1 July 2021
Day 3 of the "Advocacy International: Advancing our digital rights agenda for Asia" workshop was one of contrasts, with the first two sessions covering advocacy spaces like the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and technical spaces like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and International Telecommunication Union (ITU) from the perspective of how they function, and the last session speaking to the experience of civil society as they engage in them.
In the day’s first session, “Internet governance and digital cooperation”, Anriette Esterhuysen, the senior advisor on internet governance, policy advocacy and strategic planning at APC and chair of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group of the IGF, invited participants to reflect on how they viewed multistakeholder internet governance. While some believed that it was a way for civil society to have more voice and power in global internet policy decisions, and a few others thought that it is a ploy to keep lots of people busy talking while the real decisions are still made in other places by actors who already hold power, most said they felt it was a bit of both. These spaces can be sites of struggle, but they are also important, and a way for civil society to get out of their echo chambers. It is therefore necessary to analyse and get involved with the design of each multistakeholder process, so that it can be better used for our advocacy.