Internet Governance Forum - 7th meeting

Baku (Azerbaijan), 6-9 November 2012

The development of online media and new forms of expression online has created new challenges to the protection of freedom of expression. What can be done to ensure the safety of online media professionals and actors?

The Council of Europe is organising - in cooperation with EBU, OSCE and UNESCO - an open forum on this pressing issue at the 7th Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which the UN is organising in Baku (Azerbaijan) from 6 to 9 November.

Nils Muižnieks, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Jean Paul Philippot, President of EBU, and Neelie Kroes, EC Vice-president, will participate in the debate together with speakers such as journalist Eynulla Fatullayev and Jim Boumelha, President of the International Federation of Journalists.

The Council of Europe is also organising at the IGF events on the following topics aiming to engage in the discussions representatives of civil society, governments, the private sector and other relevant Internet actors:

Who is following me? Tracking the trackers. This workshop, organised in cooperation with the Internet Society, will explore trends in online tracking and their purposes,and how to empower individuals to know when they are being tracked.

How to prevent use of the Internet for terrorist purposes. This open forum will discuss the potential misuse of the Internet as a tool to support terrorism and ways and means to counter the use of the Internet by terrorists, while respecting and protecting fundamental human rights.

Human rights safeguards in fighting cybercrime. On the eve of the IGF, a Council of Europe conference will review how article 15 of the Cybercrime Convention, which protects individuals against arbitrary intrusion, is implemented in countries of Eastern and South-eastern Europe.

Freedom of expression and freedom from hate on-line. The aim of this workshop is to discuss the risks of hate speech and what measures are needed to combat it. The discussion will take into account a survey that was conducted among European young people in 2012.

What tools are needed to empower Internet users to exercise their rights? The Council of Europe is working on a compendium of existing human rights to help users to seek recourse from Internet actors and governments when they consider their rights have been adversely affected.

How can free cross-border flow of Internet traffic be protected? In the framework of its Internet Governance Strategy, the Council of Europe will consider developing human rights-based standards to protect the free cross-border flow of legal Internet content.

Programme