UN confirms strong business representation to benefit IGF
A United Nations announcement last week has confirmed that business will continue to have strong representation in the advisory group charged with guiding preparations for the 5th Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to take place in September.
The Multistakeholder Advisory Group, made up of representatives from all Internet interest groups, includes 10 names of business representatives, six of whom are members of ICC and its Business Action to Support the Information Society (BASIS) initiative.
Business representatives who will continue to serve the advisory group are:
- David Appasamy, Executive Vice President, Sify Technologies, Chennai
- Sunday Faloyan, Managing Director, SKANNET, Lagos
- Ayesha Hassan, Senior Policy Manager, E-Business, IT, and Telecoms, Executive in charge of ICT Policy, ICC, Paris
- Zahid Usman Jamil, Senior Partner and Barrister-at-Law, Jamil and Jamil, Chairman, Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center, Karachi
- Masanobu Katoh, Corporate Vice President; President of the Law and Intellectual Property Unit and Security Export Control Headquarters, Fujitsu Limited, Tokyo
- Stephen K.M. Lau, Chairman, Electronic Data System, Hong Kong
- Charles Sha’ban, Executive Director, Regional Office, Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property, Amman
- Waudo Siganga, Chair, Computer Society of Kenya
- Juan Carlos Solines Moreno, Solines & Asociados Abogados, Partner; Professor of Technology & Law and Telecommunications Law, San Francisco de Quito University, Quito
- Jennifer A. Warren, Vice President, Technology Policy & Regulation, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Alexandria, VA
Nitin Desai, Special Advisor for Internet Governance to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been asked to continue to act as Chairman of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group. Patrik Faltstrom, a Consulting Engineer at Cisco Systems and Heather Shaw, Vice President of Information and Communication Technology Policy at the United States Council for International Business, ICC’s national representative in the US, have been renewed by Mr Desai to serve as two of his six special advisors.
The IGF will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania, from 14-17 September and is a unique and open forum for exchange on Internet-related issues. Its original 5-year mandate is set to terminate at the end of the year – a concern to business who strongly advocates the continuation of the forum with its founding principles intact. ICC BASIS will contribute to a planning meeting taking place on 10-11 May this week in Geneva, to prepare the next IGF.
The next Multistakeholder Advisory Group meeting will also take place in Geneva on 12 May.
