. So and I'm very pleased and happy and grateful to Andrew and the team for bringing this topic on board to discuss with all of you today. So what we will be discussing, I have Simon here with me, who is an external, international advisor for the Internet universality indicators. And what we will do today is I'll just give you a very quick overview of the internet universality indicators, and we will but then focus on a regional report for the South Pacific, mainly that we have prepared following national assessment in five South Pacific countries. And the idea would be so to hear back from you on the findings and recommendations, and to have the discussion with you and take on board your input as we go forward with the findings and recommendations. So we will have two parts today, so we will just have this overview and hear back from you on the report on the findings and recommendations, and we in the second part of the workshop, we would we would like to have you divided in groups, to have maybe more targeted input from you On the questions related to the findings and recommendations, and what we will do with this inputs, we we will take them on board. If there are things that need to be implemented in the in the report, we will be ready then to incorporate and publish it. So this also serves as a launch of the report, but considering that your input is very important, we have many of you from these five countries and beyond who have contributed to the report. Of course, it's based on the national ones, but in addition, you've reviewed and gave your feedback, but it would also be very important to have a wider discussion and have your feedback. So I will just then get started with UNESCO's internet universality indicators. So, but I have been asked a few questions about UNESCO, why UNESCO is doing things related to internet or digital transformation at all, considering that UNESCO is probably more known for its cultural activities or programs, culture and education. So just to briefly mention that UNESCO, UNESCO receives its mandate from 194 countries, member states, and all of your countries are member states, and they give the give us the mandate and the priorities to work on in member states. And one of these programs is communication and information within which we work on freedom of expression and safety of journalists, media diversity and media in crisis situations, media and information literacy and digital skills, universal access to information and documentary heritage. And what where I work is digital transformation and digital policies. And what we do within this section is, again based on the mandate that our member states give give to us, and based on the priorities that they define for us, based on the national needs. We provide support to member states with, for example, their digital policies, or capacity strengthening in digital, digital skills, we have a lot of focus on artificial intelligence and other emerging topics or technologies. So the internet universality indicators, it summarizes UNESCO's position on the internet, which based on the decision of the member states, is the internet should be based on rights. It should be open to all and accessible to all, and it should be nurtured by multi stakeholder participation. So this is the position of UNESCO. And based on this guidelines, UNESCO, then Secretariat, has put together these rom indicators, and we added an X category for cross cutting issues such as gender equality environment. And these indicators were formed following a three year consultation process to make sure that we incorporate the voice and feedback and input of everyone globally. So we had consultations for three years in every every region of UNESCO. So this is where it comes from, and it's it is very much contributing to to the achievement of UN Sustainable Development Goals. For example, we contribute a lot to, for example, the sustainable development goal of free and just institutions, but also on to education and many other indicator of goals, considering the comprehensiveness of the indicators and now the what is the indicators and why is indicators important and unique? So this is a set of indicators, and I'll just give another overview, and I will unpack it, but just for you to know, as I mentioned, it is endorsed by UNESCO member states, which is all of your countries. And it is, it is measuring the legal policy and regulatory frameworks. It is also unique in measuring human rights through a multi stakeholder approach, and I apologize for those who have been part of the national assessments and who have seen some of the things that I'm saying, but it does also contribute greatly to closing the digital divide and contributing to digital inclusion by also having this comprehensive approach and inclusive methodology in the assessment process itself. And it's also it helps, it gives a solid, evidence based approach to policy making, which is also another unique approach. And I must mention that, in its nature, this framework is is unique, is a unique tool. But of course, it's not aiming to replace other other internationally available tools, for example, those who try to measure, for example, connectivity from the technical perspective, or the other tools that are out there from other international organizations. But it's rather a complementary tool with others to help the member states to get a comprehensive overview. So we have a set of 300 indicators, over 300 indicators, and what we call over 100 core indicators. The reason why we have core indicators is because so we believe that in order to have a basic understanding, basically get comprehensive understanding of the internet development in a country, which I must highlight, is a voluntary process. So the initiative or interest comes from the country. It's not imposed, and it is a voluntary process, and it is not for the purpose of ranking. It is it remains at the national level, except for this regional report, without not do ranking, but rather does an analysis, to give an opportunity also to see where, where we could learn from each other, or where we where there are common gaps that we could work together. But overall, it never, doesn't a ranking, and it is really tailored. And the reason why we have this 303 indicators is that, in addition to this 100 indicators, member states or the stakeholders have the freedom to choose and implement additional indicators based on the national context, cultural context, social and other aspects taking into consideration, so we do the analysis and then, based on the evidence founds evidence found, we propose policy recommendations for different stakeholder groups, and these policy recommendations are actionable to the extent possible, so that you can Have either immediate or mid term, sometimes long term impact to by implementing these recommendations, and then so it gives this holistic approach and evidence based approach to policy making.
So this is just to give you an idea of how, how it's structured. So we have these five categories that I mentioned, and within each category, for example, within rights, we have, we dress legal and regulatory framework. We dress freedom of expression, or, for example, in openness, we measure, for example, even open markets. In cross cutting, as I said, for example, gender equality, environment and others. But I won't bore you with this, just so you know that we have all these themes and to make it easier for anybody to use, then we have the guiding questions, which are then complemented by all of these indicators, and here you can have a better overview of the themes.
I'll allow you to take a photo, but I'm happy to also share the slides and also to give a link to if you search on UNESCO's internet universality indicators, that's the only thing that will come up normally. So about the process? So it's a bit of a long process, because we don't just focus on the on the results. We also focus on the process. So we start by, of course, when there is interest from the member states, and it doesn't have to be the government, it can be any stakeholder group we have. We've implemented it in over 40 countries. We is in some places, it's been initiated by civil society, like the Internet Society. It can be really diverse stakeholder group that initiates the process. But an important step, and the critic, most critical step, is to establish the multi stakeholder advisory board, which has to be composed of all the relevant stakeholders, including the government, civil society, private sector, academia and others. And it can be there are key stakeholders, which are key stakeholders in every country, but depending, of course, on the context of the country and cultural context of the country, that can be other stakeholder groups, and then it's normally, it can be from six months to nine months, because so We have qualitative aspect, qualitative indicators, and also quantitative. But in addition to this research, the multi stakeholder advisory board, or as we call it, map, meets now and then to to give guidance to the research team where the data is not there, or to validate, not validate, but to discuss the data, and it the to make sure that they guide the process, and they are part of the process, and but the purpose is not to lead the or lead the process, but to rather steer the process. And so finally, after a few months of the research, we have the validation workshop, which again, gathers all all the multi stakeholder advisory board members, and where people then discuss and validate the findings and also the recommendations and own up to the recommendations, because the recommend To the implementation of the recommendations which are meant for improving the situation. So and then we have the last element, which comes at a later stage, after the assessment, which is impact measurement regarding the publication process. So we have many so it's an open resource, the indicators, and anyone is free to take and use it, of course, by acknowledging the copyright. But many of the countries have, most of actually not most of all of the countries have acknowledged the importance of working with UNESCO on this, and we've been publishing most of the reports. So that part also goes with UNESCO, which then ensures the quality process and all these steps related to the publication. This is just a map of the I took the screenshot. So I'm not sure if we can see, probably not very well, the five Pacific islands that we we've been doing the assessments in. But this is a map, a snapshot of the countries that have done the assessment. What I must highlight is considering its comprehensive approach. It's relevant to any country in any level of their digital development. For example, the assessment was done and then the recommendations of the of the assessment were implemented, for example, by Germany. The assessment was done by France, for example. So no matter the development digital development of the digital landscape, it is helpful and useful for for any country, considering that it gives a really comprehensive overview, it does have tailored recommendations drafted by the National stakeholders, not by UNESCO. This is this. These are not all the reports, but this is approximately how, not approximately. This is how the reports look like. So far they have been. We have been aiming for, for example, 100 page document. But most of the reports are over 200 pages, with a record of 200 pages, over 300 pages for Mongolia, which is not here. So again, you can, you can, if you search, you can see them and read through the documents. These are just a few of the examples of for impact of IUI assessments. We have countries, many countries, actually, and I don't have all of the examples here. We have countries where, for example, laws were established following the recommendations of of of the assessments, for example, one of the most recent ones. For example, in Niger we, for example, the we, we had the latest example where the online defamation was the criminal criminalized, for example, or the assessment in Brazil led to the personal data protection law enforcement. So we have all of these few examples, and we have many more in basically every country where we've done the assessment, even before the publication, before the report was published, as the gaps were identified and recommendations were drafted. We have seen positive impact now about the Pacific. So we, since last year, we have been implementing this assessments in five South Pacific islands, Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu, Tuvalu Solomon Islands and five, okay, so we have Swan here, who has been the national lead research, the lead researcher For Tuvalu Solomon Islands and Fiji. And we have Doreen here who has been the lead researcher, Doreen Doreen, so we don't have Doreen Doreen here, who has been the lead researcher for Vanuatu. And I must thank you both for your hard work and dedication and in driving these assessments forward. And I must acknowledge all the people who have served in the multi stakeholder advisory board in all of these countries and contributed to the assessments, and even if you weren't in the multi stakeholder advisory board, officially, we've received valuable feedback and contributions from many of you, and we're truly grateful for that. And it is a product of it is a national product drafted and crafted by by people of your countries and led by by our lead researchers from the region. And the recommendations have also been crafted by you. But though, how we were able to do this project was through a joint Sustainable Development Goal fund project implemented by six UN agencies, and this project aims to support the economic diversification in these five countries. And I've been asked why these countries? And it's very simple, simply because this the office of the resident coordinator in Fiji, where the project was drafted, covers these five countries. So there are other projects that are ongoing in other parts of the region, covering different other topics. So there was no specific other reason for having the assessments in these countries. And so it's implemented. It has it's a very big project, and it's implemented by six UN agencies, and UNESCO is contributing to a cultural element which is related to Creative Industries, and also this digital transformation component, which which contributed to this national assessments in these five countries. I
so I have a slide here in the about the role of the IUI, and I covered it a little bit. So it's it's basically just to reinforce the role of the IUI. It's basically nationally driven, multi stakeholder driven assessment, which is tailored and aimed at giving the national the country a comprehensive overview. And as we map the and as you map the situation in country, then you will you are able, perhaps, to think of the priorities, because there may be instances where there are many gaps, but then you have your own priorities and areas of focus. So it helps to identify the most critical gaps, and also help identify the the solutions to some of the gaps and and to help adopt evidence based approach in closing closing these gaps and evidence based approach to policy making. And what's also important, as I said, is the process that brings together around the same table all these multi stakeholder representatives to talk to each other through the process, discuss the data recommendations, and then to work together beyond the research, to implement all of these various recommendations which can be shared with different among different stakeholders, like you will see in the in case of the regional report. So I'm sorry I talked a lot, but here is the report, the summary of the report, regional report that you have received, probably I sent it yesterday by email, and we don't have enough copies with us, but we distributed a few and which will serve as basis for your discussion this afternoon. And of course, if you have questions also now. So based on this national reports that that we've worked on and Doreen and Swaran, and also in Tonga, mele and Selu, I won't recall their last names, but I'm sure that many of you know them as they're very motivated young ladies, driving many of the initiatives forward. So these were based on the recommendation, on the main findings and recommendations of them, of these national reports. But of course, in addition to the national reports, there was a lot of work done in addition to the national reports and the work done by Simon Ellis, who is an international advisor. So he has many, of course, I think, many qualities, but for the IUI context, he's an international advisor, external consultant for internet related matters, who then put together this regional report, and I will hand over to him to unpack a little bit The findings and recommendations of the report, thank you.
Thank you. I feel like I'm I'm kind of from the same generation as those people who were spoke on the first day in the kind of internet pioneers in the region, but unfortunately, I wasn't amongst those pioneers, and I should have retired. I did retire in 2012 but I didn't really, and I'm carrying on, and I'm carrying on on things because no I can. I'm an independent consultant. I can say what I like about UNESCO, but I get involved with things I believe in, and I really believe in this, and I really believe in the region, and I hope that will come out from what I say. But equally well, I'm not from the region. I'm trying to summarize what all these researchers who worked on the project and all of you who contributed to the advisory board put all of this, and then I'm adding in, if you like, the more global perspective, without, as we said, we're trying to rank or compare in any ways. So I hope that it's a hard job, because I really don't want to seem patronizing. I don't want to seem to be somebody, an external person, saying things to you when you know what's really going on. But at the same time, as in all these kinds of strategies, we want to have something which has an impact, which shows a way forward, and which makes a difference. So that's a spirit in which I'm trying to approach this. So as tatavik has said, it's this is coming from the national reports that have been produced. It's gathering together the main findings and challenges within the region. I've spoken a little bit to other people here to see in other countries in the region whether this some of the things chime with them. And we hope that this will serve to present a pathway forward which will which you'll all be able to relate to. So I always like to start in this, because this is what I think the internet does for the Pacific. So this is, I guess me, as much as anything else. I think that we want to see all the islands connected here and within the country, if all the islands are connected, this is almost the internet, for the first time, can create a truly national dialog, where all the islands, no matter what the gap between them, can be online in one meeting, in one forum. So I think that's the first thing that the internet can do. And in a sense, the early initiatives that Ian was talking about yesterday show this initial through undersea cables, how things are moving. And this, in a way, will perhaps suggest other steps forward. I think the other thing is that it is the first time the internet allows anyone in the Pacific to talk directly to the world and the world to see what's happening in the islands. And that's really important, because before the internet, and before the broadband, if you like, or fiber, it was it's not possible for people to really see directly. You have to go. You've had to go through middlemen in other countries, and then also in terms of the UN project, and it's the first time Pacific countries can market their products and services and culture directly. So again, when those products and services go out, if they're going out through the internet, all the detail of who made things, who did things, the context, the environment in which they did it, The Verge in which they live. All of that is there. And I think this is vital for me personally. I think that all this creates an atmosphere in which the Pacific countries and particular islands can be seen fully for the first time. And I think that's for me, is the ambition here in the first day, I think it was Rico talked about the initial setting up and the number of votes that were put together the all the Pacific countries together. And I know from UNESCO and from many un operations that Pacific countries as countries can get forgotten about very easily, and the internet is the way in which that can be changed. And I think that the richness of culture, the richness of activity and the richness of life here can be seen and needs to be seen by other people in the world, and it needs to be seen at the global level too. And what UNESCO, in a way, or the UN as a whole, and not necessarily to stick just to UNESCO, can do, is to highlight that in a way. Now, I'll come back to that bit later on. So what I've done here is I've kind of grouped together, loosely related to the theme of the the IUI and some of recommendations here. So what we're doing, both here now in this session and then in groups, would be to try and get your feedback. As I said, I'm trying. I'm very conscious of being an outsider. I'm building on the reports, which everybody has done within the countries. And what we want to say also is, have we got it right? Everybody has their views here, but also outside the countries that were particularly part of the study. Does this make sense? What we're saying? Can we nuance it better to make a more useful recommendation, and then these recommendations, in due time, will then go up to the to the global level in different fora. And again, I will discuss that a bit more. So the first theme, which is the right theme, in IUI, is kind of governance, legislation, regulation. So the first thing is gaps. So we know that most of what we see from reports is that most of the countries rely on the national constitutions for establishing those human rights, but we know that many of those constitutions were written some time ago, and often before the internet. So there's a need to look at putting in place specific laws which are take those principles and embed them in internet practice, if you like. And I think the clear, the biggest gap that, for me, it seems, is data protection. And we heard again yesterday from Tonga, that is in course, and I think, and some of the other countries have things which touch on data regular data protection. But again, this sense of specific laws which now exist in many countries of exactly how to protect data online, both consumer data, both data which is submitted to governments, and then access to that data in various forms that that is there. We also see throughout the Pacific, again, that while the laws are there and the Constitution may be fair, the enforcement can be difficult for lack of resources. And throughout many countries in IUI and I've been involved in certainly over 20 countries across the world in working with them on the reports. There is a lack of the training needed to for officials, for judges, for the police, to adapt what they know about activities and offenses, if you like, in the physical world, to the online world, and how that goes across. So I think part of the enforcement issue here, then is about lack of resources. And I think that is a question directly for countries. And then there's training for the officials on there, in which is one area where UNESCO can help, one of the big than the other themes, which is really important, which I think has come out many times already in discussions over the last day or two, is transparency. When I mean, we said we're not comparing, but in the work that I've done with other countries, it's been easy to find much of the data that is required of the fundamental data so numbers of phone subscriptions, numbers of people using the internet, numbers of
registered top level domain names, country level domain names and but it's much more difficult to find this. I think all the research teams have been involved here have found difficulty in and that data we're talking again must remember about a multi stakeholder environment. So in terms of the way forward, in terms of looking at the Internet development, having that data freely available is essential. But one quick example there, in the case of top level domains and domain names we want we need to look at and all countries are facing this issue, which is, again, has come up in discussion as to local businesses. So how much? What proportion of the top domain names in Fiji, in Van Matu, Tonga, wherever are local businesses, rather than businesses that have been established overseas. And we know that the domain names have been because of their resonances at the international level, it's got to such a stage that in some cases, when people from your countries have been to international meetings, that people don't even think of that two letters at the end as being a national domain name, which is clearly a ridiculous state of affairs. So all that data needs to be out there so that people can see it. And we and in terms of one of the things I will come back to is about business startups. So in broadening out the economy, in the online economy, one wants to know what proportion of those domain names are local businesses. One wants to encourage local businesses to have a domain name, which is a.tv a.to rather than a.com and we want to see who those businesses are, and encourage and the growth of those businesses in E government, the need for more interactive sites this, this, again, is not limited by any means to the Pacific, but the sense in which, in many cases, initial ministry offerings are simply a description of what the ministry does and so on. In some cases, the next level then would be to allow submission of reports, or to get reports or policy documents from those sites. And then the third level is a more, very much an interactive process. So actually applying for licenses, commenting on reports, and then being able to get feedback from the ministry, depending on doing that, but obviously, in this environment, in the region, we need very many communities which still don't have proper access, which allow them to do that. And in terms of online transactions, there are still issues about banking, even if the facility is there, people may not be know how to use it, or people may worry about it. So those kind of two are interlinked and in going forward. So just to say, this sense of data and what it means, this is a quick example from Fiji. In the last few weeks, I've been seen that the Fiji communications authority, the telecoms authority, put online more recent data on number of subscriptions. And what you see here is the orange line shows that all subscriptions, all phone subscriptions have shot up enormously since 2023 but if you look at active subscriptions per 100 population, it's the same. So what I mean? And I since, no, it's only they could really say what this is, but some ideas we know we learned from in the meetings that we held that in some cases, tourist sims are included in the count. So maybe it's tourist Sims. The other question here, is it a post covid scenario, and then are is it somehow the people have subscriptions which they've dropped, and then they're taking out new subscriptions, which then become the active ones. But something has changed and in the last couple of years, so clearly there's something here that this data is clearly central to some kinds of policy decisions, depending on how you interpret the trend. So I want to move on relatively quickly. We will come back, and you'll see in the how these relate to more specific recommendations and national reports and so forth later on. So openness covers openness is a bit more difficult as a category to describe, because it includes both the sense of open market, but also things like open source software and open data and so these pick out some of those threads, if you like. I've already mentioned this sense of transparency. So annual reports, I know, annual reports by regulators and domain name registers telephone companies take time to prepare, but they are again, this essential fuel for fueling the internet development of fueling policy, and it's difficult to find them in the countries involved here. One of the issues. Then we the next bullet point. We asked about different software licensing arrangements, so support for open source software. Now we know that this isn't a kind of given, and this is it can be a double sided sword. So if you have proprietary software, whether it be Microsoft Office or whatever, then your support kind of comes in there, and you you pay for it, but it's there, open source software. It can be more difficult for maintenance. Can be more can be much more complicated. So this is not a kind of it's a swings and roundabouts decision. But what we would UNESCO would normally say is that there should be a diversity of licensing arrangements, but depending on where the institution was based, and we know that interactivity between different platforms is essential here, both in government and in civil society and so on, but nonetheless, that depending the place of the organization, that open source software should be available to them, and it allows also, for example, community groups to develop apps at no cost with, of course, technical assistance, which is another issue to come back to open education resources. So there has been some pilot attempts of that in the region, but generally, those seem to be quite sparse so far. And I think here, there clearly should be the possibility for government, but also for teachers themselves and the schools to share curricular lessons texts and put them on the web. We all know again that there is always an issue about textbooks and text between but nowadays, that can at least in part, be addressed by PDFs and online documents, even if those have to be printed because of access considerations and then need for sites in local languages. And again, this varies between countries in the region, but overall, there are, I would say, in almost every country, less sites than one would expect. Let's put it that way, in the local languages. So how to encourage that, especially as that's part of the the local cultures and the richness of cultures, which, again, has come out in several presentations in the last few days. So that was on the open data side, and this is the open market. So in some ways, I have to say, my starting point here is a USAID report from I think it was last year which suggested that, as one might expect, about liberalization of of national markets. And I don't think this is, I'm not sure, at least in in many cases, I don't think markets are ready, the impression we get from the workshops and again, as I'm saying, please, this is things that the impression I get, but you are the people who live this, and I may be getting this wrong, but basically, There's relatively rare for local businesses to extend beyond Facebook marketplace. So I think two quick liberalization markets would allow a lot of online businesses to come on in from the exterior and without this sense of growing the local businesses, which I talked about of before, and part of that is about the financial technology. Again here in many cases, while now
e wallets and are available in the countries, at least in the study group, people are still not used fully about paying for things online or and therefore that needs to be strengthened again, I would say, before the market gets too much liberalization. So how to that striking that balance is important, and one doesn't want to, quite frankly, leave the local economies as being entirely around Facebook marketplace we want to, one wants to push them onto domain names, which of with local local tags and local domain name identification. So again, in that sense, I going back to transparency in annual reports, the annual reports on the market conditions, or regular reports that sale market conditions can obviously, again, be a big plank to build up this this sense of the market. And again, they would benefit both from more regular data and more regular publication at the bottom, then E government again. So again, we see quite a lot of the countries have business support pages which is pointing exactly in this direction, but many times and again, we'll come back again later on. Do users get feedback? Is there interactive support for business? So again, this is, if you like, the kind of third stage of E government, from just having a website to having something where you can download documents to something which is really more interactive, and you get real online support for business development. So then I want to bring up the thorny issue, let's say of satellites. For me, I still feel and again, this is me sticking my neck out and that satellites are the way forward. There is no way, really, in countries where islands and remote islands are small, islands are well distant from the central the capital that you can afford to have an unsee cable, maybe the radio frequencies will allow some kind of distribution. But I think this sense of a national building, a national identity across sometimes 1000s of miles of oceans through a single point speaks to me of satellites, but we understand, firstly, they're still expensive, and secondly, regulation is strongly needed to ensure that this is that the whole way that the system operates is within reasonable control and but it is needed now, because, again, we've heard at least one country, the sense of somebody says that every time a plane lands, it has a whole cargo, Starlink satellite, conditions on it. And so things are moving fast here, and people are prepared to pay to have that connection, even in circumstances where where they don't have much money. So this is happening, and obviously undersea cables still have their role. So one wouldn't want to take to remove that. Another thing which isn't in the indicators, but I think should be, is about because it's essential. I think that for this area, is about uniform coverage over land and sea. Now your countries are not just the islands, they are all the ocean that's in between them, and you should be able to move across your country the same way I can move across Canada. May take a long time, but I'm traveling by land, but you're traveling by sea. What's the difference? And you should have a system, and satellites can do this, where you have the same internet connection, the same involvement, whether you're on a boat on the sea or whether you're on land. And that also has various important insinuations around control of the maritime environment, both environmental and in terms of fishing boats and so on. So I think that's, that's almost again, a question for you. That's, this is something that I think is important civic engagement. I've talked about that this sense of a national, a national broadcast, which will go out immediately to all islands, and where they can comment back. And then the second point was really, I think, a bit of a duplication. So just to illustrate this, a little bit more two maps. The light blue course is Pacific, and the dark blue is Starlink. And when you look at this site and you see the Starlink sat for like hundreds of them, moving the whole time across the whole region. And it just gives you a sense of the extent of the coverage that is already there, which is pretty phenomenal when you look to Pacific. This is again, a chart, I think of three or four years ago. And again, in terms of data gaps, it's difficult to find up to date coverage maps, but you can see the gaps then in the sea areas between the countries, which, in a way, should not be there. There should be full national coverage, at least, if not regional coverage, but Pacific is a different kind of satellite, more expensive to launch and so forth, so all of this needs negotiating. So now I've covered, if you like, half of the internet indicators. I've covered the rights and the legal aspect, and I've covered the openness, both in terms of markets and in terms of open data. So now I'm kind of going, if you like, almost bottom up, the access and the multi stakeholder ism are also large in many of the messages, as it were, are about civil society and engaging them. So gender equality is a cross cutting issue. It's down on the in the indicator structure under X, but I'm putting it in here already. So if you look at the data, and we'll see a bit later on the the the this equal usage, broadly speaking, for men and women in the data. And so that's there. However, the qualitative information that we have received in the workshops means that suggests that, although that is the actuality, if you see in many ways, that very many ways that women still do not, are not engaged fully in discussions on the internet, as they might be. So although that there, in some countries, there is women are not really represented in decision making positions, and in some countries where they are in those positions because of cultural norms and so on. They don't take part, and they should be more assertive. Perhaps, there is also this whole issue that is clearly important across the world at the moment, which is online misogyny and hate speech and so forth. And although I think most countries now have some system for reporting that it is not often enforced. And also we find that there are because, again, of traditional practices and people. And as somebody has said in the workshops in the Pacific, is a forgiving culture that women don't report that, and therefore prosecutions don't happen, and that whole sense of enforcement doesn't just doesn't happen. So that needs support there in terms of generally, capacity building for civil society groups is extremely important in many of the islands, of course, especially more remote islands, they don't know what the internet is or what it's about or how it can be used, but there can be important benefits to them, so in terms of identifying markets for local produce, in terms of prices, in terms of finance and so forth, and all those, for all those, capacity building is necessary because it's important in providing the Internet to those islands that The Internet must deliver what people in those islands want. It should not be top down, and therefore link to that. Then the links for apps which are in women's interests and
whatever they may be, universal access is a central plank of the UN and has been through with this and through many things for a long time, and it is exists pretty much as a policy in every country, including in the Pacific. But there are, then, of course, many communities Islands, which, for various reasons, are not connected. And we've talked about already about the technical issues there, so the difficulties in in cabling, in satellites and receiving in remote areas, in remote islands. But then this is then more about what, in the sense, would help from the consumer point of view or from the user point of view. So again, I've just talked about local content apps and cultural issues. So it requires often, in some countries, there's been surveys where many people have just responded and just said, we don't need the internet, and that's quite simply, I think, because they just simply don't know what it can deliver. And it is important, therefore, to have this bottom up sense of communities and what those communities want out of the internet. And that goes back to the capacity building talked about Remote Connectivity. Affordability is always there. How to keep the costs down people with disabilities that again, there's been a global issue across the whole internet. It's easy to make the print bigger. It's easy to make the sound louder. But devices, for example, for physically handicapped, or apps which deal with mental handicap are lacking in general e government we've talked about. And then there's a question here about universal access funds and how they're used again. I'll leave that and move on. I just put this up quickly. You can't see it. It's difficult to absorb very quickly. But this is, again, I've said the statistics. These are the core statistics of internet use by age, male, female and so on. Like I say, it shows basic equality, but there are some hiccups, let's say for different ages, for men or women, as the case may be, there's an important about measuring access, because this is a core issue, and often the data gets mixed up. So there is coverage. The telephone companies will say, this is the coverage. This is whether you can receive a signal. Access is how many people log on. So it's just simply, can they get a connection? But then the numbers there can be complicated. We've talked about tourist Sims being included and counted as being users as a percentage of population. People can have more than one phone, can have a home a work home phone and a home phone that can be shared phones. So all of these mean that the figures are are can be misleading and and then access beyond access, there is clearly skills. So use, sorry, so you can have access to internet, but can you use it? Do you have the skills to use it and go back relevant applications? So in my in, from my point of view, in all this data, the core data that should be used is the data, which simply is a household survey, often, this case, a national census, simply saying, how often or when did you when do you use the internet and What to use it for? In terms of cross cutting and again, online abuse, we've come across this. The clearest institution that deals with this is the Fiji Online Safety Commission, and there are questions that are passed around about how effective this is. On the other side here, one of the interesting things here that I've heard is that when the Online Safety Commission hears a complaint, you refer it to the media platform, Facebook or whoever to be taken down. But those platforms don't employ staff from the Pacific, and they're based in Australia. So again, the cultural sensitivity here is missing. And I think there's a strong argument to say that these platforms should employ more people from the islands to really get the sense of what is appropriate and what is not appropriate here. I've talked about forgiveness culture. I've talked about, Well, I haven't talked about, I think that what is clearly replied here is an effective way of reporting, and I think it has to be from my sense, a single phone number, it should be easy for people to report a problem. And the question then is, who gets that phone number, how it is treated? Is there an Online Safety Commission? Is there some other institution which is responsible for receiving it? What is her own role of the phone company? What is the role of government here and then on the last point here, Id some registration. So to what extent do you collect the data for people collecting a sim, and how is that kept and used, which can go back to data protection, but it also is very closely allied to who is responding and how is this taken forward. I should go next one. Okay, lack of skills, assessment, education skills. ICT, in schools, countries are making progress, and obviously it needs to continue. In all talked about capacity building. One of the issues here seems to be that there is, in many countries, a lack of people with the skills to do the capacity building on technical issues and internet issues and app development. So where do we go on that? Especially given second from the bottom, a general lack of post secondary institutions in the countries themselves, although at the regional level, USP and other universities in the region do a good job. And that then relates again to open education resources and how those are involved. So we're on to the last dimension, multi stakeholderism. We're in the regional IGF. The only country, as has been mentioned before, with a national IGF is danwatu, unless I much Miss 10 but my first point here is that we know now that, for example, the voice of the Pacific is heard at Global Climate Change meetings. Now people know about this happening and what's happening here. Why not the same at the global IGF, the internet is strongly involved in all these questions in climate change, but also in in many senses of the Pacific, taking part in global discussions, and it should be there too, in multi state corridors at the national level, there are principles of consultation and active participation. And that comes back to said earlier transparency about providing feedback to groups who submit comments on documents. And this is the government science again, and then how civil society, how to ensure that it supports local communities to get online the hate speech, misogyny and civil rights, again, capacity building, lack of technical resources and so forth, in Just one final one, because I think this is very relevant in region E waste, the difficulty of disposal, recycling, and again, there has been a lot of initiatives in the Pacific, a lot of plans, but as far as far as I can see, practice still needs to be pushed forward. Okay? So that's broadly it. So I think in building this into this big picture and what as it were, should go through out to UNESCO, but also from the region and so on. Everyone should be connected to allow national international exchanges and conversations and so on. Policies initiatives to mature and grow the online economy, to get the startups building to have true online commerce, rather than just marketplace,
strengthen cultural environmental values, which I know is really important to everybody here, and which the internet can enhance and strengthen by building sites and data and presentations and so forth, to show the world and to show within the region the richness that is available. The global voice at COP to global voice at IGF. I've mentioned and I think all these fit nicely within the Pacific community, 2021 to 2030 regional strategy. So I think in that sense, as well, such initiatives can be supportive of what you're trying to do at a regional body. So how to get there? So this is really catching what I've just said, transparency, so data to provoke discussion, to have to look at the online markets to see how to how they should come together in online markets. Then it's not just government, but businesses themselves. They can see the business opportunities. They can see how to market themselves with a domain name from from the country itself, capacity building, civil society, the lack of technical skills and enforcement of rights, regulation, many things there. And I know it takes a long time to get regulation in place, but it seems like the priorities are probably data protection and then satellites, because satellites are happening and they need it now. Then a global role for the region. It's there. It's happening. It's happening at COP. It can happen at IGF. And satellites is a key comes in back here you are the test bed for satellites for Starlink, because you need it more than anybody else in other regions of the world, it's a luxury or an add on, but here, I think it's happening. So you can play a big part, both in national regulation, but also in in the global attitude as this develops. And we've already talked to this in the global IGF, and various interest in what the Pacific is doing in that regard. Okay, I think that's pretty much it. So we're going to leave you. These are the sense of these are the four questions to start with, as it were, that we are suggesting to be to discuss after the tea break and but there may be other things. If you either through the email which was sent yesterday, or through the print version, if you have it, if you see things in the recommendations, we're happy that those should be discussed as well. We have people here as well who were in the the meetings and the national teams, who also will know the background to some of this debate. And the other thing to say is this, none of this is set in stone at all. In fact, the whole purpose of this meeting is we want your opinions. We want to have this truly reflecting you, not me, and therefore anything comments that you have will be gratefully received by email or any other way you you care to submit them. I can jump quickly to the thank you slide. These are the recommendations in the report, but too many. So you can see Tata Dex email down at the bottom there. So we've just got five minutes before, before the next break. Are there any immediate questions for either of us? Does this make sense? I know it's it's a bit of a rush. As we said, there are, in whole, there's 300 indicators and but we're 100 core and so on. So there are things, obviously we've skipped over. There are things which are in both fuller reports, both at national regional level, which are still kind of under editing and under revision and so on. But if it doesn't make sense or big questions, please, this is a good point. Thank you.
So no questions before we break for regarding the presentation and the findings, summary of the findings of the report,
please. Thank you. Just get to the mic. Thanks
for your presentation. My question is around stakeholder engagement in the respective countries. For example, while some of the data is accessible on the on the internet, did you also work with, for example, SPC has a Data Hub which collects a lot of data across the region. I'm just curious, was that also part of this report, in terms of some of the work that some of the regional organizations also doing, in correlation to the, I guess, metrics for digital policy and then digital transformation.
Okay, just to since no other hands at the moment, but just quickly. Yes, we did that. There are two things which I would kind of qualify that with. Firstly, we wanted to go with national data, because he's an essentially, these are national reports for national policy. And I think national policy development has to be supported by national data. And that's why, again, I showed the census and the mixed data and so forth. But obviously, SPC does an amazing job on many of these areas, which is really important. That's the main thing. I think there's something else, but it's slipped by mine. If I, if I come back on it, I remember, yes,
we have this test.
I follow up question, so are you saying or not saying that the data hub that is housed at one of these regional organizations does not influence national policies, while also linked to some of the SDG goals in terms of not using the is that, is that what you say or not saying, Sorry, so with the regional data, are you saying that the data that's been used or collated there cannot be used to influence national policy? Not
at all. I It's not about the quality of data. It's about ownership and the ownership of reports that I think it's it's important that there are many organizations in different regions who produce extremely good regional analysis. SPC is one of them, but it's about in supporting and driving forward national policy. I think national data should be there, and often it put it you can also put it this way,
the regional
data, just by international data, is national data. If there's no data at the national level, there's no data at regional level, because you can only collect data at the national level. So it needs to be the regional data can often be okay for regional data can often be processed or refined or improved on the national data because it's it's cleaned and various things improvements are made. But fundamentally, if you're if you're producing a new legislation or new policies around Universal Access, I would say you probably want to ensure that the debt is coming from your national statistics agency and that it reflects the situation. Also. What I'm saying is that not only that, but you would want to have in there as well data from the telephone companies and or and, or the regulator, so that that should be within that National Forum. And it just speaks more clearly if it's national, and it enables you to go back to the national statistics agency and question them or improve the data. So all of those elements, I think, are there. So as I said, I think the SPC data is extremely good and is important and fills in gaps to countries that don't have where the data is more difficult, let's say, but nonetheless. And lastly, where those gaps exist, the emphasis on national data encourages those countries to have those national surveys and to say that they should be looking at that. So it's a it's not a question of equality for their the data, it's about the policy and the policy development within the countries.
Thank you. Can I just add to what Simon and tashika said? Thank you so much for that. I hope, I think there might be some misunderstanding on there must be a lot of questions. Pastor, just to clarify on that question, as I give an example for Vanuatu, the Director General for the prime minister in Vanuatu signed off on this exercise before it even took place, before even UNESCO started the exercise. So it was a decision by the government to have this govern analysis by UNESCO. So that's why they are. They carried out with local, local support and context. You to the national, national governments. But I think that there could be a question, Simon and tatifiq, I know you mentioned that the five tativik mentioned the five countries were selected because they are under Fiji, but the other islands might have a question like, why are they not having this exercise happening in The exercise? Will it happen in the future? Thank you.
Yes. Thank you very much, Andrew, as you mentioned the case of Vanuatu, I must also say that this project has been officially endorsed by the government of all the five countries. So as I said, it's a voluntary process, and UNESCO does not just do the assessment. UNESCO provides support to the national stakeholders to do the assessment at the request of whether it's government or whether the national stakeholders, but in any case, as an intergovernmental organization, we do work with the ministry, with the government also to ensure the process. But again, you know that there have been many projects that have been implemented by, for example, the visits coordinators or un resident coordinator office or other UN agencies covering different regions, sub regions of the region. I mentioned that, for example, there is another project currently ongoing, for example, for for the North Pacific, with different components. But regardless of whether there is a project already developed or not, any any country that is interested to con in conducting the assessment can reach out to me. So I am the focal point for for the IUI assessments. So they can reach out to me and we can see together how to initiate the assessment in your respective countries, regardless of whether there is a wider project or not. So this is how we work. Countries just express their interest, and then we see together how to start the implementation. I think there are actually very few countries that have implemented the assessment in the framework of bigger project. There are cases, but there are a number of countries that just initiated the assessment outside of any global initiative or regional initiative.
Thank you. Thank you. Our time is 1536, we are due for tea, but we'll come back with more, more discussions on this. I think that will allow you to the floor to continue to engage and ask questions I know where to answer. Can you can you last one before we
was there a time frame? So this is the first one. Did you say that you were going to do this for the next five years? Or is this the only one? Because it's a lot of work, and I'm wondering if this is the first and then you're going to do, you know, like three more or two more, or was this a one off?
I am not sure which slide you're referring to about the next five years. So so I'm not sure, but just to clarify so this project was a one off project, the DG fund project, which is implemented by six UN agencies, and actually it is running until February. But what we try and encourage to do through the recommendations and also through this discussion, and UNESCO will take forward the recommendations and the discussion we have here, we will be talking to other other regional or international organizations, and we're having discussions with with also other other entities and governments to see how we can carry recommend the recommendations forward to ensure the continuity rather than stopping here. And all of this is discussions, and the efforts to have this vision and way forward is aimed at that, just to make sure that there is continuity and it's not stopping here. And also, I must highlight that again, this is a very comprehensive, comprehensive framework, and UNESCO has does not necessarily have mandate in all the areas where the recommendations arise. So it's also for other organizations to take up and move forward with the recommendations, working with the countries, but the project itself, yes, is running until February.
And I mean, the other point to make, I think, as tatik said at the beginning, is that, essentially, for the most part, this has been been out by countries on a voluntary basis, so that there's nothing stopping a country that wants to carry this out for suggest putting it forward. However, that's not to say that UNESCO will necessarily have resources to cover that, so the country might well have to find the resources to enable it to carry that out. From UNESCO's point of view, it may not need much resources at the UNESCO level, as it were, to support that, but in terms of bringing together stakeholders, collecting the data, that would be something that the country would in terms of resourcing would have to address. I think that's okay.
Thank you. I think we will go for a break now, until is it for 30 minutes break, yeah, so let's have a 30 minutes break, yeah, and then come back. We do have a lot of questions, please. If you don't have access to this report, I think that the email is there, send an email to have a copy, so that you can also provide a feedback, especially those of us who have not had this, who have had this report from our countries and news you you can ask question, you can look at the report and then continue to engage in the next session. Thank you. Applause.
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if you want. So welcome back and thank you very much everyone for your time and contributions during the first half of the of our presentation, presentation I should so we put up the questions that we wanted to discuss. We wanted to have discussion groups so that we have your and have your presentation and contribution to the report, to the questions and findings and recommendations that we I just wanted to make a short statement so although I did share with you the summary of the report yesterday via email, I did mention that this is working document format, and although our aim was to launch the findings and recommendations Today, as I mentioned during the firm during my presentation. Our aim is also to have as many views and inputs as possible from all of you, and before we go and publish the report, we would like and appreciate very much your input and feedback on any aspect of the report that we have on including recommendations just to before we move on, onto the discussion within the groups. I must remind you that the regional report was based on the national assessments, which have not yet been published, but I explained to you, perhaps, which side was it? But why? So the process of the assessment, which was very long ago, but the process of assessment which starts with the establishment of multi stakeholder advisory board, and this was the case for all five countries of the study in South Pacific. So we started with the establishment of multi stakeholder advisory board. And I think in the South Pacific islands, we had more people invited to join in into the map than in any other countries. Of course, not all of the members were able to join but, but we have reached out to 10s of people, and when I say we, it's the national, national teams and the findings that the data was collected and guided by the National multicultural advisory board members, but in addition, also to from different state national stakeholders with which did not necessarily have the time to be part of the map, but they kindly helped and guided the data collection. And what's also important, as I said, these national reports are we encourage very strongly the national ownership. And these reports are national products, and each of the national reports, both the findings and recommendations, have been validated by the National multi stakeholder advisory board, and they have also been circulated among wider stakeholder groups, among the people who weren't able to be part of the multi stakeholder advisory group. And we have incorporated every input that we received from national stakeholders to the report, the national reports. I'm talking about the national reports. The regional report then drew on the data and the recommendations that were validated by the National stakeholders. So we moved on to the regional report only after we had all national reports validated by the National stakeholders and multi stakeholder advisory board members. So just to clarify this and the regional report draws on on on this, national reports validated by the National stakeholders. So we observed all the all the steps, except for the impact assessment, because it's too soon to assess the impact. So just this is just a clarification and a reminder to please not circulate the working document that has been shared with you before UNESCO publishes it, because UNESCO needs to publish it first and can disseminate, circulate and use it in the way you want, of course, observing the copyright and everything. So if anyone has any questions at this point about the process or the report, I'm happy to take it, if not. I wanted to invite because we have two of the researchers here. I wanted to invite Doreen and Swaran to talk about how they went forward and how they completed the assessment in their countries. And if anybody, a few who was part of the multi stakeholder advisory board who contributed to the assessment, would like to share their experience before we move on to the discussion, please feel free. Who wants to start? Maureen, I
Okay, good afternoon. My name is Doreen, like you all know, printed here on the on the tag, good afternoon. Well, I wear a lot of hats. I am part of the smart sisters. Smart sisters, you would know it's an NGO organization in Vanuatu that we promote STEM in girls in ICT. And then I also had more than 10 years of experience with telecom industry and telecom regulators office. And then I am currently working for projects climate change projects. I was elected by UNESCO to be part of this lead research because of my experience in telecommunications and also my network with the stakeholders. In fact, I think it's the Fiji team that were part of the initial arrangement with UNESCO once that was approved. And then we were selected from different countries, five countries. So I was one of them from Vanuatu, the process that we had followed was the process that UNESCO had that IUI multi stakeholder advisory board. It's It's all how we follow the process to collect the data and establish a multi, multi advisory stakeholder, board meeting, Committee. It was all written in in this IUI study, research study. So once we were appointed by UNESCO, it's a voluntary work. So once we were appointed in each of our country, like for my country in Vanuatu, I had to select the members of the adversary stakeholder board committee, and these are telecom operators, government ministries and NGOs who are who are directly involved contributing to development of internet in the country, and also users like the NGOs, the civil society, human rights organizations, they're also part of this map committee, and once they were all informed or briefed about what their role Is into this study, and then they were the one that will help me to collect the data. I would be doing all the writings according to the framework that has been presented by Simon and tatifik, but based on the data that they give me. So whatever that I can't find, then I would do my own research, but otherwise, that's the process that we have followed so and then we also had map workshops. We had about two, like in my country, Vanuatu, I had two map workshop. The first one is to brief them about what I'm expected from them, and then the next one is the validation workshop in which they were back with you all the recommendations that is International report. So my report also because I had associated with some donor partners and and they had contributed a lot in the recommendations, because they had their experience internet in the in the country as well. They are users, and that they know what the status of internet is like in Vanuatu, so they also contribute into the recommendations. So and then the report is submitted to UNESCO. So it's the UNESCO that is going through different process of reviewing to have it final, finalized. But I think that's, that's how we were involved, and the process we were part of this UNESCO IUI report, internet landscape report for for the Pacific Island countries.
Thank you. Thank
you very much. Doreen, thank you for the excellent work done. And thank you to all the multi stakeholder advisory boards who board members who actively engaged, and we were there in Vanuatu and inspired to see also the other people, stakeholders who came and contributed and recommendations and their implementation onto leading the implementation and Swaran, I would also like to invite you to share your experience. Please. You
Thank you. Tanevik, thank you, Simon. Good afternoon, everyone once again. So first of all, I feel very honored to be standing here and also expressing some of the findings. And listen, I have had sort of a walkabout, and I'm a person who speaks very frankly, so pardon me if I may say something that upsets you. But what I generally feel is that there are some differing opinions, and we are absolutely happy to take them on board. But what we essentially want here is this report to be owned by the Pacific. Yes, UNESCO is perhaps the custodian of the report. The framework was formulated by UNESCO, and we very appreciative of that. But let's remember the report belongs to the country. That means it is still a working document. Is there's any aspect of the report that you you would like to refute? Please be my guest. I'm happy to work with you. Doreen is happy to work with you. So is Simon. Now, having said that, I just wanted to sort of summarize what the process was like. So this start, and I think for me personally, in 2020 when I saw the Romex framework for the very first time. At that point in time, I think the assessments were only up to Rome X wasn't there. I was a fellow and Anju has been very instrumental in getting this project happening in the Pacific Islands. So yes, so this happened for me personally. I was an online fellow back then for apigf, and my presentation, or rather, the key takeaway of apigf, was bringing Romex or something equivalent. So we can have, you know, some objective data to really have some introspective and find out, where can we improve omics, a project on internet, internet universality indicators, is essentially a project that stems from the basic principle of human rights, that the human rights that we as citizens are able to practice offline should be the same that we practice online. That is the basic driving force that we used to to do the assessments. So there were five countries initially that I took up the project. And Doreen was the lead researcher for Vanuatu. We had mele and Selu for Tonga, and I authored the report for Fiji, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu, but the three, the four women who were leading the research, trust me, every part of the project was visible to all the map members, and it still is, if you'd like us to share it with you. For for in In Finnish, for example, in Fiji's case, we had 25 members, and every sector was represented, right? So the report was accessible to everyone, so the format of the report was as such, there were indicators, there were direct questions, which required direct answers. Now, personally for me, because I did my Master's by theses, and I'm currently also studying my PhD, so I strongly believe in in concrete research methods. I am a believer of qualitative information, type of work. I've also worked with Professor Sharma on the Right to Information project, which is, I think this is a fourth year in right to information and, of course, it is part of the anti corruption project. So you can understand what sort of work it involves. So coming from that perspective, when I started doing this research, to be honest, initially, I had a bit of confusion, because I was thinking, if this is research, what sort of methodologies are we using? That's when we were reassured by UNESCO that this is an assessment. Whatever questions, are there? Those things either there or they're not. So there were times when I picked up info, for example, and I was told by Simon, okay, ITU is there, please go back to Ministry of Communications and ask them, what do they say? Contrary to what itu may have published. Now, the reality of the Pacific is we still have a chronic problem of working in silos. That is something we really need to work on. Right For example, in Solomon Islands, if you go search up data on the World Bank's site, APNIC site, you will see data that is as old as 2019, and in the IT field that is Ghana. So it right. So that was we faced, which is where we strongly rely on the multi stakeholder advisory board members to give us your perspectives. So I just wanted to reassure you that the document is still a working document. If you would like to review any segment, we are happy to take that on. If you would like to give us some supplementary data to put into that assessment. We are happy to do that as well. Now, I do realize that when we see the sub regional report here as a team, of course, for me as a Fijian, I would say, hey, that doesn't happen in Fiji. I mean, it's common. And I'm completely with you. Sorry, guys, but I'm completely with you. If you are going to tell me that, no, that doesn't have GG, to be mindful we have matriarchal structures and patriarchal structures in in the Pacific Island, in the South Pacific islands alone. So some of the statements we may make right now, this is just a generalized perspective. It may not be presented in a synthesis document format as what we do for IGF or AP IGF, but it is still a working document. Please feel free to tell us what you feel if you want me to share the reports. What we can do maybe from here onwards, is we can have working groups. We can have one team for Fiji, one for Tuvalu, one for Solomon Islands, one for Tonga and one for Vanuatu, and we're happy to show you the entire report all over again, and you can tell us what you what you feel, if you feel anything is wrong, say this is yes, this is right. I'm not going to say that. None of us can say that you are the owners of the report. You are the ones who are the members you own the data, contrary to what Ito APNIC may publish. And that is, that is perhaps one of my greatest experiences in this in this project. So we started in maybe October, one of the lessons I personally learned, and I had to also maybe discuss this with with the UNESCO's team, let's not start thinking about starting a project in October, because by the time we have a team ready, it's almost Christmas time. We don't want to work. We don't right that. I've had some conversations with many of you. I totally appreciate your feedback. But what I would greatly appreciate is if you could please be part of the system, work with us. What Doreen myself, Selu and mele, and many of you know that Malay is a statistician by profession, right? We only have the information that was provided to us, but many times we were told we have to go back to the agencies, go back to the organizations, ask them what they say about this, not what itu says that is the level of ownership that the report will allow, so it won't be published till we all have enough. But having said that, there is a certain time period, right? So we could allow, maybe tedwick would be able to reiterate on, you know, the timelines and up to what I mean, how much time do we really have, even if we would allow, even if you were to allow people to give in their final say. So do you think you'd like to in that approach? We have working groups. What time is it now? We don't have much time.
So thanks very much, Swaran, and thank you so much for your energy and drive. It takes a lot of energy and a lot of time and energy of 10 people to lead a research in one country, but three countries, and you've done an excellent job, and also in bringing everyone together and getting so many views on board and really ensuring multi stakeholder perspective. And I must say that we had multi stakeholder truly by multi stakeholder group in every country, so I think so we did have a lot of feedback, and the report was validated, but however, we will be open to receiving feedback, if there are any, but considering that, we really stakeholder approach and all the views have been taken into account, perhaps you could share the report with people who are still interested to contribute And who haven't necessarily seen the report, perhaps by the what are we now? We can give them two weeks. So we can give you two weeks to just give any feedback that you may feel you want to share, or any input, because the work has been done over a year and through a thorough research thinking, anybody has anything to add and just to explain what will happen after that, we do have a multi stakeholder approach. The report belongs to the countries the UNESCO provides guidance. UNESCO gets it its mandate from member states, and each of your countries are member states of UNESCO who have given us the mandate to work on this, who have endorsed this framework. So we're an intergovernmental organization, so afterwards, we will be sharing the report with the ministry in charge or the entity in charge. For Tonga, it would be Andrew for Tuvalu, it would be op ed for Vanuatu CIOs office, so we will share it as an intergovernmental organization with the ministry or entity in charge, and then we will have the summary reports, national reports published, and then the entity in charge will decide to publish the full report, just to be fully transparent. This is the process, as far as the regional report is concerned, so we can have two weeks to receive the feedback, and UNESCO will then move on with publishing the regional report, because it is based on the national reports that have been validated and will receive additional feedback from you. But we want what we wanted to do today is exactly what happened, perhaps what you received as feedback in the corridor, or, I don't know this is exactly why we're having this session, to have feedback from you. And ideally, we wanted to divide you into groups to have the discussion and perhaps have your presentation or on how to improve the report or what to incorporate. Do we have time? We do have some time, maybe
in the essence of time, what we can do at this stage is just register your interest, and then we can work with you in a group or individually. Maybe not here,
yes, but we still have 45 minutes, if everyone agrees, we had an extensive presentation on the main findings. What I would suggest is, if you would like to have a discussion within maybe three groups, and we would leave it up to you to leave it up to you to discuss
individual in different groups. They could discuss in 1015, minutes and have a present five minute presentation each. This was our plan. But if you feel like, because I feel like there was quite a few discussions, and it would be very helpful to have your feedback heard by everyone, but be
wrong for us to generalize, you know, the five countries. So if there's something happening very differently in Fiji, of course, it may not be the same for Tonga, this
is analyzed and presented the full board. So it is, it is clarified, no. So I will leave it to you to divide yourselves, please. 15 minutes presentation, so you have the printout. So to lead one group, Doreen will need one group.
Okay, I can lead Fiji's group, but
not just Fiji, not just Fiji, if they have Thank you.
Okay, we have another suggestion by the decision maker to have an open mic. And anyone who wants to avoid internal discussion and speak up, please feel free to approach the microphone. Yes, please. I
Sorry, can I sorry? I've got a really sore throat. You know results of to be 2am being pushed out of can I just make our suggestions? There are, I think, about 19 recommendations in a report.
You know, rather than having a country by country specifically look to look at the report, which once we look at, you know, because you have done the collection of the data, you make the recommendation, just wondering whether there is something that is really personal, and in the nine mentations there that you wanted all the countries to have, you know, and if that is the case, what are those? You know, one out of the 19 itself, so that we can talk about that, and then we can go home and start thinking of how we're going to be implementing a recommendation that's only a suggestion from somebody who already attended one of those workshop. And I've, you know, been given the report to have a look at at all of those things, and I like the idea that you thematically group the recommendations, just wondering, because you were the one that were doing the work right throughout the five countries, what is the thing that stand out the most you know in your recommendation that you would like all the countries to implement? Thank you.
Thank you very much for the question, and thank you so much for your role in advancing the assessment in Tonga, personally. So forgive me if I didn't understand your question correctly. But so this regional report and the recommendations that we shared with you yesterday and that we also gave out the print aways. This is exactly what we did, financial reports which were envisaged, and we will have them separately. But based on these reports, we have this regional report and the recommendation. So the regional report looked at the situation based on, again, Romex principles and summarized the situation in all of these countries. And it's just an analysis, and based on this analysis, all of these 19 recommendations are for all countries. It's regional recommendations, but it can be applied in some cases, because our the focus of our project is South Pacific. We focus a lot on the South Pacific, and mentioned in his analysis that this can be applicable also to other other countries in the region. So this nine point recommendations are already the recommendations, the sort of sub regional recommendations that are applicable for for all five countries, rather than individual countries. Is, I don't know if this was your question.
Yeah, I do understand that these are regional recommendations, but because you were the people that were doing the that you were doing that study, out of the 19 recommendation, what is one thing out of those that you think that should be prioritized? Perhaps, you know, like that is common right throughout the region. So what would be one or two of those things itself? Because I know that a whole lot of us, you know, in the countries, we're not going to implement a 19, you know, straight away. But if there is something that is really pertinent, something that is really important for our in this from this Pacific IGF, what would that be?
Thank you very much. This is exactly the question we wanted to ask you, because this is you said it's a report done by us, but I should remind that it's a report done by the countries, and the recommendations were formulated by the countries. And it's a question that we want to ask you, and this was the purpose of the breakout groups. And we cannot decide for you what is a priority recommendation for you. We want to ask you, all of you, we have all these 19 recommendations. The questions is, if we had more time to discuss but this is a question to ask to you, because you know the situation better. You know your priorities better, and you should be the ones to tell what are the priorities for you?
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you for your question. I think please correct me if I'm wrong. I think what you essentially want to know is what was some of the common findings across the five countries? Okay, so the absence of a Privacy Act, serious concerns around intellectual property, data sovereignty, and there was questions about the cyber crimes, the lack of Information Act. So some of the things that we found common, of course, for example, in Vanuatu, I must say the legal regulatory framework was, in many cases, much better than Fiji. But having said that, we had the Information Act 2018 which was enabled, an enabler for many other things. So if there was one or two things that we would comment on, it would probably be the absence of the Cyber Crimes Act, the absence of a Privacy Act, the absence of intellectual property regulation, those were some of the primary concerns. Okay,
thank you. Thank you. So we can take it home and we'll say, you know, let's work on that. You know, for example. So Andrew here from the government, I think he's got his own homework to take home. Thank you,
but thanks very much for clarifying this, Warren, but I want to ask, okay, including you, Andrew, because you've been so closely involved, we want to hear you, because it's your report, it's your findings, it's your recommendations. What's the priority for you?
I want to trigger some discussion. That's all so one of the things that I think for Vanuatu, one of the recommendation, is National Internet Governance Forum. So I think it is more relevant to talk about that in here, because these people might go away and start setting up the national Internet Governance Forum, which would be more relevant to this discussion. So tell us more about that. I mean, if they want, I think it's in some of the recommendations that you have, how will you assist in facilitating this to the global thinking?
Thank you very much. Andrew, so this was a recommendation in, I think many of the countries for Vanuatu, we speak, spoke with the CIO, and he identified this as an absolute priority recommendation. So what we did, and we had the same recommendation, which was also well count by Tonga Tuvalu, this is, this was vividly expressively something that they wanted to take upon. So what we as UNESCO did is we have a we have excellent relationship with IGF Secretariat, and it's their mandate to support national IGFs. But considering that the recommendation came came from us, we had a dialog with the IGF Secretariat. We had a dialog with the with you guys, and you the multi stakeholder advisory board and the CIOs office have identified the people who would would be talking with the IGF Secretariat to establish it, and we have facilitated the discussion. So if it's a priority for you, and then IGF Secretariat who has the mandate, then you take it. From there, we facilitated discussion among representatives from Tuvalu and Tonga, between the IGF Secretariat and these countries who were interested. So from our our end, what we can do is facilitate this discussion and get you started with it. Thank you.
Hi, I'm tajwiri. I'm representing the Online Safety Commission. Great to hear your recommendations with that commission and plus from the general public, but it would be good to understand what exactly are the complaints on how we can foster an inclusive process to understand the solutions. Now my first point is, have we picked up the Online Safety Act to see what all mandates and functions are? So the ACT mandate is what we are fulfilling currently, and we do note that our limitations are there, however, with approximately 943,000 people in Fiji, we have five people at the Online Safety Commission to fulfill those functions. To note that we are also currently working on building more people on board and perhaps the legislation review afterwards. My third point is that we have a very trusted relationship with the platform. Platforms like meta and Tiktok, however, not every request can be facilitated. Higher end issues like image based abuse and sextortions are prioritized, and with such simple things like blocking a user or, you know, avoiding further communications with the user, is something that is advised to the complainants. I also understand that we do not have powers to prosecute matters in court, but we do have a memorandum of understanding with the Fiji police force to further investigate and prosecute matters. For example, if the matter becomes an offense with the Commission, because the commission looks after into civil matters. So once the matter becomes an offense, definitely it shifts to the output of the matter. So definitely, we will have to refer those matters to the Fiji police force for prosecution. Now we also, in terms of our awareness beat, we are reaching out to the communities, to the schools, to the businesses and different demographics through our various projects. And we have also partnered with international stakeholders, like Office of the Safety Commission in Australia, Netsafe in New Zealand, Ofcom and in UK, and global online safety regulators network where learning and sharing is happening. So Online Safety Commission is learning a lot from these organizations. Having said that to our point, currently, our prioritization is building more people at the Commission, and straight after would be the legislation review onwards. Thank you.
Sorry, I got a little depressed. If you could just repeat the first question, or was it a comment?
So there were public consultations that happened like multi stakeholder approach in Fiji. So I wasn't part of some of the consultation process, but I just wanted to know what were some of the complaints from the public with regards to the ineffectiveness of the commission.
Okay, so Jeremy, can Simon please feel free to jump in, in case I may miss something. There was not, in my perspective, there wasn't really a complaint. But when we had, because we've had a series of multi stakeholder meetings with your commission, and you've also had complete visibility into the report, right, we did have, I mean, you did express that the limitations that you just mentioned, those limitations were expressed. But I don't think there was any complaint in particular, because we did not go ask the nature of the report. The nature of the research was as such. We did not go and ask people. We did not have, you know, separate research activities stemming out from the questions, where we go and ask, What do you think about the Online Safety Commission? So there was no such part of the report. So 100% of the report has been made visible to your office. There's nothing else apart from what you have seen, just to reassure you, so at any point in time, we did not have disappointments expressed within that forum. So before we made all the recommendations valid, when did we declared it as valid? The Online Safety Commission was present, and the reports had gone to the office already. So no, there was really no question of us asking anyone, are you happy with Online Safety Commission?
I think just one thing that came up, as Simon mentioned that, which isn't really complaint against the Online Safety Commission, was when the commission the culture of forgiveness that Simon mentioned, that we heard that people tend, especially when tend to not take it, not to give an action to it, or, for example, when you try to take further action, or you try to take it further, and there is a case of already criminal case to be or an investigation to be started, I think overall, this was the feedback that people do not want to pursue it further. So this, I think these were the main references that were made in this regard visa, Visa public's interaction with with the Online Safety Commission,
and in general, I would say that is that The Online Safety Commission is a good example of addressing this problem in the Pacific, but that in terms of being effective, in terms of prosecutions and convictions and complaints and so On, that a certain number of points could be not exactly improved, just this would help make the Online Safety commissions better, more effective, and those points were coming from the two members of the Online Safety Commission who were present at the MAB. So they told us directly that when they dealt with the media platforms in Australia, that the people did not understand the culture of this. They told us that people who put in, who rang the Online Safety Commission often did not wish to pursue prosecutions that they they put they complained, but they didn't want to take that further. And thirdly, that the that obviously, as you said yourself, that it would work better if there were more resources. That last point is obviously the kind of thing that, in fact, all civil society can benefit from, and we know there are limited resources. So it's a question of how that works, and that's a national decision. But those are the points there. And in a sense, the question about the media platform is a point to the media platforms. It's their actions that should change in terms of prosecutions, I think this whole cult question of the culture in Pacific and gender equality and women's representation, I know that's a very sensitive cultural issue, and I think that is something that it's not something that we can See what to do about it. That's something that you have to decide. Jude, did you want to say anything?
Just to add on to what Simon says, I think I remember. So it wasn't, not really an incident. So what happened was, we were talking about certain predicaments that the commission, not just the commission, but all the members. So the underlying principle behind the Romex assessment was having the same basic human rights as you practice offline you should have, you know, your full liberty to be able to practice your digital rights. Okay, so when we had the discussions, we did have some discussions around, you know, our traditional forgiveness remains. And you know, if you have been following news, even in Fiji, we've, we've seen statements even made by the Prime Minister, where he says that the law remains. We have our cultural aspect there. So these are not really complaints, and it is what it is. You know, it really isn't complaints. These are perspectives that we that we're not in a position to say this is right or this is wrong. These are perspectives of the people and we respect them.
Amanda from Digicel Pacific. For context, I take care of five countries in the region for a telecommunications operator, that includes Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga and Nauru. So when all of this was happening, I was fortunate to be part of the process, the multi stakeholder step at least. I do have some comments on the summary. If I could share that. I've also noticed quite a bit of defensiveness in the room. At least better. Maybe later you can give us a bit of a plate to bring us together. I
these are good things, by the way, I've taken into consideration as comments, I mean, to begin with here in the major findings you leading in terms of having an act that requires Internet service providers to introduce family friendly filtering entirely correct. I can tell you that
it also focuses on the fact that there are only three countries, Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu that have had deep and regulators. That's also a fact for these three markets, these three countries, apologies. It very specifically calls out two important mobile telephone companies in the region, yes, Digicel and our competitor.
There are also points which I think are very, very important and very valid to have here around University for including that, and that's a point that we continue to discuss in Vanuatu, in Fiji, I suppose, in the Solomons as well. The idea here behind what is written this paragraph, and I think it'll resonate with a lot of speakers today who spoke about funding. The paragraph goes, these facilities are supported by levy from telco profits, which is redirected towards extending services to unserved areas, or in developing meaningful applications for rural or disadvantaged communities. Obviously fuller detail on how it would be used would be in the national reports. I
I also see here some very credible sources cited, particularly for Fiji, the telecommunications authority of Fiji, regulator, of course, I
has a very positive call out in terms of having a national Internet Governance Forum. I note also some observations on the last met some years ago. But again, factual information, information that would have been conveyed through your on the ground, Things
trust and security, something that we already discussed throughout today, the fact that Tonga and Vanuatu Fiji does not, you know, these observations are not new. Perhaps the men which is presented this afternoon has been very confronting, so immediately, our reaction was to focus on what are they going to tell us to do? But looking at it, it's more observations of what is happening, and I hope that it can be accepted in that way, particularly because it's validated information reporting and an assessment and an observation, not a complaint. I was in the room that day when the Online Safety Commission was being discussed, and the observation was they're lacking in prosecution powers, but obviously it goes all the way back to resources legislation that can support you, and maybe having that observation in here will result in some progress towards expanding
just on the summary for recommendations regulation is urgently needed. Yes, definitely,
lights, of course,
perhaps also for G so the question raised from Dr Steen in terms of what could be priority for her to take back, or also for the representative from the ministry, I thought that number five was very, very important, that access should be a right and a vital service in order to come back in effect, operators but the governments must seek to expand access and keep costs as low as possible. We all need that in our Pacific Island countries, key areas such as online abuse. This is a growing concern, particularly, I'm specifically aware of how growing, how much it is a day to day in Fiji. So having a recommendation in here to combat that. It mentions here the police, the judiciary and other authorities should receive training on the implications of online human rights. Also something very factual. We need the training to be able to implement on the ground in terms of registers. Perhaps this is something Taff and RTI can collaborate on I'm not entirely sure they did phone numbers for reporting online abuse. I remember having this discussion with Simon, yes, liabilities and all can be discussed afterwards. The private sector. I'm noting here number 12 that they need to carefully enlarge the online market. I like the word carefully, because I do think that's important. And then I'm looking at fintech. So to my mind, triggering. Did you sell my cash and our competitors e wallet for finally, if I could just point out for the government and civil society number 17 to work closely to improve prosecution of those responsible for online misogyny, child abuse and hate speech. I know within the summary the Online Safety Commission be the only properly established entity that would do this across these five countries. But to have something this broad to say the government should work closely. You know that could include law enforcement in Fiji, the Ministry of Communications is taking a progressive step towards addressing this, particularly against pornography. In some island in South Pacific, Nauru, they've put across an entire ban. I wonder if that's something we can take away for today, for our own countries, and finally, working together to encourage the development of websites and online services in local languages. I like this one, because every time I go to a Tonga website, it's in Tonga, but I'm not blessed with the language, but I appreciate and I like the fact that it's promoted on your website for world. On incident, I see it too in te reo Maori, which is quite good. And again, I think a very positive recommendation. Yeah, that concludes my comments on this summary. Thank you so much and happy to consider continue discussions.
Thank you so much, Amanda for picking up on those points, and for for for your fabulous contribution to the process of theory report as well. And thanks very much for your feedback. We appreciate that
any reactions just just to add on to what said, I think we all know in the house that Amanda by profession is a lawyer, and the report has has also been discussed with her immediate supervisor, as I said, all map members had had 100% visibility into every aspect of the report. That means, just because the regulators and the SPC perhaps be more concerned with accessibility segment, but they had full rights and they had complete access to give comments on on R, on x, so that was how open the report was to everybody, and it still is so. Thank you very much. Amanda, for, you know, standing by us and helping us in the process. I mean, I think because you've been part of the process, right from the beginning, you have seen how we've evolved, and we are still, you know, learning. Having said that, if I could just become I don't think I can be impartial. And I say this even as a Fijian, I would sometimes get territorial when I see something written about my country, that you guys need to do this, okay, but again, introspective is very important. How are we ever going to improve if we do not, you know, see our current gaps, and we need to work positively towards, you know, using the the the digital divide. And this could perhaps be one of the things, one of the many, many initiatives that many of us are involved in Thank you very much. Please feel free to raise your comments or
good afternoon Sri Lanka. Lee. I'm a Fijian first, and so I probably talk about from the Fiji side stats that were put up earlier. I was really keen to see and really interested in that 2018 2023 mobile access once I've been sitting down for the last few hours just just researching on what happened in 2018 so Fiji had a mandatory sim Registration Act in 2010 but it didn't get implemented until like 2021 but in 2018 Vodafone's LTE LTE light went into more than 65 25% coverage. But if you're a Fijian, we have Vodafone, we have Digicel, and then we have ink, which is part of Vodafone. And every time there's a special, people buy all three SIM cards by a data or, you know, calling card for those ones, and so we're always switching, until probably that part where you had to make it mandatory. So that kind of background information is useful for something like this swarm. I know you, I know your work, and I know that you've worked hard in this report. It's a really good report, because it's really hard to get stats around information relating to the Pacific. And then this is great. I think that, like my speaker before me, it's probably just been in the way that it's been presented for the first time, and I'm seeing this for the first time. I'm looking at the summaries. I can identify with a lot of summaries, because I've done three scoping and analysis projects in the Pacific. There's a part here about online safety for the police. It is taking place because the Pacific Island, there is a Pacific Island law and law operators network, and then there is cyber safety Pacifica, which is going around and doing trainings in the Pacific for the police, but this, this entire recommendation of how we've all been operating in silos, and it's time that, you know, we're talking about Internet governance, we're talking about our region. It's that we come together and we start having discussions. Something that the UN IGF Meg normally does is, if there's a document like this, it gets put out, and people start to put comments to this. And you know, like right now, if you're asking us for comments, we might get a little defensive about what we're seeing about ourselves, but if you know we're given time, could put our comments, and if there were links to where they start, data came from, and how it came about, that would really work. One of the hats that I'm wearing is with Netsafe New Zealand and Netsafe received funding to take out online safety content to five Pacific Island countries. And it's hard because, you know, every Pacific island country needs content, but we've been talking for years about how there's not enough content for our children. But when you get funding like this, and our relationships are with the directors of teachers. Nobody's nobody's connecting us to the education people. And the education people are probably not interested in talking to us because they don't have a relationship with us and with Fiji, you, I have to associate you with somebody before I'll actually start listening to you. And it's probably like that for the rest of our Pacific Island countries, but there's still a lot of work that. And I think that, you know, it comes to the rest of us that are here, you know, we go back home. We take these things, like things like this, we take this discussion, we start having these discussions in our communities. I think Andrew brought up the topic about national IGF in Vanuatu has a national IGF Secretariat, but I think the secretariat is always studying in Australia right now. Maybe when he comes back, then they'll start having these IGF events again. I don't know that. Again, in the local context, it's really nice to when you're looking at this country data, talking to everybody in it's and a lot of times. It's ICT people that will have the background. But I want to go back to what Netsafe is doing in the Pacific. We also this. It was mentioned earlier that there is no dedicated helpline, one of the one of the work that we're working with, with safe, the truan fund and another organization, trialing out something in Papua New Guinea that we're talking to Tonga women in ICT about a helpline, because Netsafe has a helpline for New Zealand, and we're getting a lot of calls from Pacific Island countries on online safety for the Pacific. But if we start finding places that are not connected to government, maybe a civil society, or an office or something that can have something like that. We can train again. We have to come away from our silos. We need to start talking to each other. We need to start, you know, projects, if we got, if we're not going to be talking to each other, we're going to be overlapping and stepping on each other. So, you know, this is just my takeaway from this, but great report recommendations. I look forward to seeing it being published.
Thank you so much. Valuable inputs we did take already, Simon taking notes on his draft report, which is the full version. And yes, definitely, we will be sharing the full report for for comments and final input, any other questions, concerns, remarks, objections, yes, please.
Kia, ora, tatou, televa, I just really want to congratulate all my colleagues spoken this afternoon. I know how difficult it is when you're very passionate about a subject to come and respond. So I'd just like to say thank you. This is obviously very, very important work, based on what you shared with me earlier, there are only five months left to run in this project. However, in spite of the fact that I'm from internet, Aotearoa, ipuranga, Aotearoa council member mourn Maori. I'm ex member of Pacific IGF, and we all are here, and we all share the same passion for the Pacific and IGF. So we had a quick whip around at afternoon tea, and most of the groups that I spoke to from every country that is mentioned in this report, the five and many others we would like to recommend from this group here that UNESCO actually is the project of assessing internet development in the Pacific to allow the multi stakeholders advisory boards from each participant country existing to conduct further Talanoa, so the understandings of the findings, like we have just had this afternoon, is made available to them. So that's recommendation that I had a quick whip around, and that's something that we would like you to take back to UNESCO, because it is so important that our communities, we are all passionate Internet governance people, our communities have a few steps away from that. So UNESCO, we would like you to take that message back from this forum that we will be requesting an extension of this project. Kia pratao,
thank you very much. So the extent, if I'm understanding correctly, you're referring to the timeline of the assessment, or are you referring to the bigger project that I mentioned? So the bigger project is led by ILO. The bigger project is part so the bigger project is implemented by six UN agencies. What UNESCO has is a very small part the IUI assessments in these five countries, and cultural activities with this which is implemented by UNESCO Samoa and Fiji offices, the regional office. So unfortunately, the extension of the bigger project does not depend on UNESCO. It's not a UNESCO project. However, we we do appreciate your passion and your expertise, and we couldn't have imagined a better platform to discuss this regional report. That's why we are doing this, and we are grateful to the IGF Pacific, IGF Secretariat for providing this platform, and we will be more than happy to again share the bigger report with all of you to have your further input and to see how we how we can work on this together for kiss you much.
Sorry if I may just add to the week's comments, thank you, ma'am. Thank you so much for your your comments. It, I think it speaks volumes of the need for an assessment, you know, contrary to an audit. So essentially, there's a huge difference between what an assessment does and what an audit does, right? So we are here to identify the gaps and work as a multi stakeholder committee to, you know, to work on we really need to work on ISO so that we can forward. And I think one of the strongest commitments we have had from all of our map meetings across the five countries, is everybody's interested in a national IGF. And this was, in fact, thank you for bringing that up. Amanda, it was one of my I was going to discuss this with every glass of wine. What can you do for us? We want to set up, you know, our national IGF in the countries. So this was going to be a discussion, which I thought about for later tonight. I also wanted to add that. I also wanted to add that teddevik has also created a dynamic coalition of national authors and map members who are going to refine the indicators itself. So even that is work in progress. So whatever the indicators are today, it may not be the same six months down the line before we only had room now we have room x, so it will be
okay, yes. So so the indicators are being refined as well, and there's a dynamic collision, which I'm part of, Doreen is part of, yeah. So we are also part of this international forum where we are also trying to improve the assessment itself. Even we have lots of room for improvement, right? So thank you very much for your comments and
also to it, as Warren mentioned, that these assessments the need for the assessments in other countries. I take on board your recommendation and your message with appreciation, and I have I should extend another message that all the countries that want to conduct the similar assessment in their countries. UNESCO is more than happy to guide and support with the process so anybody's process in their countries. And thank you so much for pointing out the dynamic coalition. There is an IGF dynamic Coalition on internet universality indicators, and you're most welcome to join the dynamic coalition and be part of the discussion, whether it's a regional discussion or whether it's an international discussion. We convene at every IGF, global IGF. We also have periodic meeting, as Warren said, we do understand that anything indicators related to the internet and new technologies cannot remain the same and as technologies advance. We also have a commitment to make sure we have a commitment to our member states to make sure that and the community, we provide them with up to date tools and to review and update tools to make sure they remain timely and relevant at any time. So this is what we are doing for the moment and when we are due to launch the updated and even refined indicators during the IGF, global IGF in Saudi Arabia this year. Thank you.
For example. Okay, for example. One of the things, again, the Pacific study is already implementing that element, is around the importance of the environment and how in the Pacific the IT system. In that systems, as I've said, there is the maritime aspect and there's also the disaster recovery aspect. So all of that also is influencing this global discussion, through this project and through UNESCO, and through the dynamic Coalition and the further development,
I know time, but if you would allow maybe for one more question. Andrew, please, hi. I
Hi, I don't know if you guys mean properly, but I'm Athena, and I'm from sama. I'm here as part of representative Minister of Health. So I would just like to say, I would just like to commend you in what do you call it, the producing of these five country reports as well as the regional recommendations. Multi stakeholderism is not an easy thing, and I'm saying in a perspective, because usually assessments of this nature, we usually identify either a particular ministry that will spearhead these assessments, and one of the reasons why we usually do that is so that there is ownership and someone that's actually identified to roll out the recommendations. So my question really is, like this process of establishing a multi stakeholder advisory board, is there anything that you will do differently, knowing you've already rolled out to five countries. Is there anything that you would do differently in this process if you were to roll out to other countries? Because what we do see with a lot of multi stakeholder advisory boards, if you will, is that the representation changes, and sometimes you would attend only one work, and then time someone else comes, it's a different perspective, and there's some counter conflicting views. And while they're all important, you know, it does add or takes away weight from the recommendations that are eventually put in is summary. And the reason why I also say that is because then limited resources means we can't implement everything within a certain time period. So I mean taking into this, taking that indicator session, is there anything in the process of this multi stakeholderism That you would change or, I suppose one story to other countries, I suppose. Thank you. I don't know if it makes sense, but
thank you for the question. I think I should directly speak about some more in this case. So we would roll out the question, the way I see it, if we were to roll out this project in Samoa, which I really hope we do, how different would it be? I think let's see when, when I started the whole process, I only got to know about internet universality indicators. As a fellow of apigf in 2020, that time I was an online fellow for obvious reasons. So what I understood about the project back then and what I understand about it today is very different. It has evolved over time, and whatever discussions we are having here today, including the areas where you know, my colleagues, my Pacific brothers and sisters, are refuting that all that is completely welcome. So we are now acquainted with the process in the Fed, you, yourself, and all of us here as members of Pacific IGF, as a as a wider community, are part of this discussion. I think the uptake would would perhaps be a little better, because when you go back home to Samoan, if we were to do the same assessment in Samoa. You already know what the assessment is about, and there's lots and lots of lessons learned. Survey was also a part of the map. I don't know why you're supposed to be wearing a different hat right now. He was also Fiji. Police Force was also part of of the map. So many things that we have learned and we've shared with you, when you take it back home, listen, the assessment itself also allows us to be organic, and I am happy to have, you know, separate conversations with you on how that happens, because, as I said, I was not confined. It's qualitative, quantitative, and initially the research team was thinking of what is happening, then we were reiterated of the fact that it's an assessment. It's there, or it's not. If it's not, let's take some recommendations from the map on how we can improve this process that is all to it. So I think it's going to be an evolving process.
The other thing to say, really, is that, in response, is that although various, it has to be a certain methodology, because that creates a standard. But within that standard there's quite a lot of flexibility. So we have the 100 core indicators and the 300 broader ones. So as we said already, that allows some flexibility about what is appropriate and what's not appropriate in different countries. And I've seen that in working with Central Asia and African countries, those different indicators much more reflected their particular issues. The second thing I want to point out is is that the the indicators are informed questions, and you don't have to have one answer to the question. So on some questions, for example, civil society and government may have different views, and that's fine. They have different views that the idea is that the Romax will embody the views that are there, so that in looking at reports, you will get an overall reflection of the different views which are available, which are manifest, let's say, in that country. And then it's for appropriate bodies who have the authority to take the decisions about what to do. As a result, the Romex assessment and swam was making the romance assessment sets for ground. It shows what it shows it from the technological side, the data side, the policy side, the Human Rights side, it's all there, and the different perspectives are built in. There is no one answer to one question.
Okay, our time is up. If you have any questions, any remarks or any suggestions, there's my email address. There point for UI, for national reports. You know who to turn to. You know swara and Doreen and for Tonga, it's also mele and Selu. You must know them. If you don't know them, we're happy to because the name may be similar, so we're happy to share their contact information. So I must say that, as we agreed, we will be sharing the reports for not circulation, for your your eyes only, including the regional report for your eyes and your feedback only. So we will you will have two weeks to please give us feedback, any feedback that you would like, and we will take it on board and move on, move forward with the publication. I must congratulate and thank, first of all, Doreen and suaran and also mele and Selu for the excellent work done. These assessments were the first in the Pacific, and congratulations on driving this forward so well, despite many challenges that were out there. So thank you so much. And congratulations for that. And UNESCO has been absolutely honored and delighted to support you all with this journey, and I am thankful to all of the people who supported the national level, regional level, to the supported the process and contributed to the success of this process. And thank you so much, Simon for your hard work, also in guiding and also putting together the real you know, report everything so many of Romex report finally. And forgive me if I'm forgetting someone in my thank you speech. Thank you to Sarai and Andrew for giving us this space to discuss and to have your important feedback, so we're truly happy to be part of this and and thank you so very much. And congratulations on the successful Pacific IGF, thank you.
Thank you. Simon Dr reinen, I think they deserve a big round of applause. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. I think we can all say they are doing this for for and something that we will benefit from according going forward. So thank you so much for your time. And also,
thank you. So we're down to the closing remarks, then we're done for Pacific IGF 24 so again, thank you, UNESCO, for the support some fellows here and also provide us sponsor the lunch and the the evening social that we're going to discuss this afternoon. So thank you so much, UNESCO, and looking forward to the continued engagement with the community and Pacific idea. So I'll have Sarai up here and we're going to do some closing remarks
before we can let you go. You
I would like the IT team to put up our slide, especially the sponsor partner slide.
So on behalf of the Pacific IGF and board, we would like to thank you, everyone of you who are sitting here today, and some who have attended previously, but we want to thank you so much for being and it takes some of you have come far and near, but it was something that we we really treasured to have you here. And would like to thank you so much for participating in these two days of Pacifica. GF. I would like to acknowledge you. I would like you to join me in acknowledging our partners this year. So we have you next year. Let us give them a big round of applause. APNIC for job, for helping us to have the host alongside APNIC, and they they supported that in a big way. Auda torte, you, it's a big internet and said, Thank you so much for the support the European Union, who's also supporting us and bptld.
I also would like to thank the presenters, those who have presented, and including those during the opening plenary and the opening keynote that we had, want to express our gratitude and thank you to all them that and the presenters who have taken time to you know, to prepare and and present during this specific idea. We have nothing to give you, but we thank you. We can actually thank you that you were able to to, to take the time off and be here in Wellington to present, last but not least, I would like to all of us to give a round of applause to the APNIC technical team. They did a great job. And is it not only there are others who have been tirelessly providing that support in the background, I will give their names, Anthony,
George, Brad Solin, Chris, who is showing remotely, and also the takina staff that have made this place look amazing. There are Mike Warwick and Daniel so this could have been, haven't been better that? Hadn't we have this on the background. So I want to thank you so much for for the support. So before I get sorry up here, I just wanted to let you know that what the future like is like for Pacific. IGF, as of this, as of next year, we will, we will finalize the multi stakeholder group and formalize the the group documentation, and have Pacific ITF as a sort of a formal organization, and we'll invite some of you to be part of I mean, we will, we will send out an expression of interest for those who want to be in the multi stakeholder group. And I believe that I can see a lot of potential in so look out for that. We want to also get the governments involved in the Pacific IGF discussion. So if you are representing government, we we will go further than that to you know, invite your governments even up to the Minister for the next Pacific IGF. And also, we would like to engage with more partners for more financial and logistical support. And finally, we would like to there is also already a discussion to include the youth in 2025 so those are a bit of a way forward that we look forward to, and I will hand over to Sarai to to make the announcement for Pacific IGF 2025, or should I say that? Okay, I want to thank Sita. Give them a big hand. Sita from Samoa, they are going to host this. You have 25 in a pier, so give them a big hand, and they already found so let's write, do The Samoa promotion. Thank you. Bye.
Hey,
thank you. Wow. You while we're waiting, yes my presentation, but I think I the presentation on behalf of Samoa. It Association as the current president. Thank you very much, Victor and Becca GF, for entrusting our Sita
to host the next package, or I do the closing remarks for this. Okay, that's a total little in japan, Japanese language in the Pacific, when you see the map, small dot, but that's only Samoa. If you look at this map,
hosting the next package of 2025 this will be a collaborative work, continuous Samoa. It Association, the government and the National University of Samoa. So give a wonderful
and this is where we try to promote the multi stakeholder risk, the academic, the government and the private sector. And Sita, we always stay neutral. We stay between the government and the privacy so we have strong advocacy in Samoa and now to the Pacific.
Okay, just some stats. Our last census, not so many people, maybe this time, 60% go to New Zealand and Australia for seasonal work with my fellow.
You have the sps.gov.ws, they have the updated information. I have to go through that. But for the your information, I just pull it there. What is Sita? It's more Information Technology Association, and this is a recognized association with all the ICT expertise experts are there. We have people to join. So it's not just someone to you know you're interested in it, then come join us. No, you have to go through the process before you turn and this is the public voice of the ICT position and the cardinal of Professional Ethics and Standards in ICT. I Okay,
we have so many engagements with the community. We have hosted regional, south, regional and national activities, and our vision is technology for all, and our aim is to foster education and capacity building, because not all go to formal education. At least we have this short term just awareness for our people, just the structure, because six is now going to host, so that we have a practical structure. We have our annual plans. We have a strategy plans. We say, okay, we can host this with the assistance and continuous support from Auda and APNIC and Internet, and say, we still need their support. Okay, what we do before we conduct workshops, sometimes we ask, is Agni here, Nick, they always supported we've been request for trainees. So we have that the networking opportunity, we assisted our people that have the interest in it, and then we can find jobs for them. They come to us, and then we, you know, designated them to some jobs. We provide advice on ICT. Okay with the cover the current governments we have now, they are Sita ICT advice. So that's it's, you know, we have that connection, and I feel and have the confidence that the government will support us in hosting ADF 2025, and we also be invited to be part of any interview panels, especially from my public service, they always ask Sita, if there are some IT positions advertised, this needs to come in, because You need the IT experts to be in those panel. Some benefits of joining Sita, you know, to access to a network. IT experts like you guys, Sita, we, you know, discuss about pika sock, we discuss about this forum, and they can access to it,
we were selected as one of the countries, and Sita was the implementing agency in having the digital gender scorecard, and that was our first research project since we become As Association. It was a great support from the government. We have our minister there and our VC. We have a support from ADP and the academic the private sector is in here. And two of these ladies were part of the group that we conducted as digital gender scorecard. Recently we host remote for ABR IGF, and that's how Sita, you know, we have this collaboration, national,
international,
some workshops, some trainings. We did again, we engage with students. We also have a cyber hygiene workshop, thanks to the USA dccp for choosing Sita to co host. One of the existing activities in the Pacific is conducting cyber hygiene. I was a really good turn up from the students, and we target the NUS students. We also have a Sinta tech that's, well, invited all the IT related companies to come, and they, they had their expedition of their work, the RTI we have, and that's the first time we make and we have this continuous discussion now having this, I can't say, a professional body, community, so can have collectively this multi stakeholder like into the academic community, the public service, the private sector, the businesses, and then that's where the coordination comes in and can make project successful. So we supported the RTI Samoa, supported with the USP NUS and the government remote tab. Some people were remote up 9am in Taiwan, but 2pm in some of these people's days, because every other day we talk to you. That's why it's a big number. Okay, now we come to the Becca GF, I know the benefits of you. I know it's a lot of work, but at the end of the day, you learn something. You can something for yourself and for your community, regional leadership and visibility. This would be a good opportunity in the Pacific, as well as our other Pacific countries the best building the policies influence, because you can be there. Surely the politics will be there as well. The politicians will be there because this is a good thing for them, economic and social impact, especially strengthening the partnership local, national and regional as well as social and social identity. Some pictures of Samoa, you can see it here. If you come to Samoa, you want to call for enjoy yourself here. Who has this last words in our Tech Expo last year, the government supported us, and this is our prime minister. She delivered the keynote of our Tech Expo. So as I said it there was in the back IGF in Samoa. For Samoa, it association with the local support, which is this is something that a specific ISO should have retained the support from the government, because this is where our voices will be voiced nationally, and then to the next level support from the National University. Note, this is very important, and it's a step forward, strengthening the digital ecosystem in the Pacific region, promoting inclusive Internet governance and ensuring the benefits of digital technologies reach all Pacific islands. I Okay, because these are the people. If you come to Samoa, you see them, and they are going to do the homework for you, the executive committee of Sita from 2022 2023 and this is executive committee. We have now similar faces where to go so how to find Sita. We have a sita.ws website. We also have a Facebook and basically just sita.ws if you can find it, and only Sita organization has a proper online registration system in Samoa. So if you visit the register.sister.sita.ws, this is where the sitter if you want to become a Sita member, you call online, you register, then you wait for a week for your applications to get endorsed, a week or two weeks, that's, there's a reason why. There's a reason why. Because if we can't want to become a member, have to, we need to, yeah, be patient. Be patient. Because learning ICT, teaching ICT, is not a it's not an easy thing, so you go through the proper process. Okay? And Jeff 2025 will be hosted a welcoming Samoa by your Samoa it Association, so just call her Anthony if You can play video, please. It's on The YouTube Channel.
Thank you very much.
To wrap up our packagy F 24 here in Wellington, New Zealand, just to add a thank you and acknowledgement that Andrew already made in the beginning to all our sponsors, our fellows, our participants, our friends, our years. It's good to see rod here today, because the first time they came to Samoa 2006, when this is together with sits Sita used to be six, and now it's Sita. So it's bringing back Becca GF, so they call it Becca net in those days. So that's how I met these guys, and they brought Vince first time in Samoa. So thank you very much for that. So it's good to see them and continue this journey. We want to, you know, continue drive it by our own Pacific people, this specific chapter. So be proud of you, Pacific Islander, because we can do it.
So two days, we learned about IGF. We learned the challenges, the opportunities they presented. So need to continue that, and we need to play this crucial role. Keep telling Noah, keep connecting to each other, so that we have a strong question in us, and you can help out other Pacific fellows. Thank you very much to our fellows for being because without you, we can't No proceed more. So thank you for availing your time, as you see that
multi stakeholder reason we talk about today, so that we can shape a proper policies within a specific island. So thank you very much as our theme for this Becca GF is digital resilience, resilience to peace and so thank you very much on your way to back to your eyes, stay safe, travel safe, and may God be with you. Thank you very much.
Talofa,
yes, I'm all ready for someone. Yes, I think I'll send my bag with Sarai and I'll meet him in samuasi. But it was a wonderful two days. We would like to say thank you very much winner for all your contribution. It meant so especially to the Pacific Island drivers of governance, we would like to extend our business appreciation to you all, as mentioned by our chair and vice chair, unfortunately, pikachuk didn't have the full support to to get you some gifts, but we have one thing that we are proud of, and have been bestowed of this cyber security community, and this afternoon, I've been given the privilege to pray for blessings upon everyone that has been or have contributed to this successful two day event. And before we send you off, we would also like to pray for God guidance as you travel back to your country, protected and be prosperous in whatever you will take away from this event. Uh, before we end with our meeting, let me just read from a word of God in Colossians 323, and 24 and it reads willingly at whatever you do as though you you were walking for the Lord rather than for people. Remember that the Lord give you an interest as your reward, and that the master you are serving is Christ. Amen. May I ask that the Lord bless His word and for us as we travel back to our home countries, please, can we bow our heads for a word of prayer, Heavenly Father, as we conclude the proceedings of this specific Internet Governance Forum, we come before you with hearts of full of gratitude. Thank you for the wisdom shared that discussion held and partnerships fostered by this event, Lord, we ask for your blessings on all the decision and the commitments made here, may we bear fruit in their respective communities and contribute to the advancement and security of our digital environment across the Pacific, we pray for safe travels for Our delegates as they return to their homes. May the insights gain here inspire and equip them to implement positive changes in their we also extend our thanks once more to the traditional owners of this land, our grace. Host and the diligent organizers of this forum, bless them abundantly for their hospitality and hard work. Guide us, Lord as we move forward, keeping us united in purpose and steadfast in our commitment to creating a safe and inclusive digital future for all. May we continue to stand in all our endeavors in The name of Jesus. We pray Amen. God bless you.
Thank you
out. I think Saraya will lead us to you're all invited to have, maybe you can have one drink with us as a closing so thank you. Where that is and move there right away after after this. Thank you so much. Yes,
thank you. Yeah, it's
Ernesto cafe or PA. They call it. It's only 13 minutes from here. If you type on your Google Map, it's there and it's so Cupid Park. That's the name of. We're gonna go there and have some G and few drinks. You can only drink one, one drink from bigger stock and four, three from your pocket. So, yeah, so we can only give you one, and we can buy your food. See you, it's 630 we can go there now, And there's those. Yeah, Can you
