DiploFoundation announces CEI fellowships for 7th IGF

DiploFoundation is pleased to announce the recipients of two fellowships to attend the 7th Internet Governance Forum in Baku, Azerbaijan on 6-9 November, 2012. The fellows are being sponsored by the Central European Initiative (CEI) Cooperation Activity Funds, as part of the Capacity Building Programme in Internet Governance for Central Europe.

Thanks to the sponsorships, the fellows will be able to attend the meeting and participate in the debates, and make a positive contribution to their country or region.

The selected fellows are: Aida Mahmutović, from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Nikola Božić, from Belgrade, Serbia.

Aida Mahmutović was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is a law student at the University of Sarajevo. Her first contact with the IG world was as a trainee at Centre for eGovernance Development for South East Europe (CeGD), Ljubljana, Slovenia. One of her main tasks was to write a study on ‘Cloud Computing – Its Legal Challenges’. This is when she became interested in Internet and Law, and when she discovered that she would like to dedicate more of her time to learning about IG from a legal point of view. Aida participated in several e-related conferences, including the Ljubljana Forum (2011), the Renaissance for eGovernance (2012), the Cloud Computing Forum (2012), the Bled Forum on Europe (2012), where she was a speaker on ‘Enabling Prosperity of Balkans’, a Scenario Building Seminar on ‘Improving Cooperation in SEE through Developing the eRCC’; and DiploFoundation’s Internet Governance and Diplomacy Workshop in Bosnia (2012). Aida speaks English, Spanish, French, Slovenian and three languages spoken in the territory of Ex-Yugoslavia (Bosnian as mother-tongue, Serbian and Croatian). Her future ambition is to continue her studies in Internet law while combining her knowledge of languages, and to work on projects that would help to introduce IG to the youth from SEE countries.

Nikola Božić was born in Valjevo, Serbia in 1978. He participated in Diplo’s Internet Governance Capacity Building Programme between 2004 and 2005, following which he was part of the Diplo’s Team at WSIS II in Tunis in 2005. Nikola was an active educator for different activities by DiploFoundation, including facilitator on emerging IG issues on the IGCB program (2007), coordinator of the e-round table on ‘Youth and IG’ (2007), and tutor of the IGCBP Research Phase (2008). He also has taken an active role in national IG processes, and was a member of the organising committee of the 4th EuroDIG in Belgrade (2011). Nikola also helped with translating the book An Introduction to Internet Governance by Dr Jovan Kurbalija into Serbian in 2011. He is an active member of the IGF society and Diplo’s IG community, and has participated in all the annual IGFs and EuroDIG meetings directly or remotely.