IGF 2015

The need to defend citizen rights on the internet is becoming increasingly difficult. This calls for a stronger and more coherent way in bringing together different actors across the globe to defend these rights and establish principles to support and guide internet public policies, legislation and stakeholder’s practices. Despite of the different degrees of consensus that multiple actors engaged in broad political and technical process are able to achieve, international dialogue spaces have been growing and gaining more attention. From UN Human Rights Council and IGF, to NetMundial so many initiatives have emerged to respond to increasing threats to freedom of expression, privacy, access and other human rights on the internet. However, the IG process is still opaque in many developing countries and public interest issues are not openly discussed or debated with all stakeholders at the national and community levels. Thus all these global mobilization overlook the fact that for many, this conversation around internet rights is virtually nonexistent. By bringing national organizations from across the globe, we want to address the question of how those international actions can be helpful to local campaigns to defend and advance rights. With a critical approach, this roundtable will discuss if global efforts and campaigns are actually making local actions more difficult or if they can effectively empower and be supportive in advancing internet rights. We will address IG and human rights discussion from a grassroots perspective, while sharing experiences from local organizations in a global setting.