Under the main theme of this year's IGF meeting, "Internet Governance – Creating opportunities for all", which aims at developing a common understanding of how to maximize the opportunities the Internet offers for all nations and peoples, and how to address the risks and challenges, while also raising awareness on the development dimension of Internet governance, runs the workshops of the first day of the forum.

One of the workshops is entitled The Global Path for ensuring Online Child Protection and Safety: Effective Strategies and Specific Actions. The workshop focuses on effective strategies and specific actions in developing and promoting a safe and productive experience for children and youth online and protecting children and youth from exploitation and abuse. The workshop identifies and showcases regional and international best practices in terms of services, programs, policy development and implementation around child safety and child protection measures. It also allows critical examination of current standards and approaches and challenges faced in developing and ensuring a safe and productive online environment for children and youth. A growing interest among experts and governments is how to address such challenges, while also supporting the effective uses of the Internet by children and youth for both personal and educational purposes.

The session provides a closer examination of the current standards and initiatives that exist in these areas, including the role of legal provisions. The workshop addresses the significant challenges related to lack of legal provisions in some countries, and identifies proposed solutions and actions. Practical engagement of industry and NGO organizations in terms of making the online environment safer for children is discussed as well with an eye on improving the current standards and also what more needs to be done. The forum showcases regional developments and also focus on developing country perspective in dealing with the issues notably those in the Arab region.

Speaker list

1)ECPAT International : Ms.Carmen Madrinan/Mr. Anjan Bose
2)eNACSO: Mr. John Carr
3) CoE : Ms.Cristina Schulman
4) Family Online Safety Institute: Mr.David Miles
5) AT&T: Ms.Dorothy Attwood
6) Symantec Corporation EMEA: Mr.IliasChantzos
7) Microsoft EMEA: Mns.Jean-Christophe Le Toquin, Microsoft
8) Polycyb: Ms.Bessie Pang
9) Hector’s world : Ms.Liz Butterfield
10)Government/State: Cyberpeace initiative: Ms. Nevine Tewfik / Ms.HalaTadros
11) Hany Fathy Georgy, Senior Chief Prosecutor, Office of the General Prosecutor of Egypt.
12) Intergovernmental organization: UN Special Representative on Violence against Children: Ms.Marta Santos Paes

During the day there is also an open forum entitled Open Forum: Child Online Protection. During the session a strategic overview in relation to the main components of a child online protection policy is developed. The session discusses the role and responsibilities of the different players in the Internet and ICT industry. The session then provides an overview of the range of approaches that have been developed in a range of different countries aimed at reaching out to key target audiences (policy-makers, industry, parents, guardians, educators and children). At the end, the session discusses the role and responsibilities of different international institutions and how they can improve the cooperation and harmonization in this area.

Speaker list

1) Sami Al Basheer Al Moshid, Director, BDT, ITU
2) Ms Cristina Bueti, (Policy Analyst, ITU)
3) John Carr, (CHIS)
4) Dr. Hoda Baraka, (Government of Egypt)
5) Giacomo Mazzone, (European Broadcasting Union, (EBU)
6) Natasha Jackson (GSMA)
7) Dieter Carstensen (Save the Children)
8) Maria Badia (Member, Committee on Culture and Education, European Parliament)
9) Mrs Jutta Croll, Managing Director Stiftung Ditial Protection Chancen

At the end of the day there is an opening ceremony in which The Prime Minister of Egypt, Dr. Ahmed Nazif and The Minister of Communications and Information Technology D. Tarek Kamel are among the speakers. The opening ceremony is followed by an opening session in which all the key panelists of the IGF 2009 participated.