After the celebration of the commemoration on armistice day 100 years after the end of the second world war president Macron has together with UN Secretary general António Guterres and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the first Paris Peace Forum on Sunday afternoon. While US president Donald Trump ostentatiously did not take part, other leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan were among those who listened as Merkel, Macron and Gutteres lauded the U.N. and institutions like it that seek multilateral solutions to global problems.

In the following days during the Paris Digital Week representatives of governments, international organisations, NGOs and also private companies will gather to discuss the most burning issues the world is facing nowadays with a strong focus on finding concrete answers.

In parallel the thirteenth Internet Governance Forum will take place at UNESCO premises in Paris. Both events are thematically strongly interconnected, one focus will be on Artificial Intelligence. In an Open Forum organised by UNICEF for example taking children’s rights in consideration in the development of applications based on artificial intelligence will be discussed on Tuesday. Human Rights is another main issue among the topics of the IGF. Here the exercise of violence is addressed as well as the prevention of child sexual abuse material being distributed via the Internet. Taking up the debates at the Paris Peace Forum at the Internet Governance Forum also aspects of economic development in relation to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Cyber Security are on the agenda.

Please find here our reports from the IGF.

Report on IGF Day 1 - Putting people at the centre.

Report on IGF Day 2 - Children's Rights - Child Protection - Human Rights.

Report on IGF Day 23 - Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and the Internet of Things.