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Internet Governance Forum 2009 meets
on “creating opportunities for all”
The fourth annual meeting of the Internet Governance
Forum (IGF) took place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on
15–18 November 2009, under the chairmanship of
Tarek Kamel, Egypt’s Minister of Communications
and Information Technology. It was attended by more
than 1800 participants from 112 countries, including high-ranking representatives of governments, international organizations, industry and civil society.
Among them was ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun
I. Touré, who gave a keynote speech at the opening
ceremony.
IGF was created as an outcome of the second
phase of the World Summit on the Information
Society (WSIS), organized by ITU in Tunis in 2005. The
summit adopted the Tunis Agenda, which says there
should be stronger cooperation among stakeholders
in policy-making for generic top-level domain names
(gTLD) on the Internet, and underlines the need to
maximize the participation of developing countries
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ITU News  10 | 2009  December 2009
in decisions regarding Internet governance. Recalling
this WSIS outcome, Dr Touré said “ITU continues to
believe in the Tunis spirit, and has been an active participant in the IGF process.”
Participants also considered Internet governance
in the light of the Geneva Declaration of Principles,
adopted at the first phase of WSIS in 2003, which
(like the Tunis Agenda) states that “international
management of the Internet should be multilateral,
transparent and democratic, with the full involvement of governments, the private sector, civil society and international organizations.” This was in line
with the main theme of the meeting: Internet governance — creating opportunities for all.
Discussions focused on issues related to the management of key Internet resources, technical standards, and interconnection. Also on the agenda was
cybersecurity, as well as ways to improve access by all
and to promote local content and cultural diversity. In
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Internet Governance Forum 2009
addition, the meeting considered the emerging issue
of social networks and the governance issues that
they bring.
Alongside the main sessions on these issues,
many side events took place at IGF, including 11 held
by ITU. Also, as the initiator of the Dynamic Coalition
on Accessibility and Disability (DCAD), ITU organized
two workshops related to web accessibility for people with disabilities (see pages 40–42).
ITU looks at greening the Internet
ITU also initiated the Dynamic Coalition of
Internet and Climate Change (DCICC), which now
has more than 30 partners. The second meeting of
DCICC was held at Sharm el-Sheikh on 16 November.
On the following day an ITU workshop on “Greening
the Internet” was organized with the International
Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), a
Canadian not-for-profit organization, and with Nile
University, Egypt. The workshop examined how the
Internet can evolve in an environmentally-friendly manner, as well as how the growing number of
online applications and services can help to reduce
greenhouse-gas emissions by all sectors.
The panellists were Joseph Alhadeff, VicePresident for Global Public Policy at Oracle
Corporation; Catalina McGregor, Founder and
Deputy Champion of the United Kingdom’s Green
ICT CIO/CTO Council; Alice Munyua of the Kenya
ICT Action Network; George Sadowsky, Director of
the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN); Nezar Nabil Sami, Director of the
Information Systems Department at Nile University;
Catherine Trautman, Member of the European
Parliament, and Tony Vetter of IISD.
In opening the workshop, Malcolm Johnson,
Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization
Bureau (TSB), said that there is only one way in which
climate change can be tackled effectively: “by shifting
from a high-carbon physical infrastructure to a lowcarbon virtual infrastructure based on… the Internet
and other information and communication technologies (ICT).”
Mr Alhadeff gave a business perspective on sustainability. “The carbon footprint of ICT is important,”
he said, “but the potential of ICT to measure, contain, mitigate, and solve environmental problems is
much more critical to a sustainable future.” Many external factors affect “greening,” said Mr Sadowsky.
Technological progress can have a positive impact,
but an energy-cost model needs to be superimposed
upon the usual model of ICT production.
“We are saving, copying and storing far, far too
much data,” said Ms McGregor, and this gobbles up
power. But equipment is shrinking in size, she added,
and ITU is involved in offering guidance and standards
in this field “We are getting in early to get it right,”
she said. Mr Vetter asked a further question: “What
do Internet policy makers need to measure to find
out whether they are getting it right?” Mechanisms
are needed to monitor the impact of Internet policy
and governance choices upon combating climate
change, he said.
Transition to IPv6
This workshop was organized by ITU jointly with
the Number Resource Organization, which coordinates the activities of regional Internet registries
(RIR). It looked at the implications of the exhaustion of Internet addresses using the Internet protocol version 4 (IPv4), and the challenges in deploying
the new IPv6. Representatives of the developing and
developed world — and the public and private sectors — exchanged views on how governments and
ITU News  10 | 2009  December 2009
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Internet Governance Forum 2009
business can take the lead in promoting the move to
IPv6 so as to guarantee a continued basis for social
and economic prosperity.
Sureswaran Ramadass of the Malaysian National
Advanced IPv6 Centre introduced a study it conducted for TSB on IPv6 address allocation and registration methods. The study considered the establishment of country Internet registries (CIR) in order to
give users another possible source of IP addresses. In
many regions, monopolies in telecommunication and
Internet services are being replaced by competition.
This improves performance, said Dr Ramadass, and
“that same reason is why there shouldn’t just be one
RIR giving out IPv6 addresses”.
Domain name issues
A session of the IGF on critical Internet resources
discussed how these should be dealt with by such
bodies as ICANN. Based in California, ICANN manages such matters as the top-level domain (TLD)
name system of Internet addresses, including .com,
.net and .org. Until 30 September 2009, the United
States government (through its Department of
Commerce) had oversight over ICANN, based on a
“Joint Project Agreement”. With the ending of the
agreement, ICANN is now supervised by independent panels, with the potential involvement of governments worldwide.
However, another agreement between the US
government and ICANN is still in place until 2011.
It relates to ICANN’s administration of the Internet
Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which oversees
technical aspects such as global assignments related
to the Internet protocol (IP), and management of
the root zone that is the core infrastructure of the
Internet domain name system (DNS).
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ITU News  10 | 2009  December 2009
There was debate at IGF about how ICANN’s new
supervisory panels are to be selected, as well as future
arrangements for IANA. While some speakers were
happy with the status quo, others advocated ICANN
taking a more direct responsibility for IANA. A member of ICANN’s Multistakeholder Advisory Group, YJ
Park, (who is also a professor at Delft University of
Technology, Netherlands) noted that “the US government still remains as the sole global authority that
approves all delegation and redelegation of the rest
of 251 country code top-level domains (ccTLD) and
21 gTLD”. Professor Park said that “the next IANA
contract should identify an international body that
will take over the current role of the US government
” in coordinating critical Internet infrastructure on
a multilateral basis. She encouraged IGF to discuss
what that international body should be.
Meanwhile, on 16 November 2009 ICANN introduced a “fast-track process” for permitting ccTLD
(such as .ch, .jp, or .eu) in other than Roman characters. On the first day, according to ICANN, it received applications from six countries and territories
for domain names in the scripts of three languages.
Internationalized names for gTLD (such as .gov) will
be introduced later.
Proposed new .ARAB domain
name receives ITU support
IGF discussed the possible introduction of new
gTLD on a regional basis (such as .America, or
.Africa). The Arab Region officially requested the assistance of ITU for the creation of a .ARAB domain of
this kind, including expert assistance on policy and
capacity building to ensure that the region benefits
fully. A workshop on 14 November focused on this
matter and saw the participation of several countries
Internet Governance Forum 2009
from the Arab States. The participants endorsed the
ITU approach and the related activities that will start
at the beginning of 2010. ITU will follow closely,
and contribute to, ICANN’s development of the new
gTLD programme, making sure that the needs of its
Member States are fulfilled.
ITU as key player in cybersecurity
ITU/V. Martin
Five events were organized solely or jointly by ITU
on cybersecurity and child online protection, with
very good attendance by IGF participants. The topics
ranged from legal measures and organizational structures (with a specific focus on computer incident response teams, or CIRT), to international cooperation.
Participants expressed their appreciation of ITU’s
role as international facilitator and initiator of global
Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU’s
Telecommunication Standardization Bureau
programmes such as the Child Online Protection initiative and the ITU-IMPACT collaboration, within the
framework of the Global Cybersecurity Agenda.
The future of IGF
IGF received a five-year mandate that ends in
2010. The meeting at Sharm el-Sheikh discussed
IGF’s achievements and whether it should be maintained. Many participants emphasized the usefulness
of the forum as a platform for dialogue, free from
the pressures of negotiations. Some wanted to see
IGF refocusing its attention on such points as international public policy issues and participation by developing countries, and supported the possibility of
IGF making formal recommendations. Other speakers were in favour of the forum continuing as it is: a
multistakeholder platform that promotes discussion,
but does not make decisions.
Sha Zukang, United Nations Under-SecretaryGeneral for Economic and Social Affairs, led formal
consultations with IGF participants on the forum’s
future. He will present a report on the results to the
UN Secretary-General, who will then communicate
his recommendation to the General-Assembly.
Speaking on behalf of the ITU Secretary-General,
Malcolm Johnson stated that he will recommend the
ITU membership to support the continuation of IGF
in its present format, but with some improvements:
in particular, fewer side events occurring in parallel
with important discussions in the main session. “Why
not concentrate on one or two themes for each IGF?”
he asked, and suggested that the effectiveness of the
organizing structure, including its transparency and
accountability, should be addressed.
The fifth meeting of IGF will be held in Vilnius,
Lithuania, on 14–17 September 2010.
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