This explainer was updated on 20 February 2025 following the publication of the intergovernmental consultation process to finalise the modalities of the WSIS+20 review and to address community feedback.  * This year will bring the twenty year review of…

As the 2024 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) concludes, we, the undersigned organisations and individuals from civil society, the private sector and the technical community, call on all governments, institutions and organisations to affirm the vision of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) of a people-centred and development-oriented inclusive…

For those of us advocating for human rights-based digital policy, 2024 was a difficult year. An unprecedented “race to governance” saw states battling to assert sovereignty on the terrain of digital technologies—heralding a sharp multilateral turn in the field, evident in processes from the Global Digital Compact (GDC) to the UN…

Introduction  We, the undersigned civil society organisations and individuals, welcome the consensus adoption of the United Nations (UN) Global Digital Compact (GDC) annexed to the Pact for the Future. From the onset, the GDC has been an ambitious and well-intentioned effort for stakeholders — especially Member States and…

Advocacy Bytes is a series of case studies of civil society groups engaging in processes relating to human rights and digital technologies. It records the tactics used, challenges faced and lessons learned from this engagement, with the aim of supporting more strategic and effective future engagement by human rights defenders.

In October, GPD was in New Delhi for the 2024 World Telecommunications Standardization Assembly (WTSA-24), the International Telecommunication Union Standardization Sector (ITU-T)’s quadrennial conference for the development of technical standards.  As we set out in our pre-event blog, this event sets…