The Internet Governance Forum is a multi-stakeholder policy dialogue space convened by the United Nations Secretary General in 2006 to “foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development of the internet”.

It provides a kind of “pressure relief valve” for some of the most controversial internet governance issues, allowing actors with quite radically different and often opposing views to come together in an environment that is in the main respectful and constructive.

APC has found that the IGF is an experimental and influential policy forum for achieving our mission of ensuring open, universal and afforable access to the internet for all people. At the IGF, we advocate for policies and regulatory approaches that ensure equitable and affordable access, freedom of information and expression, access to knowledge, public participation, human rights, capacity-building and a development agenda for internet governance. And we express our concern about the erosion and diminishing visibility of a rights-based approach to how the internet is governed.

At the first IGF in Athens in 2006, “access (to the internet)” emerged as an issue of common concern and priority to all stakeholders. At the second IGF in Rio de Janeiro, business, civil society and the technical communities active in the IGF, worked together to prepare a more coherent approach to the access in the IGF, the outcome of which was a convergence in views as to what should be done to increase access to the internet across the world. “Reaching the next billion” was a priority theme for the third IGF held in Hyderabad.

In 2009, we took stock of our participation in the IGF since 2004. APC’s broad goals for the fourth IGF held in Sharm El-Sheikh in November 2009 are to:

• Continue to push for greater accountability of the ICANN Board to the members of the ICANN community and for a clear role within the review panels for civil society as well as promoting the IGF as an arena where the reviews themselves can be reviewed in a multi-stakeholder context as well as position the Code of Practice as an element of public accountability with regard to internet governance institutions
• Actively support the continuation of the IGF as a deliberative space for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue on internet governance
• Campaign for the issue of internet rights and principles to have greater agenda and substantive space within the IGF and within the practices of internet governance institutions
• Engage stakeholders on the issue of sexual rights and content regulation on the internet
• Actively support the recognition of the economic and social value of the internet economy in developing countries, including social networking and broadband in a time of global recession

• Continue to advocate for the inclusion of a ‘development agenda on internet governance’ in the IGF.