The internet’s early days were marked with optimism that it would be a “liberation technology” that would foster democratic norms, facilitate political mobilization, and bolster the impact of civil society. As internet access has proliferated, however, there has been a persistent decline in internet freedom globally for more than a decade. This downturn has been driven by increasing state-sponsored online attacks on free expression, such as through the use of internet shutdowns, internet filtering systems, and sophisticated commercial spyware against civil society. Those advocating for the rights of vulnerable populations, such as ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities, and those living in conflict-affected regions have been especially targeted.
Considering these trends, the United Nations’ effort to create a Global Digital Compact (GDC) has a crucial role to play in ensuring that the internet remains open, secure, and inclusive for all, allowing for engagement in public debate, full participation in the digital economy, and the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The GDC stems from UN Secretary General António Guterres’s 2021 Our Common Agenda report, which aims to create “shared principles for an open, free, and secure digital future for all” to be agreed at the 2024 Summit of the Future. The GDC’s purpose is to establish an agreement on how best to address complex digital issues, including “connecting the unconnected, avoiding fragmentation of the Internet,” and protecting digital rights. The Our Common Agenda report proposes twelve actions that are designed to accelerate achieving the SDGs—one of which is to “apply human rights online.” Despite this acknowledgment and the consensus by the UN Human Rights Council that “the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online,” UN member states have continued to tamper with or disrupt networks globally, including by filtering and shutting down the internet. These disruptions have caused billions of dollars in economic losses, harmed the globally interconnected internet infrastructure, and hampered international collaboration. Digital attacks against civil society in particular have not only become more frequent but also more sophisticated, particularly through the use of powerful surveillance technologies. Yet, civil society plays a key role in ensuring that the voices of marginalized people and those in underrepresented countries and regions are included in the development and deployment of digital technologies.
Governments of underrepresented countries, such as Indonesia, Kenya, and South Africa, as well as various civil society groups, are increasingly participating in global debates on cybersecurity. An example is the UN Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG), which is a process that began in 2019 that seeks to establish rules for responsible state behavior in cyberspace. The first OEWG included the participation of almost all underrepresented countries; many regional organizations, such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the African Union (AU), the Organization of American States, and the European Union; and over 100 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that attended the meetings as observers.
Irene Poetranto is a senior researcher for the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. She is also a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science, University of Toronto. Her research interests include internet governance and the politics of internet regulation. Southeast Asia is her geographic area of focus. Irene obtained her master’s degree in political science and Asia Pacific studies from the University of Toronto and her bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of British Columbia
Yet, the OEWG has faced challenges. Subsequent OEWG meetings involved far less NGO participation due to objections from China and Russia. Substantive progress in the OEWG on pressing concerns, such as data sovereignty and the application of international law to cyberspace, has also stalled as a result of geopolitical tensions between Western democracies and China and Russia. Furthermore, many participants registered concerns about how best to achieve cybersecurity goals while safeguarding sovereignty and the principle of noninterference in the domestic affairs of other states (a point emphasized by more recently decolonized countries, such as India and Indonesia). Even so, the OEWG successfully adopted a consensus report in 2021, which despite criticism over its broad and vague language, recognized the growing digital threat landscape and the importance of strengthening collaboration with civil society and others to address such threats.
The OEWG process has shown that countries desire to discuss the security of cyberspace under the auspices of the UN. In this vein, the GDC can facilitate building common ground for concrete policies and actions, and foster dialogue to deepen trust that will improve upon the OEWG. For example, while the OEWG has been criticized for implementing a highly politicized process that has increasingly excluded civil society from its deliberations, the GDC seeks to involve many stakeholders, including “governments, the United Nations system, the private sector (including tech companies), civil society, grass-roots organizations, academia, and individuals, including youth.” To ensure that such participation occurs in a collaborative and inclusive manner, the GDC should prioritize the principle of multistakeholderism, while incorporating mechanisms that allow for bottom-to-top input, particularly from people in developing countries. Such mechanisms would help member states and the global community hear not only from those who have benefited from different forms of digital technologies but also from those who have been harmed by them, especially those who are most marginalized. In other words, the GDC has the potential to “re-energize” the multistakeholder model through specific commitments and concrete actions that are conducted in an inclusive manner.
Although disagreements among states are likely to persist, the GDC can help identify specific goals that are of mutual interest among countries that approach cybersecurity and internet regulation differently and therefore enable cooperation. Deepening collaboration and trust would help convince states that have not decided how the internet should be regulated about the value of adopting inclusive and multistakeholder governance, rather than pursuing the state-dominated model advocated by China and Russia. For instance, in their respective submissions to the GDC, the United States and China and the Group of Seventy-Seven (G77), a coalition of developing countries, both agreed that the internet and digital technologies are crucial to achieving the SDGs and that there is a need to safeguard the security and interoperability of the internet to avoid its fragmentation.
Given this concurrence, the GDC should elevate the shared principle of an open, distributed, and interconnected internet and create specific avenues for collaboration—both with UN agencies and beyond (for example, with regional civil society and groupings such as the AU)—that will protect the complex ecosystem of devices and infrastructure that make the internet accessible. The inclusion of such a pledge would make tangible policy decisions possible, and result in a more meaningful and action oriented GDC.
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.