Baby Steps Towards a Global Digital Compact: Reflections on the Zero Draft

By Chris Buckridge.

This post probably won’t age well.

That’s the risk in commenting on a document so unambiguously labelled a “Zero Draft” – the push and pull of multilateral negotiations will significantly alter the document before any final agreement is reached, relegating this draft (and this blog post!) to the status of historical artefact.

But for those who’ve been swept along in the process to develop a United Nations Global Digital Compact (GDC), the recent publication of a Zero Draft feels like a major milestone, and a first sense of what such a compact might look like. Moreover, it provides important insight into how that process has gone thus far – what impact can we see from the stakeholder consultations and Member State inputs? – and where we might expect it to go from here. For the incurable optimists among us, it’s a moment to hope that we might help steer the coming negotiations in a positive direction and fulfil the ambition laid out by the Secretary-General in his original vision.

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The GDC zero draft: the good, the bad, and the ugly

By Konstantinos Komaitis.

The long-awaited Global Digital Compact (GDC) zero draft dropped on April 1, and there is a lot in it. It requires time to absorb it all; with discussions already in progress since Friday, April 5, time is an issue. Also, it is important to remember that this is the “zero draft” and, by the time this process ends at the end of May, the text will look very different. This means that there is no need to panic; at least, not yet.

The zero draft gives a good snapshot of where the mind of the United Nations–and those of its member states–is.

Here is my high-level take.

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