Tunis Agenda

In the Tunis Agenda (2005) of the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) heads of states decided to invite the UN Secretary General to convene a “Internet Governance Forum” (IGF) for a multistakeholder policy dialogue on Internet issues.

The mandate of the IGF is:

• Discuss public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance in order to foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development of the Internet;
• Facilitate discourse between bodies dealing with different cross-cutting international public policies regarding the Internet and discuss issues that do not fall within the scope of any existing body;
• Interface with appropriate inter-governmental organizations and other institutions on matters under their purview;
• Facilitate the exchange of information and best practices, and in this regard make full use of the expertise of the academic, scientific and technical communities;
• Advise all stakeholders in proposing ways and means to accelerate the availability and affordability of the Internet in the developing world;
• Strengthen and enhance the engagement of stakeholders in existing and/or future Internet governance mechanisms, particularly those from developing countries;
• Identify emerging issues, liing them to the attention of the relevant bodies and the general public, and, where appropriate, make recommendations;
• Contribute to capacity building for Internet governance in developing countries, drawing fully on local sources of knowledge and expertise;
• Promote and assess, on an ongoing basis, the embodiment of WSIS principles in Internet governance processes;
• Discuss, inter alia, issues relating to critical Internet resources;
• Help to find solutions to the issues arising from the use and misuse of the Internet, of particular concern to everyday users;
• Publish its proceedings

The first four meetings of the IGF (Athens 2006, Rio de Janeiro 2007, Hyderabad 2008, Sharm el-Sheikh 2009) demonstrated the need and usefulness of the creation of innovative discussion platform which allow various stakeholders to contribute to a global bottom up policy development process on Internet issues.