Policy Brief No. 201 — March 2025
Advancing Multi-stakeholderism for Global Governance of the Internet and AI Sabhanaz Rashid Diya
Key Points → There are growing tensions between the multilateral and multi-stakeholder approach to governing the internet and other digital technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI). Recent advancements in AI have prompted debates on whether a decentralized governance model can respond to increasing threats posed by powerful, transnational technology developers. → Growing strains on multilateralism can be explained by shifting geopolitical and economic power distribution between North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members and nonmembers. However, multilateralism can compel policy coordination and cost reduction within the present, highly fragmented global AI governance ecosystem. → Multi-stakeholderism, while not a panacea, principally offers a pathway of equal footing for state and non-state actors to influence AI governance. However, this approach is only possible if concerned stakeholders are deliberate about designing multi-stakeholder mechanisms throughout the product life cycle.
Introduction Since the launch of Our Common Agenda1 and Pact for the Future by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in 2021, there has been a growing concern among several democratic nation-states and civil society groups about the United Nations’ role in advancing an exclusively multilateral approach to internet governance. This is a strikingly different position from the bottom-up, multi-stakeholder approach, instituted by the Geneva Declaration2 and Tunis Agenda (International Telecommunications Union 2005) that formed the bedrock of internet governance for the past 20 years. Despite criticisms, the proposed Global Digital Compact (GDC),3 annexed to the Pact for the Future, was adopted by member states at the Summit of the Future during the seventy-ninth session of the UN General Assembly with the ambitious objective of establishing a “shared vision for an open, free, secure and human-centered digital future” (United Nations 2023). Although the final adopted text of the GDC calls on states to recognize that “internet governance must continue to be global and multi-
1
See www.un.org/en/common-agenda.
2
See United Nations (2005).
3
See www.un.org/techenvoy/global-digital-compact.