NL IGF Event 2017 — Shape Your Digital Future! — In-Depth Report: Minutes Digest & 3-Line Summary

The 3-Line Summary

On 10 October 2017, some 100 people filled the Glazen Zaal in The Hague for 'NL IGF Event 2017', themed — like December's IGF in Geneva — 'Shape your digital future!'.
Human-rights ambassador Kees van Baar's keynote laid out the reality of Internet shutdowns, warning governments that 'if you want to attract investment, you should not lock down the Internet'.
Six workshops, from online harassment and sextortion to the future of connectivity, produced the Dutch input for Geneva — an early national forum to put shutdowns front and centre.

Welcome — this is the Japan IGF Support Organization. This in-depth report on NL IGF Event 2017 — Shape Your Digital Future! draws on official outputs, session records and on-site reporting. In a hurry? The three lines above and the diagrams carry the gist.

Conference at a Glance (from official records)

Item	Detail
Official name	NL IGF Event 2017 — Shape Your Digital Future!
Dates	Tuesday 10 October 2017 (13:00–17:00)
Venue	Glazen Zaal (Glass Hall), The Hague
Theme	'Shape your digital future!', aligned with the overarching theme of IGF 2017 in Geneva
Participants	Around 100 attendees
Workshops	One keynote and six workshops
Host	The Ministry of Economic Affairs, SIDN and ECP — the NL IGF consortium; moderated by Marjolijn Bonthuis (NL IGF coordinator and deputy director of ECP)

(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. Internet Shutdowns and Human Rights — 'Shutdowns Stop the Economy Too'

Sessions: Keynote by Kees van Baar, the Dutch Human Rights Ambassador

"If you want to attract investment, you should not lock down the Internet (translated from Dutch)"
— Kees van Baar (Dutch Human Rights Ambassador) [1]

"You become inventive. Mind you, these were not human rights defenders at first — that is what you become (translated from Dutch)"
— Kees van Baar [1]

Van Baar recounted Ethiopia's nationwide shutdown halting schools, healthcare and farm shipments, and Cameroon's anglophone blackout driving activists to the border to tweet — positioning the Netherlands as 'the advocate' of a free and secure Internet [1]
He urged ISPs to push back on shutdown orders as 'off limits', and cited Bangladesh and Pakistan, where the Internet is used to track government critics, to argue for digitally protecting human rights defenders [1]

2. Online Intimidation and Privacy — 'Privacy Doesn't Fit the Business Model'

Sessions: Workshop 'Out of my Hands?' (Catherine Garcia van Hoogstraten, The Hague University of Applied Sciences), among six

The session examined the tech ecosystem's response to social intimidation and sextortion, proposing privacy built into business models and privacy risk assessments before sharing [1]
Participants concluded platforms deliberately withhold risk information — telling users would stop them sharing — making better user information and awareness the workshop's takeaway [1]

3. The Geneva Pipeline — Six National Workshops Feeding the UN IGF

Sessions: All six workshops, spanning Internet freedom, cybersecurity, infrastructure and multistakeholderism

Ministries, business, politicians, civil society, students and academics took part, with each workshop's output compiled as Dutch preparation for the IGF in Geneva (18–21 December 2017) [1][2]
Emerging topics — blockchain governance, cyber diplomacy, fake news — were on the agenda from the announcement stage, the national IGF serving as an early-warning forum for the international debate [1][2]

Three-Minute Short Talk — Your Questions Answered

Q. What did the meeting decide?

A. Nothing binding — the output of roughly 100 participants became the Dutch preparation brief for the UN IGF in Geneva that December.

Q. What was the heaviest topic?

A. Internet shutdowns. The human-rights ambassador showed how blackouts halted schools, hospitals and farms, warning governments: no investment if you lock down the net.

Q. Why does it matter?

A. Shutdown diplomacy is now on every democracy's agenda, and the debates on sextortion and platform transparency map directly onto consumer-protection fights elsewhere.

What Is Netherlands IGF? (for first-time readers)

Netherlands IGF 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 2017 meeting are the foundation of the "next rules" for the phones, social platforms and AI services you use every day.