IGF MKD 2024 (North Macedonia IGF) — In-Depth Report: Minutes Digest & 3-Line Summary

The 3-Line Summary

1. On 4 December 2024 the seventh IGF MKD met in Skopje, welcomed by GEANT CEO and UN IGF Leadership Panel member Lise Fuhr, with four panels plus a research presentation.
2. The pillars: a national study on cyberbullying among youth, online safety in schools, the Cyber Pathways women-in-cyber programme, and AI as a legal and technological challenge.
3. The agenda's centre of gravity shifted to children, education and gender — internet governance closing in on everyday life, with obvious parallels for school and child-policy debates elsewhere.

Welcome — this is the Japan IGF Support Organization. This in-depth report on IGF MKD 2024 (North Macedonia IGF) 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)

(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. Cyberbullying Research — Talking from National Youth Data

Sessions: Research presentation: 'Cyberbullying: Characteristics, Consequences and Impact on Youth in Macedonia' (12:10–12:25, Marina Dodevska and Nikola Janev)

• Findings from a national study of cyberbullying among Macedonian youth were presented, grounding the education panel that followed [1]
• Starting the debate from home-grown data rather than abstract policy talk was the edition's most distinctive move [1]

2. Online Safety at School — Teachers and a Children's-Rights NGO on Stage

Sessions: Panel 2: online safety in education (12:25–13:10)

• Teachers from two Skopje primary schools and a representative of First Children's Embassy in the World 'Megjashi' debated classroom-level online safety [1]
• Milena Ignjatova of SmartUP Social Innovation Lab moderated, bridging schools, NGOs and the innovation sector [1]

3. Women in Cyber — Reporting the 'Cyber Pathways' Results

Sessions: Panel 3: 'Empowering Educators, Inspiring Women: Cyber Pathways Achievements and Talent Development' (13:30–14:15)

• Liljana Pecova-Ilieska — the forum's 2018 GDPR speaker, now manager of Cyber Pathways for Women — moderated a report on training educators and developing female cyber talent [1]
• The global gender gap in cybersecurity was addressed through the concrete track record of a regional programme [1]

4. AI — A Challenge on Legal and Technological Fronts

Sessions: Panel 4: 'Artificial Intelligence – a Legal and Technological Challenge' (14:15–15:00, moderated by Prof. Boro Jakimovski)

• Law professor Neda Zdraveva, FINKI's Riste Stojanov and AI researcher Svetlana Kordumova took stock of legal and technical challenges in the year the EU's AI Act was adopted [1]
• The latest instalment of an AI thread running since 2018, keeping lawyers and engineers on the same panel [1]

5. Digitalisation Trends and Global Links — A Welcome from GEANT's CEO

Sessions: Opening (11:00–11:05), ICANN address (11:05–11:25) and Panel 1: digitisation — Macedonia and global trends (11:25–12:10)

• GEANT CEO Lise Fuhr, a UN IGF Leadership Panel member, sent the welcome, and ICANN's Andrea Beccalli spoke online on 'ICANN and the Internet landscape, preserving the global Internet' [1][2]
• Panel 1 put Makedonski Telekom's Stanislav Vasilkovski and Evrotrust's Kiro Burnazovski on domestic and global digitisation trends, moderated by founding coordinator Icokaev (AI LEGAL MK) [1][2]

Three-Minute Short Talk — Your Questions Answered

Q. What did this meeting decide?

A. Nothing binding — the seventh annual round-table where government, schools, business and NGOs review the year's digital issues, this time anchored by a national cyberbullying study.

Q. What stood out?

A. How everyday the agenda became: from national strategies and domains in earlier years to primary-school online safety and women's cyber careers.

Q. Why should I care?

A. Cyberbullying and classroom online safety are frontline issues in every school system, and closing cybersecurity's gender gap is a shared global project.

What Is North Macedonia IGF? (for first-time readers)

North Macedonia 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 2024 meeting are the foundation of the "next rules" for the phones, social platforms and AI services you use every day.

Sources & References

1. Agenda 2024（7th Annual Internet Governance Forum MKD 2024 – 04.12.2024 プログラム） — IGF MKD（公式サイト） (accessed 2026-07-11)
2. IGF MKD 公式サイト（年次アーカイブ一覧。「8th Annual IGF MKD 2026 – 18.11.2026」の予告により2024=第7回の回次を裏付け） — IGF MKD (accessed 2026-07-11)
3. North Macedonia IGF（NRI公式ページ。直接アクセスは403のため検索スニペット経由で確認） — UN IGF Secretariat (accessed 2026-07-11)
4. Aleksandar Icokaev – Statement of Interest（初代コーディネーターのIGFSA提出声明。系列史・回次の基準） — Internet Governance Forum Support Association (accessed 2026-07-11)

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 12 June 2024, 10:00 (Article published)

Rev. 2 — updated 17 July 2026, 12:32 (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