The future of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is an important part of the WSIS+20 review process. But after 20 years, the key question should now be its organizational evolution, more than just how long its mandate should be extended or whether it should be rebranded. The time has come for a constitutional moment for the IGF. A dedicated review process should take place in 2026 around three core questions.

The IGF was - and remains - a unique institutional innovation

In terms of internet governance, the IGF is the most important - actually the only - institutional innovation of the last 20 years. Since its inception in 2006, it has organically developed its structure and modes of operation: flexibility and self-organization are part of the IGF’s strong DNA. The recent annual events in Kyoto, Riyadh, and Oslo have demonstrated ongoing interest from the community, as well as the IGF’s capacity to rapidly put on its schedule emerging issues such as AI, illustrating its agenda-setting potential and issue-framing capacities.

Accordingly, Para. 60 of the elements paper from the two WSIS+20 Co-Facilitators highlights that the IGF’s “importance as the primary multi-stakeholder platform for discussion of Internet governance issues has been recognized”.

More importantly, as several other contributions to the WSIS+20 process emphasise, the IGF is already much more than just an annual event. In particular, the spontaneous emergence of more than 175 national and regional IGFs (NRIs), as well as the various Dynamic Coalitions, Best Practices Forums and Policy Networks, is a testament to the global bottom-up dynamics the IGF has generated. This should be more reflected in the zero draft.

A still unfulfilled potential

Yet, these achievements are a sort of miracle, because the IGF suffers from serious limitations:

• The IGF Secretariat still dramatically lacks human and financial resources, stifling its capacity to support the process beyond the logistical organization of the annual event;
• Existing composition and procedures of the MAG have not sufficiently empowered it to play the full role of a program committee, able to structure sessions in easy-to-understand tracks and formalize outcomes to inform and coordinate stakeholders;
• Thanks to generous successive host countries, the annual event has been held, but this remains a yearly search, and on three occasions emergency rescue was needed;
• There is a lack of coherence and utility of the post-annual IGF reporting, which is a lost treasure trove of ideas and stakeholder perspectives;
• Overall, several reports and efforts to improve the IGF’s functioning have failed to introduce sufficient changes to bring it to the required next level of operational efficiency.

The reality is: the IGF has all the necessary components for becoming a very successful process beyond a mere annual gathering, but it remains well below its potential. What is needed now is a structured effort to address its institutional limitations and turn it into the innovative organization it was intended to be and has the potential to become.

Mere reconduction is not enough

Most contributions in the WSIS+20 process regarding the IGF mainly focus on the extension of its mandate, including requests to make it permanent. However, in light of the above, this is totally insufficient: mere continuation of the IGF “as is” would not be up to the challenges of the time.

Yes, in an increasingly polarized environment, this unique dialogue space is even more necessary than ever, and its existing accomplishments must absolutely be preserved and the IGF extended.

But 20 years after the Tunis Summit, the time has come to be much more ambitious and to seriously address the institutionalization of the IGF and its organizational evolution, while preserving flexible modalities of self-organization and its multi-stakeholder composition.

There will be no strengthening of the IGF without solving the issue of its financial support; yet, a condition for new contributions and financing models is a clearer path regarding the IGF’s organizational evolution.

The following three issues are at stake for such an institutional review: the IGF’s mandate and role; its internal organization; and its interfacing with other processes.

1. Reviewing and updating the IGF Mandate

The IGF still operates on the basis of the concise mandate set 20 years ago in article 72 of the Tunis Agenda, which blends in a single 12-point list a rough sketch of: the functions of the IGF, the topics it addresses, and its outcomes. The mandate’s concision was beneficial during the first 20 years, allowing for a flexible development and evolution of the IGF.

Yet, significant debates persist on the actual extent of this mandate, regarding in particular: the mission of the IGF itself, the scope of the topics it is supposed to address, and the types of outcomes it can or is expected to produce. Any review should first clarify the expected role of the IGF, to find the right “Goldilocks” position on the spectrum between a mere annual dialogue event and a full negotiating body.

In that regard, interventions during the recent IGF in Oslo showed broad convergence among participants around the key role of the IGF being “agenda setting” and “issue framing”, given that:

The IGF can allow emerging issues to bubble up early and be rapidly put on the agenda; this can happen faster than in multilateral processes, where the required agreement of governments often introduces delays before a topic can be addressed, making it even harder to solve.

In parallel, the IGF can generate a comprehensive framing of any particular problem, taking into account the perspectives of the different stakeholders brought together under the IGF umbrella, be it during the annual event, in its intersessional processes, or via worldwide consultations through the network of National and Regional IGFs (NRIs).

This first clarification would provide a useful basis to further define two other elements that a revised mandate should contain: the range of topics to be addressed (a scope sufficiently broad and open to iteratively cover new issues), and the types of outcomes the IGF is expected to produce, pending proper resources.

2. Chartering the IGF’s organizational evolution

As mentioned above, the IGF already has all the necessary structures that could allow it to be an extremely efficient and useful institution. They are just not sufficiently empowered.

Therefore, the second element to be addressed in this review is the organizational evolution of the IGF itself, as there is, again, a lack of clarity regarding the exact roles of each component, including, inter alia:

• The real extent of the powers of the Secretariat and the MAG Chair;
• The composition and the exact role of the MAG, in particular as a Program Committee;
• The minimum framework applicable to the National and Regional IGFs and their interfacing (in and out) with the annual global event;
• The functioning of the Dynamic Coalitions, the Policy Networks, and the Best Practices Forum and their minimum structures;
• More generally, the degree of oversight or autonomy of the IGF vis-à-vis the United Nations structures.

All these elements would potentially benefit from being clarified in a single framework document or a Charter, a sort of constitution for the IGF, listing its different structural components, their roles and their interrelations, while preserving the flexibility of evolution as much as possible.

3. The IGF’s interfacing with other processes

The IGF should be the bridge connecting multilateral governance processes with the rest of the multi-stakeholder internet governance community. Yet, the IGF has not done enough to connect and inform these two worlds. Discussions and deliberations within the IGF do not inform the multilateral processes in a systematic way. Similarly, these processes have not used the IGF as a conduit for soliciting stakeholder perspectives on issues of mutual concern.

The third element for a comprehensive IGF review is thus about how it can better interface with other processes.

First, the IGF is part of the whole WSIS framework, including the WSIS Forum, the Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD), and the UNGIS (coordination group of the Heads of International Agencies). But there are also numerous other multilateral organizations and procedures dealing with the constantly broadening range of topics regarding governance of our digital age.

The interrelations of the IGF with these structures need to be clarified, and in particular, to explore in more detail how the IGF, in its agenda-setting and issue-framing functions, could:

• Provide input into and contribute substantively to such processes;
• Offer a space for them to regularly provide updates on their work; and
• Make the network of NRIs available for broad global consultations.

The IGF has the potential to foster stronger coordination among this network of institutions, as required by the cross-border and cross-sectoral challenges we collectively face. It needs to build on its strengths and become a platform bringing all stakeholders together to help set the internet governance agenda (writ large) and provide value to those who participate.

Conclusion

21st-century problems require institutions capable and agile enough to address them. When it was created, the IGF was a major innovation in governance architecture. It has since proved both its utility and its value as a unique space. However, the IGF still stops short of achieving its full potential, in large part because of insufficient resources.

Twenty years after WSIS, the time has therefore come for a constitutional moment for the IGF. All stakeholders share the responsibility of upgrading it into the 21st-century institution we all need.

But this clearly cannot be achieved before December 2025. Accordingly, beyond the limited question of the IGF’s renewal, the WSIS+20 review process should formally recognize and affirm in December 2025 the need for a thorough review of the IGF along the lines described above, to be conducted in 2026 via a truly multi-stakeholder review group and broad consultations.

In that regard, inspiration can be found in the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), which in 2004-5 produced, among other things, the long-lasting definition of internet governance and the proposal of the Forum.

It behooves all public and private actors supporting the principle of a multi-stakeholder approach on policy issues to be more ambitious than asking for a mere reconduction of the IGF. Only a good review process will allow us to secure, as a corollary, the necessary resources for a fully functional IGF. We need it. More than ever.