Secretary-General Renews Multistakeholder Advisory Group Membership to Guide Preparations for Internet Governance Forum Meeting in Switzerland

The Secretary-General has renewed the membership of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group of the Internet Governance Forum.

A total of 55 members, 12 among them new, will assume the responsibility to guide the preparation of the 2017 Internet Governance Forum (IGF).  The Advisory Group members are from all stakeholder groups and all regions, representing Governments, civil society, the private sector and technical community.

All Advisory Group members serve in their personal capacity, but are expected to have extensive linkages with their respective stakeholder groups.  The main task of the Advisory Group is to provide advice on the preparations for the twelfth meeting of the Internet Governance Forum, which is scheduled to take place in Switzerland in December 2017.

Representatives of previous host countries and representatives of relevant international and regional intergovernmental organizations are also invited to attend Advisory Group meetings.

The Internet Governance Forum is an outcome of the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) that took place in 2005.  In the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, Governments asked the Secretary-General to convene a “new forum for policy dialogue” to discuss issues related to key elements of Internet governance.  The mandate of the Forum was extended for another 10 years in December 2015, during the high-level meeting of the General Assembly on the overall review of the implementation of the WSIS outcomes.

The Forum’s past 11 meetings took place in:  Athens, Greece, in November 2006; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in November 2007; Hyderabad, India, in December 2008; Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2009; Vilnius, Lithuania, in November 2010; Nairobi, Kenya, in September 2011; Baku, Azerbaijan, in November 2012; Bali, Indonesia, in October 2013; Istanbul, Turkey, in September 2014; João Pessoa, Brazil, in November 2015, and Guadalajara, Mexico, in December 2016.

For further information, please visit www.intgovforum.org/multilingual/, or contact the Secretariat of the Internet Governance Forum at tel.: +41 0 22 917 4665, or e-mail: igf@unog.ch.

The full list of members can be found at intgovforum.org/cms.