The 3-Line Summary
- On 28 November 2017 the first national IGF of (then) Macedonia, IGF MKD 2017, met at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Skopje, bringing government, technical, academic and civil-society voices into three sessions.
- The Cyrillic top-level domain .мкд, the newly operational national CSIRT MKD-CIRT, and fake news and media literacy topped the agenda; conclusions were captured in the IGF MKD 2017 Messages.
- With greetings from the UN IGF Secretariat, EuroDIG and SEEDIG, this was a textbook launch of a small-country multistakeholder forum — hosted, notably, by the foreign ministry itself.
Welcome — this is the Japan IGF Support Organization. This in-depth report on IGF MKD 2017 (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)
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Official name | IGF MKD 2017 (North Macedonia IGF) |
| Edition | 1st annual meeting (inaugural) |
| Dates | 28 November 2017 (No date on the official page, but a full ~6-hour recording was published on 28 November 2017 (same day) by a telecom-affiliated channel; the venue banner in the outcome-document photos shows 'First Annual' with the date, and the founding coordinator's IGFSA statement records 'in November 2017 the first IGF MKD was held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs') |
| Venue | Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Skopje |
| Theme | Regional governance themes |
| Host | IGF MKD, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Information Society and Administration as institutional partners; financially assisted by the IGFSA |
| Outcome | IGF MKD 2017 Messages (outcome document) |
(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. Birth of the National IGF — Launched Under the Foreign Ministry's Roof
Sessions: Opening session: welcoming speeches by institutional partners (11:00–11:45)
"Sincere congratulations on the first IGF in Macedonia. More than 95 countries have their national IGF and the establishment of the Macedonian one is an excellent example of joining all the relevant national stakeholders — with an invitation to participate at the 12th Global Forum in Geneva to shape the digital future (from the outcome document, abridged)"
— Chengetai Masango (Programme and Technology Manager, UN IGF Secretariat) [2][3][5]
"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is an institutional partner of the Forum, and I am glad that today we are hosts of the event. Digitization as the Fourth Industrial Revolution is at the forefront of all agendas, the global, the European, the regional (from the outcome document)"
— Hilda Kolevska (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) [2][3][5]
- SEEDIG executive committee chair Sorina Teleanu noted the forum had been announced six months earlier at the 3rd SEEDIG meeting in Ohrid 'and is now reality' [2][3][5]
- Founding coordinator Aleksandar Icokaev traces the idea to an IGFSA session at an ICANN meeting; the IGFSA financially assisted the 2017 and 2018 editions [2][3][5]
2. The Cyrillic Domain .мкд — Infrastructure for Language and Identity
Sessions: Session 1: digital governance and identity (11:45–12:30)
"The Cyrillic top-level domain is a very important national resource that represents our language, our alphabet and the territory of the Republic — let's make the internet richer by using Macedonian language and alphabet (from the outcome document, abridged)"
— Sanja Simonova (MARnet, the Macedonian Academic and Research Network) [2][1]
- MARnet, registry for .mk, pitched the 2014-introduced Cyrillic TLD .мкд under the banner 'The Internet learns Cyrillic' [2][1]
- Prof. Boro Jakimovski (FINKI) presented digital identity via the eduGAIN academic federation, and British Ambassador Charles Garrett described the UK Foreign Office's pioneering social-media diplomacy [2][1]
3. Cybersecurity — A Young National CIRT and the Missing National Strategy
Sessions: Session 2: cybersecurity (12:45–13:30)
"A national strategy for regulation of cyber security is essential in order to achieve the level of security we are pursuing (from the outcome document)"
— Tatjana Tapandzieva (Makedonski Telekom) [2][1]
- Aleksandar Acev of the Agency for Electronic Communications presented MKD-CIRT, the national incident-response centre operating only since 2016 [2][1]
- The telecom side asked whether regulation keeps pace with technology, calling for cybersecurity maturity assessments across companies and institutions [2][1]
4. Fake News and Media Literacy — The Plight of Online Journalism
Sessions: Session 3: online enforcement and media (13:45–14:45)
"As a result, online journalism in Macedonia is characterized by lack of money, stealing other people's content and superficiality. Journalists are not always guilty of this (from the outcome document)"
— Goran Mihajlovski (editor-in-chief, news site SDK 'Sakam da Kazam') [2][1]
- Held just after the 'Macedonian fake-news factories' of the 2016 US election made the country's name notorious, the fake-news session was painfully local: many online outlets, panellists said, do not even know professional standards [2][1]
- Law professor Neda Zdraveva covered copyright and media, while React's Eli Mufisovski called for international cooperation on online enforcement against counterfeits [2][1]
Three-Minute Short Talk — Your Questions Answered
Q. What did this meeting actually decide?
A. Nothing binding — it was the first edition of a UN-IGF-style national dialogue where government, business and civil society talk as equals. The takeaways were captured in the IGF MKD 2017 Messages.
Q. Why was it held at the foreign ministry?
A. For a small country, internet governance is also foreign policy. The ministry acted as institutional partner and bridge to the UN IGF and ICANN world, lending the forum its rooms and its weight.
Q. Why should I care?
A. The fake-news debate was as local as it gets — right after the 'Macedonian fake-news factories' story — and the Cyrillic .мкд domain shows how a small language community claims its space on the internet.
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 2017 meeting are the foundation of the "next rules" for the phones, social platforms and AI services you use every day.
Sources & References
- Agenda 2017（IGF MKD 2017 プログラム） — IGF MKD（公式サイト） (accessed 2026-07-11)
- IGF MKD 2017 Messages（成果文書PDF） — IGF MKD（公式サイト） (accessed 2026-07-11)
- Aleksandar Icokaev – Statement of Interest（初代コーディネーターのIGFSA提出声明） — Internet Governance Forum Support Association (accessed 2026-07-11)
- IGF MKD（全編収録映像・約6時間・2017年11月28日公開） — A1 ONmkd（通信事業者one系YouTubeチャンネル） (accessed 2026-07-11)
- 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)
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 7 June 2017, 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
