The United Nations’ work on the Global Digital Compact (GDC) is officially over. After nearly two years of consultations, negotiations and several text revisions, the GDC became another part of the intricate mosaic of the documents reconfirming the multistakeholder model of the global Internet Governance. While the long-term influence of this non-binding document is not clear yet, it will be, for better or worse, referred to in the future Internet Governance negotiations. One such negotiation is the upcoming review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) taking place next year.
The adopted version of the GDC to some extent reflects the initial CENTR submission to the GDC consultation. Namely, the multistakeholder cooperation is embedded in one of the 13 guiding principles with the technical community highlighted as one of the key stakeholders. Focus is also given to fundamental human rights, that constitute one of the five main objectives of the whole GDC. As such, the signatories commit to “prevent and address any adverse impact on human rights arising from the use of digital and emerging technologies […] including through human rights due diligence and establishing effective oversight and remedy mechanisms”.
The internet as a global resource
The goal of the GDC is to reach an “inclusive, open sustainable, fair, safe and secure digital future for all”. This can only be achieved when we collectively manage to steer clear of developing legal and technical frameworks that would undermine the foundational principle of the internet as we know it, namely interoperability. This principle applies to both technical standards and legal regimes.
The GDC acknowledges the risk and aims to “prevent, identify and address risks of fragmentation of the Internet in a timely manner”. This is a welcome reflection, albeit one increasingly more difficult to ensure. So far it remains rhetorical, as we see more and more attempts to proactively develop standards at a regional level, instead of promoting global interoperability and development of open standards in response to new technological challenges. “Technical standards are of strategic importance. Europe's technological sovereignty, ability to reduce dependencies and protection of EU values will rely on our ability to be a global standard-setter.” as proclaimed by Thierry Breton, the former European Commissioner for Internal Market. Similarly, there are also risks of legal fragmentation, such as introduction of regulations with extraterritorial reach that have an impact on technical functionality of the internet's infrastructure. EU Geographical indications reform, or the NIS 2 Directive are just a couple of examples, where the legislation is regulating an underlying technical functionality of the Domain Name System, which is global in principle. This inadvertently affects the DNS ecosystem beyond EU borders.
GDC negotiation process
The key features of multistakeholder approach are transparency, access and equality among the stakeholders. The actual GDC negotiation process was, however, far from this ideal. Instead, the process took place in an intergovernmental setting. The representatives of Sweden and Zambia responsible for facilitating the negotiation process, so-called co-facilitators, solicited stakeholders’ feedback through dedicated sessions for interested stakeholders throughout the negotiations. However, during the consultation sessions the non-governmental participants could deliver only short oral statements with no further discussion or written follow-ups in the form of summaries or notes. Therefore, it was not immediately obvious how the co-facilitators reflected on the feedback received. Similarly, the GDC website did not always present the latest information and documents.
Where does this leave us for the upcoming WSIS+20 review next year? The preference for multilateral intergovernmental setting of the GDC negotiations is not entirely surprising given that it was a UN driven process, which focused on a highly politicised topics of digital governance, such as Artificial Intelligence (unlike the negotiations of the original WSIS process in 2005). Therefore, it is important to take the GDC negotiation as a lesson learned and try to ensure that the WSIS+20 review is once again a true multistakeholder process which captures all the diverse perspectives across geographical and stakeholder groups.
The technical community is getting ready for this challenge. Even before the GDC negotiations were concluded, important initiatives were gathering steam. Faced with the real threat of destabilisation of the multistakeholder approach, organisations across the technical community, including CENTR members, formed a Technical Community Coalition for Multistakeholderism. Their goal is to defend, evolve and strengthen the multistakeholder approach, by being an active participant and insist on technical community standing as an equal stakeholder with governments and other interest groups participating in this important process.
