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+# IGF 2026 WS #123 Context-Sensitive Governance for AI Systems
+
+## Description
+
+As AI governance transitions from high-level principles toward implementation, policymakers face a critical challenge: "AI" is not a monolithic technology. A regulatory approach designed for large language models cannot efficiently govern rule-based systems, predictive analytics, or autonomous agents. Yet policy debates frequently treat these fundamentally different AI technologies and computational systems under one umbrella, creating uncertainty for regulators, organisations, and developers.
+Aligned with the IGF 2026 overarching theme, "Governing the Internet in the Age of Intelligence: Our Shared Responsibility", this workshop will explore how evidence-based policy can translate responsible AI principles into context-sensitive governance. Moving beyond one-size-fits-all regulation, the session introduces a decision-making framework centered on the AI Policy Research Roadmap and the concept of “Question Zero” - evaluating whether a specific AI system is the best solution for the problem at hand (Why do we need it? What specific technology fits best?) before deciding how to deploy or regulate it.
+Participants will explore practicalities and capacity-building strategies needed to assess system-specific risks. Through a brief scenario exercise based on an institutional setting (e.g., higher education), attendees will apply the Question Zero approach to evaluate alternatives like process automation or human-centered solutions, demonstrating how early-stage governance strengthens accountability, transparency, and resource allocation.
+Co-organised by an international consortium spanning the Nordic region and the Global South – and uniting perspectives across academia, civil society, technical community, and the private sector – the workshop will support a broad multistakeholder perspective. By bridging diverse regional experiences and practical governance approaches, participants will co-create actionable insights for proportionate, adaptable, and impact-driven AI policy.
+
+Additional Co-organisers:
+Tatjana Titareva (Umeå University)
+Petter Ericson (Umeå University)
+Eltjo Poort (CGI)
+Maja Fjaestad (Karoliska Institutet)
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. How should policymakers distinguish between different types of AI systems when developing proportionate governance approaches?
+
+B. What factors should organisations consider when deciding whether AI is an appropriate response to a societal or organisational problem?
+
+C. What governance mechanisms can support responsible decisions throughout technology selection, procurement, deployment, and oversight?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The session will strengthen participants' understanding of how responsible AI principles can be translated into practical, evidence-based governance. Participants will gain a clearer understanding of the diversity of AI technologies and computational systems, why this distinction matters for policymaking, and how a Question Zero approach can support informed decisions before AI regulation and adoption.
+The workshop will produce a set of practical recommendations for AI governance processes, contributing to the further development and dissemination of the AI Policy Research Roadmap (<https://aipolicylab.se/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/roadmap-for-ai-policy…).> Insights from the discussion and interactive case study will inform future research, capacity-building activities, and multistakeholder collaboration on evidence-based AI governance.
+Participants will leave with practical tools and decision frameworks to assess whether AI is appropriate for a given use case, identify the type of technology involved and develop governance approaches that are proportionate to its capabilities, risks, and intended use across different organisational and policy contexts.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** The workshop format is designed to maximise interaction among policymakers, researchers, industry, civil society, and the technical community. A roundtable setting encourages dialogue across disciplines and stakeholder groups, which is essential for addressing the complexity of AI governance and developing shared understanding of Question Zero.
+The session combines short expert interventions with a facilitated interactive case study, allowing participants to apply the Question Zero approach to a realistic institutional scenario. This participatory approach moves beyond presentations by enabling attendees to debate governance choices, compare perspectives, and jointly explore proportionate governance approaches for different AI technologies and computational systems.
+The 60-minute format provides sufficient time for framing, multistakeholder discussion and collaborative reflection, as well as ensuring that practical recommendations and lessons learned can be shared beyond the session.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session is designed as a fully integrated hybrid workshop, with equal opportunities for onsite and online participants to contribute throughout the discussion. A dedicated online moderator will monitor the virtual platform, facilitate questions, and ensure that online participants are actively included in each discussion segment rather than only during the Q&A.
+The interactive case study will be conducted simultaneously with both onsite and online participants working through the proposed Question Zero approach. Participants will contribute their perspectives through live polling and collaborative digital whiteboards (e.g., Mentimeter, Miro), enabling real-time comparison across stakeholder groups and regions.
+Group discussions will intentionally combine onsite and online inputs. The session will conclude with a synthesis of key recommendations generated collectively by all participants, ensuring that both in-person and remote contributions are reflected equally in the workshop outcomes and subsequent dissemination activities.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Rachele Carli, Umeå University
+**Organizer 2:** Virginia Dignum, Umeå University
+**Organizer 3:** Viktoriia  Movchan, AI Policy Lab, Umea University
+**Organizer 4:** Hellegren Isadora, Mila
+**Organizer 5:** Brian Masinde, EthicEdge
+**Organizer 6:** Krumina Gunta, AImful Ry
+**Organizer 7:** Alex Moltzau, KI Norge
+**Organizer 8:** Jason Tucker, AI Policy Lab @Umeå University and Institute for Futures Studies
+**Organizer 9:** Kathleen Siminyu, 🔒Mozilla Foundation
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Virginia Dignum, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 2:** Jason Tucker, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 3:** Brian Masinde, Private Sector, African Group
+**Speaker 4:** Alex Moltzau, Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 5:** Viktoriia  Movchan, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Viktoriia  Movchan, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Hellegren Isadora, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Krumina Gunta, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
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+# IGF 2026 WS #178  Who Shapes Green AI? An Intergenerational Multistakeholder
+
+## Description
+
+As artificial intelligence continues to reshape economies and societies, its environmental footprint—from energy-intensive data centers to resource-heavy hardware production—demands urgent, collaborative attention. This interactive session brings together voices across generations and sectors to co-create actionable policy recommendations for environmentally sustainable AI development and deployment.
+
+Structured as a time-bound, multistakeholder multistakeholder policy role-play brainstorming exercise, participants will engage in a dynamic roleplay simulation representing key stakeholder groups: governments and regulators, tech industry leaders, civil society and environmental advocates, academia and researchers, and youth representatives based on case study scenario prompting participants to negotiate, debate, and align on proposing the policy recommendation
+The intergenerational format is central to this session's design. By bringing together experienced policymakers, technical experts, industry representatives and young leaders, the dialogue bridges institutional experience with emerging perspectives, ensuring that policy recommendations reflect both present-day realities and the long-term interests of future generations.
+
+Through facilitated rounds of stakeholder negotiation, participants will collaboratively draft a concise set of policy recommendations addressing energy efficiency standards, transparency in AI's carbon footprint, sustainable hardware lifecycle management, and equitable access to green AI innovation. The session concludes with a synthesis of proposals, capturing consensus points and highlighting areas for further multistakeholder engagement.
+
+To guide the discussion, participants will develop policy recommendations using a structured framework that links each recommendation to the assigned case study. Each recommendation will identify the proposed policy action, the responsible stakeholders, implementation or compliance mechanisms, and the expected environmental impact. This approach will encourage practical, focused and outcome-oriented policy solutions rather than broad or generic recommendations.
+
+Participants will leave with practical frameworks, cross-generational insights, and experience in collaboratively developing case-specific policy recommendations through multistakeholder dialogue. The session aims to demonstrate how inclusive and participatory governance approaches can help shape environmentally sustainable AI policies at national, regional, and global levels.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+1. How can multistakeholder frameworks balance the growing computational demands of AI development with the urgent need to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions?
+2. What regulatory, market-based, or voluntary mechanisms can ensure transparency, accountability, and sustainability across the AI lifecycle, including data centre operations, carbon disclosure, AI hardware management, and emerging sustainability certification frameworks?
+3. How can intergenerational and cross-sectoral dialogue be meaningfully embedded into AI governance processes to ensure that sustainability policies reflect both near-term industry realities and the long-term interests of future generations?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+This session will produce a consolidated set of case-specific policy recommendations on environmentally sustainable AI, co-created through multistakeholder role-play and negotiation based on policy-focused case studies. Key outputs include a summary report capturing consensus points and divergent views, intended to feed into broader IGF policy discussions and inform follow-up dialogues within relevant working groups or coalitions on AI governance and sustainability.
+
+Participants will gain practical insight into the trade-offs and tensions between AI innovation and environmental responsibility, informed by real-world case studies. The intergenerational format will expose attendees to diverse viewpoints—bridging experienced policymakers' institutional knowledge with youth perspectives on long-term impact. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of stakeholder incentives and negotiation dynamics in AI environmental governance, together with a practical framework for developing case-specific policy recommendations through multistakeholder collaboration that can be applied in regional, national, and international contexts.
+
+## Format
+
+Classroom
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** The session will adopt an interactive classroom and policy laboratory format, where participants learn through real-world case studies, multistakeholder collaboration, and role-play. After a brief introduction to environmentally sustainable AI and the policy context, participants will be divided into diverse groups representing governments, the private sector, civil society, the technical community, academia, and youth. Each group will analyse a policy-focused case study, identify competing interests and trade-offs, and negotiate practical policy recommendations.
+Facilitators will guide discussions using structured worksheets and collaborative digital tools to ensure equal participation from both onsite and online attendees. Each group will present its recommendations. The session will conclude with a consolidated set of case-specific policy recommendations and a summary report to support future IGF discussions. Participants will gain practical experience in multistakeholder negotiation while developing a framework for balancing AI innovation with environmental sustainability.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** Onsite and online participants will be integrated into the same stakeholder roleplay groups, with a dedicated online moderator relaying remote contributions into each group's negotiation in real time. A hybrid co-facilitation model—one onsite, one online moderator—ensures balanced speaking time and visibility for remote voices during plenary synthesis.
+To ensure equitable experience, online participants will receive case study materials and stakeholder briefs in advance, join breakout negotiations via video, and use collaborative digital whiteboards to co-draft recommendations alongside onsite tables. Live polling will surface real-time input from both groups during the synthesis phase.
+We plan to use Zoom breakout rooms (mirroring onsite roundtables), Miro or Mentimeter for collaborative brainstorming and polling, and a shared online document for co-drafting policy recommendations, ensuring all participants—regardless of location—contribute equally to the session's final outputs.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Phyo Thiri Lwin, Myanmar Youth IGF
+**Organizer 2:** Sana Nisar, 🔒
+**Organizer 3:** Vinayak Bharadwaz, NetMission.Asia Program Development Lead
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Edmon Chung, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 2:** Saba Tiku Beyene, Technical Community, African Group
+**Speaker 3:** Jaewon Son, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 4:** Fiona Asonga, Private Sector, African Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Phyo Thiri Lwin, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Sana Nisar, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Vinayak Bharadwaz, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9.4
+9.5
+17.16
+17.17
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+# IGF 2026 WS #204 Pan-African DPI Perspectives: Third Workshop
+
+## Description
+
+This workshop convenes the pan-African DPI Workshop Series for the third time this year, bringing the Series members’ findings on digital public infrastructure to the global stage, engaging on the critical question of AI in DPI for LMICs in Africa, and producing recommendations for the broader DPI conversation.
+
+The working group, formed by Research ICT Africa, Paradigm Initiative, CIPESA, DIAL, Richard Gevers, and Robert Karanja are running a series of online and in-person workshops to strengthen collaborative research, policy development, and implementation support on DPI across Africa. In the wake of the troubling cancellation of RightsCon, this series set out to convene African researchers and practitioners working on digital human rights and development. IGF is the series' final venue for 2026: a global stage on which to connect the working group's findings to the wider DPI conversation, and to reach stakeholders from government, private sector, philanthropy, development funding, and academia.
+
+This workshop builds on two prior gatherings: an inaugural session that surfaced active DPI projects and shared priorities across the continent, and a second meeting at AfIGF that will have deepened this agenda into a policy brief on sovereignty, open-source, vendor lockin, and private sector and donor engagement. To complement our core group of public, CSO, and donor experts we are including in this workshop Juliet Wangui Maina, the Director of Government Affairs and Policy at Mastercard. This workshop will:
+
+- Engage a global audience on the working group's policy brief
+- Expand the policy brief with a discussion of AI in DPI in LMICs, with a particular focus on:
+- Necessary state capacity at the design and implementation level
+- Challenges of vendor lockin for biometric and automation systems
+- Roles and strategies for the private sector to engage sustainably and equitably as donor models shift
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+In the context of leveraging open source DPI systems for sovereignty in Africa, what are the challenges of integrating AI?
+As funders focus more and more on AI, how can their efforts best support sustainable, sovereign, and equitable DPI systems?
+How can the private sector in Africa engage with funders and governments in building out DPI and AI-integrated DPI to increase sovereignty and equality?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+This workshop will expand upon the workshop series’ first policy brief by bringing the question of AI integration in African LMICs to the fore and producing a series of recommendations for funders and the private sector engaging on these challenges across Africa. This output will serve as our white paper going into the Global DPI summit in March 2027.
+
+In addition to the global summit, the white paper will also serve as our blueprint for engaging with the private sector and funders in our ongoing workshop series throughout 2027. The white paper will deliver a unique level of collaborative, pan-African, and multi-perspectival insight into the challenges of DPI in Africa, and provide much needed structure and depth for DPI implementers and funders.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** As this is a multistakeholder workshop, where governments, civil society, technical community, and private sector voices have equal footing, a roundtable format removes the barriers that typically separate speakers from audience, encourages spontaneous exchange, follow-up questions, and genuine debate rather than sequential presentations.
+
+To this end we will have a short formal presentation, allowing more time and structure for the session to surface nuance, disagreement, and emerging ideas that a traditional panel would leave unspoken. As such 90 minutes is suitable, allowing maximum time for our workshop participants and the rest of the participants to engage substantively on our findings.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** While we currently expect all speakers to be present in person, we do want to encourage as broad a participation as possible, particularly for those in the Global South who may not have been able to travel to Nairobi. To this end our presentation and discussion can be streamed, and the discussion moderator will also keep close watch over online participants' questions and chat remarks and will work to integrate them seamlessly into the discussion.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Thomas Linder, Research ICT Africa
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Thomas Linder, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Patricia Ainembabazi , Intergovernmental Organization, African Group
+**Speaker 3:** Melody Musoni, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 4:** Bridgette Ndlovu, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Thomas Linder, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Thomas Linder, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Thomas Linder, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9.1
+9.4
+9.b
+10.2
+16.6
+16.9
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+# IGF 2026 WS #238 Who Controls the Agents? Building Rights-Based Frontier AI
+
+## Description
+
+Agentic AI systems — autonomous technologies that can plan, decide and act — are moving rapidly from labs into deployment. Shaped largely by a Silicon Valley, Global North ethos, they are being rolled out globally without meaningful consultation with marginalized communities and the Global Majority, who disproportionately bear the risks. While agentic AI can have positive impacts and applications, these systems also risk reinforcing structural discrimination by embedding bias into automated decisions, amplifying misinformation, enabling repression, and undermining human autonomy. Multilingual gaps in large language models further compound harm by privileging dominant (colonial) languages, undermining access to justice, inclusion and rights.
+
+This session examines what is needed to align AI agents with human rights and social justice. Speakers and participants will assess the human rights impacts already emerging for marginalized groups and civic space, and how these risks are compounded in contexts of shrinking civic space, rising authoritarianism, and transnational repression. The discussion will probe where the boundaries on AI autonomy should be drawn, on what basis — technical capability, legal accountability, or democratic mandate — and, critically, who gets to decide where that line sits. Participants will weigh which safeguards are practical and effective in real deployment contexts, including human oversight, transparency, red-teaming, impact assessments, multilingual access, community engagement, and grievance mechanisms. The session will also consider what governments should require when procuring agentic AI, and whether open-source and public interest models can redistribute power away from corporate concentration.
+
+Short framing inputs will be followed by interactive discussion in which participants map risks, identify protective measures, and co-create principles for rights-respecting AI. The session aims to launch community-driven recommendations that center marginalized perspectives, address power imbalances, and guide developers, policymakers and civil society toward transparent, accountable and rights-based frontier AI systems.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+- Where should boundaries on AI autonomy be drawn? How do we navigate tensions between machine agency and human decision-making, and who decides?
+- What human rights impacts are emerging, particularly for marginalized communities and the Global Majority, and how do these risks manifest in contexts of shrinking civic space, rising authoritarianism, and transnational repression?
+- What safeguards (e.g., human oversight, impact assessments, grievance mechanisms, multilingual accessibility) are most practical and effective?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+Participants will leave with a shared map of emerging human rights risks from agentic AI, a clearer sense of which safeguards (e.g., human oversight, impact assessments, grievance mechanisms, multilingual accessibility) work in real deployment contexts rather than on paper, and diverse perspectives from government, industry and Global Majority civil society on where boundaries on AI autonomy should sit and who gets to decide.
+
+The session will produce community-driven recommendations for rights-respecting agentic AI, alongside an openly published synthesis of the discussion. Insights will feed directly into ongoing work on human rights impact assessments and multilingual auditing frameworks for AI agents developed to support civil society. Participants will be furthermore invited into a continuing community of practice, with follow-up workshops prioritizing Global Majority voices, ensuring the expertise shared here shapes advocacy and practical standards beyond the IGF and builds momentum toward governance models that redistribute power.
+
+## Format
+
+Theater
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** We have chosen a theater-style layout to accommodate a large audience while fostering interactive dialogue. The open seating arrangement enhances accessibility and encourages diverse participation from civil society, policymakers, technologists and the private sector — essential for a topic where power imbalances between these groups are themselves part of the problem.
+
+A 60-minute session strikes the right balance between depth and engagement, allowing for short framing inputs from speakers, interactive discussion, and audience participation without losing focus. Given the complexity of agentic AI and its implications for civic space and the Global Majority, this format ensures participants gain practical insights while maintaining an inclusive and dynamic space for debate and knowledge exchange, with enough space for people to attend.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** To ensure seamless interaction, both the onsite and online moderators will be physically present in the room, coordinating engagement between in-person and remote participants. The onsite moderator will lead discussions and manage speaker interventions, while the online moderator will monitor the virtual chat, relay questions, and facilitate real-time interventions. A dedicated online participation queue will ensure remote attendees can contribute equally.
+
+To enhance engagement, almost half of the session will be allocated for audience participation, with Q&A, live polling, and direct interventions from both onsite and online participants. We will use Slido for real-time input and the IGF chat function to integrate remote contributions, ensuring an inclusive and interactive hybrid session.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Marlena Wisniak, 🔒European Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ECNL)
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Urvashi Aneja, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 2:** Jorge Cancio, Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 3:** Roya Pakzad, Civil Society, Intergovernmental Organization
+**Speaker 4:** Hoh JY, Private Sector, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Marlena Wisniak, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Iwanska Karolina, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Marlena Wisniak, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+5.b
+9.c
+10.2
+10.3
+16.10
+16.6
+16.7
+16.b
+17.16
+17.17
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+# IGF 2026 WS #252 AI for the Unheard: Governing Language-Inclusive AI
+
+## Description
+
+This hybrid workshop will explore how Internet governance can make AI language technologies more inclusive, accountable, and responsive to the roughly four billion people who speak marginalized languages and remain locked out of digital conversations that concern them. Of 7,000+ languages spoken worldwide, fewer than 100 have enough digital presence to meaningfully shape a large language model and language exclusion is not a technical problem alone, but a redistribution of opportunity, voice, and safety.
+
+The session pairs implementation evidence with structured multistakeholder exchange. UNICEF will share practical lessons from Laaha, its Virtual Safe Space for women and girls, including pilots of open-source text-to-speech and translation models in Swahili, Bengali, Turkish, Lingala, and Marshallese. In humanitarian contexts, where information may relate to gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive health, or access to services, inaccurate translation or culturally inappropriate synthetic speech can create serious risks. CLEAR Global and GSMA will present joint findings on language exclusion in mobile-delivered humanitarian platforms and the gender digital divide: women in low- and middle-income countries are 14% less likely than men to use mobile internet, and 885 million women remain unconnected. An African AI developer building large language models for African languages will speak to what community-led model development reveals about data ownership, consent, dialect, and sustainability.
+
+The session is organized around three anchor questions: what is broken, what is working and at what cost, and what should be built together with participants as co-contributors rather than an audience. It will conclude by identifying practical governance principles and priorities for inclusive language AI, feeding an open repository of lessons, workflows, and ethical guidance.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+• How can communities meaningfully participate in the development, ownership, and governance of AI tools for low-resource languages including consent over voice and language data?
+• How should governments, mobile operators, technology providers, donors, and civil society balance openness, safety, cultural accuracy, and long-term sustainability in language AI?
+• What standards and accountability mechanisms are needed to reduce harm from AI translation, content moderation, and synthetic speech in sensitive and humanitarian contexts?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+Participants will gain a clearer understanding of language exclusion as an Internet governance issue spanning access, mobile infrastructure, data governance, AI development, and human rights.
+
+The workshop will produce:
+• Practical governance principles for developing and deploying AI for low-resource languages.
+• Recommendations for meaningful community participation, consent, and responsible stewardship of language and voice data — including the question "who owns a voice once it has been modeled?"
+• A framework for balancing openness, cultural accuracy, safety, affordability, and sustainability.
+• Concrete collaboration pathways among humanitarian organizations, the mobile sector, language specialists , and African LLM developers.
+
+Findings will feed an open repository of implementation lessons, workflows, models, and ethical guidance and inform future language technology pilots and public-interest initiatives in underserved languages.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** A 60-minute roundtable workshop is best suited because the session is designed for focused multi-stakeholder exchange, not a sequence of presentations. The roundtable layout reduces hierarchy and enables direct discussion among humanitarian practitioners, language specialists, technology companies, policymakers, civil society, and affected-language communities.
+
+The session will follow three stages:
+- 0–10 minutes: Brief evidence-based framing from UNICEF, CLEAR Global, and GSMA on language exclusion, access, and implementation challenges.
+- 10–45 minutes: Facilitated discussion across the three policy questions, examining community participation, data governance, openness, cultural accuracy, sustainability, and tensions between AI-generated and human voice.
+- 45–60 minutes: Participants prioritize safeguards, responsibilities, and opportunities for collaboration.
+
+Short visual prompts will introduce each discussion block. Online participants will contribute through moderated speaking queues, live polls, and a shared board. A rapporteur will capture recommendations visibly, creating the foundation for the session’s open repository and follow-up work..
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The onsite and online moderators will operate as one facilitation team, alternating between room and remote contributions so online participants are not treated as an afterthought.
+
+A shared digital board will collect examples, risks, and proposed safeguards before and during the workshop. After brief opening interventions, participants will work through structured questions in mixed onsite-online discussion rounds. The online moderator will surface chat contributions, conduct quick polls, and invite remote participants at designated intervals. The onsite moderator will use visible timekeeping and reserve at least half the session for participant discussion.
+
+Contributions may be submitted anonymously through Slido or Mentimeter, while a Miro or Padlet board will capture model examples, governance gaps, and recommendations. Materials and prompts will be shared in advance in accessible formats. The rapporteur will consolidate contributions from both participation channels into one outcome document.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Caroline Masboungi, UNICEF
+**Organizer 2:** Eugenie Humeau, GSMA
+**Organizer 3:** Wakesho kililo, CLEAR Global
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Eugenie Humeau, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 2:** Wakesho kililo, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 3:** STEPHEN  OBONYO, Technical Community, African Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Caroline Masboungi, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Abeera Akhtar, Intergovernmental Organization, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Abeera Akhtar, Intergovernmental Organization, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+3.7
+4.5
+4.6
+5.2
+5.6
+5.b
+9.c
+10.2
+10.3
+16.10
+16.7
+17.16
+17.17
+17.6
+17.9
@@ -0,0 +1,82 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #279 The Creatives Palaver
+
+## Description
+
+Content shapes how people think, learn, understand themselves and the world around them. For children, whose identities and worldviews are still forming, this influence is particularly significant. Yet, many of the creators producing this content have little understanding of the laws, platform policies, and digital governance frameworks that exist to protect children's rights, safety, and wellbeing online. This gap is significant in Africa. With more than 600 million children, African children remain underrepresented in digital design, while language, representation, and infrastructure gaps continue to limit meaningful digital inclusion. Additionally, Africa's creative economy is valued at approximately US$60 billion and could grow to US$200 billion by 2030 with the right investments and policies. As Africa's digital creators increasingly shape childhood, the ability to translate governance principles into child centred digital experiences has become a critical capability.
+
+The Creative Palaver is a 90-minute hybrid, highly interactive workshop that brings together designers, technologists, policymakers, researchers, educators, artists, young people and child rights advocates to collectively imagine what an African digital childhood could look like. Inspired by the African tradition of the palaver, a gathering where communities come together to listen, deliberate and build consensus, the session uses Afro-reflective methods and collaborative design activities rather than presentations or panels to bridge the worlds of content creation, digital governance, and child-centred design.
+Together, participants will co-create practical recommendations for designing digital products, services, and policies that are safe, culturally relevant, and rooted in African values. Rather than ending with dialogue alone, the session will generate actionable insights to inform future digital governance, Safety by Design, and child-centred innovation across Africa.
+
+This is an invitation to imagine and begin building digital futures where African children are not merely users of technology, but are recognised, respected and reflected in the systems designed for them.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+1.	How can digital governance better integrate creatives, technologists, policymakers, educators, researchers, child rights practitioners and young people  as partners in shaping digital experiences for African children?
+2.	What African values, cultures, and knowledge systems should guide the design of digital experiences for African children?
+3.	How can Africa build an enabling ecosystem that supports the creation of child-centered digital experiences rooted in African realities?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The Creative Palaver will convene diverse voices to explore what shape digital childhood should take from African perspectives. Through interactive dialogue, participants will co-create a set of principles and recommendations for designing and governing digital experiences that reflect the realities, cultures and aspirations of African children.
+
+The workshop will strengthen collaboration between creatives, technologists, policymakers, educators, researchers, child rights practitioners and young people, fostering new partnerships beyond the IGF. A summary of the key insights and recommendations will be shared to inform future digital governance, innovation and child-centred design initiatives across Africa.
+
+Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of how African contexts, values and lived experiences can shape digital policy and technology design, and practical ideas for creating digital environments where African children can safely learn, play, create and thrive.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Classroom
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The session brings together diverse voices to explore what should define an African digital childhood and how digital governance can better integrate the creative industries alongside other key stakeholders. Using the WATOTO Child-Centred Digital Framework as foundation, participants will collectively explore how African values, cultures and lived experiences shape the design and governance of digital experiences for children.
+
+The workshop strengthens collaboration across multiple and diverse stakeholders fostering new partnerships and shared approaches to advancing child-centred digital innovation beyond the IGF. A summary of the collective insights and recommendations will be shared to inform future digital governance, Safety by Design, and child-centred digital design initiatives across Africa.
+
+Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of how African knowledge systems and lived experiences can inform digital governance and digital design, along with practical ideas for creating digital environments where African children can safely learn, play, create, and thrive.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The Creative Palaver is designed as a fully hybrid workshop where online and onsite participants contribute equally to the discussion and outcomes. A dedicated online moderator will ensure remote participants are actively engaged, bringing their questions and insights into the room in real time, while facilitators alternate between online and onsite voices throughout the session.
+
+Participants will be divided into ten facilitated Palavers, each focused on one of the ten WATOTO Child-Centred Digital Framework standards. Each group, comprising diverse stakeholders, will explore a key challenge and develop practical recommendations. Online participants will join virtual breakout Palavers, mirroring onsite discussions.
+
+Insights will be captured in a shared Miro workspace and presented in plenary, where facilitators will synthesise recommendations. Slido will support live polling and Q&A, enabling inclusive participation. The session will conclude with a collective reflection that produces shared recommendations for advancing African-centred digital governance and child-centred digital design.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Makumbe Caroline, Kutunga Design Academy & Innovation Lab
+**Organizer 2:** Eunice Wambere Nyagah, Kutunga Design Academy
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Makumbe Caroline, Private Sector, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Maina Korir, Technical Community, African Group
+**Speaker 3:** Belinda Matore, Private Sector, African Group
+**Speaker 4:** George Gachui, Private Sector, African Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Eunice Wambere Nyagah, Private Sector, African Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Eunice Maingi, Technical Community, African Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Kelvin Dabengwa, Private Sector, African Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+4. Quality Education
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+10. Reduced Inequalities
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
@@ -0,0 +1,71 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #288 Advancing sustainable data center infrastructures in BRICS
+
+## Description
+
+The workshop proposes a multistakeholder dialogue focused on advancing sustainable data center governance across the BRICS countries through cooperation, shared experiences, and the exchange of best practices. The dialogue aims to explore common challenges related to the expansion of data centers infrastructures in the Global South, including those related to measuring their scale, distribution, and resource use, as well as the role of evidence, indicators, and other governance instruments in identifying and addressing socio-environmental impacts. The BRICS countries are increasingly becoming hosts to data center infrastructure, leveraging their natural and technical resources in the emerging data economy. This growth presents increasingly complex challenges related to natural resources consumption, environmental impacts, and the well-being of local communities, especially in the context of climate change, and in line with the SDGs.
+Understanding the impacts of these infrastructures requires cooperation across countries to strengthen policy frameworks and governance approaches that can balance digital infrastructure development with environmental sustainability. Sharing good practices can support mutual learning and help countries address common governance challenges while adapting solutions to their different contexts and development needs. Sharing experiences and evidence can  contribute to more informed and coordinated approaches to sustainable data center governance.
+The session will be structured around three complementary stages. First, participants will examine the challenges  related to expansion of data center infrastructure across the BRICS and the Global South, drawing on experiences from different national contexts to explore pathways toward more sustainable governance. Second, participants will consider how evidence and impact assessment instruments can support a better understanding of these infrastructures, informing policy-making. Finally, participants will discuss how sustainable data center governance can become part of the broader digital cooperation agenda among the BRICS countries, identifying opportunities to strengthen mutual learning, policy dialogue, and common approaches while respecting different national contexts and development priorities.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. What are the main governance and sustainability challenges associated with the expansion of data center infrastructure in the BRICS and the Global South, and how can multistakeholder dialogue contribute to a better understanding of these challenges?
+B. Which evidences, metrics, and impact assessment methodologies should are essential for measuring the technical, environmental, social, and territorial dimensions of data center infrastructure to support evidence-based policymaking?
+C. How can BRICS countries promote cooperation, mutual learning, and common approaches to sustainable data center governance while respecting different national contexts and development priorities?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The session is expected to generate meaningful insights on how BRICS countries and other emerging economies can strengthen the governance of data centers while advancing sustainable development, climate objectives, and digital sovereignty. It should contribute to a shared understanding of common governance challenges and identify opportunities for multistakeholder cooperation, and the exchange of methodologies, evidence, and policy experiences. It is also expected to identify areas where greater convergence on data collection practices, assessment frameworks, and governance approaches could strengthen international cooperation while respecting different national contexts and development priorities. The outcomes of the session may inform future IGF and BRICS-related dialogues, contributing to a broader agenda for the sustainable governance of digital infrastructure.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The roundtable format, combined with a 90-minute duration, is well suited to the session’s multistakeholder and international approach. The format will foster an open and interactive dialogue among the BRICS countries and stakeholder groups, enabling the exchange of perspectives, experiences, and lessons learned. The 90-minute format will allow the session to move beyond individual presentations and dedicate substantial time to an interactive discussion on common challenges, indicators, and approaches to sustainable data center governance. The roundtable setup also helps reduce the traditional distinction between speakers and audience, encouraging equitable participation from both onsite and online participants. With support from both on-site and online moderators, this interactive format will facilitate the integration of diverse perspectives and experiences, helping to identify common challenges, areas for cooperation, and potential recommendations to inform future policy discussions and international processes.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session will feature a virtual moderator who will monitor the remote participation tools provided by the IGF organizers and will be responsible for bringing up the virtual comments and questions relevant to the discussion. Accordingly, following the presentations of the invited speakers, the session will include a dedicated timeslot for participation and input from both the in-person and online audiences.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Hartmut Richard Glaser, CGI.br
+**Organizer 2:** Alexandre Barbosa, 🔒
+**Organizer 3:** Rodolfo Avelino, Insper
+**Organizer 4:** Mariana Soares, NIC.br
+**Organizer 5:** Jean Carlos Ferreira dos Santos, 🔒
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Jeff Xiong, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 2:** Graziela Castello, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 3:** Eugenio Garcia, Government, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 4:** Kola Ijasan , Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 5:** Miguel Pinto Maria, Private Sector, African Group
+**Speaker 6:** Rodolfo Avelino, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Rodolfo Avelino, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Mariana Soares, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Jean Carlos Ferreira dos Santos, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+6. Clean Water and Sanitation
+7. Affordable and Clean Energy
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+13. Climate Action
@@ -0,0 +1,68 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #292 Data work, precarity and the human infrastructure of AI
+
+## Description
+
+The hype  surrounding the development and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) systems often masks the significant human and labour rights’ costs embedded in their production. Machine learning, the technology underpinning most AI technologies, depends on the labour of thousands of workers around the world, known as data workers, who perform fragmented and repetitive tasks that are essential for generating, annotating, and evaluating the datasets used to train AI models. Despite being indispensable to the AI supply chain, data work remains largely invisible within digital governance spaces. This session will present findings from the proposer organization's recent research on data work in Latin America, highlighting workers lived experiences alongside public policy recommendations to advance compliance with international labour standards in data work. These findings underscore the need to place labour rights at the center of digital technology governance frameworks. Bringing together speakers from civil society organizations, workers' organizations, academia and the technical sector, the session will explore how the rapid expansion of AI and the growing attention to its governance must be accompanied by greater recognition of the workers who make these technologies possible. It will also examine how technology companies can be held accountable for the labour rights impacts and human costs embedded in the development and deployment of AI systems.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+What regulatory and policy mechanisms are needed to ensure that the development and deployment of AI systems comply with international labour standards and human rights  throughout the AI supply chain?
+What transparency and accountability measures across the AI supply chain  are needed to ensure compliance with data worker’s rights?
+How can AI governance processes ensure the meaningful participation of data workers, including through freedom of association and collective bargaining?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+By the end of the session, participants will have a deeper understanding of the often-overlooked role of data workers in the AI supply chain and the labour and human rights implications associated with AI development. The discussion will contribute to broadening current AI governance debates by placing the human labour  at the center of policy conversations. The session will foster dialogue arround concrete pathways to strengthen the protection of data workers' rights. In particular, participants will identify policy and regulatory priorities to improve transparency, corporate accountability, and labour protections across AI supply chain, while exploring how existing digital governance frameworks can better incorporate decent work principles. The session will inform a blog post to be published on the proposer organization's website, synthesizing the discussion and highlighting public policy recommendations for advancing compliance with labour rights for data workers.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** The roundtable format is well suited to this session as it brings together representatives from civil society, workers' organizations, academia, and the technical community in a dynamic exchange of perspectives. The 60-minute discussion will be structured around two rounds of guiding questions, encouraging speakers to share their expertise, reflect on the proposer organization's research findings, and engage with one another's perspectives. Through this interactive dialogue, participants will collectively explore policy, regulatory, and corporate accountability mechanisms to ensure that the development and deployment of AI systems uphold labour standards and respect human rights throughout the AI supply chain.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session will actively integrate both in-person and online participants through two complementary strategies. First, the session will begin with an interactive activity using a real-time engagement tool, such as Mentimeter, to pose a broad question that introduces participants to the session's central theme. The tool will remain active throughout the discussion, enabling online participants to contribute simultaneously by sharing their reactions and reflections. These contributions will serve as a common input that can be revisited during or at the end of the session. Second, a dedicated space within the videoconferencing platform will remain open throughout the session to receive questions and comments from online participants. The online moderator will collect and prioritize these interventions, ensuring they are incorporated into the discussion and addressed on an equal basis with contributions from participants attending in person.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Laura Mantilla-León, Derechos Digitales NGO
+**Organizer 2:** Paloma Lara-Castro, Derechos Digitales
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Alexandrine Pirlot de Corbion, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 2:** Posada Julian, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 3:** Jamila Venturini, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 4:** Fasica Gebrekidan, Technical Community, African Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Jamila Venturini, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Laura Mantilla-León, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Ximena Cuzcano, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
+8.7
+8.8
+10. Reduced Inequalities
+10.2
+10.3
+10.6
+12. Responsible Production and Consumption
@@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #305 Beyond AI Principles: Operationalising AI Governance
+
+## Description
+
+Governments, international organisations and the private sector in AI principles, ethical frameworks and national AI strategies have made significant progress. It is no longer in doubt what responsible AI should look like, but how do we implement it effectively? The OECD observes that the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) governance frameworks is on the rise, but this has not yet translated into their effective implementation across organisations.
+As countries implement the Global Digital Compact, the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI, and national AI strategies, institutions are increasingly confronted with practical governance questions. How should responsibilities be shared across government agencies? What accountability mechanisms are needed? How can governments, industry, civil society, academia and the technical community work together to translate AI commitments into practice?
+This workshop will focus on the practical challenge of operationalising AI governance. Through a structured multistakeholder dialogue, participants will examine implementation experiences from different regions, identify common institutional challenges and exchange practical approaches for strengthening coordination, accountability and multistakeholder collaboration. Rather than debating new AI principles, the discussion will explore how existing commitments can be translated into effective governance arrangements.
+The session will produce an AI Governance Implementation report which can also be used as a toolkit, capturing practical recommendations, implementation approaches and institutional considerations that governments, international organisations and other stakeholders can adapt to strengthen AI governance in different national and regional contexts. By focusing on implementation rather than principle setting, the workshop aims to support more effective, inclusive and accountable AI governance across the Internet governance ecosystem.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+What institutional arrangements and governance mechanisms are needed to translate AI principles and national AI strategies into effective implementation?
+How can governments, the private sector, civil society, academia and the technical community strengthen coordination and accountability for AI governance across different national and regional contexts?
+What practical approaches can help organisations operationalise AI governance while remaining inclusive, transparent and adaptable to emerging technological and policy developments?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The session will produce an AI Governance Implementation Guide, capturing practical recommendations and good practices for translating AI principles into effective governance. The guide will identify common implementation challenges, highlight institutional approaches discussed during the session, and outline practical considerations for strengthening coordination, accountability and multistakeholder collaboration. WIG will publish and share the guide with the wider Internet governance community to encourage continued dialogue and adaptation.
+Participants will gain a better understanding of the practical barriers to implementing AI governance across different contexts, learn from experiences shared by governments, industry, civil society, academia and the technical community, and identify approaches that can support more effective implementation of existing AI governance commitments. The session will also strengthen collaboration among stakeholders by encouraging the exchange of practical experiences and implementation lessons that can inform future AI governance initiatives.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** A roundtable layout is best suited to this workshop because it promotes active dialogue, equal participation and collaborative problem-solving among stakeholders. Since the session focuses on operationalising AI governance rather than debating principles, participants will work together to analyse governance challenges and identify practical implementation approaches. The roundtable setting encourages interaction between governments, the private sector, civil society, academia and the technical community, ensuring that diverse perspectives shape the discussion and proposed solutions.
+A 90-minute format provides sufficient time for brief framing remarks, focused expert insights, small-group discussions using the AI Governance Canvas, followed by a moderated discussion that identifies common themes and practical recommendations. This balance between expert contributions and participant engagement supports meaningful multistakeholder dialogue while ensuring the session produces practical outputs. The format aligns with the workshop's objective of generating actionable recommendations that will inform the AI Governance Implementation Guide.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session will be designed to ensure that onsite and online participants contribute equally throughout the discussion. A dedicated online moderator will monitor the virtual platform, facilitate interventions, and ensure that questions and comments from remote participants are integrated into every stage of the session. During the Governance Design Challenge, online participants will be assigned to mixed discussion groups alongside onsite participants using a shared collaborative document to contribute to the AI Governance Canvas in real time. Each group will nominate a rapporteur to present its recommendations, regardless of whether they are participating online or onsite. Interactive polling will be used to identify priority implementation challenges and build consensus on key recommendations. Key recommendations from each discussion group will be captured live and displayed throughout the session, enabling all participants to review, refine and prioritise the final implementation recommendations.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Gloria Frimpomaah Amofah-Adjekum , Women in Internet Governance/ Makatob IT IT
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Ines Hfaiedh, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Houda  CHIHI, Government, African Group
+**Speaker 3:** Betty Fausta, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 4:** Jacob Odame-Baiden, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 5:** Raymond Amumpaire, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Prerna Chhetri, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Nwakanma Nnenna, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Sarata Omane, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+9.5
+9.c
+10. Reduced Inequalities
+10.2
+10.3
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+16.10
+16.6
+16.7
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
+17.16
+17.17
+17.18
@@ -0,0 +1,93 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #336 AI in Schools: elevating learning or embedding exploitation?
+
+## Description
+
+Since the COVID-19 pandemic, educational technologies (EdTech) has become a permanent fixture in children’s education across the world. AI promises to democratize learning, respond to individual children’s needs, and reduce teachers’ burdens. Yet, untested, unregulated, and unaccountable systems are too often designed and deployed to prioritize commercial objectives over children’s best interests.
+
+As a consequence, global evidence shows that the rapid rollout of AI in education is exposing children to a range of serious and growing risks, including pervasive commercial surveillance and profiling, the entrenchment of discriminatory assumptions, and exploitative data practices.
+
+The growing use of AI in education also raises important questions about its long-term effects on learning, critical thinking, social development, and educational outcomes. The deployment of AI in schools should be guided by evidence of educational benefit, not unproven assumptions about technological progress.
+
+While children remain largely absent from national AI strategies and governance frameworks, the OECD found that 78% of those it analyzed prioritized regulation in the education sector. This highlights the global consensus that – particularly in the classroom – innovation should not depend on the commercial exploitation of children and the erosion of their privacy, agency, or critical thinking.
+
+This panel will explore how implementing well-established human rights obligations can ensure AI is designed and deployed in education with children's rights and developmental needs at its core.
+
+Panelists will share evidence-based assessments of the impact of AI in education on learning outcomes across different contexts and communities. Building on UNCRC General comment No. 25 and international best practices, they will explore how to ensure AI in EdTech respects children's rights to quality education, privacy, safety, and freedom from exploitation as enshrined in the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history: the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. How can we ensure AI in education prioritizes pedagogical value and children's best interests over engagement metrics and commercial interests?
+B. How can governments and regulators fulfil their obligation to protect children’s rights in the context of AI in education across different educational contexts and jurisdictions?
+C. How should children’s rights be embedded in AI governance before a product reaches the classroom, and which stakeholders bear responsibility?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+Participants will develop a greater understanding of the often-overlooked issues surrounding AI in education, including relevant risks relating to children’s privacy and safety and the lack of evidence for EdTech's claimed benefits. They will also gain appreciation for how the impacts of AI in education vary across different socioeconomic environments, with particular attention to digital divides across different contexts.
+
+The session will also equip participants with knowledge of emerging best practices for embedding children's rights to privacy, protection, and quality education in EdTech design, procurement, and classroom implementation.
+
+Finally, the session will also provide attendees an opportunity to contribute to the development of shared frameworks and tools such as a standardized taxonomy and assessment framework to facilitate consistent analysis and solution-focused discussions across sectors and jurisdictions.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Theater
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** As EdTech remains a frequently overlooked area in internet governance discussions, this session will primarily aim to raise awareness as to the risks children can be exposed to in educational settings, and what practical solutions exist to ensure respect for their distinct rights.
+
+Leading experts from diverse contexts and stakeholder groups will contribute to the conversation by reflecting on children’s lived realities and emerging best practices to protect children’s rights in the rollout of AI in education.
+
+The diverse impacts of AI and EdTech on children – in light of their contexts, communities, and lived experiences – will be highlighted through meaningful youth participation, and children will share their demands for global governance efforts.
+
+Several polls and collaborative displays will be used at different points during the session to capture participants’ perspectives and sentiments and invite them to contribute to the conversation.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** As our session showcases global perspectives, it is vital to us that it is accessible to all interested participants – which requires inclusive online and onsite engagement strategies.
+
+We seek to include online and onsite participants equally, including by alternating between speakers and providing equal opportunities for participants to intervene.
+
+We will establish efficient internal communications to ensure the online and onsite moderators can coordinate and give due representation to the voices in the room and online.
+
+We also intend to use online tools such as Mentimeter to foster onsite and online participation through live polls and surveys.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Marie-Eve Nadeau, 5Rights Foundation
+**Organizer 2:** Sami Jaber, 5Rights Foundation
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** O'Flaherty Michael, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+**Speaker 2:** Philip Colligan, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 3:** Tivayanond Mongkhonvanit Prapaporn, Government, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 4:** Sonia Livingstone, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 5:** Jennifer Kaberi Kaberi, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 6:** Marie-Eve Nadeau, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Marie-Eve Nadeau, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Sami Jaber, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Sami Jaber, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+10.3
+12.6
+12.7
+16.2
+17.6
@@ -0,0 +1,82 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #338 When AI Becomes a Friend: Governing Emotional AI
+
+## Description
+
+Humans are inherently social beings, and meaningful relationships are fundamental to healthy development, wellbeing and participation in society. However, the ways people form and maintain relationships are changing. OECD (2025) reports declining social connectedness, with many young people experiencing increasing loneliness and fewer face to face interactions. As these trends unfold, AI companions and emotionally responsive chatbots are becoming part of young people's social lives.
+Rather than simply answering questions, these systems are designed to sustain conversations, build trust and provide emotional support. Many young people now turn to them as companions, confidants and sources of advice. While emotionally engaging AI may offer important benefits, emerging research raises concerns about emotional attachment, dependency, transparency, user autonomy and the protection of young people (Hwang et al., 2025; Kostka & Zhou, 2026). UNICEF's Policy Guidance on AI for Children (2021) further emphasises that AI systems affecting children should uphold their rights, safety and wellbeing.
+Current AI governance discussions have largely focused on safety, fairness, transparency and accountability. Much less attention has been given to AI systems intentionally designed to cultivate emotional relationships with users. As these technologies become more widespread, Internet governance stakeholders must consider whether existing governance frameworks adequately protect young people while enabling responsible innovation.
+This workshop will bring together policymakers, industry, civil society, academia and the technical community to examine four questions:
+What duty of care should govern emotionally engaging AI?
+Should young people receive additional protections?
+How can governance ensure AI complements rather than replaces meaningful human relationships?
+What responsibilities should governments, industry, educators and civil society share in protecting young people's digital wellbeing?
+The session will identify governance priorities for emotional AI that protect human agency, strengthen digital wellbeing and support responsible innovation.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+1.   	What governance and regulatory approaches are needed to ensure AI companions and emotionally engaging AI systems protect young people's rights, wellbeing and human agency while fostering innovation?
+
+2.   	What duty of care should AI developers, platform providers, governments, educators and other stakeholders have when designing, deploying and overseeing AI systems that encourage emotional attachment?
+
+3.   	How can multistakeholder Internet governance frameworks address the social and ethical implications of emotional AI while preserving meaningful human relationships, transparency and accountability?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The session will produce an "Emotional AI Governance Agenda" that maps the key governance questions requiring multistakeholder action as emotionally engaging AI systems become more prevalent. The agenda will identify priorities for policy development, including duty of care, transparency, protection of young people, human agency and accountability, while highlighting areas where further evidence, collaboration and governance innovation are needed. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of how emotional AI is reshaping relationships and digital wellbeing, the governance gaps that remain, and practical insights from various stakeholder perspectives on how Internet governance can respond to this emerging challenge.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** This session examines an emerging Internet governance issue where there is no single policy solution. A roundtable format is best suited because it encourages equal participation and dialogue among governments, industry, civil society, academia, the technical community and youth representatives. The discussion will begin with a realistic scenario illustrating how a young person develops a close relationship with an AI companion, providing a common starting point for participants to examine governance challenges from different stakeholders perspectives. Rather than debating whether emotional AI is inherently beneficial or harmful, participants will explore governance questions related to duty of care, transparency, accountability and the protection of young people. Sixty minutes provides sufficient time to introduce the issue, facilitate interactive discussion between onsite and online participants, and synthesise areas of agreement, differing viewpoints and emerging priorities that can inform future Internet governance and AI policy discussions.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session will be designed to ensure equal participation for onsite and online attendees. An online moderator from WIG  will facilitate virtual participation, monitor questions and ensure that online contributions are integrated throughout the discussion rather than reserved for the end. The workshop will begin with a short scenario illustrating a young person's relationship with an AI companion, providing a common point of reference for all participants. Guided by the moderator, onsite and online participants will respond to the same governance questions from their respective stakeholder perspectives. Live polling will be used to identify areas of consensus and divergence on issues such as duty of care, transparency and protections for young people, with results displayed in real time to stimulate discussion. A shared collaborative document will capture key governance insights and emerging priorities from both onsite and online participants, ensuring an inclusive and interactive hybrid experience.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Gloria Frimpomaah Amofah-Adjekum , Women in Internet Governance/ Makatob IT IT
+**Organizer 2:** Betty Fausta, 🔒YONN
+**Organizer 3:** Phenny Awuor Apollo, Ghana School of Internet Governance
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Tinuade Oguntuyi, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Ines Hfaiedh, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 3:** Godsway Kubi, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 4:** Mary Rose Ofianga, Private Sector, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 5:** Emilia Dohrmann, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 6:** Andrew Findell-Aghnatios, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Gloria Frimpomaah Amofah-Adjekum , Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Betty Fausta, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Phenny Awuor Apollo, Technical Community, African Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+3. Good Health and Well-Being
+3.4
+4. Quality Education
+4.7
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+9.5
+9.c
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+16.6
+16.7
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
+17.16
+17.17
@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #385 Market Power in the AI Age: Bespoke Competition Rules for AI
+
+## Description
+
+AI markets are concentrating in ways not previously seen, and of deep concern. A small set of firms controls the inputs that decide who can build frontier AI: advanced chips, hyperscale cloud, training data, capital, and talent. The same firms extend that control downstream through partnerships, minority investments, exclusive compute deals, and talent raids that sit outside classic merger review. In July 2024, the competition authorities of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union jointly warned of concentrated control of key inputs, of incumbents entrenching their power in AI markets, and of arrangements among key players that could steer market outcomes. Enforcement since then has confirmed the diagnosis and exposed the limits of the toolkit: authorities reviewed the large cloud-and-model partnerships, yet most fell outside merger control.
+This session asks whether competition law built for pipelines and platforms fits AI markets, or whether AI needs bespoke rules: ex-ante obligations, dedicated digital market regimes, and access remedies for compute and data. And who writes those rules? No African firm to date trains frontier models. African economies, like most, consume AI that is built, priced, and governed elsewhere, and most African competition authorities must police global firms with national tools. Kenya is moving first: the Competition (Amendment) Bill, 2026 would create a dedicated digital markets regime, reaching abuse of superior bargaining position without proof of dominance. At regional level, the COMESA Competition and Consumer Commission runs cross-border merger control and conduct enforcement across 21 Member States, and its 2025 Regulations respond directly to digital markets. The design decisions now facing African legislators, between importing aspects of rules drafted abroad and building homegrown regimes suited to their own markets, will shape the extent to which African economies capture value from AI or merely pay rents on it.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+Where does durable market power sit in the AI value chain (chips, compute, data, models, distribution), and how does concentration form without triggering extant merger controls
+When does ex-post antitrust enforcement suffice against AI partnerships, quasi-mergers, and self-preferencing, when do markets need bespoke ex-ante rules: mandated access to compute, data-sharing duties, interoperability, transparency of partnership terms, and merger thresholds that capture quasi-mergers
+How should small and developing economies legislate: transplant, adapt, or invent? What can regional enforcement (COMESA, the AfCFTA Competition Protocol) deliver what national authorities cannot, how do states move from norm-takers to norm-makers in AI competition policy
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+Participants will leave with a shared map of where market power sits in the AI value chain (chips, compute, data, models, distribution) from an African vantage point, connecting global enforcement evidence to African market conditions. The session will produce design options for bespoke AI competition rules suited to small and developing economies: thresholds, obligations, remedies, and institutional models, including regional enforcement. It will generate concrete input into the Kenyan legislative process on the Competition (Amendment) Bill, 2026 and into digital markets work under the AfCFTA Competition Protocol, and pathways for African and Global South authorities to shape international competition norms for AI as norm-makers rather than norm-takers. A public session report will consolidate these outputs and feed into the IGF 2026 record.
+
+## Format
+
+Theater
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The session moves from a regional enforcer's keynote through two structured panel rounds to an open floor exchange, and it integrates speakers joining online from Europe. Ninety minutes is the minimum needed to move from diagnosis (does AI break the antitrust toolkit?) to design (what should bespoke rules for small and developing economies look like?) while protecting a full open exchange with in-person and online participants. A theater layout suits a moderated panel before a large audience at UNON. The moderator will run timed interventions, direct panelists to respond to one another rather than deliver serial statements, and alternate between the room and the virtual queue during the floor exchange.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** A dedicated online co-moderator will run the virtual room alongside the onsite moderator, merge the in-room and online question queues into a single order, and hold a guaranteed slot for online interventions in the floor exchange. Online panelists will take part in the same panel rounds as onsite panelists, on equal airtime, not in a separate segment.
+How will you design the session to ensure the best possible experience for online and onsite participants?
+No slide decks. Panelists respond to targeted questions in timed interventions of three to four minutes, circulated in advance and matched to each speaker's enforcement, scholarly, or practice vantage point. The agenda reserves the floor exchange for open discussion, and the moderator will alternate between the room and the online queue throughout it.
+Complementary online tools/platforms
+The official IGF virtual platform and its chat, managed by the online moderator.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Linda Bonyo, 🔒UNECA
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Waweru Alexia , Intergovernmental Organization, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Macmillan Rory, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 3:** Linda Bonyo, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 4:** Helena Malikova, Government, Intergovernmental Organization
+
+## Moderator
+
+Linda Bonyo, Intergovernmental Organization, African Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Linda Bonyo, Intergovernmental Organization, African Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Linda Bonyo, Intergovernmental Organization, African Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #392 Judgment in the Age of Intelligence: Governing Judicial AI
+
+## Description
+
+UNESCO's 2024 global survey of over 500 judicial operators across 96 countries found widespread, largely unguided use of generative AI, and a clear majority requesting regulation and training. Judges draft with chatbots, lawyers file AI-written submissions, litigants arrive with AI-generated evidence, and algorithms inform bail, sentencing, and parole decisions. The costs of the governance gap are on the record: courts in the United Kingdom, Kenya, and elsewhere have caught submissions built on fabricated case law, with fines, wasted costs, and warnings from the bench. In Malawi, judges report individual use of commercial chatbots for judicial tasks with no institutional framework. In Kenya, the Judiciary has counted seven hallucinated-citation incidents and is responding with a Judiciary AI Adoption Policy Framework.
+The promise is as real as the risk. Courts across the Global South face crushing backlogs, and AI-assisted drafting, transcription, translation, and case management can shorten the distance between citizens and justice: Argentina's Prometea assistant nearly tripled case-processing productivity, and automated transcription is speeding Egyptian courts. UNESCO's Guidelines for the Use of AI Systems in Courts and Tribunals, the first global framework in this field, insist AI must remain assistive, never substitutive, under meaningful human oversight. The task now is translation: turning global principles into court rules, practice directions, procurement standards, training, and evidence doctrine that work in real judiciaries. This session convenes sitting judges from three African courts, the architects of the global guidance, court technologists, bar leaders, and scholars of AI evidence to do exactly that, and presents the judiciary findings of the Africa AI Governance Index covering all 54 African states.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+**individual use to institutional policy:** judges are already using commercial chatbots on personal accounts, feeding case information into systems with no controls. What rules must a judiciary put in place, secure tools, procurement, and training, before informal use hardens into invisible practice
+**global principles to local rules:** the UNESCO Guidelines set the floor, and Kenya, US state courts, and others are building national and court-level frameworks. What does faithful translation look like in judiciaries with thin budgets, low connectivity, multilingual courtrooms
+AI-generated evidence, deepfakes, black-box forensic tools, and AI-drafted pleadings test doctrines of admissibility, disclosure, proprietary and professional responsibility
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+A public presentation of the judiciary findings of the Africa AI Governance Index and the Lawyers Hub report on judicial use of AI in Africa, giving the session a continental evidence base. An African bench-and-bar checklist for judicial AI governance, mapping the UNESCO Guidelines to court rules, practice directions, procurement standards, and training. A comparative matrix of judicial AI frameworks in progress, spanning the UNESCO Guidelines, Kenya's Judiciary AI Adoption Policy Framework, and US state court rules, for adaptation by other judiciaries. A training pathway connecting UNESCO's judicial curriculum to African judicial training institutes through the Africa AI Policy Lab. A record of judicial perspectives feeding into the IGF 2026 outputs and into national judiciary consultations in Kenya, Malawi, and Ghana.
+
+## Format
+
+Theater
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The session moves from a scene-setting UNESCO keynote and a ten-minute research presentation of new continental evidence through two panel rounds, the bench speaking first, to an open floor exchange that includes judicial officers attending IGF 2026. Ninety minutes is the minimum needed to hear three sitting judges, the evidence and policy specialists, and the bar, while protecting a full open exchange with in-person and online participants. A theater layout suits a moderated panel before a large audience at UNON. The moderator will run timed interventions, direct panelists to respond to one another rather than deliver serial statements, and alternate between the room and the virtual queue during the floor exchange.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** A dedicated online co-moderator will run the virtual room alongside the onsite moderator, merge the in-room and online question queues into a single order, and hold a guaranteed slot for online interventions in the floor exchange. Online panelists will take part in the same panel rounds as onsite panelists, on equal airtime, not in a separate segment.
+How will you facilitate interaction between onsite and online speakers and attendees?
+A dedicated online co-moderator will run the virtual room alongside the onsite moderator, merge the in-room and online question queues into a single order, and hold a guaranteed slot for online interventions in the floor exchange. Online panelists will take part in the same panel rounds as onsite panelists, on equal airtime, not in a separate segment.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Linda Bonyo, Lawyers Hub Africa
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Linda Bonyo, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Prateek Sibal, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+**Speaker 3:** Ablorh Sylvester, Government, African Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Linda Bonyo, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Linda Bonyo, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Linda Bonyo, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+1. No Poverty
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
@@ -0,0 +1,77 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #438 The Algorithmic Generation: Networks Shaping Human Networks
+
+## Description
+
+Governing design in the age of intelligence begins with how deeply social media now runs through our daily lives. Algorithms that rank and recommend content influence how we interact and make decisions, shaping how we learn, socialise and behave, and every interaction feeds back into the system that adjusts itself in return, which has turned digital platforms into a public issue carrying long-term intergenerational implications. Institutional responses worldwide still concentrate almost entirely on the age at which an account may be opened, keeping the architecture of those environments, and the opportunity for young people to take part in shaping it, out of the conversation.
+
+This phenomenon extends well beyond ‘access’, as design decisions sit upstream and the capacity to influence them varies enormously between nations. Thus, understanding this new era calls for an intergenerational and interdisciplinary approach, drawn from everyone who shapes, governs, studies and experiences social media. The comparative analysis is anchored by ISOC Youth Ambassadors from Latin America, East Africa and South Asia, and read against the governance that shapes platforms in practice and the rethinking underway in education, from the AI competency frameworks to the offline spaces where judgement grows.
+
+Throughout the session, interactive segments invite onsite and remote participants to engage with different scenarios and compare what currently exists in their respective contexts. What remains afterwards is a common framework to determine whether a measure merely restricts access (banning who enters), or successfully reaches the design layer, and how far it enhances capacity, a question already on the table in most of their countries.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+How can governance audit the algorithmic and generative AI systems shaping youth experiences beyond access limits, and who must bear the burden of proof?
+What mechanisms can integrate young people’s lived experiences into the co-creation of "safety by design" standards, particularly in contexts where state regulatory capacity to mandate them is limited?
+Technical literacy delivers basic awareness, but true resilience requires critical digital literacy. What must this critical curriculum include, and how can states and communities sustain it beyond the classroom?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The session opens by taking a real headline that restricts young people's access and applying it, live, to the adults in the room, so they meet the question from the seat usually reserved for the young and the hierarchy between who decides and who is decided about dissolves before the discussion starts. Participants leave able to test different measures against a shared framework, whether it merely restricts access or reaches the design layer, and how far it builds capacity, rehearsed at the close through anonymous profile cases. Live polling becomes a mirror the room reads together, surfacing how its assumptions shift as each case is revealed, so what remains is shared understanding rather than a record of anyone's answers. The lasting output is that framework, a portable reading others can reuse, and a short public synthesis making visible the governance work youth already lead and keeping the conversation going.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The roundtable’s format enables the process to unfold in a series of steps over 90 minutes. By doing so, the room first builds a shared language across regions and disciplines, then applies it to real cases, and only then does the framework answer for itself and travel home with participants. A 30 or 60 minute slot would stop at that first stage and leave people restating what they believed, with no room for the deconstruction that rebuilds the argument. The format also challenges the hierarchy that shapes these debates, since young people are absent from the tables where digital rules are written, and that absence is why the rules reach for the door and miss the design behind it. Placing Youth Ambassadors alongside those who write and study these rules connects perspectives siloed elsewhere, creating a space where participants move beyond fixed roles toward a shared sense of responsibility.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The hybrid component is designed as one interconnected space where onsite and online participants build a single dialogue together, so the two audiences integrate their knowledge. Blind votes go through Mentimeter as one anonymous stream, which keeps a participant's position in the room from ranking whose reading counts. A shared collaborative board then holds the framework as it takes shape, written into the same workspace from both sides, so understanding accumulates where everyone can see and edit it. The online moderator keeps a live queue of remote cases and hands each first response to a remote voice before the room replies, while a chat-to-floor relay brings a typed question to the table within the minute. Each tool carries one function, and participants leave having practised integrating different forms of knowledge through the tools themselves.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Fernanda Rokha Sanchez-Umaña, Internet Society
+**Organizer 2:** Doreen Nandutu Nabuzale, Uganda DNS Forum
+**Organizer 3:** Ankita Rathi, Internet Society
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Doreen Nandutu Nabuzale, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Fernanda Rokha Sanchez-Umaña, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 3:** Maarten Botterman, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 4:** Roberto Zambrana, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Fernanda Rokha Sanchez-Umaña, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Doreen Nandutu Nabuzale, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Ankita Rathi, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+3. Good Health and Well-Being
+3.4
+4. Quality Education
+4.4
+4.7
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+16.10
+16.7
+16.a
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
+17.16
+17.17
@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #439 Beyond Compute: Sustaining the Commons that Power AI
+
+## Description
+
+AI is fracturing the collaborative foundation of the internet. For decades, freely licensed content, data, and code - the knowledge commons - have been a shared resource that people and institutions could freely draw on to advance scientific research, education, innovation, and public services. Attribution, participation, and financial support flowed back into the commons, attracting contributors, strengthening communities, and sustaining the infrastructure on which everyone relied. AI development has benefitted from this relationship, particularly from the work of open communities. As AI grows as an industry, however, this reciprocal cycle has begun to break. Content is systematically scraped from the commons and served back to users via AI-powered applications, imposing significant costs on commons infrastructures while disintermediating users from contributor communities. This weakens the reciprocal dynamics which have historically supported the knowledge commons: attribution, participation, and support. Despite their importance to AI development and governance, little attention has been paid to sustaining the human knowledge infrastructure on which these systems depend.
+
+This session convenes researchers, policymakers, and stewards of the knowledge commons to ask: What collective responsibility do governments, industry, researchers, and civil society share for sustaining the knowledge commons? Should these resources be understood as critical digital infrastructure? Research will demonstrate how the AI boom is accelerating extraction from the commons, complemented by case studies from commons stewards already deploying strategies to counter this extraction. Regional examples will underscore how knowledge commons are currently used to support essential public service initiatives, as well as the feasibility of various policy approaches, governance models, and historical precedents that can help sustain the commons. The commons have always been a collective endeavour; this session invites participants to evaluate the effectiveness of current counter-strategies adopted by commons stewards and define a practical policy agenda to sustain knowledge commons as critical digital infrastructure.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+1. How should governments and international bodies define and resource the knowledge commons as critical digital infrastructure in National AI Strategies and Digital Public Infrastructure frameworks?
+2. What shared responsibilities—financial, technical, or legal—should AI developers and commercial platforms hold to prevent the depletion of public knowledge ecosystems?
+3. How can emerging AI governance frameworks balance the goal of innovation with the need to safeguard the long-term human infrastructure that powers it?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+Participants will leave with a shared understanding of how artificial intelligence is reshaping the relationships that have sustained the knowledge commons, and why this presents a new governance challenge. The discussion will inform ongoing policy work by participating organizations on AI governance, digital public infrastructure, and the knowledge commons, while fostering new cross-sector collaborations. Recommendations from the session will be documented in a publicly available summary and taken forward by stewards of the project into discussions with the OECD, Digital Public Goods Alliance annual meeting, and Global Partnership on AI via the VIADUCT project.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** Seating participants around a common table will encourage active exchange between researchers, governments, intergovernmental organizations, civil society, and stewards of the knowledge commons, allowing participants to test ideas, challenge assumptions, and identify shared priorities. The 90-minute format provides sufficient time to establish a common understanding of the issue before moving into an interactive discussion on practical policy approaches. By prioritizing dialogue over prepared statements, the session will leverage the diversity of the IGF community to explore how collective responsibility for sustaining the knowledge commons can be translated into concrete governance action.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session will be facilitated as a fully integrated hybrid roundtable, with onsite and online participants treated as equal contributors throughout the discussion. A moderator will guide the conversation while a dedicated online moderator will monitor the virtual platform, surface questions, and ensure remote participants are regularly invited into the discussion. The dedicated time for this session, as well as the roundtable format, enable questions and comments to be woven throughout the session from both online and onsite participants.  This is an important feature to encourage genuine dialogue across stakeholder groups. The entire second half of the session will be dedicated to inviting participants to contribute policy ideas and examples through an interactive guided discussion. The discussion will allow insights from both audiences to shape the discussion and be reflected in the session summary.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Rachel Judhistari, Wikimedia Foundation
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Philip Thigo Thigo, Government, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Rachel Judhistari, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 3:** Amrita Choudhury, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Rachel Judhistari, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Amrita Choudhury, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Rachel Judhistari, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+4. Quality Education
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+10. Reduced Inequalities
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #450 future of interconnection disputes - mobile, satellite, DNA
+
+## Description
+
+After several years of procrastination and debates, European Commission settled on mandatory mediation of interconnection disputes under Digital Netowkr Act ("DNA") as a way to upgrade the "network fee" discourse without revising the existing rules of Open Internet Regulation and its core network neutrality norms. Questions still abound on whether "network fee" packaged in paid peering still violates network neutrality, under what standards mediators will propose settlement terms, whether new pushes against (GSMA Intelligence's new reports) network neutrality and the likes are to be taken into account in shaping the forthcoming negotiations supervised under the DNA mediations. Previous disputes and regulatory/legislative actions in the US, Korea, Germany, Colombia, etc., will shed light on how those disputes will be handled, the lessons on how to navigate them, and the probable impact of future of internet governance.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. Is net neutrality still a viable norm in internet governance in the increasingly mobile and satellite heavy interconnection? B. What are the lessons from the previous interconnection disputes that may impact future mediation decisions? C. What will be the dynamics of future national legislations and DNA's international mediations, and what are the implications for the jurisdictions outside EU?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+Under DNA, national authorities will be given a chance to provide "options" under which "network fees" may be introduced, and civil society and technical community are worried that these interventions may open the doors for big content providers and big telcos to form vertical cartels whereby SME ISPs, local and SME content providers are excluded from the benefits of net neutrality. Previous dispute resolution experience from the US, Korea, and EU will be discussed to navigate and avoid such risk in the future negotiations and preserve net neutrality. Also, the impact of mobile networks and satellite networks will be discussed thoroughly in relation to the meaning of net neutrality and "network fees'.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+
+**Format description:** The roundtable format, paired with a 90-minute duration, was chosen to ensure that all participants, regardless of their viewpoints on network fees and net neutrality, could contribute equally. This setup is crucial in guaranteeing a diversity of perspectives, as it encourages open and active participation from everyone around the table, including those with opposing stances. Given the regional diversity of the tentative panelists, it is important to adopt a format that is comprehensive of their experiences with the topic.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** We will ensures equal participation for both onsite and online attendees. Instead of passive listening, virtual attendees will actively shape discussions. The session will alternate between onsite and online participants, facilitated by dedicated moderators for each group, integrating remote contributions in real time. Speakers will limit their initial talks to 10 minutes, leading to a dynamic roundtable where attendees interact with specific prompts related to policy questions. We will allow all participants to record insights and recommendations during the session so that others can comment on them. This method ensures that contributions are directly used in shaping policy recommendations for policymakers and regulators.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Kyung Sin Park, Open Net
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Kyung Sin Park, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+**Speaker 2:** Thomas Lohninger, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+**Speaker 3:** Claudia Ximena Bustamante, Government, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+**Speaker 4:** Maarit Palovirta, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Kyung Sin Park, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Thomas Lohninger, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Kyung Sin Park, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
@@ -0,0 +1,70 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #77 Keeping data flows in motion through privacy and trust
+
+## Description
+
+Cross-border data flows underpin the modern digital economy, enabling international trade, innovation, cybersecurity, financial services, research collaboration, and the delivery of digital products and services. At the same time, growing concerns around privacy and security are contributing to increasingly fragmented approaches to data governance and restrictions on data transfers across borders. Such fragmentation risks limiting innovation, reducing economic opportunities, increasing compliance burdens, and weakening the benefits that trusted data flows provide to businesses, governments, and individuals.
+As governments seek to safeguard legitimate public policy objectives, including privacy protection, national security, and law enforcement needs, there is an increasing need to identify approaches that strengthen trust while preserving the open and interconnected nature of the digital economy. Building confidence in cross-border data flows requires transparent governance frameworks, interoperable rules, effective safeguards for personal data, and practical tools that enable organizations to meet these objectives in practice. Among these, PETs are emerging as an important means of minimizing privacy risks and supporting compliance with diverse regulatory frameworks. Realizing their potential, however, requires policy environments that encourage their adoption alongside interoperable governance approaches and risk-based regulatory frameworks.
+This workshop will explore how policy and technology can work together to enable trusted cross-border data flows while protecting privacy, supporting security objectives, and fostering innovation and economic growth. Drawing on international experiences and emerging best practices, participants will discuss how governments, businesses, and other stakeholders can advance interoperable approaches to data governance create enabling conditions for the adoption of PETs and other trusted data-sharing mechanisms, and strengthen confidence in cross-border data sharing without creating unnecessary barriers to innovation or international cooperation. The discussion will examine how governance frameworks, technical safeguards can reinforce one-another to build trust in digital ecosystems while avoiding the fragmentation that undermines the benefits of the global digital economy.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+1.	How can policymakers enable trusted cross-border data flows while safeguarding privacy and security?
+2.	How can governance frameworks, technical safeguards, and accountability mechanisms work together to strengthen trust in cross-border data sharing and improve interoperability across jurisdictions?
+3.	What policy approaches can encourage the responsible adoption of PETs alongside internationally interoperable data governance frameworks to support innovation, economic growth, and digital trust?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The session will identify practical approaches for enabling trusted cross-border data flows while maintaining high standards of privacy, security, and accountability. Participants will exchange perspectives on emerging regulatory frameworks, international cooperation mechanisms, and governance models that support trusted and interoperable digital environments. The discussion will contribute to ongoing international efforts on data governance, privacy, and trusted government access to data by highlighting opportunities for greater policy interoperability and multistakeholder collaboration. Participants will leave with a stronger understanding of the relationship between cross-border data flows, privacy protection, economic growth, and digital trust, as well as practical approaches for balancing these objectives in an increasingly interconnected digital economy.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** A Round Table format is best-placed for the type of cross-sector, collaborative session that we envisage. It will be optimal for establishing an atmosphere that ensures both participants and panellists can engage in fruitful discussion, and that they can do so on equal footing through a seating arrangement conducive to multi-person dialogue. To allow time for in-depth discussion and also accommodate a constructive Q&A section to address the questions, feedback and thoughts of the audience, 60 minutes is the most suitable timeframe for the session.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** o	Prior to the session: to ensure speakers and attendees get the most out of the session, organizers will make use of the session’s page on the IGF website and social media channels to share preparatory material and kick-start a dialogue. A preparation call will be organised for all speakers, moderators and co-organisers so that everyone has the chance to meet and prepare for the session.
+o	During the session: the moderators are experienced in animating multistakeholder discussions and will complement each other in merging onsite and online speakers and attendees to the optimum. Onsite participants will be encouraged to connect to the online platform to stay informed and engage with discussions in the chat.
+o	Following the session: moderators will encourage participants to make use of the IGF website and social media channels to share further comments and contribute to the session’s report.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Lorrayne Porciuncula, The Datasphere Initiative
+**Organizer 2:** Suto Timea, International Chamber of Commerce
+**Organizer 3:** Chelsea ONYANGO, International Chamber of Commerce
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Kushal Prakash, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 2:** Lorrayne Porciuncula, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 3:** Meguro Maiko, Intergovernmental Organization, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 4:** Manal Ismail, Government, African Group
+**Speaker 5:** Robyn Greene, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 6:** Suto Timea, Private Sector, Eastern European Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Timea Suto, Private Sector, Eastern European Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Chelsea ONYANGO, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Maria Clara Franca, Private Sector, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
@@ -0,0 +1,84 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #133 What If? Learning Alternative Internet Governance Futures
+
+## Description
+
+Many of today's Internet governance institutions emerged from political decisions made under unique historical circumstances. Yet policymakers rarely have the opportunity to examine how different choices by governments or stakeholders might have reshaped today's Internet governance landscape. Counterfactual analysis offers a way to revisit key moments, challenge institutional assumptions, and explore alternative policy pathways that remain relevant to contemporary debates.
+
+This workshop brings together experienced practitioners involved in major Internet governance and cybersecurity negotiations to discuss three historically grounded counterfactual scenarios drawn from the evolution of the multistakeholder model, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and international cyber diplomacy. Each scenario will be introduced by the moderator, followed by diverse perspectives from speakers representing government, the technical community, civil society, academia, and international organizations.
+
+Participants will then join the discussion, testing the plausibility of different outcomes, identifying overlooked assumptions, and exploring how alternative political choices might have affected today's governance ecosystem.
+
+To enrich deliberations, the workshop will use a multi-agent AI platform operating as a silent facilitator throughout the session. This platform will provide historical context, retrieve relevant evidence, identify comparable precedents, synthesize emerging arguments, and document areas of convergence and disagreement in real time. Participants may interrogate these outputs, challenge them, or ignore them entirely.
+
+By ultimately examining whether structured counterfactual analysis can become a practical tool for policy learning, the workshop will explore how AI can responsibly support complex policy discussions without displacing human judgment but, most importantly, conclude by inviting participants to consider a forward-looking question: Which governance assumptions should the next generation of Internet institutions be willing to revisit?
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+**Scenario 1:** How might the Internet governance ecosystem have evolved if the WSIS negotiations had concluded with stronger intergovernmental oversight of critical Internet resources, rather than the multistakeholder governance arrangements that accompanied the creation of the Internet Governance Forum?
+
+**Scenario 2:** What if international cybersecurity policies had evolved through technical and operational collaboration rather than diplomatic norm development?
+
+**Scenario 3:** What if AI governance had been integrated into existing Internet governance institutions rather than developing through multiple parallel initiatives?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+Participants will understand how counterfactual analysis can strengthen policy learning by revealing the long-term implications of alternative governance choices. Through dialogue with experts from diverse stakeholder groups, they will develop a deeper understanding of the institutional trade-offs that continue to shape Internet governance and international cyber policy.
+
+The workshop will produce a concise report documenting the principal policy insights, alternative governance pathways discussed, and areas of convergence and divergence identified by participants. AI will support evidence retrieval, synthesis and institutional memory while remaining entirely subordinate to participant deliberation. The report will also reflect on the practical contribution of AI-assisted facilitation to supporting evidence-based, inclusive, and transparent multistakeholder dialogue. The counterfactual scenarios, discussion methodology, and workshop outcomes will be published as an open resource for future Internet governance schools, diplomatic training programmes, and multistakeholder capacity-building initiatives.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The workshop is an interactive deliberative exercise rather than a panel discussion. Participants assume the role of decision-makers at pivotal moments in the evolution of Internet governance and international cyber policy, exploring alternative governance pathways through structured counterfactual scenarios.
+
+**Each scenario follows a four-stage cycle:** Decide → Debate → Reconsider → Reflect. Participants first make an individual policy choice through a live poll based on the historical context presented. Expert speakers then analyse the institutional, technical, geopolitical, and societal implications of each option from diverse stakeholder perspectives. Onsite and online participants engage in moderated discussion before voting again to assess whether the exchange has changed their views or identified areas of convergence and continuing disagreement.
+
+An AI-assisted facilitation platform synthesises the discussion, highlights historical parallels and emerging themes, and documents how collective reasoning evolves. AI supports transparent, inclusive, and evidence-informed deliberation while participants remain the decision-makers.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The workshop is designed for an equivalent experience for both onsite and online attendees. Each counterfactual scenario will begin with short interventions from invited experts, followed by moderated discussion involving participants in the room and online through equal speaking opportunities. The moderator will alternate between onsite and remote interventions to ensure balanced participation.
+
+Participants will be invited to respond to one another's reasoning. The AI platform will support by capturing emerging themes, and synthesising areas of agreement and disagreement in real time. These outputs will be displayed during the discussion and used to stimulate further debate, allowing online participants to engage with the same contextual information as those attending in person.
+
+**Interactive methods:** Moderated discussion, audience interventions, live polling.
+Open Q&A with both onsite and online participants.
+
+Digital tools:
+An AI-assisted facilitation platform providing historical context, evidence retrieval, thematic synthesis, and documentation of the discussion. Live polling.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** PABLO HINOJOSA, TechGov Digital
+**Organizer 2:** Madeline Carr, 🔒
+**Organizer 3:** Anriette Esterhuysen, African School on Internet Governance
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Anriette Esterhuysen, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Ian Sheldon, Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 3:** Francesca Bosco, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 4:** PABLO HINOJOSA, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Madeline Carr, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+PABLO HINOJOSA, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+PABLO HINOJOSA, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+4. Quality Education
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
@@ -0,0 +1,69 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #172 Continuity and Convergence: Internet and AI Governance
+
+## Description
+
+This panel brings a distinct perspective to IGF: young people from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds, unaffiliated with governments or big tech. That independence gives the panel a critical vantage point and opens space for non-partisan discussion.
+
+Every argument now made about AI governance : that it moves too fast to regulate or that state and corporate power will inevitably capture, has already been made about internet governance. This session does not call for a return to some imagined golden age of internet governance; we don't believe one existed. Bangladesh, India, Nicaragua and Uganda all repeated the same pattern of disconnecting their people from the worldwide internet, showing that states still default to switching infrastructure off rather than negotiating over it.
+The alternative is plurality. Built the way Africa is already building it. Kenya's Jacaranda Health runs a large language model for maternal health in Swahili. Uganda's Sunbird AI develops language AI for communities too small for global models to serve. Lelapa AI designs small language models for the power, compute, and connectivity constraints most of the continent actually faces. On connectivity, Starlink now faces real competition in Africa from Eutelsat OneWeb and direct-to-phone providers, meaning no single government can bargain with a single company to control access.
+**This is the model this session argues for:** a thousand AI companies instead of two or three global labs, publicly owned where possible, alongside community-owned tech resources and citizens' tech collectives; hardened Bluetooth mesh and offline-first tools instead of waiting for permission to reconnect; and Aaron Swartz-style open infrastructure for AI, treating datasets and models as shared commons the way Africa's language-model builders already do. Technologists, legal scholars, and community organizers will debate — using Kenya and Uganda as live case studies — where this plurality strategy works, and where it doesn't.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. Under what conditions can a plural ecosystem of independent AI companies and community-owned network solutions contribute to an inclusive and democratic governance?
+B. How can democratic decisions be made about the internet and AI infrastructure?
+C. How can the lessons from a plural, democratic internet governance model be transferred to governance of AI, its datasets, models, and connectivity layer, so that they can be built as a public common good worth to be sustained and governed?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The session is designed to produce three tangible outputs.
+First, a published report synthesising the discussion as an openly licensed brief (deposited on Zenodo). This document would document current best practices in plural, community- and publicly-owned AI, drawn from the Kenya and Uganda case studies.
+Second, the beginnings of a standing network (working group) of actors including technologists, legal scholars, community organisers, and builders who share an interest in more plural and inclusive AI governance and are willing to continue the exchange beyond the session.
+Third, a shared map of future solutions and ways forward to build a democratic and inclusive AI governance. To the end, we will publish a roadmap of consortium development along with our report.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The session brings together youth and established practitioners across disciplines and regions, speaking independently. A roundtable seats everyone at equal standing rather than arranging speakers in front of an audience, which is what makes real discussion possible between technologists, legal scholars and organisers, and what allows younger participants to intervene rather than listen. It also lets onsite and online discussants share one table.
+Ninety minutes carries the session from shared context to exchange. Ten minutes open with a team explainer and a short film on the Kenyan and Ugandan builders. Twenty minutes of provocations follow. Participants then spend twenty minutes mapping cases they know onto a shared works / does not work board. The closing forty minutes are open discussion, the final ten reserved for turning that board into an openly licensed brief, a roadmap, and a working group.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session is a roundtable, a format that invites exchange rather than broadcast and travels well across the hybrid divide. We will seat online and onsite discussants around one shared table, prompt the discussion asking for opinions and experiences and sequence the conversation so contributions visibly alternate between room and screen. A dedicated online moderator, separate from the onsite chair, has equal authority to bring in remote participants, surface their questions, and hold speaking time, so online voices are never an afterthought.
+
+Alongside the IGF-provided link, we will run Jitsi — open-source, low-bandwidth, and self-hostable — as our complementary platform, a deliberate choice mirroring the session's commitment to open, commons-based infrastructure over proprietary tools. We will also use a live shared document and a real-time poll so every participant can mark where plurality "works / does not work," feeding the discussion directly into the report. Captioning runs throughout.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Pedro dos Santos Maia, Skema Business School
+**Organizer 2:** Chandrima Ganguly, DARS Worldwide
+**Organizer 3:** Emaan Malik, National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR)
+**Organizer 4:** Meem Arafat Manab, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Chandrima Ganguly, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 2:** Emaan Malik, Intergovernmental Organization, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 3:** Meem Arafat Manab, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Pedro dos Santos Maia, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Pedro dos Santos Maia, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Pedro dos Santos Maia, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #173 Joint DC-CIV and D-AIG - Bridging Internet and AI Governance
+
+## Description
+
+Internet governance has accumulated over two decades of technical, institutional, and procedural experience that offers valuable insights for AI governance, through both similarities and differences between the two domains. Building on work by the IGF Dynamic Coalition on Core Internet Values, the Policy Network on AI, the United Nations University, the AI Governance Lab for Humanity, and others, this session reflects on the past decade of Core Internet Values challenges and asks how core values such as openness, interoperability, and human rights online can inform AI governance while addressing its unique challenges.
+A central lesson from this comparison is methodological: separating a technology's own effects (such as massive scaling or friction reduction), from constant patterns of human behaviour and motivation, such as crime or altruism, and then reassembling the two to generate regulatory insight. Scaling and friction reduction recur as parallels across both technology worlds, though they surface differently: AI's scaling produces paradoxical effects of its own, and its friction reduction manifests as a distinct, cognitive form of friction. Because openness and interoperability flow in both directions between the two domains, preserving them becomes even more critical to building actionable governance mechanisms.
+The session aims to move from abstract principles to concrete, actionable policy recommendations, using regulatory learning and adaptation between internet and AI governance as its core method. Rather than treating AI governance as an entirely novel problem, the session argues that internet governance's hard-won lessons, about values, mechanisms, and the limits of technical fixes; offer a disciplined starting point for AI policy, provided the comparison is made explicit rather than assumed.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. What are the key similarities and differences between Internet governance and the governance of AI, and their relation to known human agency?
+B. How can the Core Internet Values applying to the Open Internet enhance and improve the prospects for beneficial AI governance?
+C. What lessons from the process of building Internet governance's stewardship of Core Internet Values can be applied for an AI governance that enhances AI safety, AI security, AI ethics, and at the same time an expanded infrastructure, access and use of AI for all?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+**Policy Recommendations:** Develop actionable guidelines for integrating Core Internet Values, such as openness, interoperability, and neutrality, into AI governance frameworks, aiming to maintain an open, fair, and user-centric digital environment.
+**Best Practices Compilation:** Create a repository of best practices that promote transparency, accountability, and inclusivity in AI development and deployment.
+**Collaborative Frameworks:** Establish models for stakeholder collaboration to address challenges at the intersection of Internet principles and AI ethics.
+Emphasis on practical outcomes, including country-specific outcomes of AI systems that work and serve the global community.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The on-site moderator will explain the discussion topic and introduce speakers and subject matter experts, who will then engage in a round-table conversation. After this, the facilitators will open the floor for a full discussion amongst all participants. Speakers will be encouraged to engage with the points made by all participants. The round-table format is very helpful in facilitating full dialogue and our Dynamic Coalitions encourage such dialogues.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** After years of organising IGF, ICANN and ISOC hybrid sessions, the organisers have extensive experience in fully utilising the hybrid format.
+
+The session will have (1) panellist participation,  then (2) invited speakers reactions and (3) Open Discussion - and for each, there will be local and remote speakers. At the end, each speaker will be given an opportunity to summarise major takeaways from the discussion.  The online moderator will both interrupt the local co-moderators when there is a hand up in the room, but also look out in particular for the written contributions online, because not all participants are comfortable actually speaking their contributions. After the session, the report of the session will take into account both what was said and what was written during the session.
+Our 2025 IGF Session made full use of the hybrid nature of the session by having extensive participation from remote participants.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Olivier Crepin-Leblond, 🔒ISOC UK England
+**Organizer 2:** Sivasubramanian Muthusamy, 🔒Nameshop
+**Organizer 3:** Luca Belli, 🔒
+**Organizer 4:** Yik Chan Chin, Beijing Normal University/UNU Macau
+**Organizer 5:** Alejandro Pisanty, 🔒UNAM, National University of Mexico
+**Organizer 6:** Walter Britto Gaspar, CTS-FGV
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Vinton CERF, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 2:** Luca Belli, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 3:** Alejandro Pisanty, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 4:** Yik Chan Chin, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 5:** Sandrine ELMI HERSI, Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 6:** Milton Mueller, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Luca Belli, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Olivier Crepin-Leblond, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Olivier Crepin-Leblond, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
@@ -0,0 +1,98 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #183 Make It Stick: How to UPR for AI Accountability
+
+## Description
+
+The UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) has proved its potential to transform peer pressure into tangible change many times. Mongolia adopted legislation to protect human rights defenders. Serbia rebuilt its anti-discrimination safeguards following recommendations. Dominica formally joined the torture convention mid-process. These shifts show that States act when scrutinized by peers. Yet artificial intelligence governance, though increasingly featured, often remains inconsistently enforced. This shows how algorithmic power eludes accountability architecture, especially when the mechanism is non-bidding and the authoritarianism advances.
+
+Now comes the harder test. If the UPR succeeded in transforming state behavior on torture and discrimination, what would be needed to make it equally effective in constraining the proliferation of unaccountable AI systems? The path forward hinges on various dimensions: making algorithmic harms visible; providing implementation-oriented recommendations and follow-up steps that replace generic commitments; and building capacity support for states to integrate UPR-AI assessments into domestic policy, especially in countries of the Global South.
+
+This session examines how to turn the UPR into a sustained advocacy and accountability tool for AI governance, understanding the gap between peer pressure and institutional change. Its impact depends on translating recommendations into national monitoring and follow-up mechanisms.
+
+The workshop brings together expert voices from the Civil Society Alliances for Digital Empowerment (CADE), OHCHR, and state-mandated bodies, with perspectives from both the North and the South. The IGF remains a unique convening space for these and other multistakeholders to converge and strategize on advancing AI governance.
+
+This session will surface lived experiences and institutional capacities, acknowledging that the UPR's real power isn't just about the recommendations but in what happens after, when civil society decides to hold States accountable to their own commitments.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+- What methodologies are useful when assessing AI human-rights impacts, including those that are most difficult to measure, such as indirect or cumulative harms?
+
+- How can UPR AI recommendations be more specific and implementation-oriented, and avoid generic commitments that do not change domestic policy? What follow-up actions are necessary if the recommendations are accepted?
+
+- How can the UPR process influence AI regulation across regions (N-S) with different capacities? What capacity support do States need to integrate UPR AI assessments and recommendations into their policies?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+After the event, we will produce a session report with best practices for integrating UPR into effective AI governance advocacy. We will adapt this information into different formats to improve visibility across pertinent partners, networks and social media, and for futher discussion in the CADE’s Digital Governance Working Group, enabling replication in partners’ contexts. We aim for:
+
+- Leveraging the UPR mechanism building on its proven track record to advance human-rights accountability through multi-stakeholder engagement.
+
+- Reach consensus on strategies/resources to identify and measure AI human-rights impacts.
+
+- Share best practices to translate the AI harms into actionable UPR recommendations.
+
+- Provide lessons learned on UPR advocacy in North and South contexts.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** A round table displaces the expert-to-audience hierarchy that silences implementation experience. When multistakeholder from the panel and the audience sit together, this configuration fosters the space to candidly surface why UPR-AI recommendations fail domestically: capacity gaps, conflicting institutional mandates, budget constraints. This peer-to-peer vulnerability is where real solutions emerge.
+
+Ninety minutes allow time for initial framing without rushing participants into dialogue, space for substantive breakout-room discussion across in-person and virtual cohorts, and a closing window to distill emergent insights without truncating the synthesis. Hybrid participation rhythms also demand buffer; this duration prevents the false efficiency of compressing complexity, allowing genuine deliberation on how to make the most of the UPR for AI accountability.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** Collective Brainstorming: On-site participants contribute via post-its; online participants via Miro board. A designated support person will transfer inputs between spaces. This exercise will nourish the session's conversations with inputs.
+
+**Breakout Rooms:** To encourage candid participation, we will create parallel breakout spaces: at least one cohort for participation at the venue, and one remote breakout on Zoom. Depending on the number of participants, we will divide them into additional groups. Each group explores the same policy question through their regional and institutional lens, then reconvenes to share distinct insights. On-site and remote speakers will support their respective cohorts.
+
+Open Floor. Now that participants have broken up the ice, we will open the floor to revisit the central ideas we want to capture, so they are well established for the reporting and follow-up steps. A designated support person will ensure remote participants who want to comment are given proper space.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Angela Alarcon, Forus
+**Organizer 2:** Iwanska Karolina, European Center for Not-for-Profit Law
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Patricia Ainembabazi , Intergovernmental Organization, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Abed Kataya, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 3:** Line Gamrath Rasmussen, Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 4:** Gina Romero, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+
+## Moderator
+
+Angela Alarcon, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Iwanska Karolina, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Angela Alarcon, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+5.5
+5.b
+9.1
+9.4
+9.b
+9.c
+16.10
+16.6
+16.7
+16.8
+17.14
+17.16
+17.6
+17.8
@@ -0,0 +1,92 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #192 The blind spots of digital governance: Exposing assumptions
+
+## Description
+
+Digital governance frameworks travel further than the contexts in which they were created. Technologies, standards, and governance approaches developed in particular environments are applied across regions with different infrastructures, institutions, languages, and social realities.
+
+When these assumptions are treated as universal, blind spots emerge. These blind spots affect inclusion, accountability, representation, and human rights; plus, the rapid expansion of AI makes them more urgent. We should ask: Are the frameworks guiding digital and AI governance sufficiently adaptable to the realities in which they operate?
+
+The Global South provides a critical lens for examining these tensions. Not because these challenges are exclusive to the region, but because different technological, institutional and social conditions make hidden dependencies more visible.
+
+We will examine case studies in which assumptions embedded in digital and AI governance approaches create challenges in practice, including:
+
+The pathway assumption that everyone follows the same route: Mobile-first ecosystems and leapfrogging, for instance, demonstrate how countries have developed digital services without replicating infrastructure pathways common elsewhere.
+
+The representation assumption that everyone is represented in the system: AI systems and digital services can reproduce gaps when local languages, cultural contexts and knowledge systems are underrepresented, for instance.
+
+The universality assumption that every context shares the same risks, institutions or priorities: Technical standards and governance approaches designed for global use, for instance, can overlook local realities.
+
+The session will move beyond identifying challenges to examine how these blind spots can inform better digital and AI governance approaches. Through diverse perspectives and evidence-based examples, it will explore which assumptions need to be reconsidered, which elements require contextual adaptation, and what practical changes are needed to ensure that technologies and governance frameworks work across different realities.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. After decades of efforts to promote human rights, inclusion, and accountability in digital governance, what assumptions remain unchallenged, and what lessons should they offer for AI governance?
+B. How should digital and AI governance balance universal human rights principles with the need to respond to different realities, needs and conditions?
+C. What are concrete examples of governance standards that were designed in specific contexts but created unexpected challenges when deployed elsewhere?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The session will:
+1. Generate a clearer understanding of which assumptions embedded in digital and AI governance frameworks remain valid across contexts, which require reconsideration, and where approaches need adaptation.
+2. Provide participants with a practical framework for examining digital and AI systems through four questions:
+>> What context was this model designed for?
+>> What assumptions does it make about users, institutions and infrastructure?
+>> Who or what is missing from the design?
+>> What needs to change for it to work in different realities?
+3. Contribute to the development of more context-aware governance approaches that preserve universal human rights principles while responding effectively to diverse social, institutional and technological realities.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The roundtable format is best suited because the session is designed as a collective examination of assumptions rather than a sequence of presentations. The three case studies will serve as starting points for testing how digital and AI governance frameworks perform when applied across different technological, institutional and social realities.
+
+Speakers will respond to a shared question: Which assumptions embedded in digital and AI governance frameworks hold when they move across contexts, and which become problematic?
+
+The format will allow participants to compare perspectives from different regions and stakeholder groups, including policymakers, civil society, and technical communities. The 90-minute duration will provide space not only to identify blind spots, but also to discuss possible adaptations and practical pathways forward. The objective is to explore how governance approaches can remain rights-respecting while responding to diverse realities.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session will be designed as an interactive hybrid dialogue: Speakers will introduce case studies illustrating different governance blind spots, followed by a moderated discussion involving onsite and online participants.
+
+An interactive tool will allow participants to test each case through a set of questions: What assumption is embedded in this model? Does it hold across different contexts? What adaptation is needed? Responses will be collected in real time and used to identify recurring patterns across regions and stakeholder groups.
+
+Dedicated onsite and online moderators will ensure balanced participation and integrate remote contributions throughout the session rather than reserving them for the end. Online participants will be invited to contribute examples and challenge assumptions emerging from the discussion. Whenever possible, online moderators will facilitate multilingual participation to broaden accessibility and inclusion.
+
+The session will consolidate key lessons on how digital and AI governance approaches can become more adaptable across contexts.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Mia Marzotto, Oxfam
+**Organizer 2:** Stephanie Borg Psaila, 🔒DiploFoundation
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Gitungo Wamere, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Juliana Guerra, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 3:** Molivurae Andrew, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 4:** ANTOINE BARBRY, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+**Speaker 5:** Stephanie Borg Psaila, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Stephanie Borg Psaila, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Mia Marzotto, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Ben Zid Haythem, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+5.b
+9.5
+10.2
+16.7
@@ -0,0 +1,86 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #237 Who Shapes Global AI Governance? From Dialogue to Action
+
+## Description
+
+Decisions on international AI governance today will shape how people access information, exercise rights and participate in society. Yet emerging institutions and processes risk reinforcing inequalities by limiting the ability of governments, communities with fewer resources, civil society and other stakeholders to influence priorities and hold decision-makers accountable.
+
+The first UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance and the preliminary report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI established an agenda and evidence base. The next challenge is translating these priorities into implementation and accountability. As preparations begin for the Second Global Dialogue and the 2027 Global Digital Compact review, this workshop will explore how governments and stakeholders can shape this transition.
+
+Convened by the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC), the session builds on the Coalition’s Joint Multistakeholder Statement on the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance and its commitment to a rights-respecting approach. It will bring together governments, civil society, technical community and private sector to examine how evidence, participation and accountability inform implementation.
+
+Aligned with the IGF 2026 theme, the session will explore how shared responsibility can be applied in practice: embedding human rights, transparency and accountability; addressing capacity and representation gaps; and ensuring meaningful stakeholder influence.
+
+Through three policy questions, the session will facilitate an interactive government–stakeholder dialogue. An opening poll will identify priorities for the next Dialogue, including human rights safeguards, AI value chain transparency, capacity gaps, AI’s environmental and social impacts, and stakeholder participation. Speakers will respond to the results, followed by participant-driven discussion.
+
+The discussion will build on, but not be limited to, the FOC Statement and civil society perspectives from the first Dialogue. Recommendations will be captured in the IGF session report, shared with stakeholders preparing the Second Global Dialogue, and inform follow-up work by the FOC Task Force on AI and Human Rights.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+- Building on the priorities identified during the first Global Dialogue on AI Governance, where does the second Dialogue offer the greatest opportunity to advance practical progress?
+- In the areas prioritised by participants, what concrete outputs could the second Dialogue realistically advance, such as shared guidance or benchmarks, implementation roadmaps, capacity building initiatives, or mechanisms for monitoring and follow-up?
+- What consultation and follow-up arrangements would enable civil society, countries with limited resources and capacity, and historically underrepresented groups, to influence the priorities, outcomes and implementation of the next Dialogue more meaningfully?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The workshop will produce:
+- A participant-ranked assessment of where the second Global Dialogue offers the greatest opportunity for practical progress.
+- A short set of practical actions or outputs that the second Dialogue could advance, informed by participant contributions from different regions and stakeholder groups.
+- Practical recommendations for strengthening stakeholder influence over the next Dialogue and connecting its outcomes to implementation by governments and other relevant actors.
+- A concise record of both areas of convergence and important unresolved differences across stakeholder and regional perspectives.
+- An IGF session report that will be shared with the Co-Chairs and other stakeholders preparing the Second Global Dialogue on AI Governance and will inform follow-up work by the FOC Task Force on AI and Human Rights.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Theater
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** The theatre layout is well suited to the session’s purpose of enabling direct exchange between a diverse IGF audience and speakers from different stakeholder groups. As the session focuses on moderated dialogue rather than small-group work or collaborative drafting, participants will engage through an opening poll, questions and direct interventions. Poll results, online participants and submitted questions will be displayed on screen to create a shared point of reference, while roving microphones and a digital question channel will support broad participation.
+
+A 60-minute format provides sufficient time to gather onsite and online input, address the three linked policy questions and reflect on key recommendations, while keeping opening remarks concise. Most of the session is reserved for participant interaction, making the format well suited to generating focused, diverse and actionable input without reverting to a traditional panel.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The workshop will use a “one room, two access points” approach, ensuring equal participation for onsite and online audiences. Moderators will alternate between both participation modes throughout the session, integrating online contributions rather than treating them separately. For each policy question, interventions from both audiences will be gathered before speakers respond. The online moderator will monitor chat and raised hands, surface written contributions and flag under-represented perspectives, while the onsite moderator will reference the virtual room and poll results. No more than two consecutive interventions will come from either mode.
+
+All speakers will join the virtual platform to ensure equal access to captions, links and polling. A rehearsal will cover accessibility, timing and contingencies. Participants will shape discussion through an opening poll and digital questions. A low-bandwidth tool will support polling and engagement, with chat and floor access available as alternatives. Contributions will inform the final report.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Marland Klara, Freedom Online Coalition (FOC)
+**Organizer 2:** Hannah Brice, Global Partners Digital
+**Organizer 3:** Helen Turek, Freedom Online Coalition Support Unit
+**Organizer 4:** Zach Lampell, ICNL
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Zach Lampell, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 2:** Luc Dockendorf, Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 3:** Jamal Tonzua Seidu , Government, African Group
+**Speaker 4:** Nicole Karlebach, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 5:** Sabhanaz Rashid Diya, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Zach Lampell, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Marland Klara, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Hannah Brice, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+10. Reduced Inequalities
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
@@ -0,0 +1,71 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #247 Knowledge and AI: Reconnecting AI governance and WSIS vision
+
+## Description
+
+Knowledge lies at the heart of AI. It is both the source from which AI systems learn and a key output of AI processing. Knowledge is also a fundamental asset of individuals, communities, institutions, and countries, shaping development, innovation, cultural identity, and the exercise of human rights. Yet, knowledge is less visible in current governance debates than data, infrastructure, algorithms, and computing power. This represents a shift from the original WSIS vision. In 2005, the Tunis Commitment and Agenda mentioned knowledge 29 times and data only 10 times. As AI reshapes societies and economies, it is time to return knowledge to the centre of digital governance. This session will examine knowledge as a critical AI asset from technical, legal, security, economic, human rights, standardisation, and development perspectives. It will explore how open-source platforms, open data, standards, taxonomies, and knowledge infrastructures can support the creation, exchange, and responsible use of knowledge. The discussion will address intellectual property, licensing, attribution, and the balance between protecting and sharing knowledge. Creative Commons will be considered as possible framework for enabling access while safeguarding the rights of knowledge creators in the age of generative AI. The session will also explore knowledge as a strategic and security asset, including risks related to manipulation, loss, concentration, and external dependency. Particular attention will be given to bottom-up AI: systems developed around local languages, cultures, institutions, and community needs. Such approaches are increasingly technically feasible, economically affordable, and ethically desirable. Finally, the session will examine both explicit knowledge, preserved in books, documents, and databases, and tacit knowledge, embedded in oral traditions, professional experience, and social interaction. Through an open, interactive format, the session will revolve around this central question: who creates, preserves, organises, validates, controls, shares, and benefits from knowledge in the age of AI?
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+As AI systems increasingly depend on knowledge as core input and output, how can governance frameworks give knowledge a more central place, and what would returning to the WSIS emphasis on knowledge mean in practice? How can intellectual property, licensing, and attribution frameworks balance the protection of knowledge creators' rights with open access to knowledge in the age of generative AI? What conditions, mechanisms, and enabling environments would allow communities, local institutions, and smaller actors (particularly in developing and least developed countries) to develop bottom-up AI grounded in their own languages, cultures, and knowledge, while safeguarding that knowledge from exploitation?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+This session aims to reconnect AI and digital governance debates with the WSIS vision of knowledge societies, generating insights on how knowledge is created, protected, shared, and governed in the age of AI. Expected outcomes include: A shared understanding of knowledge as a governance concern distinct from data, infrastructure, and compute. A mapping of tools and frameworks (such as open data, standards, taxonomies, and licensing models such as Creative Commons) for balancing the protection and sharing of knowledge. Potential guiding principles and examples for bottom-up AI grounded in local languages, cultures, institutions, etc. especially in developing countries. Suggestions for policy actions giving knowledge a more central place in governance. Participants will gain a clearer vocabulary for distinguishing data, information, and knowledge, exposure to diverse disciplinary and regional perspectives, and familiarity with the concept of bottom-up AI and its application in practice.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+
+**Format description:** We propose an open-ended conversation that would maximise the degree of audience engagement, bringing the moderator, the speakers, and all session participants on the same level and encouraging anyone to speak up. The length of the session is medium, allowing just enough time for participants to warm up and not too long for the conversation to lose its focus.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** We invite IGF participants to join us for a somewhat different type of session - an open-ended conversation dependent on audience inputs. All participants will have a chance to speak, onsite and online, guided by the moderators. There will be no panellists with lecture-like presentations, and the proposed speakers will focus on “provoking” the conversation. The session will rely on experienced moderators who will – throughout the entire session – pay equal attention to onsite and online participants, ensuring that interventions from both audiences are treated equally. Online participants will be constantly encouraged to contribute their views, both by voice and by text chat. An additional experienced online moderator will engage with participants in the chat and ensure that the discussions happening there are integrated into the overall session. Moreover, we may use live discussion tools (e.g., Slido, Mentimeter, and Pigeonhole) to facilitate real-time exchanges between onsite and online participants.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Sorina Teleanu, DiploFoundation🔒
+
+**Organizer 2:** Jovan Kurbalija, 🔒
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** KATHERINE GETAO, Civil Society, African Group
+
+**Speaker 2:** Henri VERDIER, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+**Speaker 3:** Julia Williams, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+
+**Speaker 4:** Jovan Kurbalija, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Jovan Kurbalija, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Sorina Teleanu, Civil Society, Eastern European Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Sorina Teleanu, Civil Society, Eastern European Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+4.7
+
+5.b
+
+8.2
+
+8.3
+
+9.c
+
+10.3
@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #268 Bridging the AI Governance Divide: A Policy Roadmap for MENA
+
+## Description
+
+AI governance in MENA is moving beyond principle-setting. Governments and firms are progressing from generative AI pilots toward wider deployment, including increasingly agentic systems, while capabilities to procure, evaluate, monitor and govern them remain uneven. The challenge is how countries and organizations with very different foundations can meet emerging expectations for interoperability, accountability, operational human oversight and evidence of effectiveness.
+MBRSG’s Bridging the AI Divide report examined unequal AI readiness across MENA and how regional cooperation could strengthen participation in global governance. In 2026, the policy challenge has evolved. The UAE’s announced framework for deploying agentic AI across government illustrates the pace of change, while other countries continue to face constraints in infrastructure, data, skills and regulatory capacity..
+Building on the MBRSG-Google.org Bridging the AI Divide study of 327 AI and digital companies across ten MENA countries, this session asks what shared responsibility requires when countries are moving at different speeds. It applies a three-part lens: a common governance baseline; requirements adapted or phased according to risk, sector and institutional capacity; and scarce capabilities that could be shared or coordinated regionally.
+A short context update and a multistakeholder panel, representing regional research, industry and international governance bodies, will examine how experimentation can coexist with oversight and accountability; what evidence, metrics and reporting practices can support learning from pilots, failures and near misses; and which capabilities should be developed nationally, shared regionally and coordinated globally. Onsite and online participants will contribute examples from their own contexts.
+Onsite and online participants will contribute examples of governance and learning bottlenecks from their own contexts. The session will conclude with a MENA Shared Responsibility Agenda for AI Governance. The goal is not a uniform regional model, but practical cooperation that helps countries govern nationally, learn regionally and shape globally.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. How should responsibility for AI experimentation, oversight, accountability and institutional learning be shared among governments, deploying organizations, technology providers and technical communities when countries are moving at different speeds?
+B. What evidence, metrics and trusted reporting mechanisms could countries share to learn from AI deployment, failures and near misses while preserving security, confidentiality, public accountability and national context?
+C. How can MENA countries and stakeholders ensure that regional evidence and implementation experience meaningfully shape global AI-governance priorities, standards and cooperation mechanisms?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+Building on MBRSG’s regional research, this session will produce a concise MENA Shared Responsibility Agenda for AI Governance, informed by prepared speaker contributions and evidence shared by onsite and online participants.
+**The agenda will identify:** shared-responsibility propositions for governments, deploying organizations, technology providers, international organizations, research institutions and technical communities; practical priorities for regional cooperation, including shared implementation evidence, adaptable indicators, evaluation approaches, incident and near-miss learning, and access to scarce governance expertise; and mechanisms through which experience from MENA countries and stakeholders can contribute more meaningfully to wider AI-governance discussions.
+The outcome will distinguish areas of convergence from unresolved tensions, including transparency versus confidentiality, common baselines versus national adaptation, and shared responsibility versus diffuse accountability. It will not claim regional consensus or prescribe a uniform model. Findings will inform MBRSG’s continuing research and be shared with relevant policymakers and IGF intersessional communities.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Theater
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+Format description: We propose a 90-minute theatre-style session with three segments:
+1. Evidence and Recent Developments (10 minutes): A concise update on the 2025 Bridging the AI Divide research, highlighting accelerated generative and agentic AI deployment, continuing differences in national capabilities, and the need for shared responsibility, regional learning and participation in global AI-governance discussions.
+2. Multistakeholder Panel Discussion (60 minutes): Experts from research, industry, international public administration and the technical community will examine how responsibility for experimentation, oversight and accountability should be shared; what evidence, metrics and trusted reporting practices can support learning from implementation, failures and near misses; and which governance capabilities should be developed nationally, shared regionally or coordinated globally.
+3. Interactive Audience Discussion and Synthesis (20 minutes): Onsite and online participants will contribute governance bottlenecks, implementation lessons and underrepresented perspectives. The moderator will conclude by summarizing shared-responsibility propositions, practical regional cooperation priorities and unresolved policy tensions.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** We will appoint dedicated onsite and online moderators to ensure balanced participation across both audiences. The online moderator will monitor the virtual platform, curate questions and comments, and introduce remote contributions at planned points during the panel and audience discussion.
+A shared Miro board will enable onsite and online participants to contribute examples of governance bottlenecks, implementation lessons and perspectives missing from wider AI-governance discussions. Contributions will be organized under three areas: national responsibility, regional cooperation and global participation. Selected examples will be brought directly into the panel discussion.
+During the interactive segment, questions and experiences will alternate between onsite and online participants. The online panelist will participate throughout the session rather than in a separate remote segment. The rapporteur will capture contributions from both audiences, including areas of agreement and unresolved tensions, for inclusion in the post-session MENA Shared Responsibility Agenda for AI Governance and support transparent post-session documentation.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Salem Fadi, Mohammed bin Rashid School of Government
+**Organizer 2:** Akmaral Orazaly, MBRSG
+**Organizer 3:** Eiman Almarzooqi, Mohammed bin Rashid School of Government
+**Organizer 4:** Saeed Al Amri, Mohammed bin Rashid School of Government
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Gilles Fayad, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 2:** Akmaral Orazaly, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 3:** Salem Fadi, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 4:** Deniz Susar, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+**Speaker 5:** Rasha  El Hallak, Private Sector, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Salem Fadi, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Eiman Almarzooqi, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Saeed Al Amri, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+9.5
+9.b
+10. Reduced Inequalities
+10.2
+10.6
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+16.7
+16.8
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
+17.16
+17.6
+17.9
@@ -0,0 +1,71 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #314 Walk the talk: Practicing inclusive AI governance with AIDA
+
+## Description
+
+While inclusive, human-centred AI governance is widely recognised as essential, many stakeholders. particularly civil society organisations, policy practitioners and emerging economies, still lack practical tools to meaningfully participate in governance processes. How can we move from discussing inclusive AI governance to actually practicing it?
+
+This workshop aims to demonstrate how community-built AI tools can strengthen meaningful participation in AI governance and contribute to governing the Internet in the Age of Intelligence as a truly shared responsibility by combining capacity development, collaborative foresight and open knowledge sharing.
+
+The interactive workshop introduces a new open and community-driven AI Governance and Digital Policy Assistant (AIDA) designed to strengthen AI governance capacity. AIDA helps users understand AI governance concepts, explore the technologies behind today's AI systems, examine potential futures, and identify concrete actions they can take to proactively shape trustworthy and inclusive AI governance. Built on an open-source foundation and powered by a carefully curated knowledge base, it enables the community to continuously contribute new resources and expertise, evolving into a shared digital commons rather than a closed knowledge system. Rather than presenting AIDA through demonstrations alone, participants will actively use the tool throughout the session. Together, participants will explore alternative futures, identify governance challenges and opportunities, and co-create practical governance responses using AIDA as a collaborative facilitator. This "walk the talk" approach illustrates how AI itself can support more inclusive, transparent and participatory governance processes.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+- How can open, community-driven AI tools strengthen meaningful participation in AI governance and help bridge capacity gaps among civil society, policymakers and underrepresented stakeholders?
+
+- What governance models and incentives are needed to develop AI assistants as trusted digital commons that promote transparency, openness, accountability and collaborative knowledge creation?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+Participants will gain hands-on experience using AIDA to explore future AI governance scenarios and to co-create concrete, stakeholder-based governance actions, while deepening their shared understanding of AI technologies.
+
+The workshop will produce practical recommendations for improving AIDA and expanding its use, with particular attention to youth, civil society, and small and developing states, including ideas for how the community can contribute resources to its knowledge base.
+
+It will also provide insights on how open, co-created AI tools can be developed, governed, and sustained as a digital commons and inform both AIDA's further development and broader discussions on inclusive AI governance.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** An ideal layout would consist of several round tables spread across the room, each seating 8-10 participants, with enough space between them for breakout group work. A short plenary setup at the front for framing and report-back, then participants disperse to their tables for the co-creation phase. Each table needs at least one device/laptop to access AIDA live, and ideally a flip chart for mapping stakeholders and actions.
+
+**Suggested duration:** 90 minutes, broken roughly into framing and live AIDA demo (15 min), group work exploring futures and co-creating governance actions (45–50 min), and report-back and joint recommendations (20 min).
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The workshop is well suited to a hybrid setup. In addition to the in-person tables, one group will run as an online 'roundtable' on Zoom, where remote participants work through the same tasks with their own online moderator. That moderator reports the online group's findings during the plenary report-back, alongside the in-person groups. Online participants also join the introductory plenary session and the plenary wrap-up, so they are part of the shared framing and closing throughout.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Katarina Andelkovic, 🔒
+**Organizer 2:** Arja Nunn, GIZ
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Ana Toskic Cvetinovic, Civil Society, Eastern European Group
+**Speaker 2:** Cyprian  Nyarige Nyamweno, Government, African Group
+**Speaker 3:** Gevorg Hayrapetyan, Technical Community, Eastern European Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Katarina Andelkovic, Civil Society, Eastern European Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Katarina Andelkovic, Civil Society, Eastern European Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Katarina Andelkovic, Civil Society, Eastern European Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+10. Reduced Inequalities
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #379 Small Island inclusive Internet Governance: the ccTLD cases
+
+## Description
+
+Small island territories face several specific challenges from infrastructure limitation to dependence on external providers as well as the need to build capacity at the local level but also to foster regional cooperation and integration underscoring the importance of multistakeholder collaboration.
+Country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) are strategic digital assets that support national or regional identity, trust, and Internet resilience. For small island territories, managing ccTLDs presents unique technical, institutional, and policy challenges, including limited human and financial resources and the need to reconcile local interests with global Internet governance.
+This workshop will examine how small island territories can strengthen the technical operation and governance of their ccTLDs while ensuring meaningful participation from local Internet communities. The discussion will highlight multistakeholder approaches that bring together registry operators, governments, technical experts, civil society, academia, the private sector and end users to develop sustainable governance models.
+We will leverage the allocation of public service delegations to the French registry AFNIC to manage the ccTLDs of French small island territoriesand compare this model with others to understand how local Internet communities can benefit from a multistakeholder approach that facilitates the exchange of experiences and good practices
+Participants will explore good practices for resilient registry operations, DNS security, capacity building, community engagement, and public policy frameworks that foster transparency, accountability, and local ownership. Case studies from small island territories across different regions will illustrate successful initiatives and identify common challenges.
+The session will also address how regional and international cooperation - including support from ICANN, regional Internet organizations, and the broader technical community - can enhance local capabilities without undermining community-led governance.
+Through an interactive discussion, participants will identify practical recommendations to improve both the technical resilience and the policy governance of small island ccTLDs, ensuring they remain trusted public resources.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. How can island territories strengthen the technical resilience and security of their ccTLDs while maintaining local control and sustainability?
+B. Which multistakeholder governance models best ensure meaningful participation of local Internet communities in ccTLD policy development and decision-making?
+C. How can regional and international cooperation support island ccTLD operators while preserving local ownership, sovereignty, and community interests?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The workshop will produce a set of practical recommendations for strengthening the governance and technical management of small  island territory ccTLDs through inclusive multistakeholder approaches. Participants will identify key success factors for improving operational resilience, community participation, and policy coordination.
+The session will foster new connections among registry operators, governments, technical organizations, and civil society representatives from small  island territories, encouraging future collaboration and capacity-building initiatives. The recommendations may also contribute to broader discussions within the Internet governance ecosystem on strengthening local Internet infrastructures and promoting community-driven digital development.
+Participants will leave with concrete examples, policy insights, and practical tools that can be adapted to their own local contexts.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** A 90-minute roundtable is the most appropriate format because it promotes equal participation among speakers and maximizes interaction with both onsite and online attendees. Rather than relying on formal presentations, the session will combine brief introductory interventions with moderated discussion, audience questions, and exchanges of practical experiences from different island territories.
+This format encourages cross-regional dialogue, comparison of governance models, and collaborative identification of good practices. Interactive polling and online questions will ensure that remote participants contribute on an equal footing with those attending in person, reinforcing the workshop's multistakeholder and community-driven objectives.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session will be designed from the outset as a hybrid event. An onsite moderator will facilitate the room discussion while an online moderator will ensure that remote participants can intervene throughout the session. Equal speaking opportunities will be provided regardless of participation mode.
+Interactive polling tools, moderated Q&A, and collaborative note-taking will encourage contributions from all participants. Questions collected online will be integrated into the live discussion rather than addressed separately.
+The rapporteur will summarize key points in real time, allowing participants to validate recommendations before the session concludes. This approach ensures that both onsite and online participants actively contribute to developing practical recommendations for inclusive ccTLD governance in island territories.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Sébastien Bachollet, 🔒ISOC Fr
+**Organizer 2:** Maureen Hilyard, 🔒DC-SIDS, CIIAG
+**Organizer 3:** Claire Popineau, Ministère de la Justice
+**Organizer 4:** Lucien M. CASTEX, 🔒AFNIC
+**Organizer 5:** Nicolas Raft RAZAFINDRAKOTO, 🔒ISOC-MADA
+**Organizer 6:** Olivier Crepin-Leblond, 🔒ISOC UK England
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Sébastien Bachollet, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 2:** Maureen Hilyard, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 3:** Claire Popineau, Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 4:** Lucien M. CASTEX, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 5:** Nicolas Raft RAZAFINDRAKOTO, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Sébastien Bachollet, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Claire Popineau, Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Olivier Crepin-Leblond, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+4. Quality Education
+5. Gender Equality
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+10. Reduced Inequalities
+13. Climate Action
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
@@ -0,0 +1,71 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #408 Women's Leadership Pathways in Internet Governance
+
+## Description
+
+Internet governance has invested heavily in fellowships, mentoring and capacity building to broaden participation in digital policy processes. However, one question remains largely unanswered: why do so few women become leaders? The World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report (2025) reports that women hold only 28.8% of senior leadership positions globally, despite growing participation across sectors. This highlights a challenge that Internet governance has yet to address systematically, building clear and sustainable pathways from participation to leadership.
+As the Internet Governance Forum community works to implement the Global Digital Compact and respond to increasingly complex digital governance issues, leadership matters. The people who chair working groups, shape agendas and influence policy decisions determine whose perspectives are reflected in global digital governance. For many women, particularly those from the Global South, progression into these roles remains limited.
+This workshop will explore how Internet governance organisations can strengthen leadership pipelines rather than simply expand participation. Through an interactive Leadership Pathways studio, participants will analyse institutional challenges, exchange successful practices and develop practical recommendations to strengthen leadership progression, mentoring, sponsorship and institutional accountability.
+The session will produce a practical resource to help organisations build more transparent, inclusive and sustainable leadership pathways. By focusing on institutional change instead of representation alone, the workshop aims to support stronger multistakeholder governance and ensure that the next generation of Internet governance leaders better reflects the diversity of the global Internet community.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+1. What institutional policies and practices can help transform participation in Internet governance into sustainable leadership opportunities?
+
+2. How can Internet governance organisations strengthen transparent and inclusive pathways to leadership, particularly for women and underrepresented communities from the Global South?
+
+3. What practical measures can governments, the technical community, civil society, academia and the private sector adopt to strengthen leadership development and succession across the Internet governance ecosystem?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The session will produce a practical resource capturing key recommendations for strengthening leadership progression across multistakeholder institutions. The framework will identify institutional practices that support transparent leadership development, including mentorship, sponsorship, succession planning and inclusive governance processes. WIG will publish and share the framework with the wider Internet governance community to encourage further discussion and adaptation. Participants will gain practical insights into how different organisations approach leadership development, a better understanding of the institutional barriers that limit progression into leadership roles, and examples of effective practices from across stakeholder groups and regions. The session will also provide an opportunity for participants to exchange experiences, challenge assumptions and identify actions that governments, civil society, the technical community, academia and the private sector can take to build stronger, more inclusive leadership pipelines within the Internet governance ecosystem.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** A 90-minute roundtable is the most suitable format because this session seeks to generate practical solutions through dialogue rather than presentations. Leadership progression in Internet governance is a shared challenge that requires perspectives from governments, civil society, the private sector, the technical community and academia. The roundtable format creates an inclusive environment where participants can exchange experiences, examine different institutional approaches and identify practical actions to strengthen leadership pathways.
+
+The session will use a structured facilitation approach to guide participants from identifying barriers to discussing successful practices and agreeing on key recommendations. This ensures that every stakeholder group has an opportunity to contribute while keeping the discussion focused on tangible outcomes. Sixty minutes provides sufficient time to frame the policy challenge, facilitate multistakeholder dialogue and synthesise participants' contributions into the proposed Leadership Pathways Framework for Internet Governance, which will be shared with the wider community.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session will be facilitated as single conversation across two spaces, rather than separate onsite and online discussions. Each policy question will begin with brief reflections from one onsite and one online participant before opening the floor, ensuring that remote participants help shape the discussion from the outset rather than joining only during Q&A.
+
+A dedicated online facilitator will identify emerging themes, invite virtual interventions at key moments and relay questions directly into the discussion. Rather than collecting comments at the end, recommendations from both audiences will be captured in real time using a shared collaborative document visible to everyone. Participants will also use Mentimeter to prioritise the recommendations they consider most important, allowing the final Leadership Pathways Framework for Internet Governance to reflect the collective views of both onsite and online participants.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Gloria Frimpomaah Amofah-Adjekum , Women in Internet Governance/ Makatob IT IT
+**Organizer 2:** Ines Hfaiedh, 🔒AODIRF
+**Organizer 3:** Betty Fausta, 🔒YONN
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Nwakanma Nnenna, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Prerna Chhetri, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 3:** Betty Fausta, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 4:** Mary Rose Ofianga, Private Sector, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 5:** June Parris, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 6:** Pari Esfandiari, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Ines Hfaiedh, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Betty Fausta, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Gloria Frimpomaah Amofah-Adjekum , Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+5. Gender Equality
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
@@ -0,0 +1,82 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #412 What digital sovereignty does and doesn't mean: global views
+
+## Description
+
+Whilst this year's IGF celebrates the need for shared responsibility around the topic of digital governance, there is plenty of reason to think that this shared responsibility is being challenged. Policy documents from many parts of the world talk about local control, autonomy, and oversight. Although digital sovereignty is a leitmotif for many, it has been appropriated by different actors to mean different things. Herein lies one of the challenges: sovereignty only became a dominant principle of ordering the world because *it meant the same thing to all actors*. Indeed, sovereignty as one of the cornerstones of the UN charter, implies equality of treatment, and yet states and non-states are claiming the label. Yet the meaning of these digital sovereignty claims are not clear to all stakeholders in this global environment, where histories, contexts, and even language can shape perceptions of the term.
+
+Taken to one extreme, discussions around digital sovereignty foreclose conversations about global cooperation. This obviously does not sit with declarations made during the WSIS+20 Review, or previous IGFs. So what is actually going on? Do the claims of a variety of actors around digital sovereignhood compromise the idea of a global internet? How do we even begin to talk about 'Sovereign AI'? Where are the boundaries of such claims? How do each of the actors frame digital sovereignty, not only from a perspective of 'ownership of production' but also in economic and social terms?
+
+This workshop will bring together a diverse range of stakeholders from around the world to help participants get a deeper understanding of what 'digital sovereignty' means to them. Our contribution is based on a number of years of research in networks such as Giganet, Gig-arts, and participation in UN meetings on the topic.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. What does the digital sovereignty discourse emerging from your region actually mean?
+B. How does this digital sovereignty claim fit with global governance frameworks/institutions, such as WSIS and IGF?
+C. Can we start to think of a boundary, or limit to the claims of sovereignhood in cyberspace?
+D. How do we ensure that the territorialisation of key 'parts' of the internet does not contradict our ambitions for a shared global internet?
+E. Rather than a strict legal definition, should digital sovereignty be considered as a set of 'capabilities' to protect communities?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The session should - first and foremost - stimulate interesting debate and conversation amongst participants. The topic of digital sovereignty is bound to be a popular one at this IGF, and yet, many commentators and practitioners to date do not seem to reflect much on the differences in understanding across different stakeholder groups and world regions. Our first outcome is to acknowledge that difference.
+
+Secondly, we hope to start mapping out this difference by helping create an understanding of what features of digital sovereignty are common to all definitions, and what are different. This should help continue discussions throughout the IGF and beyond.
+
+Finally, this will feed into ongoing research in the academic community of the facts of digital sovereignty, resulting in a broader report, based on observations from several years of participation at IGFs.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** A roundtable will enable full engagement between speakers (some online) and the audience. We will ask speakers to provide targeted responses of maximum three minutes per intervention. We aim to use the three minute rule to ensure and encourage speakers from beyond our speaking list. Our speakers are primed to be assertive, and yet stimulate conversation by raising particular perspectives. Our speakers are also brought together with the intention of voicing that difference: we have invited a heterogenous group of individuals to talk to the subject matter.
+
+For an intense conversation about 'difference' (different understandings of digital sovereignty), one hour should suffice for this conversation. We feel that 60 minutes provides a good timeframe to structure a debate of this nature. We hope that the outcomes from this workshop will be shared in other ones as well.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** We will have an onsite moderator and an online moderator who will be based onsite. The two will sit next to each other, and confer regularly, in order to ensure that balance between onsite and online moderation will be fair.  We shall apply a three-miinute rule for interventions, roughly allowing up to 15 interventions during the session, where a participant can intervene more than once if they can help continue the flow of the conversation. As our session is designed with a specific outcome in mind, we will keep a rolling document open (google docs or cryptpad) open, to allow all to contribute notes if they feel uncomfortable in speaking. The moderators will also monitor this document (which will be shared on a big screen when an online participant is not talking), to respond to contributions, potentially asking for more insight from the author of each comment.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Jamal Shahin, University of Amsterdam and Vrije Universiteit Brussel
+**Organizer 2:** Dorijn Boogaard, NL IGF
+**Organizer 3:** Everton T Rodrigues, NIC.br
+**Organizer 4:** Stephanie Teeuwen, Brussels School of Governance
+**Organizer 5:** Bitange Ndemo, University of Nairobi
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Qusai Al-Shatti, Private Sector, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 2:** Dorijn Boogaard, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 3:** Everton T Rodrigues, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 4:** Bitange Ndemo, Government, African Group
+**Speaker 5:** Stephanie Teeuwen, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Jamal Shahin, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Stephanie Teeuwen, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Jamal Shahin, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+1.4
+4.7
+8.2
+9.1
+9.5
+9.a
+10.2
+16.10
+16.8
+17.6
@@ -0,0 +1,82 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #417 Fragile or Agile? Fixing Internal Governance in the IGFs
+
+## Description
+
+For two decades, Internet Governance Forums (IGFs) at the global, regional, and national levels have relied on the multistakeholder model to foster open dialogue. However, behind this collaborative vision lies a growing institutional challenge: a lack of standardized, transparent, and resilient internal governance mechanisms.
+This session directly confronts the structural vulnerabilities that threaten the credibility, impact, and long-term sustainability of IGFs. Without robust internal frameworks, forums risk becoming procedurally fragile, vulnerable to capture by well-resourced actors, and disconnected from measurable policy outcomes. Participants will critically examine whether the current operational model offers genuine organizational agility or masks systemic fragility.
+
+Designed as a collaborative policy lab, the workshop brings together civil society, technical communities, industry leaders, and policymakers to dissect key governance deficits. The discussion will revolve around three core pillars:
+
+**Accountability and Inclusivity:** Establishing transparent protocols for agenda-setting, speaker selection, and decision-making to balance power dynamics between tech giants, governments, and resource-constrained stakeholders.
+
+**Institutional Sustainability:** Developing durable funding, operational, and organizational models—particularly for National and Regional IGFs (NRIs) in the Global South.
+
+**Impact Tracking:** Building lightweight Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) mechanisms to trace how non-binding discussions translate into tangible regional and national policy initiatives.
+
+Rather than offering passive criticism, this workshop aims to produce a concrete set of a minimum standards of  Internal Governance Model and  Principles. By equipping IGFs organizers with actionable reform blueprints, the session seeks to transform internet governance platforms from passive dialogue venues into resilient, accountable, and impactful institutions built for the digital age.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+How can IGFs implement standardized internal transparency protocols for agenda-setting and funding to prevent capture by well-resourced actors?
+
+What structural mechanisms can National and Regional IGFs (NRIs) adopt to achieve long-term financial and operational sustainability without compromising independence?
+
+How can multistakeholder forums establish lightweight Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) frameworks to track the real-world policy impact of non-binding discussions?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+**Internal Governance Framework:** A practical set of draft principles outlining standards for transparent agenda-setting, conflict-of-interest management, and inclusive decision-making across global, regional, and national IGFs (NRIs).
+
+**NRI Sustainability Blueprint:** Actionable recommendations identifying alternative funding models, operational practices, and capacity-building strategies to secure the long-term institutional independence of forums, particularly in the Global South.
+
+**Impact-Tracking Roadmap:** A lightweight Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) methodology designed to help organizers measure, document, and trace how non-binding multistakeholder dialogues influence real-world national and international tech policies.
+
+Enhanced Network & Knowledge-Sharing: An active community of practice connecting IGF organizers, civil society, and policy experts committed to implementing structural reforms and sharing best practices for governance resilience beyond the annual event.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** Designed as an interactive 90-minute Roundtable, this session prioritizes peer-to-peer dialogue over passive presentations. To kick off, four diverse lead discussants deliver 3-minute lightning triggers outlining key internal governance deficits.
+
+The majority of the session is dedicated to facilitated, non-hierarchical discussion among all onsite and online participants. Utilizing dual-moderation and live digital collaboration tools (Slido and Miro), the roundtable creates a level playing field where attendees actively debate reform proposals, address power imbalances, and co-draft a set of practical Internal Governance Principles for the IGF community.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** To guarantee complete parity between physical and remote participants in our 90-minute Roundtable, we employ a dedicated Dual-Moderation Strategy. An Onsite Moderator manages the physical room while a Remote Moderator manages the Zoom queue, chat, and technical needs, maintaining a live backchannel to alternate speaking queues 1:1. Remote speakers sit "at the table" via main-screen displays and high-definition room audio.
+
+Designed as an interactive Policy Lab, long lectures are replaced by 3-minute lightning triggers, reserving over 70% of the session for open debate. All attendees interact through a single digital hub: Slido for live polling/Q&A upvoting (accommodating non-native speakers or low bandwidth) and Miro for a 20-minute live co-drafting segment. High-contrast, screen-reader-accessible visual sharing ensures an inclusive, high-quality experience for all participants.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** MOHAMED FARAHAT, 🔒African IGF
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** MOHAMED FARAHAT, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Malek   khachlouf, Government, African Group
+**Speaker 3:** Shifa Sorene Assefa , Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+**Speaker 4:** Amged B Shwehdy, Intergovernmental Organization, African Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+MOHAMED FARAHAT, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+MOHAMED FARAHAT, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+MOHAMED FARAHAT, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+16.6
+16.7
+17.16
+17.17
@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #442 Building Stakeholder Expertise into the UN Global Mechanism
+
+## Description
+
+Following two decades of ad hoc formats, the establishment of the UN Global Mechanism on ICT security provides to Cyber Diplomacy a permanent institutional home, and shifts its purpose from negotiating norms on the safety and security of the cyber domain to implementing them.
+
+The Mechanism also comes with a new structure that carries a significant recognition. The establishment of Dedicated Thematic Groups, complementary to the plenary agenda, integrates stakeholders' expertise into delegations' deliberative responsibilities on specific issues. With this shift, Cyber Diplomacy has formalised the acknowledgement that effective cyber governance cannot be sustained without the technical and scientific knowledge that expert communities provide across different regional contexts, and without the diverse sectoral perspectives that different stakeholder communities bring.
+
+Yet questions remain on how this novel structure will function, and on how to ensure its effective support to the plenary. Questions remain too on how to build a common language, shared priorities, and a constructive exchange between delegates and expert stakeholders, where knowledge flows in both directions and regional perspectives from across the globe are treated as indispensable inputs rather than optional additions. These are critical conditions for the effective implementation of the UN Global Mechanism, and questions the broader IGF community is well equipped to address.
+
+Building on the first plenary session held in July 2026, on the Cyber Diplomacy Compass consultations convened alongside it by EU Cyber Direct, and on the first Dedicated Thematic Groups meeting from 7 to 11 December 2026, this session brings together delegations, the technical community, civil society and industry to work through these questions. With the ambition of producing concrete recommendations to be shared with the UN Secretariat and Global Mechanism delegations, the session works towards the further integration of expertise in the consolidation of the Global Mechanism on ICT security.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+**A:** At what points in the Global Mechanism's cycle is stakeholder expertise most useful to delegations, and what would make its contribution visible in the outcomes of the Dedicated Thematic Groups?
+
+**B:** What conditions would allow expertise from all regions to reach the process on equal terms, and where should responsibility for creating those conditions sit between states, stakeholders, and capacity building efforts?
+
+**C:** How can engagement between delegations and expert communities be sustained between sessions, and what forms of continuity would strengthen the implementation of the Mechanism without adding to the burden on smaller delegations?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The session will produce a short set of practical recommendations on stakeholder support in the Global Mechanism, drafted from the discussion and shared with delegations and stakeholder communities ahead of the 2027 cycle. A session report will be published by EU Cyber Direct and shared with UNODA, the Chair of the UN Global Mechanism, and delegations, feeding into EU Cyber Direct's regular preparatory work on multistakeholder contribution to the Global Mechanism and the broader Cyber Diplomacy domain.
+
+Participants will leave with a clearer picture of how the Mechanism's new structure works in practice, drawn from delegations and expert communities involved in its first sessions. Delegates will gain perspectives from technical, academic, and civil society communities across regions on what expertise can realistically be supplied and what it requires, and the exchange is intended to establish contacts sustained between sessions rather than reassembled at each meeting.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Classroom
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The classroom layout accommodates a wider group than a roundtable while keeping participants at a working surface, which suits a session where delegations and expert stakeholders are expected to draft and refine recommendations rather than only listen, working from policy questions circulated in advance. Ninety minutes is the minimum this requires. Short framing interventions take thirty minutes, leaving a full hour of open exchange, which is what a multistakeholder discussion needs once a regionally balanced speaking queue is accounted for. A shorter slot would compress the exchange into a sequence of statements rather than a conversation.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** Speakers will be split across both modalities, with at least one framing intervention delivered remotely. An online moderator will hold an equal role throughout, sharing a single alternating speaking queue with the onsite moderator and taking the floor at fixed announced intervals rather than at the end. Chat questions will be read aloud and attributed. The roundtable format, with policy questions circulated in advance, suits hybrid exchange better than sequential presentations. A collaborative document will carry a live summary and written interventions, with a pre-session form collecting input from regions poorly served by the time slot.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Andrea Calderaro, CyberDirect/European Institute for Security Studies
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Raman Jit Singh Chima, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 2:** Moliehi Makumane, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+**Speaker 3:** Maria Paz Canales, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 4:** Madeline Carr, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Andrea Calderaro, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Adolfo Moreira, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Houwen Marius, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+10. Reduced Inequalities
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
@@ -0,0 +1,82 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #51 Coordinating Digital Governance in the Age of AI
+
+## Description
+
+The implementation of the IGF's permanent mandate offers an opportunity to strengthen coordination across a complex digital governance landscape. As AI reshapes the Internet and digital policy, improving coherence among institutions, stakeholders, and governance processes is essential to addressing shared challenges while preserving the multistakeholder model.
+
+This workshop will introduce the proposed Dynamic Coalition on Global Digital Governance Coordination (DC-GDGC) as a platform for dialogue, collaboration, and knowledge sharing on governance coordination. Bringing together representatives from governments, international organizations, the technical community, civil society, academia, and the private sector, the session will examine practical approaches, lessons learned, and successful coordination practices that can reduce fragmentation, strengthen policy coherence, and improve collaboration across global, regional, and national digital governance processes.
+
+Moving beyond a traditional panel, the workshop will operate as a Coordination Challenge Lab. Following brief framing remarks and an opening poll, onsite and online participants will work through practical digital and AI governance scenarios to identify which institutions and stakeholders need to coordinate, where gaps or overlaps exist, and what mechanisms could improve cooperation. Participants will build a Digital Governance Coordination Map in real time, while invited experts from different stakeholder groups will act as challengers and resource persons. The session will conclude with participants prioritizing the three coordination gaps most urgently requiring action and identifying practical next steps. This participatory process will ensure that the session's recommendations are generated by the wider room.
+
+The resulting map, priorities, and recommendations will be captured in a concise session report to inform DC-GDGC's  work and contribute to broader efforts to strengthen cooperation and coherence across the digital governance ecosystem.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. How can digital and AI governance be better coordinated without creating new layers of bureaucracy or weakening the multistakeholder model?
+B. Where are the most consequential gaps and overlaps across Internet, digital, and AI governance, and what coordination mechanisms could address them?
+C. What practical role can the proposed DC-GDGC play in connecting governance processes, sharing effective practices, and turning multistakeholder dialogue into coordinated action?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The session will produce a participant-generated Digital Governance Coordination Map, identifying relevant actors, existing coordination mechanisms, gaps, overlaps, and missing connections across selected digital and AI governance challenges.
+
+Through the Coordination Challenge Lab, participants will test coordination approaches against practical scenarios, exchange examples of successful practices, and identify where additional coordination would add value—and where it could create unnecessary complexity or bureaucracy.
+
+Participants will collectively prioritize three coordination gaps for action and identify potential responses, including stronger connections between existing processes, knowledge sharing, further research, or new coordination mechanisms where justified.
+
+The map, priority gaps, examples of effective practice, and recommendations will be captured in a concise session report. These outputs will inform discussion on the future work and priorities of the proposed DC-GDGC and provide participants with a practical framework for assessing governance coordination challenges.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The 90-minute roundtable enables the session to operate as a participatory Coordination Challenge Lab rather than a traditional panel. Brief framing remarks will be followed by an opening poll and practical governance scenarios. Onsite participants will work at tables while online participants engage with the same questions through shared digital tools.
+
+Participants will collaboratively build a Digital Governance Coordination Map, identifying actors, existing mechanisms, gaps, overlaps and missing connections. Invited experts will serve primarily as challengers and resource persons, responding to participants' findings rather than delivering sequential presentations.
+
+The final phase will bring onsite and online participants together to prioritize the three most urgent coordination gaps and identify practical next steps. The roundtable layout supports collaborative work and equitable participation, while 90 minutes provides sufficient time to move from problem identification through analysis to concrete, participant-generated outcomes.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The Coordination Challenge Lab will treat onsite and online participants as one working group rather than separate audiences. Both will respond to the same live polls, scenarios and prioritization exercises. A shared digital workspace will capture contributions from both groups in real time as participants jointly build the Digital Governance Coordination Map.
+
+The onsite moderator will facilitate the overall Lab, while the dedicated online moderator will actively bring virtual contributions, questions and challenges into each stage of the discussion. Invited experts will respond to findings generated by participants rather than deliver lengthy presentations.
+
+Following scenario work, all participants will vote on the three most urgent coordination gaps and potential responses. Results will be displayed live and used for the closing synthesis. The experienced moderation and rapporteur team will ensure balanced participation, capture divergent perspectives, and integrate onsite and online contributions into the session outputs.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Pari Esfandiari, 🔒Global TechnoPolitics Forum
+**Organizer 2:** Yik Chan Chin, Beijing Normal University/UNU Macau
+**Organizer 3:** Olga Cavalli, Argentina Ministy of Defense
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Olga Cavalli, Government, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 2:** Anriette Esterhuysen, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 3:** Yik Chan Chin, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Pari Esfandiari, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Olga Cavalli, Government, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Yik Chan Chin, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+16.6
+16.7
+16.8
+17.14
+17.16
+17.17
@@ -0,0 +1,83 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #97  Operationalizing WSIS+20: EU–Africa Dialogue through NRIs
+
+## Description
+
+The adoption of the WSIS+20 Outcome Document marks a new phase in global digital cooperation, shifting the focus from policy development to implementation. As preparations begin for the 2027 review of the GDC, National and Regional Internet Governance Forum Initiatives (NRIs) are increasingly recognised as key platforms for translating global commitments into national, regional, and local action through inclusive, multistakeholder processes.
+
+Throughout 2026, the African Internet Governance Forum (AfIGF) community has advanced this agenda through the “Road to Ghana” Community Engagement Series, culminating in the 15th AfIGF in Accra, Ghana. These consultations have brought together governments, the private sector, civil society, the technical community, academia, and youth to identify Africa’s priorities and recommendations for implementing the WSIS+20 Outcomes and the Global Digital Compact. In parallel, EuroDIG 2026 has provided a platform for European stakeholders to exchange experiences, shape regional priorities, and develop recommendations on digital cooperation.
+
+Building on these complementary regional processes and the longstanding Africa–Europe dialogue on digital governance, including the 2023 EuroDIG Opening Plenary on “Digital Cooperation between African and European Parliamentarians” and EuroSIG, this workshop will bring together stakeholders from both regions to reflect on the key messages emerging from EuroDIG 2026 and AfIGF 2026. Participants will explore how the evolving digital governance landscape and the WSIS+20 Outcomes can strengthen Africa–Europe cooperation.
+
+The dialogue will examine how recommendations from both regional IGF processes can inform global digital governance discussions and the 2027 GDC review. Particular attention will be given to the role of NRIs in advancing implementation through peer learning, knowledge exchange, collaborative initiatives, and policy innovation while preserving the bottom-up multistakeholder model. The workshop will identify practical opportunities for Africa–Europe collaboration and develop actionable recommendations to strengthen NRIs' contribution to implementing the WSIS+20 Outcomes and to advancing an open, inclusive, secure, resilient, and people-centred digital future.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. How can the key messages, priorities, and recommendations emerging from EuroDIG 2026 and the 15th Africa IGF 2026 translate the WSIS+20 Outcomes into concrete action at the national, regional, and global levels?
+B. How can National and Regional IGF Initiatives (NRIs) strengthen their role in implementing the WSIS+20 Outcomes, contribute to the 2027 review of the Global Digital Compact, and identify concrete opportunities for EU–Africa cooperation on digital governance?
+C. What practical EU–Africa initiatives can be developed through the NRI ecosystem to pilot, exchange, and scale innovative approaches to emerging digital governance challenges while preserving the bottom-up, multistakeholder model?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The session will:
+1.  Identify areas of convergence between the Africa IGF 2026 Outcome Message and EuroDIG 2026 Messages, highlighting shared priorities and opportunities for strengthened EU–Africa cooperation on digital governance.
+2.  Develop actionable recommendations on how National and Regional Internet Governance Forum Initiatives (NRIs) can contribute to the implementation of the WSIS+20 Outcomes, including through:
+2.1. Peer learning and exchange of national and regional experiences;
+2.2. Innovative forms of collaboration and policy experimentation; and
+2.3.  Stronger multistakeholder engagement while preserving the bottom-up model.
+
+3. Identify practical opportunities for EU–Africa collaboration, including joint learning, knowledge exchange, cross-regional partnerships, and cooperative approaches to emerging digital governance challenges.
+4. Strengthen collaboration among African and European NRIs by sharing practical experiences and approaches to implementing global digital governance commitments at national and regional levels.
+5. Produce an EU–Africa Dialogue Outcome Note summarising key messages, areas of convergence, and recommendations.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The session will be conducted as a 90-minute facilitated roundtable discussion rather than a traditional panel, creating an inclusive environment where African and European stakeholders participate on an equal footing. This format encourages open dialogue, peer-to-peer learning, and active participation from all attendees, fostering meaningful exchanges on shared priorities and experiences.
+
+Following a brief introduction, participants will engage in an interactive discussion guided by a facilitator, with ample opportunities for interventions from both onsite and online participants. The dialogue will focus on identifying practical recommendations, strengthening cooperation between the African and European IGF communities, and exploring how National and Regional IGF Initiatives (NRIs) can support implementation of the WSIS+20 Outcomes and contribute to the 2027 Global Digital Compact review.
+
+The roundtable setting reinforces the multistakeholder model by removing barriers between speakers and participants, promoting collaboration, mutual understanding, and the co-creation of actionable outcomes for enhanced EU–Africa digital cooperation.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session will have dedicated onsite and online facilitators working together to ensure balanced participation. The facilitators will actively bring online participants into the discussion, alternating between onsite and virtual contributions and ensuring that questions and comments from both groups are reflected in the dialogue.
+
+The facilitated roundtable will be designed to give onsite and online participants equal opportunities to engage. The facilitators will monitor both channels throughout the session and ensure that neither group becomes a passive audience.
+
+We will use the Global IGF online participation platform, including its chat and Q&A functions, with additional tools such as Mentimeter where useful for real-time input and interaction.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Shifa Sorene Assefa , UNECA
+**Organizer 2:** Sandra Hoferichter, 🔒
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Shifa Sorene Assefa , Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+**Speaker 2:** Sandra Hoferichter, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 3:** Hon Alhagie Mbow, Government, African Group
+**Speaker 4:** Philip Thigo Thigo, Government, African Group
+**Speaker 5:** Lucien M. CASTEX, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Sandra Hoferichter, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Shifa Sorene Assefa , Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+WINNIE KAMAU, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
@@ -0,0 +1,71 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #114 Why Infrastructure & Content Moderation Shouldn't Mix
+
+## Description
+
+We often associate 'content moderation' with posts being blocked or taken down by social media companies. However, they are not the only ones playing a role in content governance: infrastructure providers at lower levels of the internet 'stack' also act as gatekeepers for content - whether through their internal decision making processes or in compliance with requests from various actors. Particularly when it comes to the Domain Name System (DNS), the 'address book' of the internet, such actions can have a chilling effect on freedom of expression online.
+
+Stakeholders are ordering domain suspensions as a solution to block access to a wide range of content, ranging from copyright infringement to independent media coverage. Concurrently, AI is accelerating the scale and scope of abuse via the DNS. The problem is that the only action these operators can take is inherently broad: to target content on a particular webpage, they must block all webpages using the same domain. This approach is like damming a river to catch a few fish. This is particularly worrying given that the relationship between domain suspension orders and freedom of expression is not broadly understood.
+
+With policymakers already debating new regulations to curb this abuse via the DNS, there is an urgent need for multistakeholder dialogue on the governance of this critical infrastructure. The session proposal also directly applies to the IGF 2026 theme as it speaks to governing digital infrastructure in the Age of Intelligence.
+
+The DNS was designed to enable access to information - not stifle it. We have a shared responsibility to ensure it stays that way. We therefore propose convening a cross-regional group of experts to introduce the topic to the IGF community, exchange perspectives and collaborate on potential solutions to balance safety and security needs with human rights safeguards.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. What is the role of governments versus that of domain operators when it comes to balancing freedom of expression and DNS abuse mitigation? What role can civil society play?
+B. How can regulatory policy aimed at DNS abuse mitigation integrate human rights protections and safeguards?
+C. What lessons from policy regulating other areas of the internet (such as platform or AI governance) could be applied to policy regulating the DNS?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+Participants will gain a more nuanced understanding of the invisible yet significant role that digital infrastructure plays in the availability and dissemination of information online, and specifically, with more technical expertise when it comes to the DNS. The session also involves collaboratively developing policy recommendations for regulating the use of infrastructure for the purposes of content moderation. Participants can then bring this new expertise and recommendations to their national and regional contexts. Given the trend of using the DNS for content moderation and censorship is a global one, the session will serve as a stepping-stone for building broader stakeholder capacity to engage in new and ongoing complex regulatory and technical discussions on the responsibility of infrastructure providers, government, and civil society when it comes to addressing abuse via the DNS while ensuring human rights safeguards remain intact.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** Given the session will cover a complex technical topic, the panel format with a roundtable layout that allows for subject matter experts to first provide an introduction to the topic is best suited for our session aims. With this format, our speakers have the space to provide a comprehensive overview of what the DNS and how it works in an approachable manner before delving into key regulatory challenges and opportunities. Finally, given this is a topic that audience members may not be well-versed in prior to the session, this format facilitates an open dialogue that invites audience engagement through questions and interventions.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** ARTICLE 19 and DotAsia (.Asia) have extensive experience facilitating and organizing hybrid meetings, including the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF), the Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum (DRIF), and Global Gathering, among many other events. The hybrid IGF session will have an in-person moderator with a mixture of in-person and online speakers. The session will have a traditional A/V set up on-site, including Zoom participation and any IGF platform tools. The DotAsia team will support in-person with ARTICLE 19 supporting remotely to facilitate comments, questions and answers from the participants. Questions for discussion will be shared, along with findings from ARTICLE 19's DNS abuse case study, for participants' reaction and feedback.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Edmon Chung, 🔒DotAsia
+**Organizer 2:** Evin Erdogdu, DotAsia Organisation
+**Organizer 3:** Michaela Shapiro, ARTICLE 19
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Polina Malaja, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 2:** Christabel Mebaghandu, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 3:** Edmon Chung, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 4:** Michaela Shapiro, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Edmon Chung, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Michaela Shapiro, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Michaela Shapiro, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9.1
+9.a
+9.c
+10.2
+10.3
+16.10
+16.3
+16.6
@@ -0,0 +1,71 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #148 The Future of the Open Internet in an Interconnected World
+
+## Description
+
+The open Internet depends not only on rights and rules at the application layer, but also on the decentralised arrangements through which autonomous networks exchange traffic. Peering, transit, Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and caches shape reachability, resilience, competition, traffic localisation and the ability of networks of different sizes to participate. As governments consider how infrastructure investment and demand are evolving in response to AI, cloud services and video traffic, proposals involving network usage fees, mandatory bargaining, facilitated dispute resolution and new reporting obligations may have different effects across the interconnection ecosystem.
+This roundtable compares experiences from the European Union, Brazil, the Republic of Korea and African markets to examine what can be learned from the available evidence, how different policy approaches respond to concerns raised by stakeholders and what their possible technical, economic and governance implications may be. Rather than framing the issue as a binary dispute between telecommunications operators and digital service providers, the session will distinguish among three related questions: how infrastructure investment can be supported; how the economics and architecture of interconnection are evolving; and which governance principles can help sustain an open and globally interoperable Internet.
+The discussion will consider different approaches currently under debate, including mandatory payments, facilitated dispute resolution, and transparency or data-collection obligations. Speakers and participants will be invited to reflect on how these approaches could affect peering, transit, IXPs, CDN and cache deployment, smaller Internet service providers, infrastructure investment, competition and end-user choice. Through moderated discussion, audience questions and live polling, the session will seek to identify areas of agreement, points of uncertainty and questions requiring further evidence across different market and regional contexts.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A) What does the evidence from South Korea, the EU Digital Networks Act debate and Anatel’s proceedings reveal about current interconnection arrangements, stakeholder concerns and possible regulatory responses?
+B) How can governments address concerns about infrastructure investment without altering the governance principles that have historically sustained an open, globally interoperable Internet?
+C) How could network fees or other mandatory payment mechanisms adopted in major markets affect Internet development in other regions, including infrastructure deployment, competition, connectivity costs and user choice?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+A clearer comparative understanding of the experiences of the European Union, Brazil and the Republic of Korea, including what the available evidence suggests about Internet interconnection, infrastructure investment and the governance of the open Internet. A brief summary of the discussion and its main takeaways may be shared through the organisers’ and partner institutions’ communication channels.
+Identification of relevant considerations for assessing proposals that may affect Internet interconnection, including their possible implications for competition, infrastructure investment, Internet architecture, market participation and the preservation of an open and globally interoperable Internet. The session is intended to contribute perspectives and questions that may inform ongoing policy and regulatory discussions across jurisdictions.
+Stronger dialogue among policymakers, the technical community, civil society, academia and industry from different regions, creating opportunities for continued exchange on Internet interconnection and the governance of the open Internet within the IGF ecosystem and regional Internet governance processes.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** A roundtable format is best suited to this session because the questions under discussion do not have a single technical, economic or regulatory answer. Meaningful analysis requires direct exchange among participants representing different regions, sectors and institutional perspectives.
+
+The 90-minute duration allows the session to combine focused interventions with substantive discussion. The first part will establish the principal policy models and the available evidence regarding their impacts. The second will compare experiences from different jurisdictions and examine possible safeguards, alternatives and implementation risks. The remaining time will be dedicated to audience questions, scenario-based discussion and identification of areas of agreement and disagreement.
+
+The roundtable layout will reduce the separation between speakers and participants, encourage interaction throughout the session and allow the moderators to incorporate audience contributions into each thematic segment rather than limiting participation to a short question-and-answer period at the end.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session will provide structured opportunities for both onsite and online participants to contribute. A single moderator will guide the discussion, manage the speaking order and periodically invite questions and comments submitted through the online platform.
+Remote participants will be encouraged to submit questions through the chat throughout the session. These questions will be grouped and introduced during the dedicated audience discussion and Q&A, alongside interventions from onsite participants. This format will help ensure that online contributions are considered without requiring separate moderation tracks.
+A brief live poll may be used at the beginning of the session to identify participants’ initial perspectives on the main policy questions. The results will serve as an entry point for the discussion and may be revisited during the closing reflections. The interactive elements will remain flexible so that sufficient time is preserved for substantive audience questions and exchanges among participants.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Thobias Moura, dig.ia
+**Organizer 2:** Amrita Choudhury, 🔒CCAOI
+**Organizer 3:** Milena Cramar Londero, Internet Society - Brazil Chapter
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Amrita Choudhury, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 2:** Lara Levet, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 3:** Phokeer Amreesh, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 4:** Thomas Lohninger, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Thobias Moura, Private Sector, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Milena Cramar Londero, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Milena Cramar Londero, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9.1
+9.c
+16.7
+17.16
@@ -0,0 +1,99 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #193 Co-creating an Inclusive AI-Enabled Internet
+
+## Description
+
+Artificial intelligence is reshaping how people access, create, share and participate in knowledge online, while influencing how decisions about the Internet’s future are made. Yet these changes are not experienced equally. Differences in access, digital and AI literacy, language representation, institutional capacity and participation shape who benefits from emerging technologies, who contributes to their development, and who is excluded from governance decisions.
+
+This interactive workshop explores how communities can move from being users of an AI-enabled Internet to becoming meaningful participants in shaping its future.
+
+Through a five-stage collaborative process: Understand → Map the Problem → Co-design a Response → Stress-test Governance Implications → Commit to Action, participants will work together to examine real-world AI and Internet governance challenges.
+
+Unlike a traditional panel, facilitators will provide prompts, tools and guidance, while participants lead the discussion and development of solutions. Small groups will identify affected communities and stakeholders, explore governance challenges, develop practical responses, test potential risks and unintended consequences, and define concrete next steps.
+
+The workshop will address issues including access, literacy, language, representation, accountability, transparency, rights and meaningful participation while considering diverse community contexts and capacities.
+
+Bringing together Kenyan, African and international perspectives, the session will encourage participation across stakeholder groups, regions, genders, professional backgrounds. The methodology supports meaningful participation by participants. Facilitators will guide the process but participants will contribute their experiences and expertise to create community-centred responses. The workshop will produce practical action ideas showing how multistakeholder approaches can translate AI governance discussions into locally relevant possibilities.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+1. How can communities participate meaningfully in shaping the governance of an AI-enabled Internet and the systems that affect their access to knowledge and participation?
+2. How can AI governance responses better address differences in access, digital literacy, language, representation and community capacity?
+3. What governance safeguards should stakeholders consider when designing and implementing community-centred responses to AI-related challenges?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+Participants will develop a practical understanding of how AI-related Internet governance challenges affect communities and stakeholders, and how inclusive, participatory approaches can address these challenges.
+Through the five-stage collaborative process, groups will identify a challenge, map affected communities and stakeholders, develop a community-centred response, assess governance risks and safeguards, and define a concrete action step.
+The workshop will generate participant-led outputs using the framework: Challenge → Response → Governance Consideration → Action
+These outputs will capture key insights, proposed responses and governance considerations, informing the session report and supporting continued collaboration after IGF 2026. Participants will leave with a practical approach for moving from identifying challenges to designing and testing possible solutions.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Classroom
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The workshop is designed around collaborative problem-solving rather than expert presentations. A classroom format therefore provides the strongest opportunity for participants to contribute their experiences, perspectives and expertise in groups.
+Participants will work in diverse small groups through five connected stages:
+1. Understand
+2. Map the Problem
+3. Co-design a Response
+4. Stress-test the Governance Implications
+5. Commit to Action
+Facilitators will introduce each stage, provide guiding questions and support the groups, while participants generate the substantive analysis and proposed responses.
+The 90-minute format allows participants to move from understanding a concrete challenge to developing and testing a possible response, while leaving time for concise group pitches and joint reflection.
+The methodology builds on EduWiki Hub's participatory workshop experience, including its Wikimania 2026 workshop approach, where participants worked collaboratively on real-world challenges and developed and presented practical responses.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The workshop will be designed as a genuinely hybrid activity, with onsite and online participants contributing equally rather than remote participants serving as observers. Onsite facilitators and a dedicated online moderator will guide participants through the same five-stage process using shared digital workspaces and collaborative tools. Groups will document challenges, stakeholder maps, proposed responses, governance considerations, safeguards and action commitments. Online and onsite discussions will be connected through shared outputs, plenary exchanges and facilitator synthesis. Accessible materials, clear instructions and structured activities will support meaningful participation, ensuring all participants contribute to the final workshop outcomes.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** JAMES BUKOLA , EduWiki Hub
+**Organizer 2:** Barakat Adegboye, EduWiki Hub
+**Organizer 3:** Rhoda James, EduWiki Hub
+**Organizer 4:** Rita Maliqi, EduWiki Hub
+**Organizer 5:** Winnie  Kabintie, Wikimedia
+**Organizer 6:** Yusuf Ganyana  Juma, Kenya National Library Service
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** JAMES BUKOLA , Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Barakat Adegboye, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 3:** Winnie  Kabintie, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 4:** Yusuf Ganyana  Juma, Government, African Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Rita Maliqi, Civil Society, Intergovernmental Organization
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Rita Maliqi, Civil Society, Intergovernmental Organization
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Rhoda James, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+4.4
+4.5
+4.7
+4.a
+9.5
+9.c
+10.2
+10.3
+16.6
+16.7
+16.9
+17.16
+17.17
@@ -0,0 +1,88 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #202 Lessons from Multistakeholder Collaboration for Local Access
+
+## Description
+
+Civil society, the technical community and for- and not-for-profit community connectivity providers have been engaging telecoms regulators in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean for more than a decade, with the dual goal of building recognition of the value and feasibility of community-based connectivity solutions for bridging the internet access gap, and achieving enabling policy and regulatory environments for local access providers. Over time, the interaction between these actors has changed dramatically. At the beginning, community networks felt they were simply not heard or taken seriously. Today, many are not only working in partnership with the community connectivity sector, several regulators have introduced community-connectivity-friendly licensing options and creative approaches to spectrum allocation.
+
+The story of how regulators in Africa and LAC have shifted their stance towards community connectivity providers demonstrates the success and impact of three important internet governance processes:
+
+a) multistakeholder collaboration
+b) evidence-based policy and regulation
+c) building a bottom-up movement among advocates and activists for the unconnected
+
+This session will bring together regulators, civil society advocacy groups (APC), multistakeholder networks (KictaNet) members of the internet technical community (ISOC) and community connectivity providers themselves who have lived and worked through this transition — from contestation, when regulators were not interested, to collaboration, with regulators and others working together to find solutions for connecting the unconnected or the "barely connected."
+
+By creating an opportunity for them to share their stories, this workshop will capture the lessons learned and document them in a format that can be shared with others.
+
+The session will not just talk about multistakeholder digital governance as an abstract ideal — it will explore how it has evolved through ups and downs in practice, in the specific context of community connectivity, towards the ultimate goal of digital inclusion.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. What, from the perspective of the different stakeholder groups, have been the main barriers and/or enablers of effective and influential engagement?
+B. Is there evidence of capacity building gains and of regulatory decisions being influenced as a result of engagement between regulators and other stakeholders? If so what examples are there and are there differences between the two regions?
+C. What is needed to strengthen these relationships and engagement?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+**The main objective:** to gather and synthesize lessons from the experience of civil society, community networks and the technical community's advocacy for regulatory change, with a focus on improving the effectiveness of these efforts to secure official recognition and enabling policies for community-centred connectivity.
+Lessons learned capture here will be included in a case study that KictaNet will publish in early 2027 together with the Diplo Foundation's CADE project.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** A 90‑minute roundtable format is best suited to this session because the goal is genuine peer dialogue among regulators, community connectivity providers, civil society and the technical community, rather than one‑way presentations. The roundtable layout allows participants to face each other and interact as equals, mirroring the multistakeholder collaboration the workshop seeks to highlight. Short, focused interventions from each stakeholder group will be followed by a moderated conversation where speakers and attendees can respond directly to one another’s experiences from Africa and LAC.
+
+Ninety minutes are needed to provide concise scene‑setting, allow a substantial exchange among roundtable participants, and integrate questions and comments from onsite and online attendees. This depth of discussion is essential to surface nuanced lessons on the shift from contestation to collaboration in community‑centred connectivity and to identify practical recommendations that participants can adapt in their own contexts.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session will treat on-site and online participants as a single integrated group. All speakers will use the official IGF platform, and the onsite moderator will regularly invite questions and comments from both the room and the online space, with the online moderator bringing chat interventions into the roundtable. Short initial inputs from each stakeholder group will be followed by a moderated conversation and targeted questions that invite responses from participants, not just speakers. We will avoid long presentations and keep interventions concise to allow interaction. To deepen engagement, we will use simple collaborative tools like slido so that onsite and online participants can post key lessons and recommendations during the session. These joint contributions will be displayed live and form the basis of a short synthesis to be shared after the workshop.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Mwendwa Kivuva, KICTANet
+**Organizer 2:** Anriette Esterhuysen, African School on Internet Governance
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Yumna Panday, Technical Community, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Charley Lewis, Government, African Group
+**Speaker 3:** Mwangi Michuki, Technical Community, African Group
+**Speaker 4:** Bruna Zanolli, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 5:** RENATA SANTOYO, Government, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 6:** Dennis Sonoiya, Government, African Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Anriette Esterhuysen, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Mwendwa Kivuva, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Anriette Esterhuysen, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+1.4
+4.3
+4.4
+5.b
+8.2
+8.5
+9.c
+10.2
+16.7
+17.16
+17.17
@@ -0,0 +1,86 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #214 Maintaining AI’s Open Foundations: A Shared Responsibility
+
+## Description
+
+AI innovation depends on a vast, often invisible layer of open digital infrastructure: the open source software, protocols, standards and technical communities that enable interoperability, security, technological diversity and innovation across the digital economy. These shared foundations are often maintained by small teams, individual maintainers and organisations with limited long-term funding.
+
+As governments increase their focus on AI, digital sovereignty and strategic technology capability, sustaining the open digital infrastructure on which these ambitions depend is an increasingly important public policy issue. At the same time, AI is changing the work of maintainers through increased automated contributions and vulnerability reports, new security and governance pressures. Together, these developments strengthen the case for more deliberate and sustained investment in open digital infrastructure.
+
+This session will explore how public institutions, industry, funders and the Internet community can better recognise, fund and steward the open infrastructure on which AI and the wider Internet depend. It will draw on practical examples, including the UK Government’s Digital Standards Strategy, which positions digital technical standards as essential to innovation, resilience and international interoperability; Kenya's National Open Source Programme Office under the Open Source Ecosystem Enabler project; Nominet’s DNS Fund as a commitment to sustaining critical open-source Internet infrastructure, and public investment models such as the Sovereign Tech Agency, which frames open digital infrastructure as foundational to digital sovereignty, economic competitiveness and societal resilience.
+
+Discussion will consider how targeted investment can address persistent underinvestment in shared digital foundations on which governments, businesses and citizens rely. It will examine how open standards and open-source technologies support interoperability, choice and resilience without contributing to fragmentation.
+
+Participants will leave with a clearer view of the shared responsibilities governments, industry, funders and technical communities have towards open digital infrastructure and the practical models needed to sustain them in the age of AI.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. What are the respective responsibilities of governments, the private sector, civil society, the technical community and other funders in sustaining the open source software, Internet infrastructure and standards that AI and digital services depend on?
+
+B. How can countries pursue digital sovereignty and strategic technology capability while preserving a globally interoperable, open Internet?
+
+C. What practical funding, governance and skills models are needed to sustain the maintainers of critical open digital infrastructure as AI changes software development and maintenance?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The session will produce a clearer shared understanding of open digital infrastructure as a public good and a foundation for responsible AI, digital sovereignty and Internet resilience.
+
+Participants will identify practical models for investing in critical open source software, standards and technical communities, drawing on examples from government strategy, public funding, Internet governance and philanthropic or industry-backed initiatives.
+
+The discussion will generate a short set of principles or takeaways on shared responsibility for maintaining open digital infrastructure, including how to align AI investment with long-term infrastructure resilience, how to support maintainers, and how to avoid sovereignty approaches that could fragment the Internet.
+
+The session could feed into follow-up dialogue between government, Internet technical bodies, funders and open-source communities on sustainable funding models for critical digital infrastructure. This could be facilitated through the IGF policy network on open digital infrastructure.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** A 60-minute roundtable is best suited because the session is designed to move beyond diagnosis towards shared responsibility and practical action. The topic cuts across government policy, open-source maintenance, Internet governance, standards development and funding. A roundtable format will allow short provocations from different stakeholder perspectives, followed by structured discussion with onsite and online participants.
+
+The session would begin with brief interventions from government, an Internet infrastructure funder, an open-source maintainer or funding body, and an Internet governance organisation.
+
+The moderator would then guide discussion around the three policy questions, using audience input to test where responsibilities currently sit and what new models are needed. This format supports dialogue rather than presentation, encourages diverse views, and aligns with the IGF’s multistakeholder approach.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session is an interactive hybrid roundtable rather than a traditional panel. Speakers will be asked to make short 5 minute opening contributions, focused on one practical challenge or example. We plan to run a short survey with open source maintainers on the impact of AI ahead of the session to share results. The onsite moderator will guide discussion around the policy questions, while the online moderator will actively gather questions and reflections from remote participants.
+
+To support balanced participation, the session will use short audience prompts, live polling and a shared online note taking space. Online participants will be invited to respond to the same questions as onsite participants, with the moderator regularly bringing their contributions into the room. The session will close by asking participants to identify one practical action relevant actors could take to better sustain open digital infrastructure.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Amy O'Donnell, Nominet
+**Organizer 2:** Elaine Quinn, Nominet
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Elaine Quinn, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 2:** Nikita Bhangu, Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 3:** Paul Sharratt, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 4:** Ikua Evns, Government, African Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Elaine Quinn, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Amy O'Donnell, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Amy O'Donnell, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+4.4
+8.2
+9.5
+9.c
+16.6
+16.7
+17.16
+17.17
@@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #225 Can AI Change Who Shapes Open Internet Standards?
+
+## Description
+
+Policymakers, civil society and technical communities increasingly depend on one another as the overlap between public policy objectives and the design and operation of the Internet continues to grow. Multistakeholder interaction within open Internet standardisation has therefore become an increasingly important dimension of Internet governance. It is also challenging, and the emergence of AI raises new questions.
+
+At the root of these challenges is a fundamental gap: different communities use different terminology, evidence, timelines, incentives, mandates and sources of legitimacy. Assessing the technical implications of policy interventions, or the societal, political and economic implications of technical standards, is difficult. Participation is further constrained by lengthy deliberations on technically complex topics and the large volume of standards outputs, only some of which ultimately see deployment.
+
+AI brings both opportunities and risks. It may lower barriers to participation through summarisation, translation, drafting and analysis, making complex technical discussions more accessible. At the same time, AI-generated contributions may reshape open standards processes by introducing new challenges for transparency, accountability, consensus formation, information overload and the evaluation of technical arguments. As AI-assisted participation moves from isolated experiments to practical deployment, important questions arise about who shapes open Internet standards and how this may affect multistakeholder Internet governance.
+
+The workshop will be a moderated discussion with active onsite and online participation. Participants will first identify the barriers they encounter when engaging with standardisation processes, followed by reflections from the panellists. The discussion will then examine how AI is being used in standardisation, where it can improve collaboration, and where it may create new challenges. The session will conclude by identifying areas of agreement, disagreement and priorities for further work.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. How is AI changing the ability of policymakers, civil society and technical communities to shape discussions and outcomes in open Internet standardisation, and what does this mean for multistakeholder Internet governance?
+
+B. Which challenges may be addressed through technical or procedural responses and safeguards, which require changes in relationships, processes or institutions, and where is further evidence or discussion needed?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+This workshop will identify open questions, evidence gaps and priorities to guide the multistakeholder discussion and collaboration on AI-assisted participation in open Internet standardisation.
+
+The workshop will start by clarifying how barriers among policymakers, civil society and technical communities shape participation, how AI may reduce some barriers while reinforcing or creating others, and how AI may affect the distribution of influence within multistakeholder Internet governance. Panellists and participants will then identify which questions may be addressed through technical or procedural responses and safeguards, and which require further discussion about relationships, processes or institutions.
+
+A report will capture these findings and set out an agenda for continued work in this emerging area. The organisers will take this forward through multistakeholder exchanges and related research within the IRTF, particularly RASPRG, sharing the resulting work through relevant IETF, IAB, W3C, RIRs and Internet governance channels and using it to inform future IGF activity.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The workshop will use a 90-minute round-table format to support direct exchange among panellists and onsite and online participants. The session will be a moderated discussion, supported by polls and structured requests for input through online tools. The moderators will incorporate these contributions throughout the discussion.
+
+The round-table layout will facilitate exchange across civil society, policymakers, industry, academia and the technical community, bringing together different regional and institutional perspectives. The 90-minute duration will provide time to introduce the issue, gather participant input, hear short reflections and concrete examples from the panellists, examine areas of agreement and disagreement, and conclude by identifying open questions and priorities for further discussion.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** This will be a participant-led discussion. Onsite and online participants will join the discussion directly by requesting the floor, submitting questions through the chat and responding to prompts from the moderators. The online moderator will monitor remote interventions and chat contributions, while the onsite moderator will move between onsite and online speakers and connect participant input with short reflections and examples from the panellists.
+
+To further engage online and onsite participants, the session will complement the official IGF platform, polling and written-input tools will be accessible online and in the room through a link or QR code. The online moderator will consolidate these inputs and present the main themes at designated points in the session. This will surface recurring concerns, less visible perspectives and priorities that may not emerge through direct interventions alone. The closing synthesis will combine the live discussion with the consolidated input from onsite and online participants.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Dirk Kutscher, Internet Research Task Force
+**Organizer 2:** Castro Ignacio, Queen Mary University of London
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Anriette Esterhuysen, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Mark Nottingham, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 3:** Esteve Esteve Sanz, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+
+## Moderator
+
+Castro Ignacio, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Castro Ignacio, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Castro Ignacio, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9.c
+16.6
+16.7
+16.8
+17.16
+17.17
@@ -0,0 +1,71 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #256 Trust, Access, Control: The Global VPN Oversight Debate
+
+## Description
+
+VPNs have evolved from a corporate security tool into essential infrastructure for individuals, small businesses, and civil society worldwide, offering privacy, security, and cross-border access to information. As governments increasingly move to regulate, restrict, or block VPN services, citing national security, sovereignty, and cybercrime concerns, the debate has become a flashpoint for broader questions about encryption, network sovereignty, and open Internet access.
+
+This session, organized by the VPN Trust Initiative (VTI), an industry initiative of the i2Coalition, brings together a geographically and professionally diverse panel spanning government, civil society, technical standards bodies, and industry to examine these questions rigorously and fairly.
+
+Discussion will center on the tension between legitimate security and governance interests and the risks that over-broad regulation poses to privacy, security, and Internet openness. Panelists will explore how objectives like national security and cybercrime prevention can be balanced against privacy and free expression; the real-world effects of licensing regimes, registration requirements, app store restrictions, and lawful access mandates on users and the broader Internet ecosystem; the role of international standards bodies like the ITU and multistakeholder processes in shaping VPN governance; what separates proportionate regulation from measures that undermine VPN security and utility; whether restricting consumer VPN use is justifiable when institutional actors continue to rely on the same technology; and what evidence actually supports the risks commonly attributed to VPNs.
+
+Rather than advocating for a single outcome, this session is designed to surface the strongest arguments on all sides and identify where common ground, or principled disagreement, remains.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. Where is the line between proportionate VPN regulation that serves legitimate national security and cybercrime objectives, and measures that undermine the privacy, security, and free expression rights VPNs are designed to protect?
+B. What role should international standards bodies and multistakeholder processes play in shaping VPN governance frameworks, and how can they help ensure that oversight remains consistent with an open, interoperable global Internet?
+C. What role should international standards bodies and multistakeholder processes play in shaping VPN governance frameworks, and how can they ensure that mechanisms like licensing, registration, and lawful access mandates don't fragment the global Internet?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+This session aims to advance shared understanding across stakeholders who often talk past each other on VPN oversight, clarifying where security and governance interests genuinely conflict with privacy and openness concerns, and where they don't.
+
+VTI will publish a written summary of key points and areas of agreement or disagreement, informing its ongoing engagement with governments and standards bodies, including work referencing ITU processes, and feeding into its broader research and advocacy on VPN policy.
+
+Participants will hear perspectives they might not otherwise encounter together: government rationale for oversight measures, civil society and technical accounts of real-world effects, and industry's security case for VPNs. They'll leave with a sharper framework for evaluating oversight proposals and awareness of evidentiary gaps in current debates.
+
+## Format
+
+Theater
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** A theater layout and 60-minute format work because this session is about hearing different viewpoints, not producing a document or working through an exercise in small groups. Theater seating fits a large audience and still leaves room for questions after the panel talks. An hour is enough time to introduce the topic, let panelists respond to each other, and take questions from the room. Since the goal is to lay out the strongest arguments on each side, not reach an agreement, a panel discussion in front of a full audience works better than breaking into smaller groups.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** i2Coalition has run multiple hybrid IGF sessions and brings that experience here. The moderator will alternate between onsite and online speakers at set points, not just when there's a lull, and a dedicated onsite rapporteur will monitor chat and relay online questions in real time. Remote speakers will be part of the panel itself, with audio and video tested in advance to avoid delays. Discussion questions will be shared and displayed on screen so online participants can follow along and prepare contributions, and speaking time will be tracked to keep onsite and online voices roughly balanced.
+
+Alongside the official IGF hybrid platform, we'll use a shared live Q&A tool (like Slido or Mentimeter) so onsite and online attendees submit and upvote questions in one combined queue, rather than splitting in-room mics from chat. Slides and key questions will also be posted in chat for easy reference.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Snead David, 🔒Secure Hosting Alliance
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Venetia Argyropoulou, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 2:** Sebastian Schaub, Private Sector, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 3:** Robbert Hoving, Intergovernmental Organization, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 4:** Linda Bonyo, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Snead David, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Christian Dawson, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Christian Dawson, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+10. Reduced Inequalities
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #297 Resilience in Conflict: Protecting Internet Infrastructure
+
+## Description
+
+When conflict strikes, Internet infrastructure becomes both a lifeline and a target. In the MENA region, people have experienced Internet shutdowns, intentional destruction of communication networks, and weaponisation of digital infrastructure in the form of attacks against civilians. However, most resilience frameworks for the Internet were built on the assumption of peace, effective governance, institutional capacity, and the organisational ability to enforce technical measures. This session, organised by the ISOC MENA Internet Governance Working Group, will discuss the requirements of Internet resilience in conflict and crisis environments. Technical experts, civil society, policymakers, and community network operators will come together to understand how Internet infrastructure withstands conflicts, what governance frameworks are required to protect connectivity for civilian populations, and how AI systems incorporated into Internet infrastructure impact resilience. The MENA region is unique in the world because it offers the lived experience of what it takes to keep connectivity alive when state-run infrastructure is down. In this session, expertise on the MENA region is brought into the global IGF dialogue, and the lessons the international governance community could learn from it will be discussed. In addition, the session will contribute to the general IGF 2026 theme of AI and the future Internet. As AI systems are integrated into infrastructure, conflict environments pose distinct challenges, including AI-driven targeting and surveillance, large-scale disinformation campaigns, and the use of AI tools to detect and disrupt communication networks. The resilience of the Internet of intelligence will require governance frameworks that address these threats.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+- What technical and governance mechanisms are needed to protect civilian Internet infrastructure and connectivity during conflict?
+- How should Internet governance frameworks address the weaponisation of digital infrastructure, including AI-enabled surveillance and network disruption, in conflict contexts?
+- What can the international Internet governance community learn from MENA communities' lived experience of maintaining connectivity under crisis conditions?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The participants will gain better insight into the specific technical and governance weaknesses exposed by the conflict contexts surrounding the current Internet resilience framework. At the end of the session, a set of recommendations will be produced on how the processes of global Internet governance, including GDC implementation and the IGF's intersessional work, can better take into account conflict and crisis contexts. The recommendations will be used to draft the 2027 work plan for the Internet Society MENA Internet Governance Working Group and disseminated among the relevant IGF Policy Networks. A session report will be produced and published via Internet Society MENA. The session is intended to establish connections between technical resilience specialists and NGOs working in conflict-affected regions of the MENA.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The roundtable format has been carefully considered in this case, as this meeting requires dialogue between practitioners with practical experience and the framework designers. A classroom format would erect a barrier between the expertise in the room and those who have to interact with it. Ninety minutes will allow covering both technical and governance issues related to this topic. It is not an abstract topic, and it is highly contextual. As such, a presentation would not do justice to the weight and specificity of this subject.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session will begin with a quick introduction of the moderator, providing online participants with some orientation to the discussion. Online participants will be able to ask questions throughout the process via a common platform, which will be moderated by the online moderator. At least one speaker will participate online to model hybrid inclusion from the start. The onsite moderator will explicitly invite online contributions at each transition point in the session. The rapporteur will monitor the online chat for substantive contributions and flag them in real time.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Noha Abdel Baky, North Africa IGF
+**Organizer 2:** Raneem Zaitoun, Inskillz OU
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Amged B Shwehdy, Intergovernmental Organization, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Raghdan Orsud, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 3:** Jacques Bakaev, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Noha Abdel Baky, Civil Society, African Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Raneem Zaitoun, Private Sector, Eastern European Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Abdulrahman Abotaleb, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+10. Reduced Inequalities
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
@@ -0,0 +1,79 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #344 Governing Open-Source AI Agents for Public Good
+
+## Description
+
+As AI systems evolve from chatbots into agents capable of planning, calling tools and executing workflows, public institutions face a new governance challenge. Open-source AI agents may strengthen transparency, local adaptation, digital sovereignty and public-sector capacity building, but they also raise urgent questions around cybersecurity, accountability, procurement, liability and human oversight.
+
+This workshop examines how open-source agentic AI should be governed when deployed in public- interest contexts. It will begin with a concise state-of-the-art briefing explaining the current open- source agentic AI stack, including open models, agent frameworks, tool integration, permission layers, runtime environments, evaluation methods and monitoring. The briefing will highlight why agents differ from conventional AI applications: they do not only generate outputs, but can interact with systems and produce real-world consequences.
+
+The main part of the session will be interactive. Participants from government, academia, technical communities, civil society and industry will map key risks, including prompt injection, excessive agency, insecure tool access, data leakage, weak auditability and unclear responsibility for agent
+actions. The discussion will then move from risk identification to governance design: what should regulation require, what should public procurement demand, what should be treated as public digital infrastructure, and what can remain market-led or community-led?
+
+The session will explore whether an Open Agentic AI Commons could support responsible public- sector adoption through shared evaluation tools, procurement templates, reference architectures, security practices, training resources, and deployment playbooks. The goal is not to promote open- source AI uncritically, but to examine how openness, security, accountability, and public capacity can be aligned.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. Which parts of the open-source agentic AI stack should be considered public digital infrastructure, and which should remain market-led or community-led?
+B. How can regulation and public procurement foster open-source AI agents while ensuring cybersecurity, accountability, human oversight, fundamental rights and long-term maintainability?
+C. What shared resources should be included in an Open Agentic AI Commons to help public institutions deploy AI agents responsibly across different regional and institutional contexts?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how agentic AI differs from conventional AI systems, why open-source agents create both public-interest opportunities and security risks, and what practical governance mechanisms are needed before such systems are deployed in public institutions.
+
+Participants will also identify candidate components for an Open Agentic AI Commons, such as evaluation tools, red-teaming practices, prompt-injection test cases, reference architectures, procurement templates, public-sector deployment playbooks and training materials.
+
+The workshop will produce a co-developed draft checklist for responsible public-sector use of open-source AI agents, synthesising inputs from participants during the session. The checklist will reflect shared perspectives on procurement criteria, governance requirements, security safeguards,
+auditability principles, human oversight, liability considerations and capacity-building needs, and will serve as a preliminary, non-binding output to inform further community and policy development.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The session is designed as an interactive governance workshop rather than a conventional panel. A roundtable layout supports direct exchange between policymakers, technologists, public-sector practitioners, civil society, academia and industry. The topic requires both technical orientation and structured policy discussion: participants first need a shared understanding of open-source agentic AI before debating governance, procurement and security requirements.
+
+The 90-minute duration allows the session to move through four stages: a concise state-of-the-art briefing, short stakeholder responses, interactive risk mapping, and collaborative development of a public-sector deployment checklist. A shorter format would leave insufficient time for meaningful audience participation and would risk becoming a one-way presentation. The roundtable format also supports hybrid participation, as online participants can contribute through live polling, shared documents and moderated interventions alongside onsite attendees.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session will be designed for equal participation from onsite and online attendees. After a short state-of-the-art briefing, the moderator will use live polling to identify the audience’s main concerns about open-source AI agents, including security, procurement, accountability and public infrastructure. Onsite and online participants will contribute to the same interactive exercises through a shared polling tool and collaborative document.
+
+The moderator will alternate between onsite and online questions throughout the session, rather than leaving online input until the end. A designated online facilitator will monitor the chat, collect questions, surface remote interventions and ensure online participants can contribute to the risk- mapping and checklist-building exercises.
+
+The session will use tools such as Slido, Mentimeter or an equivalent polling platform, plus a shared document or digital whiteboard to co-develop the draft public-sector checklist for responsible deployment of open-source AI agents.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Hailan Wang, TUM
+**Organizer 2:** Till Zacher, TUM
+**Organizer 3:** Nico Caballero, SPARK Foundation
+**Organizer 4:** Ricardo Aveiro, Internet Society Paraguay
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Hailan Wang, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 2:** Nico Caballero, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 3:** Ricardo Aveiro, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Nico Caballero, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Till Zacher, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Ricardo Aveiro, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+4. Quality Education
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #360 Do look up! LEO Satellites and the Internet Future
+
+## Description
+
+Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations are rapidly becoming a new layer of global Internet infrastructure as the Open Knowledge Foundation has shown through its SkyCommons Observatory. As these networks expand, they will shape not only how people connect to the Internet but also where artificial intelligence services are deployed, how digital resilience is achieved during crises, and how digital sovereignty is exercised.
+Ahead of WRC27 and other relevant governance discussions, public interest stakeholders remain fragmented across telecommunications, space policy and Internet governance. Questions about interoperability, accountability, transparency and public-interest oversight have not kept pace with the rapid deployment of commercial constellations. This discussion will examine whether LEO connectivity should be understood as critical Internet infrastructure and what strategies can we craft for the upcoming processes to preserve openness, resilience, interoperability and equitable access while supporting innovation.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+If LEO constellations become a foundational layer of the Internet and AI ecosystem, what governance principles should shape them before market structures and technical architectures become irreversible?
+What technical, policy and governance mechanisms can promote interoperability, transparency and accountability in orbital connectivity?
+How can governments, the technical community and civil society ensure that expanding LEO connectivity strengthens digital inclusion and resilience without increasing concentration and dependency?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The workshop will strengthen dialogue between Internet governance and space governance communities around a rapidly emerging infrastructure challenge.
+Participants will contribute to a draft blueprint for a positive agenda for LEO satellites and also a playing field map for the relevant processes in the next 18 months.  The session will also help establish a cross-sector network interested in continuing work on orbital connectivity within future Internet governance discussions via the SkyCommons initiative.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** It is the best format to hear all voices. We want to have a collaborative yet deep conversation around the topic and co create as we speak.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session will begin with a short presentation introducing key findings from the SkyCommons Observatory, followed by moderated interventions from each stakeholder group. Audience participation will be prioritised through alternating questions from onsite and online participants. The online moderator will monitor the virtual queue to ensure equal participation. We will use live polling and leverage our asynchronous discuss.okfn.org  for this purpose.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Renata Avila, 🔒Open Knowledge Foundation
+**Organizer 2:** Burcu Kilic, Center for International Governance Innovation
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Coyle Nathan, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 2:** Burcu Kilic, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 3:** Marilia Maciel, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 4:** Renata Avila, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Burcu Kilic, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Lucas Pretti, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Burcu Kilic, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+10. Reduced Inequalities
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
@@ -0,0 +1,108 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #374 The UnTraining Dilemma: "Right to be Forgotten" in AI Models
+
+## Description
+
+Primary Focus
+The session centers on a core technological paradox: Global privacy laws require a "Right to be Forgotten," but GenAI models currently lack a built-in way to delete specific ingested data.
+Short Description & Key Topics Covered
+The event explains "Machine Unlearning"—the technical challenge of making AI models selectively "forget" personal data, copyrighted code, or sensitive information without having to retrain multi-billion-parameter models from scratch.  We will address three core topics during this session:
+1. Legal vs. Neural Reality: Explaining the "Baked Cake" analogy—why deleting data from a standard database is simple, but extracting data from neural network weights is mathematically complex.
+2. The Machine Unlearning Solution: Clarifying emerging technical methods for targeted data removal and demonstrating why full model retraining violates sustainable "Green AI" practices.
+3. Shared Governance & Standards: Linking policymakers and AI developers to establish proper compliance standards, verifiable "Proof of Unlearning," data provenance, and shared accountability.
+
+What Sets This Session Apart
+Unlike traditional AI governance panels that focus purely on the legal philosophy of privacy, this session confronts the urgent, applied technical reality of enforcement. While previous IGF discussions have debated whether data should be deleted, we address the mathematical roadblock of actually doing it.  Furthermore, we introduce a critical dimension to the privacy debate: The Environmental Cost of Compliance. We will highlight how forcing full model retraining to meet legal deletion requests actively violates green energy targets, establishing Machine Unlearning not just as a privacy workaround, but as a mandatory foundation for Sustainable AI.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+Harmonization & Legal Enforcement: How can global data protection regimes reconcile statutory mandates for individual erasure (e.g., the "Right to be Forgotten") with Generative AI architectures, where data deletion cannot mirror traditional database record removal?
+
+Standards & Technical Verification: What standards, technical criteria, and governance frameworks are needed to establish verifiable "Proof of Unlearning," ensuring regulatory compliance without placing unreasonable audit burdens on AI developers?
+
+Sustainability & Policy Alignment: How can privacy enforcement balance strict legal compliance with global sustainability commitments, considering the substantial carbon footprint and energy demands associated with full model retraining?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+Expected Outcomes & Outputs
+1. Tangible Outputs & Deliverables
+
+**Interdisciplinary Policy Brief:** An open-access synthesis mapping machine unlearning benchmarks to data protection requirements, published via NIXI.
+
+**Unlearning Verification Framework:** A draft blueprint defining metrics for "Verifiable Proof of Erasure" to inform standards bodies (IEEE, ISO/IEC, ITU-T).
+
+**Sustainable AI Policy Note:** Recommendations submitted to IGF Dynamic Coalitions on balancing algorithmic enforcement with environmental sustainability.
+
+2. Participant Takeaways
+
+Algorithmic & Regulatory Literacy: Understanding the "Baked Cake" paradigm—contrasting neural network parameter weights with standard database deletion.
+
+**Multi-Stakeholder Alignment:** Regulators explore computational friction and carbon intensity, while ML practitioners internalize privacy rights frameworks.
+
+**Operational Compliance Matrix:** A practical heuristic tool for decision-makers to triage deletion requests, evaluating unlearning, full model retraining, and alternative compliance paths.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** 1. Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue: A roundtable layout dismantles the traditional speaker-versus-audience divide, establishing an inclusive, collaborative space. By bridging complex machine learning concepts with high-level legal policy, this setup fosters active peer-to-peer dialogue, transforming attendees from passive listeners into true co-contributors during interactive segments.
+
+2. Depth for a Complex Paradox: Unpacking the intersection of generative AI, the "Right to be Forgotten," and green energy constraints demands dedicated time. A 90-minute duration provides the necessary runway to introduce the technical "Baked Cake" paradigm accessibly, while reserving generous space for deep thematic analysis across our diverse panel.
+
+3. Seamless Hybrid Q&A Execution: The open room layout allows the Onsite Moderator to effortlessly navigate microphoned audience contributions. This setup powers our 35-minute alternating Q&A framework, ensuring natural engagement for physical attendees while keeping the dedicated Online Moderator fully synchronized with virtual chat inputs and Slido polling.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** Interaction & Dynamic Moderation
+We will deploy an Onsite Moderator and a dedicated Online Moderator to maintain a strict 1:1 alternating Q&A queue. The Online Moderator will read virtual questions into the microphone to ensure full transcript integration. Remote and in-person speakers will receive equal floor time.
+
+Inclusive Design & Parity
+To prevent digital fatigue, presentation decks will use high-contrast, low-bandwidth graphics illustrating core technical concepts. Speakers will address the camera, pacing interventions to accommodate live interpretation. A one-page concept PDF will be distributed via chat and QR code at minute zero.
+
+Tools & Platforms
+We will use Slido as a unified platform for both audiences. A 10-second opening poll will gauge the room's expertise to calibrate technical depth, while unified Q&A upvoting will highlight the most pressing audience queries.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Yash Vashishth, National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI)
+**Organizer 2:** Mudassir Inam, National Internet Exchange of India
+**Organizer 3:** Nikhil Raj, National Internet Exchange of India
+**Organizer 4:** Abhishek Anand, NIXI
+**Organizer 5:** Sandeep Singh,  National Internet Exchange of India
+**Organizer 6:** Sameer Gahlot, National Internet Exchange of India
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Luca Belli, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 2:** Nicolo Zingales, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 3:** Rojszczak Marcin, Technical Community, Eastern European Group
+**Speaker 4:** Rolf H. Weber, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Yash Vashishth, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Sandeep Singh, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Abhishek Anand, Intergovernmental Organization, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9.4
+9.5
+9.b
+16.10
+17.14
+17.16
+17.17
@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #383 Post-Quantum Migration: Governing a Global Transition
+
+## Description
+
+Encryption underpins public and private services delivered over the Internet, including government services, financial transactions, healthcare systems, digital identities, software distribution and critical infrastructure. Advances in quantum computing threaten many of the public-key cryptographic algorithms on which these services rely, creating an urgent need to migrate to post-quantum cryptography.
+Policymakers and regulators will play an essential role in accelerating this transition. Requirements introduced without sufficient understanding of technical dependencies could lead to fragmented approaches, incompatible implementations or unnecessary costs. These challenges may be particularly significant for developing countries, which face limited technical capacity and longer infrastructure lifecycles, risking widening existing digital divides.
+Governments face legitimate public policy objectives, including national security, resilience, protection of critical infrastructure and digital sovereignty. The challenge is to pursue these objectives while maintaining the interoperability on which the global Internet depends. The workshop will examine how these objectives can be balanced through effective coordination between policymakers and the technical community.
+This session will bring together policymakers, regulators, the technical community, private sector and civil society to examine the technical and governance considerations involved in PQC migration. Drawing on experience from the IETF and the technical community, it will explore how public policy can support global standards, encourage preparation, provide regulatory certainty and address sectors that may struggle to migrate.
+The discussion will consider questions such as when regulatory intervention is useful, how migration should reflect technical readiness and risk, how procurement and reporting requirements can encourage progress, and how governments and regulators can participate effectively in the standards processes.
+Short expert presentations will provide context, but the workshop will focus primarily on dialogue among policymakers, regulators, technical experts, industry and civil society. Its goal will be to develop practical recommendations for policy and regulatory approaches that accelerate PQC migration while preserving global interoperability and security.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. How should technical standards bodies, industry, governments and regulators coordinate responsibilities and timelines for a globally interoperable transition to post-quantum cryptography?
+B. Which policy and regulatory measures are most effective in accelerating migration while avoiding premature mandates, fragmented requirements or barriers to implementation?
+C. What shared practices, information and accountability mechanisms are needed to identify cryptographic dependencies, prioritize migration risks, and support organizations with limited resources or legacy infrastructure, particularly in developing countries?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The workshop will produce a concise set of multistakeholder observations and recommendations identifying areas of consensus, differing perspectives, and practical actions for advancing a timely, secure and interoperable global PQC migration. These will identify practical actions for standards bodies, technology providers, network and service operators, governments and regulators, including approaches to migration planning, cryptographic inventories, sequencing, interoperability testing, procurement and regulatory coordination.
+Participants will gain a clearer understanding of the technical and governance dependencies that make PQC migration different from an ordinary technology upgrade; the respective roles and constraints of different stakeholder groups; and the risks of both delayed action and poorly coordinated mandates. The session report will capture areas of agreement, unresolved questions and suggested follow-up work. The organizers will share the recommendations through relevant IETF, IAB and Internet governance channels and use them to inform future technical-policy dialogue.
+
+## Format
+
+Classroom
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** A 90-minute classroom format is best suited to the session. The topic is likely to attract a broad audience, but the workshop should remain discussion-led rather than becoming a sequence of presentations. Classroom seating provides greater capacity than a roundtable while enabling more direct interaction than a theatre layout.
+The session will use no more than four speakers plus one moderator. Opening presentations will be limited to five minutes each, leaving approximately 50 minutes for participant discussion and 10 minutes to synthesize recommendations. The moderator will organize contributions around the three policy questions and short migration scenarios, rather than relying on an open-ended question-and-answer period. This provides enough time to compare technical, operational and regulatory perspectives, explore areas of agreement and disagreement, and develop concrete outcomes with meaningful input from onsite and online participants.
+If 90-minute slot is not available, agenda can be re-arranged to fit into 60 minutes.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session will be designed as a discussion involving onsite and online participants equally. The moderator will alternate between the room and the online, while an online moderator monitors chat and questions. Remote speakers will participate throughout, rather than in a separate segment.
+Opening interventions and discussion prompts will be brief. Participants will respond to live polls on migration readiness, priorities and responsibility, with results used to guide the discussion. A shared online document will allow participants to submit recommendations, identify barriers and react to proposals. Participants will also be invited to contribute examples from their own jurisdictions and organizations, allowing the discussion to compare different regulatory approaches, deployment experiences and operational challenges.
+Submitted questions will be integrated into each discussion segment. The final ten minutes will test the emerging recommendations through a rapid prioritization exercise, ensuring that the conclusions reflect both onsite and online participation.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Rosomakho Yaroslav, Zscaler
+**Organizer 2:** Dhruv Dhody, IAB
+**Organizer 3:** Roman Danyliw, IETF
+**Organizer 4:** Dirk Kutscher, Internet Research Task Force
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Dierdre Connoly, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 2:** Michael Parsons, Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 3:** Ramy Fathy, Government, African Group
+**Speaker 4:** Rosomakho Yaroslav, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 5:** Elkins Nalini, Private Sector, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Roman Danyliw, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Dhruv Dhody, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Dirk Kutscher, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9.1
+16.7
+17.14
+17.16
+17.17
@@ -0,0 +1,85 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #414 Internet Resilience for the Age of AI
+
+## Description
+
+For more than four decades, the Internet has demonstrated remarkable resilience through open standards, interoperability, distributed architectures and voluntary cooperation among technical, operational and policy communities. As societies become increasingly dependent on digital services, the Marconi Society Internet Resilience Institute has shown that Internet resilience is the foundation for creating justifiable trust in the digital society. Its Phase 1 work—the Life of a Packet Mapping Framework and the Business Resilience Guide—demonstrates that resilient digital services depend on understanding hidden technical, operational and organizational interdependencies and translating that understanding into practical implementation.
+
+The Internet is now entering a new phase of evolution. Originally designed to connect people, it is increasingly becoming an environment in which autonomous AI agents discover services, exchange information and make operational decisions on behalf of people and organisations. This fundamentally changes the requirements for Internet resilience and governance. Building on the outcomes of the WSIS Forum 2026 session Operationalizing Digital Resilience, this workshop explores how resilience principles can enable justifiable trust for both humans and AI through dependency mapping, operational best practices, trusted operational Internet intelligence and continuous verification.
+
+Through interactive 2035 scenarios, participants will examine how hidden interdependencies influence AI-assisted decisions in critical services and infrastructure. Discussions will address what information Internet operators should expose, how AI can distinguish resilient from fragile infrastructure, where accountability lies when AI acts on inaccurate operational data, and how organizations can safely delegate decisions to autonomous systems.
+
+Holding this discussion at IGF 2026 in Nairobi is particularly important. Africa's rapidly growing digital economy, mobile-first infrastructure and expanding AI ecosystem offer unique perspectives on resilience. Ensuring that diverse regional experiences and real-world failure scenarios inform future resilience frameworks is essential for creating globally relevant Internet governance and building justifiable trust in an Internet increasingly shared by humans and autonomous AI agents.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+1.	How should Internet governance evolve as autonomous AI agents become operational participants on the open Internet rather than simply users of Internet services?
+
+2.	What technical, operational and policy mechanisms are needed to enable humans and autonomous AI agents to establish justifiable trust before acting on Internet-derived information?
+
+3.	What operational Internet information should be made available—in a secure, privacy-preserving and interoperable manner—to enable autonomous systems to assess the trustworthiness of sources, infrastructure and dependencies without compromising security or privacy?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The workshop will produce:
+•	Candidate principles for Justifiable Trust applicable to both humans and autonomous AI agents.
+•	Recommendations on operational Internet information that AI systems require for trustworthy decision-making.
+•	Community input to Phase 2 of the Marconi Society Internet Resilience Institute's Life of a Packet and Business Resilience Guide initiatives.
+•	Recommendations for future standards, operational practices and Internet governance discussions.
+•	A public workshop report.
+
+Participants will gain practical insight into how Internet resilience principles apply to AI agents operating on the open Internet. Building on the WSIS outcomes, the workshop will identify how dependency mapping, organizational resilience, operational transparency and trusted machine-consumable Internet intelligence can strengthen future Internet governance. Community feedback will directly inform the Internet Resilience Institute's Phase 2 activities and contribute to ongoing discussions on AI governance, Internet architecture and implementation of the Global Digital Compact.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** The roundtable format moves participants beyond discussion into collaborative problem-solving. Following a short introduction to the Marconi Society Internet Resilience Institute's work and the outcomes of the WSIS Forum 2026 session Operationalizing Digital Resilience, participants will work through two or three realistic 2035 resilience scenarios involving autonomous AI agents operating during cloud outages, DNS anomalies, routing incidents or supply-chain disruptions. Rather than discussing resilience in the abstract, participants will explore how hidden interdependencies affect decision-making, what operational information AI agents and human operators need to establish justifiable trust, and which governance, technical and organizational measures are required to strengthen resilience. Candidate scenarios include a hospital whose apparent infrastructure redundancy masks shared dependencies, and a supply chain where hidden common services undermine resilience. A third scenario, reflecting African digital realities, will be developed with regional stakeholders to ensure local relevance while contributing to globally applicable resilience principles.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The workshop will use a dual-moderation model, combining an experienced on-site moderator with a dedicated online moderator to ensure balanced participation. On-site participants will use room microphones, while remote participants will engage through the virtual platform's hand-raising and chat functions, actively managed by the online moderator.
+
+To maximize interaction, both audiences will participate simultaneously in live digital polling during the 2035 resilience scenarios. Participants will assume the role of an AI agent faced with incomplete operational information and decide whether to proceed, pause, seek additional evidence or escalate to human oversight in situations such as DNS anomalies, routing incidents or cloud disruptions. The aggregated responses will be displayed in real time and used to drive the moderated discussion on resilience, hidden interdependencies and justifiable trust, ensuring equal participation regardless of location while generating practical insights for future Internet governance and resilient AI deployment.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Maarten Botterman, 🔒GNKS Consult BV
+**Organizer 2:** Marina Pappas Marina Pappas, Marconi Society
+**Organizer 3:** Flora Tromelin, Marconi Society
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Maarten Botterman, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 2:** Raneem Zaitoun, Private Sector, Eastern European Group
+**Speaker 3:** Philippe Fouquart, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 4:** Ram Mohan, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 5:** Vinton CERF, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Maarten Botterman, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Marina Pappas Marina Pappas, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Flora Tromelin, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+4. Quality Education
+8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #68 A Multilingual Internet by Advancing Universal Acceptance
+
+## Description
+
+**Full title:** Enabling A Multilingual Internet by Advancing Universal Acceptance, and How AI can Contribute
+Digital technologies benefit society by enabling users to participate in the economy, to learn, connect, and communicate online. For global communities to participate online, the Internet must be accessible in all local languages and scripts. Yet today, millions of people remain unable to use web addresses or email addresses in their own languages or scripts. These languages and scripts are well-supported by technical standards and are technically feasible to implement, but many applications and websites have not been updated to fully support them, preventing these capabilities from reaching users. This is due to missing technical support for Universal Acceptance (UA), a state in which all valid domain names and email addresses are accepted, validated, stored, processed, and displayed correctly and consistently by Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems.
+
+Despite significant progress, many technology providers have not upgraded their systems, due to lack of awareness, limitations in capacity, or lack of prioritization. All stakeholders need to contribute to promote UA adoption. ICANN collaborates with UNESCO, the ITU and the broader Internet community to raise awareness for the need of UA, and working with technical organizations and universities around the world to build capacity. Engaging Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools can further contribute towards addressing technical barriers and capacity challenges. By using domain names and email addresses to publish local content and communicate online, civil society and end-users can create the necessary awareness and demand.
+
+The session will bring experts from these different stakeholders to discuss how the Internet can be made more multilingual by addressing UA challenges, what has already been achieved and what needs to be done. The session will highlight how AI tools can facilitate UA adoption by updating applications and systems to become UA-ready.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+1. What strategies, policies and incentives should stakeholders use to encourage technology providers and software developers to implement Universal Acceptance in their systems, applications (including email), devices and software?
+
+2. How can AI tools be leveraged effectively to facilitate UA adoption? What are key considerations to ensuring AI tools enable Universal Acceptance for a wide range of languages and scripts online?
+
+3. How can civil society organizations, local communities, International Organizations and other stakeholders stimulate demand for Universal Acceptance of domain names and email addresses?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+- Stakeholders, including civil society, will understand the technical barriers of Universal Acceptance (UA) and why it is a requirement for enabling a multilingual Internet for promoting digital inclusion.
+- Stakeholders understand their role in UA adoption and how to contribute to the work and discussions.
+- Stakeholders understand how to innovate using AI tools to make software applications and systems UA-ready.
+- Inform how the IGF community and intersessional processes can contribute to UA adoption and solutions.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** The session will include a panel from different stakeholders, including tech organizations, public sector, academia and civil society, which will help introduce the different aspects of the challenges and opportunities in 30 minutes. For the second half, the session will engage the audience in a discussion to share their view point on additional mechanisms which can be put in action to address the challenge of addressing Universal Acceptance for a more multilingual Internet. The roundtable format will facilitate the audience to engage in the session and share their input as participants in the discussion and not just listeners.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** ICANN has a proven track record of organizing large-scale hybrid meetings that foster inclusive, multilingual, and globally diverse participation. The session will be supported by both an onsite moderator and a dedicated online moderator to ensure equitable participation from in-person and virtual attendees. The online moderator will monitor Zoom chat, Q&A, and raised hands, integrating questions and comments from remote participants throughout the discussion rather than only at the end. The session is designed to encourage real-time interaction, with balanced opportunities for engagement from both audiences and speakers responding to questions from onsite and online participants throughout. Zoom will support remote participation and interaction, while ICANN and UNESCO communications teams will extend the conversation through X and LinkedIn, encouraging broader engagement before, during, and after the session.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Adam Peake, ICANN
+**Organizer 2:** Rebecca McGilley, 🔒ICANN
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Sathees Babu Chellikattuveli Sivanandan, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 2:** Sarmad Hussain, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 3:** Theresa Swinehart, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 4:** Xianhong Hu, Intergovernmental Organization, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Moderator
+
+Theresa Swinehart, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Adam Peake, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Zacharias Dimitris, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9.1
+9.c
+16.10
+17.6
@@ -0,0 +1,70 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #86 From Assessment to Impact: Aligning Cyber Capacity Building
+
+## Description
+
+Cyber capacity-building has achieved unprecedented momentum. Over the past decade, governments, development partners, and international organisations have invested substantial resources into national programmes, regional initiatives, and institutional development. The challenge now is not capacity investment, but capability realisation.
+The rapid scaling of cyber capacity-building has created a visible coordination gap. Assessment missions occur in parallel rather than sequenced. Training cycles do not align with institutional readiness. The ecosystem expands, but visibility across it shrinks.
+
+States consistently signal the same preference: sustained, sequenced programmes anchored to national strategy—not one-off workshops.Sustainability requires architecture.Many interventions remain disconnected from the larger institutional development pathway. A cybersecurity training initiative concludes. Personnel turn over. New staff require re-training. The cycle repeats. Without sequencing investments do not compound into lasting state capacity.
+The roundtable will open with CCB insights based on evidence across two regions where UNIDIR holds direct assessment and programming data. The roundtable will subsequently invite governments, donors, regional organisations and implementing partners to explore how existing investments can better support nationally owned, sustainable and evidence-based capacity-building. Discussion will focus on practical proposals for improving coordination, identifying underserved areas, strengthening the translation of needs assessments into programme design, and ensuring that funding contributes to long-term institutional development.
+Governing the internet in the age of intelligence demands that cyber capacity keep pace with capability asymmetries. The gap widens when investments are siloed, when needs assessments gather dust, when donors and states operate on incomplete information. Closing that gap requires shared responsibility—and shared responsibility is operational, not rhetorical.
+Substantive sessions in existing global mechanisms and regional cyber policy bodies—should carry this work forward. Geneva Cyber Week becomes an annual touchpoint where stakeholders may discuss on coordination progress, states update capacity priorities, and implementing partners share lessons learned. Each cycle feeds evidence back into programming decisions.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+•	What mechanisms would enable donors to see the full capacity-building landscape in real time?
+•	How should states signal which capacity investments will generate institutional returns versus which remain tactical needs?
+•	Which cyber capacity-building functions consistently remain underfunded despite documented demand?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+**Key Takeaways Paper:** Closing the Cyber Capacity-Building Coordination Gap : UNIDIR will synthesise the roundtable discussion and regional assessment data into a focused key takeaways paper for circulation to donors, governments, and regional organisations.
+**Geneva Cyber Week Session:** Translating Evidence into Action :The paper is presented and discussed during Geneva Cyber Week, creating visibility among policymakers and providing a platform for donors and states to test implementation approaches and signal commitment to improved coordination.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 90
+**Format description:** A roundtable is ideal because it sits key donors, select state representatives, regional bodies, 2–3 implementing partners, UNIDIR facilitators. It is small enough that each person contributes but large enough to represent the ecosystem.
+Around a table, participants face each other. No stage. No hierarchy of seating. Equal sight lines force equal engagement. Questions and counter-arguments surface immediately. Misunderstandings get clarified in real time. Parallel solutions emerge through direct conversation, not solo presentations.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** To ensure seamless interaction between onsite and online participants, after the initial kick-off interventions, we will prioritize questions and interventions from the online audience before turning to onsite participants, ensuring inclusivity and equal engagement across both groups. The organizers will also leverage complementary online tools and platforms such as Slido and online polling tools to collect input and encourage engagement during the session. By incorporating these interactive elements and encouraging active participation from both online and onsite attendees, we aim to create a dynamic and inclusive discussion where diverse perspectives are valued, heard, and recorded to inform the non-paper, which will be published in 2027.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Pavel Mraz, United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research
+**Organizer 2:** Moliehi Makumane, UNITED NATIONS INSTITUTE FOR DISARMAMENT RESEARCH
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Natasha Jackson, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 2:** Pavel Mraz, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+**Speaker 3:** Thelma QUAYE, Intergovernmental Organization, African Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Moliehi Makumane, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+A Kastelic, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Pavel Mraz, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
@@ -0,0 +1,88 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #129 Who Protects the First Click? Children's Digital Resilience
+
+## Description
+
+Children’s first online experiences are happening earlier than ever, often in digital environments that were not designed with their rights, development and safety in mind. The challenge is no longer how to teach children to “be careful online”, but how to govern the digital environments in which they learn, play, communicate, consume content and build their identities.
+This session will examine how responsibility for children’s digital resilience should be shared between families, schools, platforms, regulators, helplines, hotlines and young people themselves. It will move beyond awareness-raising and focus on practical governance questions: child safety by design, age-appropriate services, AI-driven recommender systems, persuasive design, reporting pathways, digital literacy, harmful content, online sexual exploitation risks and public-private cooperation.
+Rather than viewing children only as vulnerable users, this session adopts a child-rights approach that recognizes their rights to protection, participation, privacy, information, agency, and age-appropriate support. It argues that digital resilience depends on safer design, effective education, accessible support, and accountable institutions - not on placing responsibility on children alone.
+The panel will bring together perspectives from the technical community, education, public health, child protection, regulation, academia, civil society, the Global South and youth representative. It will ask where responsibility should sit when children encounter harmful content, manipulative design, algorithmic amplification, disinformation, grooming risks or ineffective reporting mechanisms.
+The session will produce a short “First Click to Digital Resilience Action Checklist” for policymakers, platforms, educators, child protection actors and civil society. The checklist will identify practical steps that can support children from their earliest digital interactions to safe, meaningful and resilient participation online. The session will also provide an opportunity to exchange practical knowledge and experiences on responding to harmful content, particularly child sexual abuse material, drawing on the operational expertise of hotlines within the INHOPE association.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+A. How should responsibility for children’s first online experiences be shared between parents, schools, platforms, regulators, helplines, hotlines and children themselves?
+B. How can digital resilience be supported and measured globally, especially for younger children, vulnerable groups and countries with fewer educational, regulatory or technical resources?
+C. How can youth participation become a real part of digital governance, rather than a symbolic addition to child online safety debates?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+1. A short “First Click to Digital Resilience Action Checklist” for policymakers, platforms, educators, hotlines, helplines and civil society.
+2. Practical recommendations on moving from awareness-raising to shared responsibility and safer digital design for different stakeholders.
+3. A summary of youth perspective on what makes children and young people feel safe, respected and empowered online.
+4. An exchange of practical knowledge and good practices on responding to harmful content, particularly child sexual abuse material (CSAM), drawing on the experience and operational expertise of hotlines within the INHOPE association.
+5. A basis for further cooperation between stakeholders, including possible follow-up through IGF youth, regional or intersessional processes.
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** The 60-minute interactive format is designed to maximize participation, collaboration, and practical outcomes. Instead of lengthy presentations, the session begins with a brief framing and a “Youth First” intervention, ensuring that young people's perspectives is a very important part of the discussion. Moderated thematic exchanges then explore governance challenges from multiple stakeholder perspectives. The room layout will encourage dialogue among speakers and participants, while the hybrid format ensures equal opportunities for onsite and online engagement. An online moderator will actively integrate remote questions throughout each discussion segment, rather than limiting online participation to the final Q&A. Live polling and collaborative online tools will enable participants to identify governance gaps and co-develop a “First Click to Digital Resilience Checklist.” The session concludes with a rapporteur summary synthesizing contributions from both onsite and online participants, resulting in practical, community-driven recommendations for child online safety and Internet governance.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** 1) Interaction between onsite and online speakers and attendees
+- The online moderator will collect questions from the online participants and introduce them during each discussion round.
+- The onsite moderator will alternate between onsite and online questions.
+2) Best possible experience for online and onsite participants
+- The session will use short interventions rather than long speeches.
+- At least one audience interaction point will be planned before the middle of the session.
+- Equal time will be reserved for onsite and online questions.
+- Online comments will be considered in the final checklist-building segment.
+3) Complementary online tools/platforms
+- Live polling tool such as Slido, Mentimeter or the IGF-provided equivalent.
+- Shared collaborative document or board for collecting proposed actions.
+- Chat-based question collection through the official IGF hybrid platform.
+The final checklist will reflect contributions from both onsite and online participants.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Maciej Gron, 🔒
+**Organizer 2:** Julia Piechna, NASK - National Research Institute
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** Awo Aidam Amenyah, Civil Society, African Group
+**Speaker 2:** Jutta Croll, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
+**Speaker 3:** Jannat Roshatey, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 4:** Ankita Rathi, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Maciej Gron, Technical Community, Eastern European Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Julia Piechna, Technical Community, Eastern European Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Maciej Gron, Technical Community, Eastern European Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+4. Quality Education
+4.4
+4.7
+10. Reduced Inequalities
+10.2
+10.3
+16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
+16.10
+16.2
+17. Partnerships for the Goals
+17.16
+17.17
@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
+# IGF 2026 WS #141 Raised with AI: Empowered or Dependent?
+
+## Description
+
+AI companions and generative AI are no longer just tools for answering questions. For children and teenagers, they can become tutors, friends, role-play partners, and sources of emotional support and advice. As young people increasingly turn to them for companionship, they create a new child online safety and Internet governance challenge: how to protect children's agency, development, privacy, relationships, and digital resilience when AI systems are designed to simulate care, intimacy, trust, and constant availability.
+The session will be framed around three possible roles of AI companions in childhood.
+First, AI may empower children by supporting learning, creativity, communication, accessibility, and inclusion, helping them explore ideas, overcome barriers, and access personalized support. Second, AI may create dependence if children increasingly rely on AI companions for emotional reassurance, decision-making, learning, or social interaction, potentially weakening agency, resilience, and human relationships. Third, AI may exploit children through the commercialization of intimacy by collecting sensitive data, maximizing engagement, encouraging self-disclosure, manipulating attention, or providing harmful, inaccurate, or biased advice.
+The session will examine how governance can preserve AI's benefits while protecting children from dependency, manipulation, and unsafe design, and what limits should apply to systems designed to simulate friendship, intimacy, and trust.
+The discussion will move beyond AI in education to examine the governance of AI companions used by children, focusing on safety-by-design, age-appropriate design, data protection, transparency, platform accountability, crisis response, and meaningful youth participation.
+The session will bring together perspectives from the technical community and from experts in child protection, education, AI governance, public health, civil society, regulatory bodies, and industry. The expected outcome will be a practical set of “red lines and design principles” for child-centred AI companions.
+
+## Policy Question(s)
+
+1. When does an AI companion empower a child, and when does it create emotional, social or cognitive dependence?
+2. What safeguards should apply to AI systems designed to simulate friendship, intimacy, care, or emotional support for children?
+3. How should responsibility be shared between parents, schools, platforms, AI providers, regulators, child protection actors and young users themselves?
+4. Should AI companions for children be treated as ordinary digital services, educational tools, high-risk systems, or a separate category requiring child-specific rules?
+5. What should be considered unacceptable exploitation of children’s attention, emotions, data or vulnerabilities in AI companion services?
+
+## Expected Outcomes
+
+The session will aim to produce:
+- A short “Raised with AI: Red Lines and Design Principles” checklist for child-centred AI companions.
+- Practical recommendations for platforms, AI providers, policymakers, educators, parents, hotlines, helplines and youth communities.
+- A clearer distinction between AI as a lever for development, AI as a cognitive or emotional prosthesis, and AI as a potentially exploitative system.
+- A basis for follow-up cooperation through IGF youth, regional, intersessional or child online safety processes.
+
+## Reference Document
+
+Reference Document
+
+## Format
+
+Roundtable
+**Duration (minutes):** 60
+**Format description:** The 60-minute interactive roundtable is designed to maximize meaningful participation rather than passive listening. Brief framing inputs establish a shared understanding, followed by a moderated discussion structured around the opportunities, risks and governance challenges of AI companions. The thematic format allows participants to explore different perspectives while maintaining a focused and dynamic exchange. Live polling, hybrid Q&A and equal opportunities for onsite and online interventions ensure continuous engagement, rather than limiting participation to the final minutes. Collaborative identification of red lines and design principles transforms the discussion into concrete, actionable outcomes, with remote participants contributing on equal terms through polling and shared collaborative tools. The room layout will facilitate dialogue among speakers and participants, encouraging interaction across stakeholder groups and regions. The session concludes with a rapporteur summary that synthesizes key insights and recommendations from both onsite and online discussions, providing a practical basis for future policy and governance conversations.
+
+## Hybrid Format
+
+**Hybrid Format:** The session will be designed as a genuinely hybrid discussion. The online moderator will actively collect online questions and bring them into each segment of the discussion, rather than reserving online participation only for the final Q&A.
+The session will use:
+- live polling to ask participants whether they see AI companions mainly as support, risk or exploitation;
+- equal time for onsite and online questions;
+- collaborative collection of red lines and design principles;
+- a final rapporteur summary of points raised by both onsite and online participants.
+Possible tools include the IGF online platform, Slido/Mentimeter or equivalent polling tools, and a shared online document or form to collect recommendations from remote participants.
+
+## Organizers
+
+**Organizer 1:** Julia Piechna, NASK - National Research Institute
+**Organizer 2:** Maciej Gron, 🔒
+
+## Speakers
+
+**Speaker 1:** José Renato Laranjeira de Pereira, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
+**Speaker 2:** Julia Piechna, Technical Community, Eastern European Group
+**Speaker 3:** Pascal Bekono, Government, African Group
+**Speaker 4:** Svaradiva Devi, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
+**Speaker 5:** Jannat Roshatey, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
+
+## Moderator
+
+Julia Piechna, Technical Community, Eastern European Group
+
+## Online Moderator
+
+Maciej Gron, Technical Community, Eastern European Group
+
+## Rapporteur
+
+Maciej Gron, Technical Community, Eastern European Group
+
+## Participant Benefits
+
+What will participants gain from attending this session?
+
+## SDGs
+
+3.4
+4.4
+4.7
+10.2
+10.3
+16.10
+16.2
+17.16
+17.17
--- a/Show More
+++ b/Show More