Today's panel is going to be on the global digital compact. And as you know that in September 2021, the Secretary General released his point on the digital agenda. And the digital agenda was proposed as a global digital compact that will be agreed upon this sum in September, at the summit of the future, and the panel is, the global digital compact was supposed to be a place where the UN which is composed of member states, were able to combine all the value is digital cooperation and emergent technology issues into one central location. And they had variety of topics including connectivity, Internet fragmentation, data, privacy and trust, human rights, promoting trustworthy Internet through accountability criteria, artificial intelligence, misinformation, disinformation, a host of other technology issues, we had very lofty goals. But have we have we achieved those goals is this the best format to corral all the digital cooperation initiatives together, instead of having them disparate in different countries where we have the peace accord, the security meetings, cyber meeting separate, so they thought that they would have all one place to do it. And that is what the idea of the joke, this issue has been talked about. It's being championed by two co facilitators from Zambia, and Sweden, who were having last year, they had several different sessions, to educate member states, and Member States made a series of different contributions at the seven different stakeholder learning sessions. And they had some very brief and they had some, and they had some discussions on this issues. And then they went back and then they had to report was very high level. And now we're going through a new round of discussions. But I want to introduce my panel, who will really discuss these different angles and see whether the GDC will allow us to meet our goals. So we have Bill Drake, who we know who is the Director of International Studies at Columbia Institute for telecommunications. We have Milton Mueller, who have you also met before, and we have Elizabeth Oh, watch, who heads up the government and international government relationship at ICANN. And they will discuss these issues together and figure out where we're gonna go and how we're gonna proceed and exist the chosen vehicle. So I will turn it over to Elizabeth purse to give a little bit more of a detailed overview of the GDC and where it lives in the framework. Elizabeth.
Thank you so much, Judith. Hello, everyone. So but GDC, the global digital compact, it's, it's an acronym that has been dropped quite a bit. But there is a bit of a bit of history in the UN on digital cooperation. Where, several years ago in 2018, the UN Secretary General convened a high level panel on general on digital cooperation. And the goal really was to examine some of the digital issues that were impacting our sustainable development. And out of this panel, there was a report, the age of interconnectedness. And in there, a number of issues were identified, including challenges with the digital governance architecture. The evolution of this was a digital cooperation report with a series of recommendations around a number of issues including connectivity, security and privacy data, the digital governance architecture, and part of what the Secretary General had highlighted that in his digital cooperation report was to figure out a way to implement some of these recommendations which led to a series of roundtable Also, they will call the digital cooperation roundtables, follow on roundtables. And those were convened over a couple of years, across the number of areas to really determine how do we implement some of these recommendations. So, in 2020, just leading up to the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, the Secretary General, told member states that he was going to come back with a vision, the common agenda on how to really make these recommendations actionable. And in the common agenda, he proposed a global digital compact. And that is where we are today. And as Judith mentioned, the global digital compact encompasses several several areas among them, connecting everyone to the Internet, addressing human rights, artificial intelligence, avoiding intimate fragmentation, and so on. And so we are at a, at a place now where member states have until 2024, this year in September, to negotiate the Pact of the future. And in the Pact of the future, the global digital compact will be annexed to the fact of the future. And its intention is a way to build digital cooperation in order to foster a digital future for everyone that is open and inclusive. And I'll stop there and pass it over to to Bill.
Are you gonna go first, I don't care. They've heard from me all that.
Okay. Well, I just am not sure why I'm on this panel. Just to be a bit about it. I'm much more interested in the digital economy than I am in the United Nations based global governance initiatives. And the reason is that I think this is coming in and out. I think that the productive capabilities of the economy have a lot more to do with these digital benefits get disseminated the world and there will be global cooperation or not. But let's see if this works any better. It's it was pretty well aimed. So the the big question, I think you really have to start, and I'm sorry if this sounds cynical or unhelpful, but what traction does the United Nations system really have over the digital economy? I mean, you really have to ask that question and be pretty serious about answering it realistically, before you do invest much time and effort into the the GDC. Right. So as I explained on the first day, you know, why is ICANN an effective institution? And what does it govern? Well, it governs something that it actually has control over, which is the root or top level of these various Internet identifier systems. And so its remit as a, as a governance institution is defined by its capability to exercise certain kinds of control and policymaking over those specific things that it actually does control. And what does the United Nations control with when it comes to the digital economy? Seriously, if you're talking about connecting everybody, right, connecting everybody role require and has required, I mean, this has been going on for 30 years now. Even before, if you consider the liberalization of telecommunications. It began in the 80s and 90s. But connecting everybody people will require massive amounts of capital. Where are these connections going to come from? If they're going to the rural areas of the world or the undeveloped areas of the world or to the islands into the oceans? Where is that coming from? It's coming by merrily from private investment. Now, there are national government initiatives in which we allocate funds for But what you might call universal service. And those supplement the market process by extending connectivity to people who, who may not otherwise be able to afford it. But again, the these national governments have a funding source called taxation of their populations and their level of wealth or their level of governmental budget determines how much they can actually subsidize these things. So what is the United Nations budget? Well, it comes from donations from nation states in effect. And so, again, is the United Nations the correct agency to be financing connectivity. It's pretty obvious that it's not so the question is when they issue these grand proclamations about we should connect, everybody was like, what exactly are they doing? Are they establishing a norm? Again, okay, fine, it would be great to connect everybody. But the real question is implementation, right? It's like, where's the money gonna come from? And avoiding fragmentation. As we explained in our earlier panel on fragmentation, what is the sought source? The biggest source, I think that we all agreed on of fragmentation, or the threat of fragmentation? Is geopolitical conflict among nation states? So in what sense? Is the United Nations in a position to resolve geopolitical conflict among nation states? Well, ideally, it should be able to do that it should be the right institution to do that. But the problem is that you're entering into an institution based on the principle of sovereigns, negotiating treaties with each other. And if there's one thing we know about the current world, whether digital or non digital, it is that there are nation state power blocks, that will not cooperate, or are actually breaking down warmer forms of cooperation. You know, look at the decoupling is going on between the US and China, for example. So what were some of the other disaster orders of the GDC? Fragmentation connecting everyone?
Human rights. Alright. So, you know, the United Nations consists of a collection of states, which have highly variable records on human rights to put it mildly. Will they ever agree to? And do they have the power to enforce human rights protections upon governments that do not protect human rights? I think the answer that question is clearly no. Data governance, the world is sort of negotiating that. But again, the real negotiations are going on between individual and very large nation states, basically the US, Europe, China. And they're taking initiatives on their own. And it might be possible for the UN to serve as the basis for a globalized agreement on data protection, but it's probably unlikely maybe bill would have a better take on that. So in terms of hope, I would say generally, I'm pretty hopeful when it comes to the evolution of the digital economy as long as it is left to be free and to be governed in ways that facilitate development, freedom and growth. But I don't think that the United Nations and the GDC is going to be the vehicle for creating this kind of global cooperation in the digital economy.
Okey dokey, that was fun. So very hopeful building this nice thank you are well first of all, thank you, Elizabeth, for great setup. And mapping out sort of the background is directory and Milton pretty skeptical view. I guess I find myself in the more mixed position here. I'm skeptical, but more optimistic. But I would also be a little bit less summarily dismissive about some of these things. It's United Nations. Organizations are actively engaged in a wide variety of issues around information and communication, technology, deployment and development and governance and have been for a long time. The ITU a central role in facilitating the development of global network of telecommunications networks upon which the Internet ultimately from the context within which the Internet ultimately grew up from privately circuits and then establishment of additional networks, etc. radio spectrum ek management, crucial done in the ITU technical assistance in developing countries, various developing countries care a great deal about this and are heavily invested in the ITU. And the ITU provides a great deal of this technical assistance, training, support and efforts to roll out digital connectivity in those countries. That's just the ITU. Now we can go through the UN Commission on international trade law, which sets the global framework for electronic contracting and digital authentication and things like that. The World Intellectual Property Organization, which does intellectual property rules, there's a wide variety of activities under a wide variety of international organizations, all of which contribute in varying ways to the development of the digital economy, nationally and globally. But the there are a lot of issues that don't fall within the remit of any of those organizations, that people have often called these orphaned issues, issues that don't fit neatly into the boxes of existing organizational mandates. And there have been a lot of governments particularly in the developing world, urging the United Nations to get involved more play more proactive role in trying to fill those gaps, provide frameworks for them to be able to address things like cybersecurity, and cybercrime, and all kinds of other issues that are not well mapped with the existing frameworks. So there's been a lot of demand for international cooperation and institutions coming from member governments. And the Secretary General's Office is responsive to that, because that's their job. That's one aspect. The other aspect, I think, let's be honest, sure, probably the Secretary General would like to play a role in this space, and have a legacy of having contributed to it. He is by background and engineer has an interest in technology. No Secretary General has really played a central role in Information Society issues. Kofi Annan, during the World Summit on the Information Society 20 years ago, did a few things. But basically, they were giving mandates to people to go out and pursue actions like creating the Internet Governance Forum and so on, not so much a direct, active engaged role. So Qataris has been looking for a way to play a role here. And in that context, then started to push for some sort of an integrative role for the General Secretariat in New York to play a coordinating role among all the different UN agencies, and to play an additional role of filling in gaps by creating new mechanisms. That's where we get into problematic stuff. As Judy said, in her introduction, there's a certain tendency in the thinking behind this, to want to centralize responsibilities in some new institutional form. Because that's a simple way for the UN to be able to have control over things, and for people to build up budgets, resources, institutional capacities, etc, which are valued prizes in the UN kind of context. So there's a lot of incentives for the UN to try to get engaged and try to make a name for itself, and try to feel like it's serving the interests of countries, particularly developing countries who are screaming, demanding, oh, there's all these issues out there, and there's no place for us to deal with them. What do we do? So the global dish digital compact became sort of the vehicle to embody all those aspirations. The problem has been, I think, the way they've gone about it, the global digital compact, whatever, I think I'd like to tears, what I think is his incentives, his intentions are good. But the way they proceeded as they went out, they they hired a technology envoy, to be the lead person to drive the initiative, and the technology on why quite frankly, he has viewed this as a way to build some new organizational capacity that he would have control over within the United Nations. So there's been a push from the start, we have to create new stuff. There are several problems that one is they've been absolutely uninterested in learning from experience, the world some of the information society and the processes after it. We went through 20 something years of fighting over the role of international organizations, whether to create a new organization and enhance cooperation negotiations, etc. And over and over these things deadlocked because there was no agreement among the major power blocks to do anything. And then This new initiative now is not taking onboard any lessons learned from what's been done before. So they're coming, coming back and proposing whole new initiatives as if nothing has happened previously, and does if all the actors were mobilized in the context of with this, and the initiatives after it around the IGF and around enhanced cooperation around all these other activities aren't there. So there's been almost no real effort to engage in a serious way, with the global multi stakeholder community. They have had some so called Open consultations, which I've attended some of them, and they're not real consultations, there are opportunities for people to each give three minute speeches, which are then ignored. And then, and then the technology, tech, and voice office comes out with a proposal doing precisely the opposite of what everybody was saying they should do in the consultation. So the consultations are kind of like, it's all window dressing. It's not a serious engagement. And that's the problem. So we have, we have a process that is not being driven in quite the right way. It's not true, sufficiently transparent, accountable, inclusive, participatory, and it is prone towards a sort of bureaucratic, central centralized mechanism, building agenda. And when you start to approach things this way, you can get into two difficult terrain. The first big proposal was to create a digital Cooperation forum, you might remember this, there were they they proposed that they would create essentially something that was more or less a replica of the IGF. But based in New York City, under the control of the Secretary General's office, in a much more top down inter governmental way, with sort of undefined limited participation by stakeholders, the complete opposite of the way the IGF actually works. And people in the IGF community obviously took this as a bit threatening, why is the UN trying to create a whole new mechanism that seems to duplicate everything I Jeff's already doing, but doing it in a more inter governmental, inter inter governmental manner. Ultimately, that effort failed, it didn't get traction. But this was, I think, indicative of the kind of thinking that was behind this whole initiative. Now we have the big push, it's moved from digital Cooperation forum to AI. And they want to get a new international organization or capability based in New York for AI. And they've put together a high level panel. And the high level panels put out an interim report, which is mostly written before the panel was even put in place. And that report, surprise, surprise says that we need a global governance framework for AI under the United Nations compatible with United Nations Charter. So this means we're going to have an intergovernmental sovereignty based approach to governing AI, which is a widely diffused highly diverse, heterogeneous range of applications and activities. It's not as clear that that's the best approach. We agree on some points. So anyway, I'm gonna stop there. But my point was to say, there are good intentions behind this, I think, initially, there's the UN does have to be responsive to members. It's trying to create a space for itself. There's incentives there, though, for some bureaucratic entrepreneurship, which are not good. And if you create inter governmental, centralized mechanisms, these then become the toys in the usual intergovernmental battles for control. And we're gonna have authoritarian governments trying to take control of any new mechanisms and leverage them to support their particular agendas. And the question is, is that a great thing? I stop there.
Thank you, Bill. I just want to touch on I think, a couple of points that you mentioned, about centralization, having all these issues housed under the UN, but also this tendency towards reinventing the wheel. Because there's been a lot done, you know, whether it's on cybersecurity, whether it's on data protection, there's lots of frameworks there, even at the regional level. But there is a tendency to say, you know, let's do something within the UN. Let's have a contract. Let's have a compact. Let's put all those issues under that umbrella. But the thing about that is, I recall during the roundtable on digital cooperation on security and trust, and that was an interesting session, thinking about what would we like to see what as an outcome as a tangible outcome out of this work? There were suggestions perhaps to have all 193 Member States commit to cooperation to ensure that every single country has a cert something that many countries can agree Because at that time, I believe something like 7070 countries didn't have certs. They weren't able to converge around a set of ideas. But throughout that sort of brainstorming, you had both governments and then some governments protecting existing processes within the UN that are dealing with some of these issues, you have the open ended Working Group. At that time, there was a resolution that was being floated on elaboration of a Cybercrime Convention. You had some of the architects for the Microsoft cyber security technical accord, the Paris call for trust and security, all saying we have these existing structures, they're all multi stakeholder, they're all inclusive. So why do you need to build something new on security and trust, which then brings me to the next point, which is in the first digital cooperation report. The Secretary General alluded to this. My read processes and frameworks, which were part of the driver, I think, from his perspective, in trying to centralize these issues. And in the report, he said that there are just divergent approaches and ad hoc responses that threaten to fragment the interconnectedness. And from developing countries perspectives, you know, we've heard in some of these spaces is the challenge to be able to have the resource capacity to, to go from one platform to another to engage them, most of them are multistakeholder, including the G G, F, C, E, which is doing tremendous work on capacity building and cyber resilience amongst others and working with many governments. But there are some governments smaller, SIDS, and LCDs within the UN space that do come up. And they do articulate that it's very challenging, and perhaps, to include all of all of these issues and areas in in some form of agreement. However, they there are existing structures that have been working. So how do we how do we champion that throughout this process? To raise awareness? address some of the hard questions around inclusion around I don't want to use the word accountability. But efficacy, I think, is one word. I think we have seen some tractions in that with the leadership panel, for example, in the IGF that also came out of the digital cooperation. But those are just some of my ramblings.
Let's see. So I think the the message I'm getting from from you, Elizabeth, is that the the attempt to centralize some kind of, let's not even call it authority, let's call it some attempt to coordinate and centralize the policymaking process for the digital world is probably doomed to failure. Right? Not it's not just a question that there are existing efforts out there, it's that the issues are too diverse and too contentious for them for the United Nations to take a leadership role, right? This is not 1945, right? When the United Nations was sort of the world was consensus around the formation of the UN and the US was kind of the in a position to push forward and exert leadership and make everybody kind of fall into line, the world is much more polycentric now. And the digital economy, I like to call it the digital ecosystem, rather than the economy is too diverse and too decentralized and distributed. And it's creating too many new issues for a rusty old organization, like the UN, to be exerting any kind of a leadership role. And again, I think that so much of this is driven by private sector innovation and new technologies, which creates new problems constantly. And the organizations like the UN are really lagging behind. And that's a good thing. In my opinion. It's like they are not in a position to govern very much. And that allows things to develop and problems be solved in on a piecemeal basis. People will come together and cooperate when they really do need to cooperate, okay, when we really needed somebody to man Manage and govern the root of the domain name system, we got a new organization that did it, when we really needed an organization to deal with, let's say the dissemination of terrorist content on media, digital media, we got the global Internet forum to counterterrorism. And we got the Christchurch call, and we got other new forms of multi stakeholder governance that arose in response to a need. And I think what Bill was sort of hinting at but didn't come out and say, because he's a nicer guy than me is that the UN is kind of pursuing a bureaucratic self justification. In other words, they want to be relevant, they want to be perceived as in the lead. And they have an kind of an organizational imperative to do that. And in the case of the, you know, digital Cooperation Forum, that kind of goes in a bad direction, they're they're creating something that we don't need, and which is displacing something that exists. The IGF? So I, you know, I, I'm quite hopeful about the ability of certain forms of digital cooperation to take place. But I just think that the, the UN trying to run out in front of the parade and say we're leading this is really not happening.
So in the 33 years, they built it and I have known each other, we've been on many panels where he takes a strong position, and then I feel compelled to take the opposite position. So I'll now proceed to run to the opposite corner here, and just be a little bit more generous. In fact, I want to note, it's there's undoubtedly, as I said, some bureaucratic empire building going on here. There's undoubtedly people who would like to create a new, quote, organizational capacity in New York, that they manage and control that has FTEs. And budget, and authority can hold meetings, and becomes a wonderful, little signature. But let's also recognize how difficult participation in this myriad diverse heterogeneous array of governance mechanisms, institutional practices, and so on so forth, is our I don't remember the beginning sentence for, for developing countries, and particularly the Least Developing countries, least developed countries, I spent over 21 years living in Geneva, Switzerland, hanging around the United Nations, spent a lot of time interacting with governments there. I remember that there was over 40 Developing countries that could not maintain permanent representation in Geneva, at the United Nations did not have the budgetary capability to have people on the ground to represent their interests and ongoing basis. Many of these countries, their their offices would close they had one person, they they couldn't get cheap rent. They call back somebody to the Capitol because they didn't have the budget. This problem of for developing countries, especially the least developed countries, of how do you engage in international policy processes, when everything's going on in the gazillion different kinds of institutional forums, some which have very high kind of barriers to participation in terms of technical knowledge that's needed budgets, having that you need to have people who are continually allocated the responsibility to be engaged in those processes. It's very hard. And so there's been a constant push, ever since the West is in 2002, to 2005, to have some kind of one stop shop for digital issues. A lot of countries say, Look, we can't have people running around to all these different places they can't even show and look, it's not just them, even the US government. We have the US government in the back row here. Hello, there isn't. Even the US government has trouble being represented in all the different institutional forums that are going on around the digital Internet issues, and sometimes has to choose and so often, pressure is brought to bear when people pose new initiatives panels, but or else they say, We don't have the capacity to staff this. We can't even members of the UN can't all engage in this. Well, you can imagine that's a lot worse. For the least developed countries. They can't engage in these things. So of course, there's a push to have some centralized mechanisms we heard all the time. All through this, this and you remember this with Milton, how governments would say, look for telecommunications, we have the ITU for air transportation, we have IATA, for trade we have the WTO What is there for the Internet. What is there for Digital, they think that there ought to be one focal point place where they can have a certain number of staff who are allocated responsibility. And hopefully that things move slow enough that they can monitor and engage in those kinds of activities. And so we had multiple proposals the year, the Indians came out with their proposal for a surplus. If you remember, in 2011, a UN committee that would centralize all Internet activity and would meet a couple of times a year and have treaty making and enforcement responsibilities is this grandiose proposal, that would never work. But for them, for certain countries, that was an appealing idea. Then we had the enhanced cooperation negotiations. And the attempt was made to do the same thing. I'm not buying into I'm saying, This is why some of these governments have an urge that they would like to see something I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying you have to understand where the urge from their side comes from. And the United Nations, I think, tries to listen to the member governments and say, We're here, we're here for you. You want you feel something needs to be done, you think there needs to be a place, we'll try to do something. Now, whether they're doing it the right way, is a different point.
That's the point is that basically, you're conceding that it can't be done through the UN, but the UN wants to be able to do it, they want to be able to promise that they can do it. I think the point that I'd like to make is that the a more open and multi stakeholder process actually does enable the participation of smaller players more than a centralized process, right, so that you can focus on these narrower and more localized issues in a multi stakeholder open participatory context. And it doesn't have to be that government bureaucrat, it could be whoever is interested in your country, whoever is directly affected in your country can get in there and participate in these smaller more distributed forums, if we take a more of a so called multi stakeholder or private sector led approach.
So I know we don't have a crystal ball, but where do we go from here? What's next? These past two days, there's been the consultations. And you know, thank you for sharing, you know, some of the limitations of those consultations. And there have been some, I think, some good insights. Yesterday, in particular, there was the consultation with member states on some of the structural elements of others zero draft of the GDC. And a number of interventions, some of them from coalition governments, from the G 77. and China, for example, where they did mention, they would like to see, for example, the whiskers plus 20. referenced in the report, you did have also the United States supportive of analysis of including the multi stakeholder model sort of some of those, you know, key principles and references that are very important to many of us in the multi stakeholder community. One of the challenges with the global digital compact has been, what is sad and what is written. So are you
experience, I think it's going to be a more narrowly tailored kind of thing. So you can't have too much too wild and expectations for what will be in there. But I think that they will try to at least play a normative mobilizing role by saying, Here are various kinds of issues where, whether it's the number of certs around the world, or the level of connectivity, here's aspirational goals that the United Nations community should all work towards. And here's a few concrete action steps, one of which could be the AI stuff, whether you think that aI think would be a good thing, or not just a lot of time for everybody to weigh in on that idea. So I think we could probably go to conversation. So
no, I just want to introduce a slightly different idea. So there is, as people have suggested, there's a lot of things going on that purport to be policymaking, or norm shaping initiatives in this space, right? My advice is, vote with your feet. Right? If you don't think that the GDC is going to be irrelevant as I don't, I am not going to spend time on it. I'm not going to waste time trying to influence a UN process that is really has no leverage over the real world and probably will not do anything good. As for with this, the mayor phrase whistles plus 20 tells you that somebody ought to recognize that somebody should take whiskers out behind the woodshed and shoot it and get it over with right, it's got to be done right. So so there are all kinds of things going on out there regarding AI, that are going to have a lot more influence. Today, there's a news item about Musk is suing open AI for breaching their contract about being nonprofit and open and becoming controlled by Microsoft. Now, I'm not saying anything about the merits of that suit, or the ideas behind it. But that is going to have a lot more influence on the governance of AI in the future than anything that comes out of New York and the United Nations. And what also is going to have a lot more influence is is whether this debate about open source versus closed source, you know, what direction is that going to take? Are we gonna get a hybrid and the property rights that we define over the use of data by AI applications? You know, do you do you violate copyright by feeding a bunch of things in there? Or is that fair use, that is going to be a critical issue for the governance of AI. And again, the United Nations might have something useful to say about that. But if it actually happens, it's going to be implemented at the national level or through litigation, or through corporate agreements. So yes, I think we should open it up. And I'll stop there.
By the way, you know, it was Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, organization that raised the question of open AI as nonprofit status. And Musk is using Ralph Nader. How about that? So Julius, do you want us to just open up to the I don't know if we can, or you must?
Yes. I guess that's both now open it up to questions.
Alright, since you're not visible to us, let's just open it up. So
I'm here. Okay.
Yeah. So we'll open it out to participation. Is there anybody? Do you have access to the online? Is there anybody online? Yes.
Yes, we do have an online question. And Mildred will voice it from David Mackay.
Yes, it says do you think is the diversity of human values that leads to the variety of ideas and initiatives on the digital governance?
The most important thing about the multi stakeholder model is making sure that all relevant expertise and interests are there at the table. So yes, having a variety of ideas and suggestions coming to the table, the ability to do so is something that is vitally important in this process. And it is certainly something to to follow. And watch as the GDC evolves.
That's your what you're signaling to us. Oh, We can plenty mics. Okay, so is there anything else online? Judith? Oh, we don't want to ignore people. Oh,
no. Right now. That's it. So thank you so much for asking.
Okay, so I see hands in the back of the room. Let's start here. Yes,
yeah, I actually thought that the panel had a very relaxed way of seeing the GDC. What's happening in and a bit more concern about the whole process for me to mention that they don't have that much leverage that much power. But as you can see, for example, wh H O or WIPO actions, they have a lot of influence as enablers or suppressors of national behavior and national regulation, even as a coordinator drives itself during the pandemic. And this really becomes a problem with fitting Oh, the attacking boy has a specific agenda of creating a body there. And he can get support of some countries that to do that. And there are a lot of countries, for example, that lost in the recent itu election, they blocked that loss there. And if all these things cannot get together, exactly as a problem of fragmentation and of getting too much governmental power around the Internet, like this process of GDC, to me, as I see, it, can be a become a real problem to the Internet as a unique thing. AI is not open to consultation, I pray sample reports, the great milestone of the process came out exactly during the process of focusing consultation, like it was something we don't care about what you are saying we have disposition and it will be like this. So all these things together seem very concerning to me.
Let me offer you hope. There is very little authority directly that the UN has. And I agree that with you that there are probably some not so nice intentions and some bureaucratic self aggrandizing intentions and some attempts by maybe certain countries to impose their values globally on other countries that don't share them. But again, whatever happens through the UN, is going to happen through national government. So if your national government does not go along, or and if they are subject to political pressures from the bottom up, I think that these dangers can be minimized. And again, I would just say like, don't encourage that process by and don't lend it legitimacy by participating in it and pretending like you are influencing it, right. I'm saying vote with your feet.
You're saying don't participate. Okay, I would say participants participate, express your views, get your views on the table, make it part of the mix, because otherwise people will go off and agree something without you being there. And as we see with the UN cybercrime negotiations right now, they can indeed establish international frameworks, which governments then use at the national level to pursue ends that we may not like with international legal support. So it's not irrelevant, in my view, so let's get more student, Elizabeth finance something.
Yes, it is something to be concerned. And that is why so many stakeholders have been pushing and advocating for really opening up the processes, because it's very important that what is what comes out of the process. In has a lot of the core principles that many of us support. And so, yes, while it's a multilateral process, and there are very few avenues to participate, there are other ways you can participate in the consultations. I think the last one is today for stakeholders, but they're also going to be regional discussions. In some governments, they do reach out to their stakeholder communities. And those are other avenues. But it's very important to follow the evolution of the zero draft of the GDC. It is supposed to be a consensus document and not necessarily a document that governments will vote on. So important to converge around key principles that they that they support. Yesterday in the member states consultations. There really wasn't support for the digital Cooperation Forum. It wasn't mentioned but by 111 government, but a number of the statements the common thread was not to duplicate existing processes that are there. There was some in supportive of the IGF, also the multi stakeholder process. So important to go back that was on UN TV and you can listen to those statements, but also through the evolution of the document, follow the various iterations and see what has been written and what has been marked up and important to engage. I think
we should task Milton with watching the replay of all those interventions from the
three hours of statements Okay, so let's go back. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you very well, because the cameras.
Okay. All right. So let me stand up. My name is Sobey, Abraham, and UN Global digital compact, I belong to the youth IGF group. So during the process, I submitted my feedback and report on base based on the concept. We looking at issues around the environment sustainability, how un is able to address it, because inclusion of some of these organizations that needs to be in included in terms of the policymaking? We don't see them there. And we've been having a lot of Internet Governance Forum, IGF from various years, two years, how do we see ensure that based on the discussion that goes on, there is a compliance, comparing it to the Coppa on the climate change action, whereby nations are now enforcing to be able to do what is right, there is a monitoring and evaluation funding available. If we move in switching to the global data compiled by the UN? How are we as UN have a funding to measure that this initiative and conversation has been implemented? How do we monitor it? How do we evaluate it? How do we make sure that the monitoring and evaluation based on component of each country or region is being done. And looking at that, let's say Most countries don't care, or most regions don't care? Especially, we have the GDPR, whereby European Union have come together in Africa, even the African data protection is not even effective. Most countries have not implemented and there seems to be no enforcement. So how can we make sure that the global data combat is something that is coming up to solve or address this issue? If if not that? What is the relationship that IDF can also play in the data? There'll be no contradicting effects to all those things? Thank you very much. I hope my question is very well understood it
is. And actually, you're raising a really important point. And one that I've been thinking about a lot. The one of the biggest problems with a lot of these international negotiations and agreements. And this feeds the kind of cynicism that we hear from my friend here, Milton, is that well, is that many of them end up just being pieces of paper, Wolfgang welcome claim vector has the he often refers to the cabinet of forgotten documents, as a place where agreements that are made among governments go and I know when I used to walk around in the United Nations, late hours, I'd see these huge bins of all, you know, the published in five languages, of various reports, Commission's consultations, outcome documents, etc, in Russian and Chinese and, and they're all in the garbage waiting to go out. Nobody, the stuff gets produced and nothing gets done with it. So input follow up and implementation becomes a really critical thing. And it's especially critical when you're dealing with normative agreements. If you have a binding agreement where there's some kind of mechanism of Compliance and Enforcement and mute and mutual surveillance like we historically had in trade, which is now broken because of the United States. But which, you know, is it this becomes very important for normative agreements. If you'd have a normative agreement where people say we aspire to do X, we want to redo x, but there's no legally binding background to it. What can you do to try to encourage compliance? You have follow up an implementation you report on it, you You release annual reports taking stock and you say, here's here's how many countries have implemented this and here's who have not. And there's ways of doing this. So like the United, un, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, last year, reached an agreement to create a set of guidelines for social media platforms. Probably you've not much paid attention to this Milton, but, but it was a big negotiation involving a great deal of effort by many countries and stakeholders. And they adopted these guidelines, which I thought was problematic, because I think a lot of authoritarian governments will interpret them in ways that will give them the capacity to go out and do something bad and say, well, the UN gave me a mandate to do this. But what's been created by UNESCO, which I think is good, and I applaud them, is a whole constellation of implementation mechanisms, including multi stakeholder committees that are groups of think tanks and NGOs, and private sector players and so on, who are collaborating together to monitor compliance with the initiative. So this is the kind of thing that can be done. And it's been suggested by a friend of some of us Fiona Alexander, who formerly the US government, that in trying to do follow up an implementation for the GDC, we should try to get encourage a role for both the IGF and the wizards forum now that the wizards forum, run by the ITU is under a new Secretary General, who is not all about trying to take over the UN is more focused on global digital divide, and has a progressive approach. Perhaps we could use these two forums, which both mobilize a lot of stakeholders as a means for following up and implementing relevant parts of the GDC. And I think that's a good idea. I think it's one that should be pursued.
There is one more question sorry. There is one more question from the zoom. And is Marita more it says cool, we have a retake of sorry. What will happen to the Internet Global Forum? And the MS model?
don't understand the question. He wants CDC going to produce another IGF? Yes.
And asking about the multi stakeholder model. I
think that's really important, too, to see what comes out of the GDC, because that will really inform what's going to happen next year. And certainly with the proposals that especially the Secretary General's policy, brief five with proposal for the digital Cooperation Forum. While there hasn't been support me to continue to see what comes out in the zero draft in terms of what is being proposed, moving forward, both for the implementation, and the follow up of the GDC. Because that, I think, will also have a bearing on the wizards plus 20 review, and the IGF renewal next year. But following both of those processes, I think are very important.
Yeah, they weren't talking sorry, they were talking about the multi stakeholder model.
Well, so it's the UN, it's not multistakeholder. It's a sovereignty based institution. And they may say, you can come and speak for three minutes in a line of 45 people that we don't listen to, and they'll call that multistakeholder. But it's not. And a question is, where does the authority lie? And I'm telling you, I'm not the cynical one here. I'm saying you are free people, right? Nobody has power over you. Unless you are the UN cannot have power over you unless you actively lend them that and contribute to it and participate in their processes. And I'm just saying don't do that.
But there's also two things as well, I think to consider, as well, which is, I think there's a there's a distinction between advancing sort of a consensus framework in the past of the future. And the GDC, which then has outlines, you know, that this some of these issues should be done in a multilateral basis, and tries to diminish the multistakeholder model that can have implications for the technical aspects. And so that is something that I think we have to be very mindful of, and what has been proposed, what is what is the overarching role of the GDC and what are the implications? I think developing a framework that we can live with, I think is going to be challenging for some good to monitor and see what comes.
Can I just say at one point on the spot that Well, two points quickly, one month on multistakeholder there was a tie I'm back in with us and after witness, many of us who are engaged in all these processes coming from the global multi stakeholder community, quote, unquote, had a certain kind of energy and optimism about growing multistakeholder as a sort of approach towards tackling wide variety of Internet and digital issues. And it's fair to say that a lot of that momentum has stalled, if not stopped and gone backwards. If you look at the way a lot of new issues are being dealt with today, governments are very much more out in the lead and asserting their their lead role. And the notion that you would you still hear people say we had a conversation there last night, people say, Oh, shouldn't there be an ICANN for AI, there's not going to be an ICANN for AI, there's not going to be an ICANN for any of these issues. ICANN, as Milton notes, has a specific set of resources and actually has control over and there's nothing comparable like that or going to be. But it should be noted, I think we should at least take some comfort that since with us, governments feel compelled to at least allow a level of multi stakeholder input into these processes in a way that didn't exist before. WTO is still nothing WTO it's all closed doors, nobody gets it, nobody has any possibility of providing input. But even in the Cybercrime treaty, or the cybersecurity where most international organizations now that are engaged with digital and Internet issues, at least have some mechanisms in place to allow a level of stakeholder input, even if it's not terribly effective, or ultimately dispositive in terms of what gets done. There's an end you can say, well, that's window dressing, it doesn't mean anything. But there's at least the possibility to try to grow that leverage it. And as you see, some governments will cite it. So a lot of civil society, people said we don't want a digital Cooperation forum with a bunch of us came to the consultation that they had in March at the UN and said, Look, do not do this do not create a new body. Well, now a lot of the OECD governments cite that and say, yeah, there's no demand for a new body from stakeholders. So it's not like stakeholder views don't matter at all. And the mechanisms to, to bring them to the fore are starting to be put in place a bit and give the UN some credit for that, that we have more of a multilateral Plus model emerging now.
So for more questions, just okay. Go ahead. Okay.
Thank you. So honestly, speaking after this, like, huge conversation, it's not clear to me, what are the exact outcomes of the GDC. And like concrete outcomes of the GDC. You've mentioned some actions about AI, maybe and, uh, but I want to focus here on the IGF. And I think we can all agree that the Internet Governance Forum as it is, now it needs to evolve. So and maybe this is a this is a problem, because now it's become a forum for discussion, which is great. But it needs to evolve to have a more concrete role that actually can put commendations and, and follow up on on implementation and recommendations. And I don't know if this can, can be part of the GDC. Or maybe we don't want the GDC at all, and but we want to evolve the IGF in a form that is not only for conversation, but is for implementable actions. Thank you.
Thank you very much for your question. Just quickly to go back to the GDC. It will have in there, there'll be the preamble section, there'll be some core principles there that have come out of the consultations. For example, one of them will be around connecting every school to the Internet. Also, avoiding Internet fragmentation, some principles around that, then they'll also be some commitments, which I guess need to be identified, what sets of commitments will will be identified there. So they will be perhaps a document that reflects some of those concrete ideas. And that's why they're doing the the consultations right now, are these the right set of principles? And then, you know, what commitments do we need to build but also keep in mind in the conductivity area, there is ongoing work on the implementation should have that which the ITU leads, for example. And that's dealing with meaningful and affordable universal connectivity. And one of the ways that they can implement that is because member states annually submit their ICT statistics. And so they can measure that their specific targets on technologies on universal access. So that's something that's existing that the ITU does already. So in some of those areas, they don't need to reinvent the wheel. The implementation is happening in the ITU has a focus on development, on expanding and growing infrastructure, and also promoting meaningful access and connectivity. And there's many organizations including ICANN, ISOC, amongst others that are working with private sector to really advance and promote Internet access and connectivity. Now as to the IETF. And next year, I'm sorry, the wizards plus 20 review, that is going to be an important process to really take a stock and look back on the implementation of the progress that has been made on the implementation. So participate in that I kept, for example, reports annually on what it does as an organization in the implementation of the wizards outcomes. But also, we report on our regular participation in the IGF ICANN has been attending IGF 's from the inception. And something I think that was raised earlier by Milton is that a number of these processes have gone through iterations, they've gone through improvements, the stakeholder communities have come back and said, you know, there is a way to improve and strengthen the IGF. And we're seeing some of that. So if there's another iteration, it is possible, it's just really ensuring that we do have the possibility of an IETF moving forward, to be able to adapt the flexibility to do so. And the ability to, to come together to make those decisions in that space.
Just like to dress more directly this idea that the IGF should be more of a policymaking body with follow ups and implementations. And I think the good thing about the IGF as Bill described, you know, why were we able to mobilize opposition to the GDC as an idea? Well, it was through the IGF, we assembled the community, it was a sounding board, people made it clear that they didn't like this. But the forum only has that function and should only have that function, it cannot, it has no authority over anything. So if the IGF comes up with a recommendation, which sounds almost impossible, but suppose they say, like, social media platform should be regulated in this way. Okay, how's that going to happen? Who's going to do it? You know, it would have to be implemented at best by national governments. And, by the same token that might destroy the open and multi stakeholder dialogue. Because if it did have any actual authority to make recommendations, then people would try to stack the deck, they would try to knock things off of discussion, they we don't want to discuss that. We actually have that problem in the very early days of the IGF. My organization was saying, let's talk about us control of the route, that people that didn't want that on the agenda, we had to fight to keep it on the agenda, because, you know, they thought that that would have some impact on on something that they didn't want it to have impact on. So I think the IGF does serve this valuable function as a multi stakeholder forum where ideas and norms can be mobilized and can spill over into the intergovernmental frameworks as well as the multistakeholder framework.
The IGF renewal of its mandate will happen 2025 separately from the GDC. It's a different process. The IGF has in its original formulation, and the mandate that we wrote the working group, and Internet governance in 22,004, the capacity to adopt recommendations as as advisable or whatever the mealy mouthed diplomatic language was that we had to use. The problem has been that nobody has ever wanted that to happen. I mean, there's always been people, particularly in civil society, who felt that the IDF should do more could be a soft law kind of place that could be adopting normative agreements like the net Monday l did, and that this could be encouraging behavior to move in particular directions, etc. And there's always been opposition from different parties, particularly business and technical community to having to play that role, as well as certain governments. So there's always been for 20 years now. People saying we need IGF reform and improvement and strengthening and then zero agreement about what that means, because everybody has different agendas. So I'm not optimistic that that's going to change. That said, I think it should be noted, the IGF does have outcomes. It has outcomes that are just not formalized. In terms of a shared unified text, lots of things spin out of the IGFs, a testbed and an incubator, a network builder, and so on, that are meaningful, important and part of the tapestry of IG. Do we have time for one more do we stop? I saw Emily had her hand up. It's lunch. One more. Go ahead. Well,
I was really interested in hearing about your concerns about the sort of the the Secretariat for the GDC, you know, there were 177 inputs to the global digital compact, and then a one and a half page summary coming out of the secretariat. And it was, you know, I don't know if anybody in there has actually read any of those summaries. And my question, you know, I'd like to hear from the panel is like, what can the multistakeholder community do to get the messages from those submissions out into circulation since they seem to have just died?
I would say we need to raise the issues more vocally. Wolfgang has started a website, what's the URL? Wolfgang? Are you awake? What's the what's the? What's the website for this new platform for debating the GDC?
So that means do your video on VEVO? Yes, it is based on my government enrollment management. So we're trying to bring together so we're trying to keep energize people around the GDC, to get them to express views, and then find ways to feed those into the discussions through various evidence.
Emily, that's always a challenge. For UN diplomats, they're tasked with so many other issues to go back and read. And so the tech envoys office, part of what we assumed they were going to read through that and incorporate a lot of those great ideas and proposals. And the two page document was very, was very thin. I know Konstantinos. comidas had put together a matrix of all of that. I know, government's like those matrices. So, you know, if those matrices are out there and sort of has a synopsis of what are the key ideas, key points, recommendations that they can grab.
Okay, Judith, I think we've reached the end. People are ready for lunch, and we've probably exhausted everybody with our verbiage. So yes,
