The Freedom Online Coalition (FOC), a partnership of 39 governments working to advance Internet freedom, has announced the admission of six new members to join its Advisory Network (AN) beginning in May, to form the fourth cohort of the Advisory Network that will serve from 2024 to 2026. The new members joined 24 existing members who continue to serve on the AN as part of the 2024 to 2026 cohort.
Composed of representatives from civil society, academia, the technical community, and the private sector, the FOC Advisory Network, of which Media Rights Agenda (MRA) is a member, supports the Coalition’s mission of advancing Internet freedom and human rights, both online and offline, worldwide.
The AN plays a crucial role in facilitating information and knowledge sharing within the FOC by providing advice to the FOC Member States and support for the Coalition’s activities and events.
The new members joining the AN after a successful open call for applications are Katharine Millar, Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, who is joining the AN in an individual capacity; Avri Doria, an independent researcher also joining in an individual capacity; and Salesforce, Inc., an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California and represented on the AN by Shahla Naimi, Policy Director at the Office of Ethical and Humane Use of Salesforce.
Other new members are Internews, represented by Olga Kyryliuk, Technical Advisor on Internet Governance and Digital Rights at Internews; Tech Global Institute, represented by Sabhanaz Rashid Diya, its Executive Director; and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), represented by Konstantinos Komaitis, Senior Resident Fellow, DFRLab Tech and Democracy Initiative of the Atlantic Council.
The new members were selected from among applicants by the incumbent AN members and in consultation with the FOC Steering Committee through an open application process administered by the FOC Support Unit. The selection process was guided by considerations for the candidate’s stakeholder group, gender, and geographic balance; commitment to the values of the FOC; relevant expertise in the field of Internet freedom, digital rights advocacy, business and human rights, free expression, privacy, and/or international human rights law; and the ability to contribute to the Coalition’s work.
The FOC also acknowledged the outgoing members from the third cohort (who served from 2022 to 2024), saying they played a key role in supporting the work of the FOC through their participation in the AN.
To view more information on the AN, including a list of all current members, please visit www.freedomonlinecoalition.com/advisory-network.
The Advisory Network emerged following the sixth Freedom Online Conference organized by the FOC in Costa Rica, where the Coalition identified as a priority the need to create a strong mechanism for ongoing multistakeholder engagement. The FOC Advisory Network was established to play that role through regular engagement with FOC governments.
The AN is an independent multistakeholder group composed of civil society, academia and private sector representatives who provide advice on aims, objectives and activities, as well as support the FOC’s mission of advancing Internet freedom and human rights online through its working methods. The AN may provide two types of formal, consensus-based input to FOC Members, namely Proactive Advice, where AN members proactively submit pieces of advice on certain topics and issues they consider the FOC should address, as well as recommend a topic for development of an FOC statement; and Reactive Advice, where AN members respond to the FOC’s request to comment on a certain issue, or input into documents in development, such as Joint Statements, Programs of Action, and other similar outputs.
AN Members widely contribute to the Coalition’s activities and events and through regularly engaging with the FOC through Strategy and Coordination Meetings, learning sessions, and other ad hoc convenings, the AN plays a crucial role in information and knowledge sharing efforts within the FOC.
Coalition governments may also engage with the AN on a bilateral basis to receive ad hoc, immediate feedback on a specific topic, or work together to shape the outputs of regional forums on topics of relevance to the FOC’s mission. In addition, FOC Members may collaborate with the AN to respond to relevant consultation processes and seek to submit agreed-upon language sourced from consensus-based FOC documents.
Existing members of the AN who are continuing in the 2024 to 2026 cohort Members, are Elonnai Hickok, Managing Director of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), who currently serves as Co-Chair of the AN, Dr. Tatiana Tropina, an Assistant Professor in Cybersecurity Governance at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University in The Netherlands, participating as an AN member in her individual capacity and also currently serving as Co-Chair; Adeboye Adegoke, Senior Program Manager at Paradigm Initiative; Alison Gillwald, Executive Director of Research ICT Africa and an Adjunct Professor at University of Cape Town in South Africa; Alexandria Walden, Head of Human Rights and Founder of the Human Rights and Freedom of Expression Programme at Google; Allie Funk, Research Director for Technology and Democracy at Freedom House; Amalia Toledo, Lead Public Policy Specialist for Latin America and the Caribbean at Wikimedia Foundation, who is participating as an AN member in her individual capacity; and Bernard Shen, Assistant General Counsel at Microsoft.
Others are Edetaen Ojo, Executive Director of Media Rights Agenda; Fiona M. Alexander, Distinguished Policy Strategist in Residence in the School of International Service and Distinguished Fellow at the Internet Governance Lab at American University in Washington DC in the United States, who is participating as an AN member in her individual capacity; Frane Maroevic, for Executive Director of the International Press Institute (IPI), who is also participating an AN member in an individual capacity; Helen Harris, Manager, Public Policy (Digital Rights) at Amazon; Juan Carlos Lara, Executive Director of Derechos Digitales; Kyung Sin Park, a Professor of Law at Korea University Law School as well as co-founder and director of Open Net Korea; Laura O’Brien, Senior UN Advocacy Officer at Access Now; Elizabeth Orembo, a Research Fellow at Research ICT Africa, who is participating as AN member in an individual capacity; Mallory Knodel, Chief Technology Officer at the Center for Democracy and Technology; Matthew Shears, Director, Global Internet Policy and Human Rights Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, who is participating as AN member in an individual capacity; Quinn McKew, Executive Director of Article 19; Michael Samway, President of The Business and Human Rights Group and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University in Washington DC, participating as AN member in an individual capacity; Rebecca Mackinnon, Vice President for Global Advocacy at the Wikimedia Foundation; Sebastian Smart, Regional Director for the Chilean National Human Rights Institution and lecturer at Universidad Austral de Chile, participating in the AN in an individual capacity’ Veronica Ferrari, Global Policy Advocacy coordinator at the Association for Progressive Communications (APC); and Zach Lampell, Senior Legal Advisor for Freedom of Expression & Digital Rights at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL).
