ICC BASIS intervention on Specific Themes that have been proposed for IGF Rio topics
by Ilkka Lakaniemi
Thank you, Mr. Chairman; my name is Ilkka Lakaniemi representing the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and its initiative, Business Action to Support the Information Society (BASIS).
ICC/BASIS believes that the cross-cutting theme of human and institutional capacity building should feature in all of the main meeting sessions, and urges a true integration of concrete capacity building elements in the agenda for the IGF in Rio. Therefore, key sub-themes that should be reflected in all the main meeting sessions are:
- Creating multistakeholder, multi-generational and gender inclusive dialogue at the national and regional levels on Internet governance issues.
- Creating capacities to access the e-skills value chain and
- Policy development that allows new uses of the Internet in developing countries. For instance, duty free e-commerce and accredited e-learning could be profiled in the emerging issues session.
Mr. Chairman, the second IGF should build upon the success of Athens. With this in mind, the ICC/BASIS has carefully considered candidate topics and has offered some proposals relative to discussion at the second IGF on the four Athens session topics. In addition, we have proposed two additional subjects for consideration as “emerging topics”. As topics are proposed for consideration, ICC/BASIS once again suggests that three questions outlined in our previous intervention should be answered positively before a candidate topic is added to the agenda for the November 2007 IGF.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.