For IGF first-timers and veterans, listening to people talk about issues related to internet governance has created a snowball effect of thoughts. Three women write for genderIT.org about their impressions and thoughts on the IGF, straight from Vilnius.
The Future of privacy: an internet governance issue
by Françoise Mukuku
The future of privacy is one of the themes that struck me directly. Will Privacy in ten years be different from what we know today? I’m a lawyer by training and I know that the law evolves but I cannot even get used to it in this context. But in me lives also a victim of violence on the internet, I wish strongly that no girl no woman face what happened to me.
So I went in the room with an empty head, ready to listen, give my opinion and challenge those who will say that the future does not belong to us.
Pre-IGF session on Internet Governance and Human Rights, reflection
By Nyx
I sat in on a pre-IGF session: internet governance and human rights: strategies and collaboration for empowerment. 14h00 in Room 5 at the IGF venue
What I noticed was the importance given to certain areas, and the language employed in speaking to certain issues:
1. Issues of access
a. Who has access or who do we focus on when speaking of access
Here one of the speakers, Anja Kovacs (CIS) raised the issue that when we discuss issues, particularly groups are given preference/greater importance than others, primarily linguistic/cultural groups and persons with disabilities. She argued that this serves to render other groups’ rights invisible or well, basically off the table for discussion. I agree with her in that, we cannot be specific or focus on specific groups if we have not discussed the issue of access at its broadest level.
Close encounters
by Maya Ganesh
This is the third time I’m attending the Internet Governancei Forum and I’ve never really expected anything too extraordinary to happen here. I’ve felt like part of a feisty band of women with a small but real network of allies and supporters in a nebulous space of governmenti representatives, corporations, assorted NGOs and policyi wonks. I mean, making a case for women’s rights and sexuality rights in an environment where ‘content regulation’ tends to be too easily equated with ‘child protection’ is a complicated endeavour.
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