multistakeholder

The Global Digital Compact provides an opportunity to agree on common principles that can make the internet and its governance more inclusive, human rights-based and supportive of sustainable development. APC believes that we need less of some things and more of others to achieve this goal.

Speaking on behalf of the Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication and Bangladesh Internet Governance Forum, APC associate AHM Bazlur Rahman emphasised the need to create strong global governance of digital transformation through the Global Digital Compact.

In its statement, APC member Derechos Digitales stresses that the Compact being drafted should provide for proactive actions towards building effective multistakeholder processes and increasing broader participation in all digital cooperation and internet governance discussions.

How did the world begin to establish the internet's basic governance rules and try to enable universal access? Carlos Afonso, director of Nupef and co-founder of APC, offers a historical look at the uneven global internet governance movement, from the 1998 International Telecommunication Union (ITU) meeting to the first World Summit on the Inform...

APC believes that the Global Digital Compact could play a key role in ensuring that the lessons learned from years of multistakeholder cooperation feed into future processes of internet policy, internet governance and global digital cooperation.

This IGF is taking place when the effects of overlapping global crises such as the weakening of democracy, wars, and the worsening of the environmental situation and climate change are felt strongly but differently in different contexts. What does all this mean for internet governance?

Inclusive participation of civil society actors helps ensure that the Council is informed and responsive to human rights priorities and needs on the ground, engagement of organisations based outside Geneva, as well as under-resourced civil society actors.

Although multilateral forums including the United Nations have made some progress in identifying norms, rules and principles to guide responsible state behaviour in cyberspace, applying agreed norms to "real life" throws up challenges of interpretation and enforcement.