The Internet Society welcomes the opportunity to submit our comments on the WSIS+20 Zero Draft. We commend the co-facilitators’ leadership and openness in facilitating stakeholders’ participation in the WSIS+20 review process, including providing feedback on the Zero Draft. We believe that continued openness and transparency throughout the negotiations on the text will be essential for a successful review. We strongly encourage the co-facilitators and member states to deepen their engagement with non-governmental stakeholders as negotiations advance. It is vital that the review genuinely reflects the views of all stakeholders.
In this review, it is important that member states formally recognize that the tremendous growth in global Internet connectivity and digital transformation has been enabled by the more than 75,000 globally distributed interconnected independent networks using open standards developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and other Internet standards bodies, advancements in Internet security technologies and applications such as end-to-end encryption that are available to all users, and the stewardship of essential Internet resources such as IP addresses, domain names and the Domain Name System (DNS) by the Internet technical community. All of this was achieved through multistakeholder mechanisms and collaboration across borders and disciplines. This global cooperation between many stakeholders, in many countries, from many cultures, is more essential than ever if we hope to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
We would also like to thank the co-facilitators for the Zero Draft, which provides a good starting point. We are pleased to see that stakeholder feedback from consultations on the Elements Paper and the co-facilitators’ engagement with the WSIS community have been taken into account. This includes reflecting the general consensus that the resolution must reaffirm critical WSIS commitments around a people-centered, inclusive, and development-oriented information society, multistakeholder Internet governance, and make the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) a permanent forum of the United Nations. These commitments are non-negotiable. Further, with 20 20-year proven track record, it is time for UN member states to affirm that Internet governance will always be multistakeholder.
For two decades, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has served as the world’s primary multistakeholder platform for dialogue on Internet governance. The IGF’s strength lies in its structure. What began as a single global meeting has evolved into a dynamic, year-round ecosystem supported by over 170 national and regional IGFs (NRIs), as well as a growing track of intersessional work. This growth has been driven by the needs of participants—governments, technical experts, civil society, business, and academia—each finding value in a space designed for neutral, globally accessible cooperation. We would like to see stronger recognition of NRIs’ role in advancing multistakeholder collaboration in regions and within member states, and a commitment to continue to expand those efforts. Further, the IGF secretariat should be strengthened to ensure its continued evolution and to provide additional support for NRIs and intersessional activities.
We encourage the co-facilitators and UN member states to consult closely with non-governmental stakeholders during negotiations of the text of the resolution to ensure that those stakeholders’ perspectives on the 20-year review of the WSIS framework are included, and to recognize the important role that they have in how the Internet is developed, operated, managed, and governed. We welcome strengthening the accountability for the implementation of the WSIS Action Lines and calls to further develop the arrangements from the Tunis Agenda and the Summit of the Future to continue to support the implementation of the WSIS vision and objectives and the integration of the Global Digital Compact (GDC).
On Enhanced Cooperation, we note that the WSIS+10 outcome document observed that there were divergent views regarding the process for implementation of enhanced cooperation. Noting that the GDC reaffirms that Internet governance must continue to be global and multi-stakeholder in nature and should continue to follow the provisions set forth in the Tunis Agenda and the Geneva Declarations, including in relation to enhanced cooperation. We observe that this has best occurred via bottom-up participatory processes. A robust example is the vast number of national and regional IGFs and schools of Internet governance that continue to emerge every year. We would like to see an ongoing commitment from all stakeholders to support these national and regional efforts and ensure that their outcomes are brought to the Internet Governance Forum.
We see important areas in which the Zero Draft should be strengthened. While the draft acknowledges the IGF’s value and provides a permanent mandate, it stops short of outlining a clear pathway for securing sustainable, long-term funding, instead opting to ask the Secretary-General to come back later with a proposal. As we noted in our response to the Elements Paper, financial sustainability is critical to preserving the IGF’s independence, relevance, and capacity to support stakeholder engagement globally. Existing IGF funders, such as the Internet Society, and other stakeholders should be part of any long-term funding discussion and its mandate. Further, the draft fails to recognize important milestones in the evolution of multistakeholder governance, the 2014 NETmundial principles to guide Internet governance, and the 2024 NETmundial+10 Multistakeholder Statement: Strengthening Internet governance and digital policy processes.
There is still considerable work to be done to realize an enabling environment that will support meaningful connectivity and an open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy Internet. In this context, it is imperative that the draft more explicitly call out the elements that help provide an enabling environment, such as measures to foster investment, innovation, and technological development. These include open access to data, proportionate taxation and licensing fees, access to finance, efficient allocation of the radio frequency spectrum, infrastructure sharing models, and community-based approaches. Further, insufficient recognition is given to community-centered connectivity initiatives, which have emerged to provide Internet access to communities where commercial options are not available or viable. We also believe that technical capacity building is essential for bridging digital divides, and note that much of this capacity building is provided by the technical community.
We encourage the co-facilitators to build on this momentum by addressing the remaining gaps and ensuring the WSIS+20 outcomes reinforce an open, inclusive, and sustainable digital future. The Internet Society remains committed to supporting this process and contributing to its success. The comments above provide some overarching reflections on the Zero Draft. They are complemented by the matrix below, which offers specific paragraph-level feedback and suggestions aimed at further improving the final resolution text. In the interests of facilitating agreement on the text, many of the proposed improvements leverage already agreed language from the WSIS+10 outcome document, the Global Digital Compact, ECOSOC resolutions, and other previously agreed documents.
This document represents the ongoing effort carried out by the Internet Society to identify how the language proposed in the WSIS+20 Zero Draft aligns with the vision of an open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy Internet for everyone. The paragraphs have been identified as containing positive (POS), needing improvements (IMP), or concerning (CON) language. The rationale offered in this document is the result of the collaboration among the Internet Society staff, community members, and partners.
