Speakers

Alberto J. Cerda Silva is a founding member and international affairs director of ONG Derechos Digitales, a Chilean civil society organization that works on promoting and defending human rights in digital environments. He is also a tenure professor in law and technology at the Center of Studies on Law and Information of the University of Chile Law School. Currently, he is a Fulbright Commission scholar pursuing a doctoral degree in law at Georgetown University Law Center with a dissertation on human rights and Internet regulation in Latin America. 

Amira Al Hussaini is a Bahraini journalist, translator, editor and blogger. Amira started as a trainee journalist in a Bahrain newspaper in 1991, working her way up to becoming news editor - in an environment not as accommodating to outspoken and free-thinking women as we would wish. Amira has a number of firsts under her cap - she is among the first female Arab news editors in an English language daily and among the first Arab women to win the Dag Hammarskjold Scholarship, which offered her a three-month fellowship to cover the United Nations in New York in 1996.  Amira's interests cover women and human rights, politics, freedom of expression and democracy and all forms of artistic expression. In 2004, Amira ventured into blogging and embraced online media with the same intensity she fell for mainstream media at a young age. Today she is Global Voices Online's Middle East and North Africa and Arabic Language Editor

Amr Gharbeia Underway

Anahi Ayala Iacucci is the Senior Innovation Advisor for the Internews Center for Innovation & Learning. Before covering this role, Anahi was for 2 years the Media Innovation Advisor for the Africa Region, Health and Humanitarian Media, covering Central African Republic, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Republic of South Sudan and Haiti.  In the past 4 years Anahi has consulted for NGOs and international organizations on the use of the ICT4D, new technologies and crisis mapping, and namely UNOCHA Iraq Inter-Agency Information and Analysis Unit, UNDP, Unicef, Alliance Guinea, Freedom House, the World Bank, Ushahidi Inc., and NDI in countries like Iraq, Jordan, China, Afghanistan, Egypt, Armenia, Bosnia, etc. Anahi is currently also Expert Advisor on Mobile Technology for The Popular Engagement Policy Lab in Pakistan and sits on the Board of Director of the NGO Freedom Connect. Anahi is also the Co-Founder and Advisor of the Standby Task Force, and a member of the International Network of Crisis Mappers. Anahi has been recently named by the Diplomatic Courier to the 2012 99 Under 33 list, as one of the 99 under 33 most influencial foreign policy leader in the Innovators Category. She holds a Master degree from Colombia University - School of International and Public Affairs, a BA in International Affairs from the University of Bologna and a Master in Human Rights from the University of Padova

Andrew Puddephatt is the Director of Global Partners leads the organization’s work on HR, communications policy and transparency. The main focus of his work is global digital communication policy. He has advised the European Commission and Swedish SIDA on implementing FoE policies, and assisted the Brazilian government evaluate implementation of its right to information law.  He has published widely on different aspects of FoE and digital policy, written guides on assessing the impact of development programs on HR policy for UNDP and UNESCO, as well as well strategic advice to DevCo in the European Commission. He was previously director of Article 19; is currently chair of International Media Support in Denmark; Deputy Chair of the Sigrid Rausing Trust; management board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Anja Kovacs is a Project Director at the Internet Democracy Project in India which engages in research and advocacy on the promises and challenges that the internet poses for democracy and social justice in the developing world. She was earlier a Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. She obtained her PhD in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK.

Anne Jellema is Chief Executive Officer of the World Wide Web Foundation and has over 15 years of experience as a development worker and human rights campaigner. From 2006 to 2012 she was the International Director of Policy and Campaigns for ActionAid, and also oversaw the organisation’s global programming on women’s rights, education and food rights. She helped to found the Global Campaign for Education and served as its first coordinator from 2001 to 2005.

Anriette Esterhuysen Underway

Ben Scott is Senior Adviser to the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation in Washington DC and a Visiting Fellow at the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung in Berlin. Previously, he was Policy Adviser for Innovation at the US Department of State where he worked at the intersection of technology and foreign policy. In a small team of advisers to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he worked to help steward the 21'st Century Statecraft agenda with a focus on technology policy, social media and development. Prior to joining the State Department, for six years he led the Washington office for Free Press, the largest non-profit organization in the US dealing exclusively with media and communications policy. As policy director for Free Press, he headed a team of lawyers, researchers, and advocates, and directed a public interest policy agenda to expand affordable access to an open Internet and to foster more public service journalism. He was frequently called as an expert witness before the US Congress. Before joining Free Press, he worked as a legislative aide handling telecommunications policy for then-Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the U.S. House of Representatives. He holds a PhD in communications from the University of Illinois.

Ben Wagner is a Researcher at the European University Institute in Florence. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and Human Rights Watch in Berlin. His research focuses on human rights, digital foreign policy and internet governance in the Middle East, Europe and North America. In recent years Ben has served as an academic expert for the European Commission, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, UNESCO, Hivos, the Open Society Institute and the European Parliament.

Bertrand de La Chapelle is a Board member of ICANN and has actively promoted multi-stakeholder governance processes since 2001, building on wide-ranging experience as a diplomat, an entrepreneur and a civil society actor.  From 2006 to 2010, Bertrand served as France's Thematic Ambassador and Special Envoy for the Information Society.  Bertrand is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique (1978), Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (1983) and Ecole Nationale d'Administration (1986).

Cynthia M. Wong is the senior researcher on the Internet and human rights at Human Rights Watch. Before joining Human Rights Watch, she worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and as director of their Project on Global Internet Freedom.

Dr. Daniel B. Baer was sworn in as a Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor on November 23, 2009. Baer’s portfolio for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor includes the Office of East Asia and Pacific Affairs, and the Office of Multilateral and Global Affairs. Prior to joining the Department of State, Baer was an Assistant Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, where he taught business ethics to MBA and undergraduate students.  In 2007-2008 he was a Faculty Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University. From 2004-2007, he worked at The Boston Consulting Group where he was a Project Leader and provided strategic advice to leaders in the corporate, government, and non-profit sectors. A Colorado native, Baer holds doctoral and masters degrees in international relations from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar.  He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in social studies and African American studies.

Dixie Hawtin is the project manager for FoE at Global Partners & Associates. Dixie workes closely with civil society in democratic countries in the Global South - particularly South Asia - to foster more effective and broad-based movements for human rights on the internet. These projects support the generation of original research, advocacy, alliance building and outreach to engage new groups on internet issues. She has worked on many reports about the relationship between human rights and internet policy – including the Global Survey on Internet Privacy and FoE for UNESCO; and Cyber Security, Surveillance and Online Human Rights for the SIF. Dixie serves as an independent expert at the CoE working on a user guide to online HR and remedies; and was a co-chair of the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition for 2 years. Dixie has an LLB in Law and an MA in Understanding and Securing HR.

Dunja Mijatovic has been the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media since March 2010.  She observes media developments in all 57 OSCE participating States. She provides early warning on violations of freedom of expression and promotes full compliance with OSCE press freedom commitments.  She was previously Director of the Broadcasting Division of the Communication Regulatory Agency (CRA) of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Chairperson of EPRA, the European Platform of Regulatory Authorities.

Emmet Tuohy joined International Centre for Defence Studies (ICDS) as a research fellow in June 2012, focusing on cybersecurity, energy policy, and regional defence issues. A specialist in the politics and security of the Black Sea states, particularly Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine, Tuohy has also written extensively on issues such as Central Asian affairs and political Islam.

Eric King is the head of research at Privacy International, where he runs the Big Brother Incorporated project, an investigation of the international trade in surveillance technologies. His work focuses on the intersection of human rights, privacy and technology. He is the secret prisons technical adviser at Reprieve, is on the advisory council of the Foundation for Information Policy Research and holds a degree in law from the London School of Economics.

Eunice Kariuki is Deputy Chief Executive and Marketing Director, Kenya ICT Board, in Nairobi whose role is to promote Kenya as an ICT destination and advise the government on all matters to do with ICT industry.  Prior to joining the ICT Board, Eunice worked for Microsoft East Africa.

Fieke Jansen based at Hivos where she runs the Digital Defenders Partnership. Her background is working in the field of internet freedom, technology for transparency and accountability and independent media.  In her Master in International Communication and her Advanced Master in International Development Cooperation she has looked at the role of media and digital technologies in social change processes like digital activism in repressive environments. Her areas of interest are to understand the new spaces, grey areas and changing dynamics that technologies bring to the world.

Françoise Mukuku is an international consultant in communication from the Democratic Republic of the Congo carrying out research and communication with various NGO’s on sexual and reproductive health and rights and women rights in general in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the African Great Lakes Region (Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda).

Geraldine de Bastion is is a freelance international consultant based inBerlin, Germany. She is an expert on information and communication technology and new media for development and advises governmental organisations, NGOs and businesses on digital media and communication strategies. She also works with activists and bloggers around the world. Geraldine began her career working for the Gesellschaft fürInternationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the German Federal Ministry forEconomic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). She helped organise the German delegation for the World Summit of Information Society (WSIS) in 2005. During the past years Geraldine worked with newthinking communications GmbH, an agency for Open Source strategies. In 2012, she curated republica, Germany's largest conference on Internet and Society. She is also an active member of the non-profit organisations Digitale Gesellschaft e.V and ICE Bauhaus.

Guy Berger is UNESCO’s director for Freedom of Expression and Media Development, based in Paris. Between 1994 and 2011, he was head of the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University, South Africa.

Hala Essalmawi is the Principal Attorney and the Intellectual Property Rights Officer at the Library of Alexandria, Egypt. She is the Project Lead of the Library’s Access to Knowledge initiative and the editor of its website (www.bibalex.org/a2k) . She was eIFL-IP Country Coordinator and the research coordinator for the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) “Consumer Protection in the Microfinance Industry Research Project. She is the Project Lead for Creative Commons in Egypt.

Hisham Almiraat is Global Voices Advocacy director and long-time member of the Global Voices community of international authors and translators. He is passionate about citizen media and freedom of speech. He is also a medical doctor and blogger. In 2009, he co-founded TalkMorocco.net, an award winning citizen media portal dedicated to promoting cultural understanding and online commentary. Shortly after the start of the Arab uprisings in 2011, Hisham, co-founded Mamfakinch.com, a citizen-media platform dedicated to defending FoE and democracy in Morocco. The website works at aggregating, curating and disseminating online citizen media material related to the grassroots movement for democratic change in Morocco. In 2012, Mamfakinch won Google's Breaking Borders award in support of online FoE.

Dr Ian Brown is Associate Director of Oxford University's Cyber Security Centre and Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. His work is focused on technology and public policy related to Internet privacy and security. Dr Brown spent December 2012-February 2013 working as a consultant for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime on their forthcoming study of global cybercrime. For the OECD, he co-authored with Peter Sommer the 2010 report "Reducing Systemic Cybersecurity Risk".

Jac sm Kee is a feminist activist, writer & researcher. She is the Women's Rights Programme Manager of the Association for Progressive Communications (www.apc.org) and works on the issue of women's rights, violence against women, sexualities, and internet rights. Jac leads the Take Back The Tech! global campaign on violence against women and internet technology, and the EROTICS research project on sexuality and internet regulation, and serves as a board member to the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) and one of the directors of Centre for Independent Journalism, Malaysia.

James Lawson currently works in the Internet Governance Unit of the Council of Europe, the 47 member state organisation whose primary aim is to create a common democratic and legal area throughout the whole of the continent, ensuring respect for its fundamental values: human rights, democracy and the rule of law.  He has also been active in the NGO world for many years where inter alia he led a project to develop a web-based system for documenting human rights violations and set up a vertical human rights search engine.

James Losey is a fellow with the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation where he focus on policies in support of an open, secure, and affordable internet.  Mr. Losey has published articles and chapters with Advances in Computing, Ars Technica, CommLaw Conspectus, IEEE Internet Computing, IEEE Spectrum, and Slate. Additionally, he is a graduate student at Uppsala University in Sweden where he researches the networked public sphere and the role of global civil society in information policy making

Johan Hallenborg Underway

John Kampfner is an adviser to Google on freedom of expression and culture. He is an author, broadcaster and commentator specialising in UK politics, international affairs, media and human rights issues.  He is also Chair of the board of Turner Contemporary, one of the UK's highest profile art galleries. The opening of the gallery in Margate in April 2011 received plaudits around the world, and it is regarded as one of the UK's most important culture-driven regeneration projects. In August 2012 he became a member of the Council of King's College, London.  From Sept 2008 until March 2012 he was Chief Executive of Index on Censorship, one of the world's leading free expression organisations. In late 2009 Index launched a successful campaign to change UK libel laws.

Kamel Labidi is a Tunisian journalist and HR defender with many years of media experience. He is the former head of the National Authority for Reform of Information and Communication (INRIC) in Tunisia and a prominent campaigner within the IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group (IFEX-TMG). He has also worked as a consultant on the Middle East and North Africa for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Kamel has a long history working in journalism and has contributed pieces on peace, conflict, and HR in his region to many US and Arab publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Herald Tribune, Annahar, and Al-Masry El-Youm. Kamel has also worked for various papers, news agencies, RWB, and Amnesty International.

Kwame Karikari is the executive director of the Media Foundation for West Africa, a press freedom/freedom of expression advocacy and promotion organisation based in Accra, Ghana.  The MFWA covers all 15 countries in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Mauritania.  The MFWA engages in media law reform, legal defence of journalists, press freedom monitoring, and in protection for persecuted journalists. He has been for several years, a professor in journalism and mass communication at the School of Communication Studies at the University of Ghana.  He has also been involved in training journalists in several countries in Africa over the years. Prior to that and during all those years, he practiced as a journalist, including serving as director general of the public Ghana Broadcasting Corporation in the early 1980s. He has also been an activist pursuing social justice and human rights causes, in Africa, including democratic reforms in Ghana. He serves on the boards of a number of African and international rights organisations and on the editorial boards of academic publications. He was educated at the City College of New York and Columbia University in New York.

Lionel Veer became the Dutch human rights ambassador in august 2010. This position was created in late 1999 to strengthen the human rights component in foreign policy and make it more coherent.   Lionel Veer has worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 1984, in such policy fields as European affairs, asylum and migration, and international cultural policy. In recent years he has held the posts of Dutch ambassador in Zagreb and consul-general in Munich.

Lucy Purdon is the ICT Programme Support Manager at the Institute for Business and Human Rights. Lucy joined IHRB as a researcher on the European Commission ICT Sector Guidance on Implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. She manages IHRB's ICT Programme and works mainly on the 'Digital Dangers' project which analyses situations where ICT companies may be complicit in violations of freedom of expression and privacy.  Lucy graduated with an MA in Human Rights from The Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICwS), University of London. She also holds a First Class BA (Hons) in Film and Video from London College of Communications, University of the Arts.

Luigi Gambardella is Vice-President, Public and Economic Affairs Relations; TELECOM ITALIA and Chairman of the Executive Board of the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ association (ETNO) for 2013.  Mr Gambardella joined the Telecom Italia Group in 1999, in charge of relations with the National Regulatory Authority, and he is currently Group Vice President for Relations with International Institutions and Organizations.

From 1996 to 1999 Mr Gambardella ran the regulatory and Institutional affairs for Olivetti.

As well as being Chairman of the Executive Board of ETNO, European  Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association, BIAC Vice Chair to the OECD ICCP Committee, President of EUBrasil, a member of the Advisory and Support Group of BUSINESSEUROPE, a member of the board of the Transatlantic Business Council, a member of the board of the European Internet Foundation, Associate at the European Round Table of Industrialists, President of Puntoit- the Italian Association for the development of the digital economy.

Markus Löning is the Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights in Germany.  Previously, he was from 2002 to 2009 Member of the German Bundestag from 2004 to 2009 and state chairman of the FDP in Berlin.

Dr. Meryem Marzouki, is a senior academic researcher with the French National Scientific Research Center, currently with the Computer Science Laboratory of Paris 6, where she runs a multi-disciplinary research activity at the nexus of ICTs, public policies and the public space, with a focus on Internet governance, HR, and the transformation of the rule of law.  As part of her volunteering activities, she has also been actively promoting HR in the digital environment since 1996 at the French, European and global levels. Since then, she co-founded, has served in, or is an active member of several NGOs and civil society coalitions: Imaginons un Réseau Internet solidaire, European Digital Rights, The Public Voice, The UN WSIS Civil Society Human Rights Caucus, The IGF Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles and The OECD Civil Society Information Society Advisory Council.

Mohamad Najem is the advocacy and policy director at Social Media Exchange (SMEX). He has initiated and contributed to several successful online campaigns, such as #stopthislaw and Protect Privacy, and is currently focused on bringing together knowledgeable and progressive voices to push for sound Internet governance in the Arab region. He tweets as @MoNajem and blogs for SMEX and Global Voices Advocacy. He previously worked as a fixer and translator for journalists and activists covering the aftermath of the 2006 war and as a staffer with the French NGO Architectes de l’Urgence.

Mohamed Al Taher, Egyptian blogger and activist, is working in the HR field, focused on digital freedoms and FoE. He believes in free software culture and the enrichment of the Arabic content on the Internet.  He is working on how to serve the Technology in the civil society organization development and enhance the Human Rights principles. Currently, he is a digital freedom program coordinator at Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression. 

Morgan Marquis-Boire is a Senior Security Engineer at Google where he focuses on Incident Response, Forensics and Malware Analysis. He also serves as a Special Advisor to Google Ideas. He is a Security Researcher and Technical Advisor at the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. Best known for his work tracking targeted surveillance and digital repression, he received an honorable mention from SC Magazine as one of the influential minds of IT Security in 2012.

Pranesh Prakash is Policy Director at the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based non-profit that engages in research and policy advocacy.  He studied at the National Law School, Bangalore, and his research interests converge at the intersections of technology, culture, economics and the law. His current work focusses on interrogating and promoting access to knowledge (primarily copyright reforms), 'openness' (including open government data, open standards, free/libre/open source software, and open access), freedom of expression, security, privacy, and Internet governance.  His writings and views on law and policy issues have been quoted in the Indian Parliament, and by publications ranging from the New York Times to the Times of India.  The newspaper Mint called him “one of the clearest thinkers in this area”.  He was selected as an Internet Freedom Fellow 2012-2013 by the US government.

Rebecca MacKinnon is a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation where she conducts research, writing, and advocacy at the intersection of networked technologies, human rights, and corporate accountability. She is author of the award-winning book, Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom (2012) and co-founder of Global Voices Online, the citizen media network and digital rights advocacy organization. A founding board member of the Global Network Initiative, a multi-stakeholder organization that advances corporate responsibility and human rights in the technology sector, she also serves on the Board of Directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists.  MacKinnon is currently an adjunct lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and visiting affiliate at the Center for Global Communications Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication where she leads a new project, Ranking Digital Rights, developing a methodology and process to rank Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies on free expression and privacy criteria.   Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, MacKinnon worked as a journalist for CNN in Northeast Asia for 12 years, including as Beijing Bureau Chief and Correspondent from 1998-2001, and Tokyo Bureau Chief and Correspondent from 2001-03. 

Reem Al-Masri is the Research and Development officer of 7iber Dot Com, a hybrid media platform that works to encourage freedom of speech and responsible journalism in Jordan. Currently researching the current state of Internet Governance in Jordan, Reem have actively participated in a campaign aiming to to halt passing the new "Media and Publication Law" in the Parliament. Reem is also working on creating awareness of Digital Rights through interactive content on the website. Prior to joining 7iber, Reem co-produced a media monitoring radio show at a community radio station. She obtained her M.A in "Communication, Culture and Technology" from Georgetown University, and currently resides in Amman, Jordan.

Richard Allan joined Facebook in June 2009 to lead the company’s public policy work in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Richard works on a broad portfolio of issues including privacy, online child safety, freedom of expression, e-commerce regulation and public sector uses of social media, Richard also appears regularly in the media as a spokesman for Facebook in Europe. Prior to joining Facebook, Richard was European Government Affairs Director for Cisco from September 2005 and had been an academic visitor at the Oxford Internet Institute. From 2008 to 2009 Richard was Chair of the UK Cabinet Office’s Power of Information Task Force working on improving the use of government data. Richard was an elected Member of the UK Parliament between 1997 and 2005, and was appointed to the House of Lords in 2010. In the early part of his career Richard was an archaeologist and created software for the UK’s National Health Service - he remains equally fond of Latin and SQL. 

Robert Guerra is a civil society expert specializing in issues of internet governance, cyber security, social networking, multi-stakeholder participation, internet freedom and human rights. Robert is the founder of Privaterra, a Canadian based organization that works with private industry and nongovernmental organizations to assist them with issues of data privacy, secures communications, information security, internet governance and internet freedom. Robert also works as special adviser to The Citizen Lab and Canada Centre for Global Security Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. Robert serves as a member of ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC), as well as a member of the US IGF Steering Committee. Additionally he has participated as a member of the official Canadian delegation at two UN WSIS.

Ronaldo Lemos is the director of the Center for Technology and Society at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) School of Law in Rio de Janeiro.  Dr. Lemos is the head professor of Intellectual Property law at FGV Law School.  He is also the director of the Creative Commons Brazil and chairman of the Board of iCommons.  He has earned his LL.B. and LL.D. from the University of Sao Paulo, and his LL.M. from Harvard Law School.

Ross LaJeunesse  is the Global Head of Free Expression and International Relations for Google. Before joining Google, LaJeunesse served as Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He developed and executed the Governor’s ambitious policy agenda, on a broad range of issues from infrastructure investment to education reform and economic development, as well as numerous environmental initiatives.

Simone Halink works for Bits of Freedom, a leading Dutch digital rights organization. Her main areas of focus are social media surveillance, cybersecurity and unlawful interception. Simone studied law at the University of Amsterdam and New York University and was a commercial litigator at the Dutch firm De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek before joining Bits of Freedom.

Slim Amamou is a computer programmer, entrepreneur and blogger. He co-founded the web agency AlphaStudios in 1999 and ALIXSYS in 2008 as a web services company for entreprise. His writings focus on the modalities and mechanisms for the emergence of new global society of the Internet. He is also a founder of the Pirate Party and known for his positions against censorship and intellectual property and fights for the neutrality of the Internet. Arrested in 2010 for organizing a street protest against internet censorship and then again in 2011 during Tunisian revolution on the background of Anonymous attacks, he was appointed Secretary of State for Youth and Sports in the new Tunisian interim government 3 days after getting out of jail. He resigned after the return of Internet censorship.

Sophie Kwasny is the Head of the Data Protection Unit of the Council of Europe and is responsible for standard-setting (notably the current modernisation exercise of Convention 108) and policy on data protection and privacy, including with regard to new technologies and the Internet. She is a graduate of the Strasbourg Law University and has been working for the Council of Europe for over 15 years on a variety of topics ranging from prisons’ reforms to medical insurance, or from the independence of the judiciary to nationality law.  

Victor Kapiyo is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya practicing in the Kenyan Bar. He also works in the Human Rights Protection Programme of the Kenyan Section of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ Kenya). His areas of interest are development, governance, human rights, law and technology. He has conducted research in these areas to inform new legislation and engaged in policy advocacy on the same at various levels. Further, he works closely with the indigent and disadvantaged members of the society including through the conduct of public interest litigation. In 2012, he was involved in organising Kenya's annual Internet Governance Forum as well as the East Africa Governance Forum. His more recent assignments include among others joint studies on Intermediary Liability in Kenya and Online Violence against Women; and the production of a Handbook on Devolution in Kenya. Victor is a member of the Internet Society; the Internet Society Kenya Chapter; Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet); and the Law Society of Kenya (LSK). He holds a degree in law (LL.B) and post-graduate certification in Internet Governance and Policy from the University of Nairobi and DiploFoundation respectively.

Wael Abbas is an internationally renowned Egyptian journalist, blogger, and human rights activist, who blogs at Misr Digital (Egyptian Awareness). He reported an incident of mob harassment of women, and broadcast several videos of police brutality and this led to the conviction of police for torture, but he has been harassed by the Egyptian government, and his accounts with YouTube and Yahoo were closed. YouTube has since restored his account and most of his videos

William Echikson is Head of Free Expression Policy and PR, Europe, Middle East & Africa, for Google.  Bill is a veteran European correspondent, writing over the past two and a half decades for a series of prestigious US publications including the Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and BusinessWeek. From 1985 to 1990, he covered the collapse of communism in Central Europe, publishing a book “Lighting the Night: Revolution in Eastern Europe” on his observations and experiences. From 2001 until 2007, he managed the Brussels bureau for Dow Jones as bureau chief. He has considerable experience with EU issues, most prominently antitrust, trade and environment.

Zineb Belmkaddem, 28, consultant and business English teacher in Rabat. Pro Democracy Activist and blogger since 2011 with the February 20th movement in Morocco, and member of mamfakinch.com team. #Feb20 called for protests nationwide and Mamfakinch.com ensured citizen media coverage online.