Bevil Wood­ing

In­ter­net-re­lat­ed tech­nolo­gies play an in­creas­ing­ly sig­nif­i­cant role in the de­vel­op­ment of Caribbean economies and so­ci­ety. From on­line ed­u­ca­tion, e-com­merce and e-gov­ern­ment to on­line so­cial net­works, gov­ern­ment cy­ber-snoop­ing, Wik­iLeaks and cy­ber­crime, the In­ter­net is im­pact­ing every facet of mod­ern life. Yet, there is lim­it­ed Caribbean par­tic­i­pa­tion in in­ter­na­tion­al fo­ra shap­ing In­ter­net gov­er­nance.

The good news is this is chang­ing. More in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions are get­ting in­volved and play­ing a role in the evo­lu­tion of the In­ter­net here at home and even across the globe.

?In­ter­net gov­er­nance

One or­gan­i­sa­tion play­ing a sig­nif­i­cant role in ad­vanc­ing the Caribbean's In­ter­net gov­er­nance agen­da is the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (CTU). The CTU is an in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion with a man­date to fa­cil­i­tate the de­vel­op­ment of the in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions (ICT) sec­tor in the Caribbean.

In 2005, through the com­bined ef­forts of the CTU and the Cari­com sec­re­tari­at, the Caribbean was first in the world to hold a re­gion­al In­ter­net gov­er­nance fo­rum. That meet­ing, held in Guyana, marked the first co­or­di­nat­ed ef­fort by the Caribbean to de­vel­op re­gion­al, mul­ti-stake­hold­er frame­works to deal with the grow­ing in­flu­ence of the In­ter­net on Caribbean economies and so­ci­ety.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion's ef­forts over the past sev­er­al years to in­crease pub­lic and gov­ern­ment aware­ness of the In­ter­net gov­er­nance is­sues that im­pact the re­gion have been con­sis­tent and fruit­ful.

In ad­di­tion to sup­port from gov­ern­ments and In­ter­net ad­vo­cates from across the re­gion, the CTU has al­so man­aged to se­cure sup­port from ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies in­clud­ing, the In­ter­net So­ci­ety (ISOC), the In­ter­net Cor­po­ra­tion for As­signed Names and Num­bers (ICANN), the Amer­i­can Reg­istry for In­ter­net Num­bers (ARIN) and the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Net­work In­for­ma­tion Cen­tre (LAC­NIC).