About Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF)
Today, Asia has the strongest growing demand for Internet addresses. That is more and more people in Asia are using the Internet. In contrast to North America and Europe, demand for the Internet in Asia is not only growing, but also growing at an accelerating rate.
Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF) serves as a platform for discussion, exchange and collaboration at a regional level, and also where possible to aggregate national IGF discussions, ultimately advance the Internet governance development in the Asia Pacific region.
In 2010, while the global IGF is already in its fifth and final year of its initial charter, and Regional IGFs have been established in many other regions, including Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, to date, Asia has seen no parallel forum for discussing Internet governance issues at a regional level. For the first time, the APrIGF is therefore being convened with objectives to raise awareness and encourage participation from relevant stakeholders around the region on Internet governance issues, as well as to foster multi-lateral, multi-stakeholder discussion about issues pertinent to the Internet in Asia.
The multi-stakeholder approach is a core principle of the APrIGF with the emphasis on the diversity of participants and openness of the discussion. Valuing the youth as an important stakeholder and the future generations of the Internet, a Youth IGF also become an integral part of the APrIGF whereby they are held in parallel annually featuring a simulation of the multi-stakeholder discussion model among the young people on various Internet governance issues.
What is Internet Governance Forum (IGF)?
Building on the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals, and the mandate given at the Second Phase of the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis in 2005, the IGF (Internet Governance Forum) is a United Nations activity initiated in 2006 as a global platform for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue on prevailing and emerging issues on Internet governance so as to foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development of Internet. The annual Forum was previously held in Greece (2006), Brazil (2007), India (2008), and Egypt (2009), Lithuania (2010), Kenya (2011), Azerbaijan (2012).
The Internet has become an integral part of people’s life. Despite the advantages, misuses and abuses lead to social problems, such as digital divide, Internet addiction, information safety, security, privacy and other evolving issues. These issues have no respect to national borders, and therefore require collaboration between countries and territories to address. The IGF approach is an open forum for knowledge sharing between stakeholders across borders, which in turn inform local policy development.
More information can be found on their official website at http://www.intgovforum.org
