Agenda

Senior advisor on internet governance, policy advocacy and strategic planning (consultant) at APC. Anriette Esterhuysen was the executive director of APC until March 2017. Prior to joining APC, Anriette was executive director of SANGONeT, an internet service provider and training institution for civil society, labour and community organisations. She was active in the struggle against Apartheid from 1980 onwards. From 1987 to 1992 she did information and communication work in development and human rights organisations in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Ambassador Thomas Schneider is leading the Swiss delegation in various fora in the field of digital and internet governance, including AI. He is the chair of the Council of Europe’s Committee on AI (CAI), mandated to negotiate a binding convention on AI. He has been a co-initiator of EuroDIG and is the president of its Support Association, since 2012. He is a bureau member of the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Media and Information Society (he was its chair in 2018-19 and vice-chair in 2020-21). He has also been a member of the bureau of the CoE’s Ad Hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence in 2019-2021. From 2014-2017, he was the chair of ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee and in this role negotiated the compromise among governments regarding the “IANA Stewardship transition”, the biggest reform in the ICANN system. He was a vice-chair of the OECD’s Committee for Digital Economy Policy (2020-2022). He was responsible for the organization of the 12th UN IGF in Geneva in 2017 co-chair of the IGF’s Multistakeholder Advisory Group in 2017. He participated in the meetings of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, as personal advisor of Swiss president Doris Leuthard (2018-2019). Since 2003, he has been coordinating the Swiss activities with regard to the follow-up of the UN World Summit on the Information Society.

Azin Tadjdini is a human rights officer working on technology and human rights at OHCHR. She has previously worked on the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression and as desk officer in the Middle East and North Africa Section at OHCHR.  

Ms. Tadjdini holds a Master in Law from the University in Oslo, an LLM in Public International Law from Georgetown University and a PhD from the University of Oslo. 

Is Senior Programme Specialist at UNESCO CI Sector focusing her work on freedom of expression in the digital environment.  Before she was the regional Director for ARTICLE 19's Office for Mexico and Central America and previously, she ocupied a position as the organization's Right to Information Program Officer, spearheading the development of projects related to education for development. Ms. Ruelas also worked in the Right to Information office of Mexico's National Commission for Human Rights and has a vast experience collaborating in various human rights organizations both in Mexico and Peru. She is a lawyer and holds a Master's Degree in Public Administration and Public Policy from the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superior de Monterrey.

Besides InternetLab’s Associate Director, Mariana is an assistant professor with a tenure track at the University of Saint Gallen, Switzerland. She is a lawyer and holds a Ph.D., a master’s degree and a bachelor’s from the University of São Paulo Law School in the area of sociology of law. She did part of her Ph.D. as a visiting researcher at UC Berkeley, researching international aspects of intellectual property law. She was also a DAAD fellow at LMU in Munich, a participant in the Linkage Program at Yale University, and a student at the WIPO Summer School.

Mariana is dedicated to researching the relations between technology and society, regulation of the digital economy, and fundamental rights in the online environment. She has experience in equity policies, gender equality and violence, access to knowledge, culture and education, intellectual property, the impact of technologies on democracy and social mobilization, and data justice issues.

She is also a researcher at CEBRAP’s Law and Democracy Nucleus. Before joining and directing InternetLab, she was a researcher and professor at the Center for Technology and Society at Fundação Getúlio Vargas, and legal coordinator at the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo. Between 2019 and 2021, she coordinated Creative Commons Brazil and worked on strengthening its national network. Before becoming a professor in the University of Saint Gallen, Mariana was also a professor at Insper, where she taught undergraduate courses for business and economics students and conceived and coordinated the Certification in Law and Technology in Executive Education.