The importance of the Internet management forum

“There is a governance gap!” This is one of the messages that United Nations Secretary General António Guterres delivered in a recorded message to approximately 6,300 participants in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the annual meeting that discusses current Internet policy issues, which took place starting in October Kyoto, Japan. October 8 to 12, 2023. The Secretary General did little to explain what exactly this gap is or what it looks like beyond this statement. However, his message implied that only the UN, as the true multilateral system, can help address such a governance gap.

There’s nothing worse than adding a complex process to a complex system. And frankly, that’s what multilateralism, in the form of the UN’s Global Digital Compact (GDC), would do to the internet. The GDC is the latest attempt to ‘fix’ internet governance and address the perceived gap in the current multi-stakeholder governance model. The thesis of this story is based on an old idea of ​​’digital collaboration, or the effort to enhance global cooperation in multiple forms to address the social, ethical, legal and economic impact of digital technologies, seeking to maximize the benefits for maximize societies. ;” and for anyone who’s been in the internet curation space long enough, this feels like the remake of a movie that no one really wants to see again. Previous, formalized collaboration efforts have yielded little, especially compared to informal efforts that bring stakeholders together more organically.

The Internet has always been and will continue to be a complex ecosystem. Thousands of networks around the world must interact with each other every day through a series of standards and protocols. Managing this complexity requires the participation and input of multiple, diverse actors, whose expertise, by extension, is indispensable for understanding and bridging existing gaps in Internet governance. Most of the operations these actors engage in are not visible to the average user and are carried out according to a normative framework of rules and values ​​developed over years of Internet governance and use. Understanding the policies, values ​​and existing institutions that underpin that framework is fundamental to understanding what the Internet is, why it needs to be protected and how to enhance people’s ability to participate in the future evolution can be assured. The suggestion that the challenges we face today on the Internet can only be addressed by states – which is the premise of the GDC – should be alarming to us all.

Decentralized, bottom-up arrangements such as the Internet Governance Forum are better suited to the complex system that makes up the Internet. As a multi-stakeholder gathering of experts and interested actors, the IGF has successfully promoted and facilitated the development of the normative framework of the Internet for eighteen years. Discussions at the IGF are usually based on the internet’s core values ​​of openness and inclusivity, while human rights considerations play a crucial role in how participants discuss various issues. Collaboration is not only encouraged, it ultimately becomes a prerequisite for success. Building consensus-based, normative standards has been a gradual but steady process, and that can result in criticism of the lack of ‘concrete’ results from forums such as the IGF. However, a lack of such concrete action should not be confused with a lack of impact. Indeed, the IFG has played a meaningful role in the development of standards around internet governance.

Despite this, there was a sense at this year’s IGF that the GDC could be a central avenue for future internet governance mechanisms and that key decision-making could be moved to a space controlled by states, rather than the current multi-stakeholder model that ensures the participation of a range of stakeholders. of independent, informed and involved stakeholders. To be fair, the UN cannot ‘take over’ the Internet; the architecture of the internet makes that impossible. However, the multilateral, only GDC argues, could become a new normative force in the field of Internet governance. If the GDC (and its associated forum – the Summit for the Future) – were to replace the IGF as a major avenue for internet governance decisions, it would cut off the access of technical experts and interested non-governmental organizations to conversations about internet governance. Creating a competing and potentially adversarial forum for Internet governance discussions would further strain the limited resources of these interested and knowledgeable parties, and provide no guarantees that it would actually add value to Internet governance efforts. Furthermore, it is imperative to remember that the IGF exists within the UN structure and in that sense is just as “legitimate” as the GDC.

The IGF is a manifestation of the Internet community’s hard-fought struggle to have a seat at a technical, global, interconnected table. However, unlike the GDC, the IGF did not emerge from a top-down and obscure process; it is a creature born from years of successful collaboration with multiple stakeholders. There is no doubt that the IGF needs to be reimagined; but the GDC will ultimately undermine it and not update it. Therefore, as the GDC process is about to get underway and negotiations begin behind the closed doors of UN Headquarters in New York early next year, let us not forget that the IGF, despite its limitations, has proven its ability to go further. , collaborative, multi-stakeholder approaches to governance. The GDC has thus far only proven that it can distract from the long-standing, mature and nuanced governance model that the IGF continues to support and uphold.

Konstantinos Komaitis is a non-resident fellow at the Democracy + Tech Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. He is also a veteran of developing and analyzing Internet policies to ensure an open and global Internet.