The Global Digital Compact: a concerning process

In our last Internet governance blog, we told you about the technical community coalition that InternetNZ has been working with others to establish, and shared with you its Statement of Purpose. “A Technical Community Coalition for Multistakeholderism” (TCCM) aims to raise the global Internet technical community’s collective voice to defend multistakeholderism and shape the future of Internet governance. 

The focus of TCCM this year has been the Global Digital Compact (GDC) which is being negotiated by United Nations Member States in New York, and is expected to be finalised for adoption at the Summit for the Future in September 2024. The TCCM has developed joint positions and statements to feed directly into the United Nations GDC process, and to support TCCM members to provide direct input to their governments, who are the parties negotiating the GDC. You can find some of the TCCM joint positions linked at the bottom of our last blog.

This involvement has highlighted to the TCCM the challenges that stakeholders have faced and continue to face in engaging in the GDC process. The coalition has deep concerns about this process and about the impact the process will have on the resulting Compact, and has shared these concerns in a joint statement (which we set out below, minus signatories).

We are always keen to hear from you with any questions or comments about our Internet governance work. Please email us at internet.governance@internetnz.net.nz.

Joint Statement from A Technical Community Coalition for Multistakeholderism: Our concerns on the Global Digital Compact process & possible outcomes

We, the undersigned, are aligned organisations working in the internet’s technical community with a long history of involvement in multi-stakeholder Internet governance. We are writing to convey our concerns around the Global Digital Compact (GDC) process and, consequently, the possible outcomes of the Compact.  

Following our regular engagement in multi-stakeholder inputs for the Compact’s development, we remain unclear about how the views put forward in these engagements have effectively and meaningfully contributed to the GDC zero draft and its subsequent revisions. We are also troubled that recent multi-stakeholder consultations have not catered to global participation in terms of format and selected date and time.  

These challenges run contrary to the Compact’s invitation to “international and regional organisations, the private sector, academia, technical community and civil society groups to endorse the Compact and take active part in its implementation and follow-up” (para. 65, Rev. 2). Noting that the latest version of the Compact (Rev. 3) and further schedule remain unpublished, we also have continued concerns about the transparency and openness of this process.

Despite widespread support for multi-stakeholder Internet governance across all stakeholder consultations, and strong advocacy from many Member States, there appears to be real potential that such support will not be meaningfully reflected in the agreed-upon Compact. Multi-stakeholder Internet governance involves all stakeholder groups — governments, civil society, academia, the private sector and the technical community — in policy decisions about how the operational aspects of the Internet are managed, on equal footing.  

Finally, we remain very concerned about the scope and breadth of UN-led initiatives outlined in all versions of the Compact. Despite repeated calls from stakeholders and many Member States for the scaling back of such new initiatives and structures, there has been limited meaningful reduction or tempering of the new multilateral initiatives proposed in the GDC. We have also repeatedly called for the bolstering of multi-stakeholder initiatives including those that were created as part of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) outcomes, in particular the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).  

We highlight similar concerns to those outlined above in recent statements from other members of the technical community and members of civil society, respectively. We call for additional, timely and meaningful engagement with the multi-stakeholder community as this process progresses, with clear indication of how these inputs have been integrated into the outcomes of this Compact.  

It is only through the regular and meaningful involvement of all stakeholder groups in the Compact’s development that we can successfully achieve its stated goal of “shared principles for an open, free and secure digital future for all”.