APNIC staff participated in the annual World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2016, held in Geneva, Switzerland from 2 to 6 May.
Co-organized by the ITU, UNESCO, UNDP, and UNCTAD, the Forum is an annual gathering of the ‘ICT for development’ community. It also assists in developing public/private partnerships to advance development goals.
APNIC has participated in the previous five WSIS Forums.
APNIC activities included:
- Organizing the session Creative Internet-based solutions to social and economic development, which APNIC’s Community Partner Specialist, Sylvia Cadena, facilitated. The session sought to acknowledge important contributions of industry innovators to the development of the Internet and reflect on their role in contributing to the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).
- APNIC’s Strategic Engagement Director, Pablo Hinojosa, facilitated a high-level policy session on Inclusiveness – Access to information and knowledge for all, which included two ministers (Senegal and Nepal), and three vice-ministers (Nigeria, Turkey and Serbia). The speakers of this panel shared ideas to improve inclusive access to information and knowledge for social and economic impact.
- Sylvia was invited to speak during the session Engaging under-represented communities in regional and global Internet governance debates, where panellists discussed ways to improve diversity in discussions on Internet issues.
- Both Sylvia and Pablo attended a number of open sessions and side meetings with the Internet technical community, academia, governments and civil society to assess future activities related to supporting the implementation of the SDGs.
- Following the forum, Pablo travelled to Tallinn, Estonia, to participate in a panel discussion at the Cyber Norms Platform, during which he spoke about maintaining trust in the Internet and preventing further erosion of trust by State interventions.
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