[governance] Youth Coalition on Internet Governance

[Rafik Dammak]

Hello All,

On behalf of the new Youth Coalition on Internet Governance, we want to
share the statement for Open Consultations with all member of IGC and to
have the endorsement of the group in order to show the support of the youth
involvement on Internet  governance, please find below the statement text
and please feel free to share your feedback and comments. we will be happy
also to have people joining us and of course everybody is welcome.

"

We are happy to announce that the new Youth Coalition on Internet Governance
is officially launched and we would like to share this information with all
participants of the open consultations. The coalition is the main outcome of
the workshop organized at IGF Egypt : "Youth and Internet Governance: the
way forward".

We would like to  invite people from the IG community to join our effort and
the coalition. As a new coalition, we will be glad to cooperate with the IG
community and existing dynamic coalitions. We hope to help individuals and
organizations interested or involved on youth issues to coordinate their
efforts and foster more effective participation and involvement of youth on
IG community and IGF.


Our current homepage is http://groups.google.com/group/ycig and we would
like to invite everybody to visit it.


we would like to emphasize some proposals  with the following
recommendations:

*1. Ensure presence of young people in all relevant panels and workshops,
including the main sessions.* Preparing the young generation in the digital
age is indeed a shared responsibility, as the Honorary Country Host Session
in Egypt was titled. This not only means to talk about young people, but to
discuss the relevant themes with them. Internet is a fairly new phenomenon
and, first and foremost, a world of the young. Children and young people
have a very valuable contribution to make to debates and decision-making and
therefore should have many opportunities to engage in IGF discussions.

There is a real need to expand capacity building programs on IG and to
extend fellowship programs addressed to youth to attend IGF and open
consultations and participate in IG discussions with full-capacity.



*2. Youth are key players of Internet Governance and should be considered
stakeholders, *youth participation should not be restricted to specific
issues and young participants and experts should be involved in all IG
discussions and debates.

We *strongly urge* the MAG to include more youth representatives with
respect to gender and geographic balance. We also ask the other stakeholders
and delegations attending IGF and open consultations to include more youth
participants. The same request is addressed to regional and country IGFs, as
well.



*3. When we talk about children´s rights, it is also important to put focus
on the enjoyment of the right to access to information. *At the IGF in
Egypt, there were a lot of discussions on how to protect children and young
people from harmful content on the internet. This is a very important issue,
but discussions on children´s rights should not focus on this solely.
Children and young people have – just as adults – the right to privacy and
access to information and knowledge. It is important to acknowledge that
children and young people do not only need to be protected, but also to be
empowered to exercise their rights freely and without restrictions– both in
the offline as in the online world.


4. *When talking about sexuality, also place focus on the positive impact of
the internet on sexual and reproductive rights. *At the IGF in Egypt,
discussions on the linkages between internet and sexuality were mostly about
negative side-effects of the World Wide Web, such as the easy spread of
child pornography which shouldn’t be used as argument for restrictive
policies. But we have to acknowledge that the internet also has great
advantages in regard to people’s sexual and reproductive rights – e.g., in
terms of access to information and to knowledge, freedom of expression and
openness.





Yours sincerely,



Youth Coalition on Internet Governance
"
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