The United Nation’s Internet Governance Forum will meet in Bali on 22-25 October 2013. The theme for this year is “Building Bridges – Enhancing Multi-Stakeholder Cooperation for Growth and Sustainable Development”.
Governments, businesses and campaigners will come together in Nusa Dua to discuss cross-border challenges and common opportunities regarding the internet, under the auspices of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
More than 1,500 delegates are set to attend in-person and thousands more are expected to participate remotely from around the world.
Attention will fall in particular on the following topics;
- the Internet as an engine for growth and sustainable development (a topic relevant to on-going discussions on the post-2015 development agenda);
- cybersecurity;
- human rights and freedom of expression;
- the principles of Internet governance and enhanced multi-stakeholder cooperation;
- and emerging issues of concern, such as Internet surveillance.
The IGF in Bali will be preceded, on 21 October, by a high-level meeting on cyber ethics, hosted by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology of the Republic of Indonesia.
South East Asia has some of the highest online engagement rates in the world. Indonesia itself is estimated to have 63 million Internet users, 47 million accounts on Facebook and nearly 30 million Twitter accounts.
