The 8th edition of IGF took place in Indonesia at the invitation of the local government. It has seen the participation of 2000 experts coming from all over the world, representing governments, civil society, industry and academia/technical community.

The event has been opening speeches of Neelie Kroes (EU Commissioner for Information Society), Dunja Mijatovic (OSCE), Thomas Gass of Switzerland Assistant UN Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Inter-Agency Affairs, Fadi Chehadé (ICANN), the ministers of communication from Brazil, UK and Indonesia and many others.

The main topic discussed this year is the joint initiative just announced by ICANN and Brazilian government that intend to re-launch on new basis the process for a globalization of the Internet Governance.

Most of the discussions in the corridors as well as in the official meetings was around this idea, that is the first officially response of the Internet community after the blow-up of the NSA scandal. Having among the promoters ICANN (that basically remains an institution under US control) and Brazil as champion of the BRIC countries that have always asked for a more shared governance of the Internet, give to this initiative a certain chance to succeed. This announcement arrived after the failure of the WICT of Dubai in 2012, the summit that failed to agree on a new world telecommunication treaty, and while the discussions at the United Nations General Assembly (going on exactly in these days) are stacked because of totally opposed position between US and developing countries.

EBU –that represented WBU , the 8 broadcasting unions of the world, at the summit-  has organized a joint open forum with UNESCO, Council of Europe, WEF – World Economic Forum and OSCE dedicated to the “Journalism on the Internet: how to protect and finance it and which role for the public service media”.

Link to IGF website  where the final report of the meeting will be published: http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/open-forums/list-of-open-fora

EBU has also participated to various other initiatives, such as the meeting of the Child On Line Protection initiative (backed by ITU and UNICEF), the meeting of the Net Neutrality dynamic coalition (backed by Council of Europe), that has just released the first report about Net Neutrality (link: networkneutrality.info), the MAG meetings and many others.

The transcripts of all the discussions at the event are available on the website www.intgovforum.org.

A daily highlights reports of IGF 8 2013 has been made available by Eurovision on the World Feed and World Link, produced by national broadcaster TVRI, member of the sister union ABU.