Wrap up 2017

7 June 2017 | 17:30 - 18:00 | Grand Ballroom, Swissotel, Tallinn, Estonia |
Programme overview wiki | Programme overview EuroDIG web site

Wrap up of EuroDIG 2017

• Wrap up of EuroDIG 2017
• Outlook to the IGF by Chengetai Masango

Transcript

2017 EuroDIG annual meeting, 6-7 June 2017

Closing Ceremony Remarks by Mr. Chengetai Masango, IGF Secretariat

Distinguished delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Colleagues present onsite and online,

On behalf of the United Nations Secretariat of the Internet Governance Forum, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for inviting me, and of course, to congratulate the EuroDIG Organizing Team and to the Host Country, for the impressively organized meeting.

For years, EuroDIG serves as an effective channel through which the European community can say what are the issues of their concern regarding the Internet governance.

This year’s Forum provided with a very rich and diverse agenda, on which this multistakeholder community offered many new perspectives. These will be valuable inputs to many of the Internet expert communities, for further work.

But what I find as one of the most valuable achievements of the EuroDIG is that over the years, it managed to establish a firm engagement of the broader community, that was clearly visible here in Tallinn for the past two days. It was impressive to see how the stakeholders coming from various countries and organizations with different backgrounds, from across the Europe, collaborated and challenged many of the existing issues with offering some very innovative recommendations. This sense of the community that this multistakeholder Forum created, is what is encouraging and long term promising for creating a better and safer Internet for all. Only by enthusiastically working together, by committing to understand each other’s perspectives, by learning one from each other’s, we can make a change. That is the core IGF objective, and EuroDIG is a very important partner on this path, along with many of the existing national and regional IGFs.

In these times, when the nations committed to strive toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, our collaboration was never more important, as many of the Goals directly depend on people being connected to the Internet, having good policies and robust ICTs , all in order to achieve social and economic progress for the society.

I am very pleased that the EuroDIG community has been discussing some of the currently most important Internet Governance issues for all the citizens. At the same time, I would like to especially thank you for putting huge efforts to have Youth present, informed, trained and engaged, through dedicated pre-events, as Young people are the soon to be, the new generation of experts and leaders on the field.

I am hoping that many of you will bring your knowledge and expertise to the global IGF as well. You are cordially invited to the 12th annual meeting of the IGF that will be hosted by the Government of Switzerland at the premises of the United Nations offices in Geneva, from 18 to 21 December under the overarching theme: Shape Your Digital Future! The preparatory process is underway, and we will be thankful if you would bring some of this wonderful energy that I could feel everywhere at this meeting, to the intersessional work of the global IGF.

With this, I am thanking you for an excellent and important work, and wishing you many more meetings like this to come.