Internet Governance: The IGF gets a permanent UN mandate

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After twenty years, the United Nations General Assembly has declared the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) a permanent institution. On Wednesday afternoon, member states adopted the final declaration on the review of the implementation of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in a remarkably short session.

This means that the governance of the global internet remains a so-called multi-stakeholder process, in which representatives from research, business, and civil society participate alongside governments. The process was decided upon 20 years ago at the first two World Summits on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva and Tunis.

As expected by many observers, the delegations, who had been negotiating for two years, agreed without problems to make the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), founded at the summit in Tunis, a permanent institution. However, the "Group of 77", which brings together numerous countries from the Southern Hemisphere, the USA, Argentina, Israel, and other countries, are distancing themselves from parts of the wordy final declaration.

Recognition of the IGF

Associated with the resolution is the recognition that the forum, planned two decades ago as an annual conference, has matured into a considerable network. In 170 countries and regions – including Germany and Europe – there are now local chapters where current digital policy issues are discussed, all in a "multi-stakeholder" manner.

How much money the United Nations will provide from its own budget has not yet been clarified. Germany is contributing one million euros to the IGF, which Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger (CDU) has brought along. "We are here to reaffirm our commitment to a free, open, and interoperable internet," Wildberger said on Tuesday before the UN General Assembly in New York.

The permanent mandate for the IGF is one of the major advances of the WSIS follow-up conference (WSIS+20), according to international law expert and internet governance expert Wolfgang Kleinwächter from New York. The outcome is also a confirmation of the "idealistic intentions of Geneva and Tunis and a small light of hope."

Access to the internet and digital services for everyone, and the necessary bridging of the "digital divide," remains an unfinished task, and therefore continues in the WSIS+20 declaration. According to figures from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 94 percent of the population in the richest countries are online, but only 23 percent in the poorest countries.

For the promise of universal access, the Group of 77 (G 77) would have wished for more financial commitments or the establishment of a task force for financing. "We regret that financing methods have not been addressed more seriously. This is the core issue for the implementation of the WSIS goals," also urged Anriette Esterhuysen from the Association for Progressive Communication.

USA and Russia with requests for changes

The US delegation submitted most of the requests for deletions. This concerned areas such as climate change, gender equality, and inclusion. If it were up to the US government, the United Nations should stay out of digital policy and internet governance altogether.

In contrast, the Russian delegation, as always unsuccessfully, called for a shift of digital policy authority towards the United Nations and the ITU. Finally, Russia took issue with the mention of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the detailed chapter on the fundamental rights of the information society.

Effective despite parallel processes?

The document adopted on Wednesday makes a sincere effort to place the parallel processes – WSIS action lines and 2030 development goals, IGF network, Global Digital Compact follow-up process, UN Office for Digital and New Technologies – into an overall architecture. One can only be curious about how the two secretariats intended for the IGF in New York and Geneva will cooperate.

The multitude of new bodies and processes for digital policy within the UN concerns not only critics. Experts like Swiss diplomat Markus Kummer view the new overall architecture with a certain skepticism. Kummer, one of the founding fathers of the WSIS process, recalled that the term "Internet Governance" actually encompasses all digital policy issues. The now strengthened IGF could be the central point of contact for all questions.

(mho)