“Internet Governance Forum: Multistakeholder Advisory Group Meeting”

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a pleasure to welcome you all to Geneva for the Multistakeholder Advisory Group meeting of the Internet Governance Forum. A pleasure because this gathering is part of a global effort to nurture a precious, global resource: the Internet. I would like to thank the International Telecommunications Union for hosting this important event and the Forum for the chance to speak with you today.

The Internet is fundamental to the great issues of our time. Like the printing press or mass communication, it unleashed revolutions in thought and breakthroughs in every field, including sustainable development. The Internet and the proliferation of ever-cheaper smartphones have made it possible – through eHealth, microfinance and data collection services among so many others – to jumpstart development. The Internet will only grow more vital as emerging technology like the Internet of things, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles enter our lives.

The success of the Internet is in large part due to the way it was built and allowed to grow: as an open, bottom-up platform for innovation. One that allows visionary ideas to blossom into global titans like Alibaba and Google. This openness is both the Internet’s greatest asset and its greatest vulnerability. Today, no one is safely out of reach of hackers, while terrorist cells spread hate and find recruits online. Unsubstantiated news stories flourish and organized crime syndicates continue to exploit it.

The paradigm is that tackling these issues without the necessary care could undermine the very openness of the Internet, while a failure to act together could lead to an overcorrection on the part of states, fracturing the global Internet into narrow national networks. Ultimately, we need a global governance of the Internet, but one in which the interests of all stakeholders – states and the wider internet community – are represented. This is why the multistakeholder model at the heart of the Internet Governance Forum is so essential. This bottom-up approach is best suited to foster a free discussion on the shared principles, norms and rules that will shape the Internet as we move along. This model is also essential in light of today’s global trust deficit, with public opinion distrustful of institutions at every level. A January 2017 Pew Research poll found that a majority of Americans did not trust their government or social media sites to protect their data, but did trust credit card firms and mobile phone providers.

In 1864, the international community came to Geneva to set the rules in that era’s premier arena of competition: the battlefield. Today, the Internet is an arena both for competition and for cooperation between states, the private sector and civil society. Geneva, however, remains the logical place for the international community to come together and write the rules for this arena. Geneva is home to many relevant actors, like the International Telecommunications Union, the Internet Governance Forum and CERN, where the World Wide Web was invented. But, Geneva is also a natural home for multistakeholder approaches. That is because it is a veritable laboratory, where the proximity of actors fosters collaboration, deep institutional knowledge is shared and parties are willing to experiment, to sometimes fail, but ultimately to make breakthroughs. Allow me to share with you two examples of what International Geneva is all about. Last month, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Microsoft launched a new initiative to use the big data revolution to help detect human rights crises, while the Geneva University and Tsinghua University launched a new Masters’ degree in innovation and sustainability. Students in this programme will work with United Nations System entities and CERN to develop ground-breaking solutions to contemporary problems.

I look forward to the twelfth annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum, which will take place this December here, in Geneva. Events like it demonstrate how International Geneva is rich and fertile soil for collaboration and how much it can constructively contribute to tackling the challenges of today.

The world is going through transformation of a magnitude that we have yet to fully grasp. Fast technological progress challenges us all to rethink and reimagine the way we work and collaborate. I wish you all success as you work collectively to protect and nurture the Internet for future generations.

Thank you.