Workshop on Internet Governance – Chairman’s Report

A workshop held at ITU Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland where 30 experts gathered to address key aspects of Internet Governance. The workshop concluded: it is impossible to separate technical issues and policy issues in defining “Internet Governance”; identifying what aspects of the Internet needs to be governed is more pertinent than reaching a consensus on a workable definition; the debate should now focus on the need for some form of self-regulation, co-ordination, and co-operation; a layered approach is necessary in the context of multi-stakeholderism with different layers covering infra-structure, infra-service, and application or different layers for technical, commercial, and public policy issues or in terms of services, applications, transport & infrastructure; multi-stakeholder involvement would be done both off-line through Workshops and online through the WSIS website; and capacity-building must be done in developing countries for them to participate in the multi-lateral inclusive system of governance. Annexes include statements from the Federative Republic of Brazil, the People’s Republic of China, Denmark, Japan, and the Syrian Arab Republic.