LACIGF 2011 Port of Spain — In-Depth Report: Minutes Digest & 3-Line Summary

The 3-Line Summary

1. The 4th Regional Preparatory Meeting for the IGF (LACIGF 4) met on 9-11 August 2011 at the Hyatt hotel in Port of Spain — the first edition held in the Caribbean, with the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) joining as co-organiser.
2. Under the cross-cutting theme of freedom of expression online, sessions covered access and diversity, critical internet resources, emerging issues, internet governance for development and human rights, and security, openness and privacy. For the first time, the agenda was set bottom-up through an open consultation that drew hundreds of contributions.
3. A forum that called itself 'Latin American and Caribbean' finally met in the Caribbean, and abandoned formal presentations for equal, all-participant debate — a turning point in multistakeholder meeting design with lessons for forum organisers anywhere.

Welcome — this is the Japan IGF Support Organization. This in-depth report on LACIGF 2011 in Port of Spain draws on official outputs, session records and on-site reporting. In a hurry? The three lines above and the diagrams carry the gist.

📍 The official list of past editions on lacigf.org confirms the 4th edition took place in Port of Spain in 2011, matching the catalogue. The one-year city shift found in the 2023-2025 catalogue entries does not apply to this year.

Conference at a Glance (from official records)

(See the source list at the end of this article.)

Discussion Digest — from the Session Records

Key exchanges extracted from session records and transcripts.

1. First Caribbean Edition — CTU Makes 'Latin America and the Caribbean' Real

Sessions: Across the meeting (venue and co-organisers)

• The fourth edition met in Trinidad and Tobago, with the Caribbean Telecommunications Union joining as co-organiser and dramatically widening the forum's geographic reach [4][6][1]
• The Internet Society and the ITU Caribbean office also joined the founding organisers (by then NUPEF had replaced RITS), bridging the English-speaking Caribbean and Spanish/Portuguese-speaking Latin America [4][6][1]

2. Bottom-Up Reform — Open Consultation and Equal Participation

Sessions: The pre-meeting open consultation and in-session group work

• The agenda was set through an open community consultation that generated hundreds of contributions — a shift from top-down to bottom-up agenda-setting [4][3]
• Formal presentations were eliminated in favour of equal participation: each theme ran as introduction, group work, then group reports [4][3]
• This participatory model became the template for later LACIGF editions, emphasising inclusion across government, business, civil society and the technical community [4][3]

3. Freedom of Expression — The First Cross-Cutting Theme

Sessions: Across the meeting (cross-cutting theme) and the 'Internet Governance for Development and Human Rights' session (10 August)

• Freedom of expression online was declared the theme cutting across the whole meeting — a reflection of 2011, the year of the Arab Spring [5][3]
• Human rights were explicitly folded into 'internet governance for development' and given a full day of debate, anticipating the rights-centred turn that later reached the global IGF [5][3]

4. Six Working Sessions — From Access to Security and Privacy

Sessions: Working sessions (9-11 August)

• Six working sessions — access, emerging issues, governance for development, human rights, resource management, and security and privacy — distilled the regional priorities to carry to the 6th IGF in Nairobi that September [5][3][1]
• An ICANN-hosted reception opened the meeting socially, and sponsorship from Google, IDRC and Brazil's CGI.br/NIC.br showed international, private and research-funding institutions lining up behind the regional process [5][3][1]

Three-Minute Short Talk — Your Questions Answered

Q. What did this meeting decide?

A. Nothing binding — it prepared the region's priorities for the UN IGF in Kenya the next month. But organisationally it was decisive: the agenda came from an open call for input, and formal presentations gave way to equal, all-participant debate.

Q. Why Trinidad and Tobago?

A. A forum calling itself 'Latin American and Caribbean' had met three times without ever leaving the Spanish/Portuguese-speaking mainland. With the Caribbean Telecommunications Union as co-organiser, the fourth edition finally made the Caribbean part of the name real.

Q. Why should I care?

A. Putting freedom of expression at the centre of governance debates in 2011 — the year of the Arab Spring — anticipated the rights-centred turn of the global IGF, and bottom-up agenda-setting via open consultation is now standard practice for forums worldwide.

What Is LACIGF? (for first-time readers)

LACIGF is a National or Regional IGF Initiative (NRI), aligning local internet governance discussion with global IGF principles.

Why It Matters to You

What was discussed here becomes the baseline for national digital policy, platform rules and AI regulation worldwide within a few years. The principles confirmed at the 2011 meeting are the foundation of the "next rules" for the phones, social platforms and AI services you use every day.

Sources & References

1. IV Reunión Preparatoria para el Foro de Gobernanza de Internet（公式サイト・アーカイブ） — archive.lacigf.org (accessed 2026-07-10)
2. IV Regional Preparatory Meeting for IGF — English site (venue, organisers, sponsors) — archive.lacigf.org (accessed 2026-07-10)
3. IV Regional Preparatory Meeting for IGF — Agenda — archive.lacigf.org (accessed 2026-07-10)
4. Nosotros（LACIGFの沿革。第4回でのボトムアップ議題設定・CTU参加の記述） — LACIGF（公式） (accessed 2026-07-10)
5. Reunión Regional Preparatoria para el Foro para la Gobernanza de Internet — Wikipedia（スペイン語版） (accessed 2026-07-10)
6. Latin American and Caribbean Regional Preparatory Meeting for the Internet Governance Forum (LACIGF) — GISWatch / APC (accessed 2026-07-10)
7. Foros anteriores（歴代開催一覧、LACIGF 4: 2011年8月9〜11日・ポートオブスペイン） — LACIGF（公式） (accessed 2026-07-10)

Quotes are translated or condensed from the records listed above. Bracketed numbers [n] refer to the source list.

Related links

• IGF official (NRI list): https://www.intgovforum.org/en/content/national-and-regional-igf-initiatives
• Japan IGF: https://japanigf.jp/
• Yuki Nakazawa's blog: https://nkzw.jp/category/igf/

Revision History

Rev. 1 — published 9 August 2011, 12:00 (Article published)

Rev. 2 — updated 10 July 2026, 23:16 (Fully revised into the in-depth edition: added the 3-line summary, minutes digest, short talk, source list and diagrams (all quotes verified against the listed sources))

— 中澤祐樹