Webinar on digital rights and citizenship for young Europeans

On Wednesday, 25 May 2016, 25 youth panellists from the Insafe network of Safer Internet Centres (SICs) and 4 Youth coordinators attended a webinar on digital rights and citizenship.

Date 2016-05-27 Author BIK team
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Participants were able to hear from Katarzyna (Kate) Pawelczyk about UNICEF and its work with young people from across the world to engage them digitally in internet policy and global governance discussions. "Even if we all agree that children and young people need to consulted and engaged on any issues that are relevant to their wellbeing and their lives, it is not always so easy", explained Kate in her presentation. To that end, UNICEF is carrying out a vast amount of work with young people to empower and provide them with digital tools and platforms to exercise their rights, with countries advising on policy and the private sector bridging collaboration for the wellbeing of children and young people.
 
Additionally, Kimberly Anastácio from Brazil, a former youth participant in the Youth@IGF programme and Internet Governance Forum 2015, gave an inspirational talk about youth participation and involvement in internet governance discussions to ensure that digital rights of children and young people are respected. One of the outcomes of the Youth@IGF programme, which brought together young leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean, is the Youth Observatory which aims to train young people on internet governance issues to encourage their participation.
 
Invited to take a poll both before and after the webinar to collect views and feedback, youth panellists admitted that freedom of speech, online safety, and privacy and protection of data are among the most important digital rights for them. Equally, youth participants defined digital citizenship as "appropriate and responsible use of digital technologies", "having rights and responsibilities when online, just as we do in real life" and "being digitally literate to be able to participate online". 
 
The youth webinar will be followed by a second webinar on 1 June 2016 from 7 pm CEST focusing on internet governance. Grace Abuhamad and Andrea Beccalli from ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ) will talk about the role of ICANN and what it does for the internet, while Florian Daniel, Insafe Youth ambassador, will present a young person's viewpoint on internet policy and share his experience in attending both European and international events.
 
The webinars fit into a youth participation and engagement strategy that aims to incentivise young people to get involved in internet governance discussions on a more consistent and regular basis by acquiring the adequate knowledge and skills to both facilitate understanding and the building of personal opinions on issues related to how the internet ecosystem works. The output from these webinars will be shared more widely via the Better Internet for Kids portal at www.betterinternetforkids.eu and via social media @Paneuyouth.
 

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