1st Children's Forum at ICANN

Armenia Team: Lili Saroyan (Chaperon)
Yeva Musayelyan (13-year-old), Arman Tsirunyan (12-year-old)

Date of the event: 7 to 11 April 2013

Title: 1st Children’s Forum at ICANN

Location (City, Country):  Beijing, China

Hosting Organization(s): ICANN, Against Child Abuse, DotAsia Organisation, DotKids Foundation, Hong Kong Committee on Children’s Rights, Kids’ Dream, NetMission Ambassadors

Description of the event:
Children from 10 countries participated in the 1st Children’s Forum in ICANN, organized by Against Child Abuse, DotAsia Organisation, DotKids Foundation, Hong Kong Committee on Children’s Rights, Kids’ Dream, NetMission Ambassadors. The Children’s Forum was organized alongside with ICANN 46th International meeting in Beijing and was an excellent opportunity to discuss problems children face on the Internet and speak out at such a high-level auditorium.

 With DotAsia Organisation’s financial support, 2 child participants (Yeva Musayelyan, Arman Tsirunyan) and 1 adult supporter (Lili Saroyan) from Media Education Center/eNACSO participated in the 1st Children’s Forum in ICANN.

The 1st Day
The first day started with the introduction of ICANN. The Hong Kong team with their supervisor Ms. Wong spoke about what ICANN is and how it works. They also mentioned the aims of the Children's Forum which was to tell ICANN what children think of the Internet. The introductory part was over with making a list of expectations from the Forum. The teams were active and enthusiastic about writing their expectations.

The Hong Kong team spoke about the Child Protection Policy and introduced the members of the Child Protection Team:

Ms Billy Wong –Hong Kong Committee on Children’s Rights
Ms Diena Haryana- SEJIWA, Indonesia, Chairperson of SEGIWA Service for Peace
Mr Vijaya Baskar- Protect and Save the Children
In the second part of the discussion the teams played a game and were given numbers for demonstrating their Culture and Organization Exchange Presentations.

China Team was the first to speak about their organization. Armenia Team (13-year-old Yeva Musayelyan, 12-year-old Arman Tsirunyan was the second.

Armenia team gave a full picture of the organizations they represented, spoke about their websites, exchanged badges, CDs and booklets (including, copies of eNACSO Next Click). During their presentation the Armenia Team presented Safer Internet Armenia Program, told participants about open lessons on Internet Safety held at secondary and high schools in Armenia and in particular about Nethiquette classes at their school, Anania Shirakatsy Lyceum.  The Lyceum was recognized the best school by the Safer Internet Armenia 2012 Program and chosen to send delegates to the 1st Children’s Forum at ICANN.

There were a few questions to the teams about how long their organizations had been functioning and what other projects they had done.  The other teams introduced their presentations during next days.

The 2nd Day
The second day started with a visit to ICANN Welcome Ceremony. It was the 46th ICANN meeting in Beijing and opening of the Beijing office of ICANN.

Fadi Chehade, the president of ICANN, started his speech with the ICANN slogan “ONE WORLD, ONE INTERNET”. He spoke about the Internet penetration rate which had grown enormously. He emphasized that they wanted to make sure they are understood and accepted as serving in the public interest. Later, there was Issue Briefing; they were going to hear the perspectives from participants in talks. This referred to adult participants only. After the welcome ceremony the children teams gathered in the hall to make a reflection and share their feelings and impressions.

The 3rd Day
The third day Egypt and Switzerland teams were demonstrating their organization exchange presentations. Alongside with the organization exchange presentations, teams started demonstrating cultural exchange presentations in the second half of the day.

The Hong Kong team continued speaking of what ICANN is and how the organization works. They explained the notion of a 'domain name', spoke of the link between a Registry, Registrar and Registrant. To make it clear they played a game to present the role of each of the above mentioned bodies.

The 4th Day
The fourth day was a Public Forum Day. From the early morning, the children started to work in groups to discuss and state the main points of child protection policy. During discussions each child had to vote for the elements that should be included in child-related new gTLDs (Two documents «Elements_to_be_ included_in_child-related_new_gTLDs.doc» and «Voting_results_Elements_child-related_new_gTLDs.doc are attached to the report).
They could choose three issues that they thought should be raised to ICANN, and those elements should be included in child-related new gTLDs. So after the voting, the children were divided into three teams.              

The 1st team was SHARING TEAM. This team was going to attend the youth ICANN venue and talk to ICANN people and had 30 minutes to introduce the Children's Team and the purpose of their participation in ICANN meeting.

The 2nd team was NEW gTLD TEAM. This team was going to make a presentation at the ICANN public forum on the elements that should be included in the child-related new gTLDs.

The 3rd team was KIDS’ ROLE TEAM. The function of this team was to make a presentation at the ICANN public forum on what are the kids’ roles in the Internet Governance.

After long discussions and hard work, the teams continued introducing their organizations and culture. The Armenia Team made their Culture Exchange Presentation through a PowerPoint demonstration, which was full of information about people, customs, traditions, history and nature of Armenia.

The 5th Day
The fifth day was the most important day as the children were working on their Declaration of the 1st Children's Forum at ICANN in the afternoon. The previously formed teams had a brief discussion and sumed up what had already been done.

The 1st team went to ICANN to make a presentation at the public forum.
Before their return, the 2nd and 3rd teams were preparing to visit the ICANN venue and speak about the new gTLDs.

The ICANN meeting started. The 2nd team made a presentation about new gTLDs. The children were excited because it was the first time they were going to speak about the kids’ role in the Internet Governance.

Things went wrong when it was the turn of the 3rd team to present a Declaration; we were informed that the line was finished and the children couldn’t speak. There were tears, despair and anger. The scene caught the attention of the ICANN President, Fadi Chehade. The president paid a special attention to the children group and expressed readiness to listen to them. Children spoke to him and were given an opportunity to present their declaration before the ICANN public.

The teams left the meeting hall and again had a round-table reflection of the meeting and shared opinions. The children were looking forward to ICANN decision. They believed that they can also fight for their rights, if they are given the chance to do so.

The report was shared by eNACSO - European NGO Alliance for Child Safety Online