At the FOC Open Forum, held at the twelfth Internet Governance Forum 2017 on 20 December in Geneva, the government of Germany engaged with FOC stakeholders, presenting its plans for the Chairmanship in 2018 and its work for the Coalition.
Ambassador Thomas Fitschen, Director for the United Nations, International Cyber Policy and Counterterrorism, for the Government of Germany addressed and engaged with IGF 2017 participants. He underlined that the German engagement to lead the Coalition in 2018 reflects the ever growing global importance of ICT and the need to keep human rights online on the international policy agenda.
Ambassador Fitschen outlined the following priorities of the Program of Chairmanship:
- Annual FO Conference 2018: This will be a multistakeholder conference that aims to deepen the discussion on human rights online. The conference will offer an open platform for discussion among all stakeholders – governments, civil society, the private sector, and others – to share relevant information, develop joint strategies and combine efforts towards their mutual goal of a human rights based Internet.
- Diplomatic coordination: Germany will dedicate efforts as Chair to revitalise the FOC Diplomatic Networks in Geneva, New York, Paris and Vienna through meetings and support of coordination of FOC Members in multilateral fora.
- FOC Program of Action 2018: The FOC aims to be a proactive Coalition that ensures Internet freedom is on the international policy agenda as a way to drive concrete policy changes and outcomes. The FOC Program of Action 2018 will have three thematic areas of focus: To promote global norms that seek to prevent and limit state-sponsored restrictions to human rights online; To support civil society voices online; To promote and protect human rights online in the context of cybersecurity policy.
- Implementation of San José Workplan and Stockholm Terms of Reference: Germany will support the ongoing implementation of the San José Workplan and new FOC Terms of Reference adopted 2017 in Stockholm, through the development and implementation of required protocols to strengthen the FOC’s functionality as a cross-regional Coalition. Notably, Germany will support the launch and implementation of the Coalition’s new mechanism for multi-stakeholder engagement, the FOC Advisory Network.
- Outreach efforts: Approach potential new members with the aim of increasing membership in underrepresented regions to further increase the FOC’s geographic diversity.
Updates on the implementation of the German program of Chairmanship will be communicated via the FOC website and the monthly FOC Newsletter.
