United Nations agrees to persist with multi-stakeholder internet governance

The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday reached consensus on a review of the world’s internet governance arrangements and preserved the current multi-stakeholder model that means governments are just one of many voices that debate the future of the internet. Wednesday’s session caps a process that started in 2003, when the UN convened the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), a forum for discussing the role of technology in society. The first WSIS process saw participating nations pledge “to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented information society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge.” It also saw participating nations agree to the multi-stakeholder internet governance arrangements that persist to this day, and which sees organizations like the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet Society (ISOC), and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) each play a role. Under WSIS, governments, academics, civil society groups, and other stakeholders all have a voice on matters related to the digital world. WSIS also links internet governance to the UN’s other goals around human rights, equitable development, and sustainability. WSIS also led to the creation of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), a body to discuss public policy issues pertaining to the internet. In recent years, the IGF was the prime mover behind the first wave of international discussion on laws that govern AI. The UN revisited WSIS in 2015, and left it largely unchanged but pledged to look at it again in 2025. That process ended on Wednesday with approval of the WSIS+20 resolution. Wikidata: Attempting to bridge FOSS ideals and direct democracy UN Cybercrime Treaty wins dozens of signatories, to go with its many critics UN says Asian scam call center epidemic expanding globally amid political heat ICANN distances itself from radical proposal – which it funded – to give nations a role in internet governance The big change in WSIS+20 saw the UN decide to make the IGF a permanent body, and to fund it properly. ICANN welcomed that decision as a “significant element” of WSIS+20, and giving the IGF a permanent mandate “is critical for the IGF to continue serving as the world’s most globally representative platform for dialogue on digital governance.” The Technical Community Coalition for Multistakeholderism (TCCM), a group that represents technology businesses and governance organizations, also welcomed the WSIS+20 resolution, especially the IGF elements and the re-affirmation of the existing multi-stakeholder model. TCCM and ICANN campaigned against another United Nations initiative – Global Digital Compact – on grounds that it could sideline the technical community from discussions about the internet. The version of the Compact adopted in 2024 acknowledged that techies deserve a seat at the table. WSIS+20 does the same. Khaled Koubaa, a Mozilla Fellow who has served as an ICANN director and a senior public policy exec at both Meta and Google, hailed WSIS+20 as giving the UN the tools it needs to consider governance of agentic AI. “We need a constitutional layer for the agentic Internet that connects technical architecture, accountability, safety, and inclusion,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “Otherwise, the gap between capability and legitimacy will widen, and trust will be replaced by improvisation.” “WSIS+20 gives us a stronger platform to do this work without reinventing the wheel. It protects the space where multistakeholder problem solving can happen, and it reminds us that closing divides, protecting rights, and maintaining an open and interoperable Internet are not side quests. They are the main storyline.” ®