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ADC (for its Spanish acronym: Asociación por los Derechos Civiles) is a civil society organization based in Buenos Aires, in which we address civil rights and democratic values in the country. In the past few years, we have centered our work upon freedom of expression and privacy on the digital ecosystem. In this context, when we joined NPOC in September 2015, we became aware of the importance of domain names for civil society organizations. We decided to create a toolkit to describe the basics of the domain name system (DNS) with the goal of strengthening NGOs voices on the Internet.

Understanding domain names as ways of expression, we believe that if we know how DNS works and if we use it properly, organizations like ours have a lot to win even if their work is connected to the Internet or not. That ́s why we began by asking ourselves questions like what would we do if we wanted to register our NGO's website name? So first we have started the toolkit from the beginning: what a domain name is and how the DNS works. Also, we have explained the levels of the system and the different sorts of TLDs (ccTLDS, gTLDs and new gTLDs). Second, we have stressed why NGOs should use “.org” and not other extensions. Then, by focusing on the Argentinean case, we continue to explain the usage of the “.org.ar” and how organizations could and should register their domain names at NIC.ar. As things may get complex, we also decided to talk about ICANN and the dispute resolution mechanisms. To finalize, as we work on freedom of expression issues, we highlighted that when we speak about DNS we are not referring to the content that we update on our website.

We presented this toolkit during NPOC Constituency Day in ICANN55 in Marrakesh and it was well received by the members of the constituency in particular, and by the ICANN community in general. This shows the existing necessity that our community has, as to build a message than can be reached by everyone inside or not the Internet ecosystem.

This is our experience. Now, we are encouraging other organizations to address the issue. We are sharing here our toolkit under a creative common license so, if your organization is interested in creating something similar for your country, you have some ideas on how to start.

By ADC`s Team

Toolkit (in Spanish): https://adcdigital.org.ar/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Guia-nombres-de-dominio-ong.pdf ong.pdf 

By Klaus Stoll

Recently I was able to participate in the WSIS Forum 2016, and I would like to share some of my observations with you.

I have attended several WSIS Forums over the last years and to be honest I did not have many great expectations to this years event, In the past years WSIS Forums where quite a dull affair, mainly occupied with pre-prepared statements by ministers and events where governments praised their countries ICT efforts.

I am glad to say, this year was different. There are several reasons for this. One of the main point was that the Mandate of WSIS had recently renewed for another 10 years, so uncertainties about the future where gone. Another point was that the decision to connect the WSIS action lines with the UN Sustainable Development Goals gave the event a focus that was often missing in previous events. Maybe the most important change was in the emphasis of the WSIS Secretariat on dialogue and a multi stakeholder approach. To achieve this the Secretariat had appointed High Level facilitators as moderators for the High-Level Policy Sessions. This experiment turned out to be very successful and instead of having to listen to hours and hours of ministerial statements, some very interesting sessions emerged. I very much hope that this experiment will continue and can even increased.

It was remarkable how different the overall spirit of the WSIS Forum 2016 was from previous WSIS Forums. Only seldom where the usual complaints about digital divides and ICT under development voiced, instead one could here a lot of optimism that things could get done. A number of voices even went so far to state that the time to talk is over and that now the time has come to tackle hands on all the Sustainable Development Goals with the help of ICT's .

I would like to mention the NCUC organized event "Engaging Under-Represented Communities in National, Regional, and Global Internet Governance Debates" To my best knowledge, this was for the first time after 5 years, NPOC was invited to participate as a speaker in an NCUC organized event, and I had the privilege to be that speaker. It was a very good event and you will find worthwhile looking at it at at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_j72CX6VBw&feature=youtu.be

(my contribution starts at 1:03:25) I want to Thank Ayden for organizing the event and reaching out to NPOC. NPOC should think now about engaging more in future WSIS Forum events and thinking about an NPOC event at the Forum 2017, to be held on 12-16 June would be the right way to go. In conclusion I am very happy to report that WSIS is a going concern again and our engagement worthwhile.

Hope to see many of you at WSIS 2017

Yours Klaus


Related Resources:

Sustainable Development Goals: http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-

goals/

All archived sessions: https://www.itu.int/net4/wsis/forum/2016/Media/RP/Webcast/Archived/

WSIS FORUM 2016 INTERVIEW: High-Level Track Facilitators:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rLRaJuANHk

WSIS Forum 2016 Outcomes: https://www.itu.int/net4/wsis/forum/2016/Outcomes/? utm_source=WSIS+Flash&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=May+2016+Special+Issue