At the 9th Internet Governance Forum (IGF) taking place from 2 to 5 September in Istanbul, the Council of Europe aims to trigger a debate on how to empower Internet users´ to exercise their human rights online. In an open forum on 3 September, the Council of Europe will address the issue and discuss how to apply its Guide to human rights for Internet users which was adopted by the 47 member states of the organisation on 16 April. The Council of Europe will also organise discussion on a report on ICANN´s procedures and policies in the light of human rights, fundamental freedoms and democratic values. The report concludes that ICANN´s current rules for creating new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) (which are the suffix at the end of domain names, for example com, info or org) do not fully comply with freedom of expression and privacy standards and contains recommendations on how to address this.

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Special IGF file
Special Internet governance file