Hearing everyone’s voice

Immediately after the opening of APrIGF 2019, the plenary session “Internet Governance in Asia-Pacific: The State of Play and Outlook” took place, chaired by APTLD Director Leonid Todorov. The participants talked about the contribution the Asia-Pacific Region makes to resolving internet governance issues, the main challenges faced by the Asia-Pacific countries, and how to make the internet secure and accessible to every resident in the region. “Hearing everyone’s voice means giving everyone the opportunity to participate in internet governance, and for this, more attention should be paid to teaching young people ICT,” said one speaker. Digital illiteracy is one of the key problems in some Asia-Pacific countries, and finding a solution to this is the key task in the field of education today.

Further, the forum continued in three streams – each participant could choose the most interesting subject for themselves and participate in discussions and sessions. The first day’s topics were A safer internet, cybersecurity & regulation, The digital economy, access & universality, and Emerging technologies & society. The section on Universal Acceptance (UA) focused on the use of the internet in different languages. Universal Acceptance ensures that end users will be able to successfully use the internet in their languages, and ensures that different population groups are connected to the network so they can use the internet’s capacity for personal, business, public and family purposes.

For the Asia-Pacific Region, Universal Acceptance is a key topic of importance to many countries in the region where alphabets other than Latin are used. The largest number of top-level IDNs, both national and so-called “new” IDNs, registered under the ICANN New gTLD program, is concentrated here, and for correct use, it is necessary to ensure proper storage, validation, retrieval and handling of all domain names, URLs and email IDs, regardless of their length and character set.

Registries of domains in Southeast Asia, the Trans-Caucasus, and the Middle East have gained considerable experience in using them, and technical and political experts from these countries will talk about the possibilities of UA, as well as about the pitfalls and risks that the general online community should be aware of. Russia’s experience in the governance and development of the national Cyrillic domain .РФ is in demand today by many registries. Mikhail Anisimov, external communications head at the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/ .РФ, said the regional internet governance forum was unique because, on the one hand, it brings together the agenda of various countries, and on the other, it still allows for communicating in a fairly close community and substantively discuss the most pressing issues. “I am very pleased that the Universal Acceptance section was held as part of APrIGF, as the world’s largest region brings together countries for which IDN implementation is especially important. Such meetings become the basis for close cooperation, and we are confident that the mutual exchange of experience will promote the successful development of domains in national languages in the region,” he added.

APrIGF 2019 will continue tomorrow. Follow our posts!

A live broadcast of the forum is available at https://aprigf.ru/