Papers

By Jordan Carter.

This article was first published in Intermedia on 20 June 2024.

In 2025, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly will make decisions on the future of a vital but little-known set of technology governance processes that will shape the evolution and development of the internet. This UN work comes about from a review of progress since the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) concluded in 2005. Next year marks twenty years since the summit and the review, and associated decision-making, has been dubbed ‘WSIS+20’.

Much has moved on in the technology world since 2005, a time before smartphones, high speed wireless connectivity, the marvels of nascent AI technologies and more. Yet the framework developed at WSIS has in many respects proved flexible and adaptable enough to support progress towards the vision agreed in the summit’s first phase (2003), to ‘build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilise and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life’.

Continue reading “How much influence should governments have over the internet?”

By Regine Grienberger and Lilian Georgieva-Weiche.

Global endeavors to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are increasingly gearing up speed and digital technologies together with online connectivity are among the key agents for change. All efforts should have one common vision in mind: one where all citizens of the world have access to a safe, enriching, and productive online experience at a reasonable cost.

However, as we try to bridge the digital divide, we face a crucial balancing act: While digital transformation promises substantial economic and social benefits, it also opens the door to heightened cybersecurity risks, with significant political and economic implications for all countries alike.

Continue reading “Building Cyber Resilience for Sustainable Development”

By Prof. Dr. Rolf H. Weber.

2024 and 2025 will be exciting years for Internet Governance: The Global Digital Compact (GDC) should reach the final shape and the WSIS+20 celebration might be a milestone for the future of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). At the time of the two WSIS Summits (2003/05), Internet Governance was often seen as a mainly technical issue with some political implications. In the meantime, the equation appears to have reversed: Internet Governance has become a mainly political issue with a technical component. For the future, different pillars are important, namely, based on the multistakeholder participation principle, a consolidation of the institutional framework, the better alignment with generally accepted international legal principles and the inclusion of new policy issues into the debates.

Continue reading “IGF future: Why we need Consolidation and Acknowledged Legal Principles”

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”