In the same year that World Wide Web celebrates 25 years, Brazil hosted NETmundial – Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance. The meeting was a partnership between the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) and /1Net, a forum that gathers international entities of the various stakeholders involved with Internet governance. This meeting focused on the elaboration of principles of Internet governance and the proposal for a roadmap for future development of this ecosystem. The goal was to consolidate proposals based on these two topics.
NETmundial represents the beginning of a process for the construction of such policies in the global context, following a model of participatory plurality. With the goal of bringing together representatives of civil society, private sector, academia and technical community to establish strategic guidelines related to the use and development of the Internet in the world, the meeting was concept into committees format, each one with representatives of the involved stakeholders, distinguished experts, aiming to give guidelines and organize the meeting.
NETmundial thanks the High-Level Multistakeholder Committee, composed of ministerial representatives of 12 countries (Argentina, Brazil, France, Ghana, Germany, India, Indonesia, South Africa, South Korea, Tunisia, Turkey and United States of America), plus 12 members of the multistakeholder international community, and the representatives of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) of the United Nations, and representation of the European Commission. They were responsible to oversee the overall strategy of the event and to promote the involvement of the international community around the themes that were discussed.
The Executive Multistakeholder Committee was responsible for the agenda of the meeting, its format, the call for participants and the management of the received content contributions, ensuring balanced participation of the global community. This Committee has nine international members, including representatives of technical, civil and academic communities, the private sector and the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations. The Logistics and Organizational Committee and the Council of Governmental Advisors completed the organization of the event.
NETmundial meeting took place on April 23rd and 24th, 2014, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, congregated 1,480 stakeholders with active voices (including remote participation), from a diversity of 97 nations. It was the first of its kind. It hopefully contributed to the evolution of the Internet governance ecosystem.
