Papers

By Jimson Olufuye.

The Netmundial+10 convened at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, Sao Paulo, Brazil on April 29-30, 2024. It was a logical follow-up to the maiden edition in 2014. The 2014 edition took place as a result of the urgent need to address the asymmetric oversight by the United States [https://aficta.africa/latest-news/480-the-evolving-face-of-enhanced-cooperation-what-is-next-after-wgec2-0] of the critical Internet resource (domain name system & the IANA function) which had become a global resource for the benefit of all.

Continue reading “Netmundial+10: projecting the benefit of Multistakeholderism”

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.

Continue reading “Baby Steps Towards a Global Digital Compact: Reflections on the Zero Draft”

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.

Continue reading “The GDC zero draft: the good, the bad, and the ugly”

By Jorge Cancio.

Principles of open and inclusive multistakeholder collaboration in digital governance are scattered in various foundational documents and declarations, but nowadays we lack an agreed set of principles that would guide multistakeholder collaboration and decision-making. This means that communities wishing to establish multistakeholder collaboration lack clear reference when doing so. It also means that some processes that lack fundamental multistakeholder features may be presented as “multistakeholder” in a sort of “white-washing” exercise.

Continue reading “Towards a protocol of protocols for multistakeholder collaboration and decision-making”

By Avri Doria.

As more and more institutions begin to claim that they adhere to multistakeholder models, it becomes possible to either reject the claims of those with processes that do not promote the active participation of relevant communities or to develop a set of criteria that can be used to rate maturity levels and growth as a multistakeholder organization. As I chose not to reject an institution’s claims of its character and intentions, I have opted for trying to delineate some maturity levels that I have experienced in organizations that make a claim to being multistakeholder organizations.

Continue reading “Multistakeholder models: Maturity Levels”