The final phase of the WSIS+20 review has started. The two co-facilitators, Ambassador Suela Janina from Albania and Ambassador Ekitela Lokaale from Kenia, published on May, 21, 2025, their road map. The WSIS+20 Roadmap will lead us to the WSIS High-Level Meeting of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), scheduled for New York at the UN HQ on December 16-17, 2025.

The first intergovernmental consultations were held on May 30, 2025, in New York. Two online stakeholder consultations followed on June 9 & 10, 2025. An “Elements Paper” is announced for June 20, 2025, just on the eve of the 20th Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which starts on June 23, 2025, in Lillestroem/Norway. After another series of consultations, inter alia during the ITU-sponsored WSIS Forum in July 2025 in Geneva, a “Zero Draft Outcome Document” is expected for mid-August. Intergovernmental negotiations will start in October 2025 in New York, embedded into a series of additional multistakeholder consultations convened by the president of the UN General Assembly, Annalena Baerbock, the former German Foreign Minister. End of November 2025, a “Draft Outcome Document” will be available for further comments.

The hope is that the final negotiations in early December 2025 will produce a text that will be acceptable to all 193 UN member states and that will guide the global Internet Community into the next decade. Since the beginning of the WSIS process in the year 2001, all WSIS documents were adopted by consensus, even if controversial issues took the intergovernmental negotiations sometimes to the brink of a collapse, as in December 2003 in Geneva, when the US and China were unable to agree about the future of Internet Governance.

WSIS is a Success Story

It is too early to predict how a consensus can be reached on so many new controversial Internet related public policy issues as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, imbalances in the data economy, fake news and hate speech or mass surveillance. However, the last 20 years have demonstrated that the WSIS framework—its founding documents as the Geneva Declaration of Principles (2003), the Geneva Action Plan (2003) and the Tunis Agenda (2005), as well as the established mechanisms like the IGF, the WSIS Forum, UNCSTD, UNGIS and others - has been a good guardrail to manage the transformation from the industrial society to the information society. And the WSIS mechanisms, in particular the IGF, have demonstrated their usefulness as an “early warning system” by offering a discussion space for new emerging issues such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence or quantum computing.

The WSIS framework enabled meaningful and enhanced cooperation among all stakeholders around the world to the benefit of the global community. It initiated new forms of enhanced communication, coordination and collaboration also on the regional and national level, as demonstrated by the more than 150 national and regional IGFs (NRIs).

WSIS, with all its problems, is a unique success story. 20 years of WSIS means 20 years of extraordinary steps forward into the still-unknown territory of the information age, guided by and rooted in the universal principles of international law and human rights. And WSIS was also innovative in building bridges among governmental and non-governmental stakeholders, even if those bridges are fragile and have to be stress-tested year by year.

But it should not be overlooked that the generally positive assessment also has a flip side. Part of the reality is that, regardless of WSIS, each step into the new digital territory has unintended and sometimes negative side effects. And each new opportunity, which the borderless cyberspace has created, can also be misused. There are many good guys in the digital world who have produced useful services and applications. But the bad guys did not die in the information revolution. And the political and economic problems of a divided world did not disappear with unlimited communication capabilities and the availability of large language models (LLM).

The digital divide is now also a skills divide, a knowledge divide and an AI divide. We see the emergence of tech empires, which have monopolized and commercialized the open and free Internet. Governments have politicized and weaponized cyberspace. We see growing cybercrime, hate speech and mass surveillence, as well as the development of Internet based autonomous weapon systems (AWS) and an AI arms race.

All those complicated problems will be discussed in the forthcoming WSIS+20 review. It would be unrealistic to expect that the conference could find global solutions for this long list of controversial issues. To find such solutions will need another decade. However, the WSIS+20 review can pave the way and enable stakeholders to move forward. WSIS is a process, and WSIS+20 is just a milestone in a journey which will continue in the coming years. The opportunity of WSIS+20 is to channel the discussion for the next decade. The basic direction is already fixed in the existing WSIS framework. WSIS+20 has now to adjust it, where needed, and to open the door to move the process to the next level.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel. There is no need to launch new processes or establish new institutions or mechanisms. What is needed is to pool the various initiatives to make them more effective and output-oriented.

Since 2005, we have had various reports from ITU and UNESCO, including the recommendations from the Broadband Commission. We have the annual UNCSTD reports on WSIS implementation. We have the reports of two Global Commissions on Internet Governance (2014) and Stability in Cyberspace (2020). We had the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation (HLP) and its final report, “The Age of Digital Interdependence” (2020), followed by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s “Roadmap for Digital Cooperation” (2021). In 2024, as part of the “Pact on the Future,” the “Global Digital Compact” (GDP) was adopted. The GDP, like all the other documents, is a good additional tool to strengthen WSIS.

It would be a great step forward if WSIS+20 brings all the ideas and the wisdom of those documents under one umbrella and makes them future-proof for the next decade. There are a lot of things to do beyond December 2025. The GDC review, planned for 2027, and the review of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), scheduled for 2030, will be another opportunity to push for the implementation of the goals, principles and WSIS Actions Lines by strengthening enhanced multistakeholder cooperation towards a WSIS+30 in 2035.

Looking Backwards

In 2001, when the 56th UN General Assembly started the whole process, a new element was included in the UN Resolution 56/183. The resolution invited not only governments to a UN World Summit, as usual, but also “non-governmental organizations, civil society and the private sector to contribute to, and actively participate” in the intergovernmental negotiations. This reflected the global discussions around the “information revolution” since the early 1990s.

The “dot-com-boom” started after the invention of the World Wide Web in 1989. The Internet Society (ISOC) was established in 1992, ICANN in 1998. Manuel Castell published his “The Rise of the Network Society” in 1996, where he argued that “borderless spaces” will become more important than “bordered places.” The G7 launched a “G7 Digital Opportunity Task Force” (DOT Force) at its summit meeting in Okinawa in the year 2000, followed by a “UN Information and Communication Technology Task Force” (UNICTTF) under the chairmanship of the former president of Costa Rica, José María Figueres. In all those processes and new institutions, the technical communities, the private sector and civil society organizations were the driving force. Governments tried to understand the new challenges of that time and were looking for new forms of partnerships.

This was a time when one wave of technological innovation was followed by the next wave. It was a time when code makers were much faster than lawmakers. This did have unavoidable consequences for policymaking. It was Kofi Annan, then UN Secretary-General, who understood this new challenge and also called for political innovation. In a speech in 2004, when he addressed the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), he said, “We need to develop inclusive and participatory models of governance. The medium must be made accessible and responsive to the needs of all the world’s people”. And he added that “in managing, promoting and protecting [the internet’s] presence in our lives, we need to be no less creative than those who invented it. Clearly, there is a need for governance, but that does not necessarily mean that it has to be done in the traditional way for something that is so very different.”

The WGIG took Kofi Annan’s proposal very seriously. It proposed to go beyond intergovernmental regulation and to develop mechanisms for multistakeholder cooperation. It argued that governance in the information age must move from a “one stakeholder leadership model” to a “multistakeholder collaboration model.” An “either-or-approach” doesn’t work. The question is not whether governmental top-down regulation should be enlarged to the “technical world” or whether it should be substituted by private sector self-regulation. WGIG did not recommend a “replacement” of the existing system but an “enhancement.”

The “United Nations” of governments need the “United Constituencies” of non-governmental stakeholders and vice versa. Governance in the digital age will only function on the basis of co-regulatory models, which take into consideration both the sovereignty of the nation state and the universality of global networks. Regulation by states and self-regulatory mechanisms by non-governmental networks have to be complementary. The weakness of one partner in one area can be compensated by the strength of the other and vice versa.

There is no “one size fits all” solution. Cybersecurity needs a different governance model than the management of critical Internet resources such as domain names or IP addresses. Internet policy and regulation are becoming more and more issue-oriented, which means that for each of the related Internet questions, a special governance model has to be designed to meet the specifics of the issue in the right way.

What is needed is a holistic and collaborative approach, a constructive co-existence among the different stakeholders, the development of new and innovative models of “Co-Governance”, where each stakeholder understands its respective role in a decentralized multilayer multiplayer mechanism of communication, coordination and collaboration.

Looking Forward

Developing such a mechanism was a challenge in 2005. And this is still the challenge in 2025. Certainly, the world has changed dramatically in the last two decades. In 2005, Internet Governance was a technical problem with some political implications. Governance in the digital age is now a political issue with a technical component. The world is much more polarized, divided and confronted with geostrategic conflicts. Today, every political controversy has a “digital component,” from the new development agenda to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

But with all the new complexities of the 2020s, today’s basic problems are not so different from the problems of 2005. It is about closing the digital divide, cybersecurity, human rights in the digital age and managing the challenges of emerging technologies. To find solutions, more than ever it needs the involvement of all affected and concerned stakeholders. Neither power politics among the five members of the UN Security Council nor a one-stakeholder approach will be able to produce sustainable results.

Will WSIS+20 provide such a space for enhanced communication, coordination and collaboration (EC³) among governmental and non-governmental stakeholders from the global North and the global South? It has to be seen.

The first round of consultations was “Baby Steps.” Governments were separated from non-governmental stakeholders in the UN HQ on May 30, 2025. Non-governmental stakeholders had a first opportunity to present their position in two virtual consultations on June 9 & 10, 2025. These consultations were monologues. There was no time for interaction. And it remains unclear how interventions of non-governmental stakeholders will be recognized in the forthcoming intergovernmental negotiations.

But the first steps were steps in the right direction. It should be recognized that UNDESA, which manages the process, has been very open and flexible in this first phase. The intergovernmental discussions were accessible via UN Web TV for everybody. Anybody could register for the non-governmental consultations. And all written statements are published on the UNDESA WSIS+20 website. In other words, even if the first steps were “Baby Steps”, it was a good start.

But more “Adult Steps” have to follow. In 2003, Kofi Annan called WSIS a “Summit of Opportunities”. It is now an opportunity for the co-facilitators and the president of the UN General Assembly (the new UN WSIS Troika) to use the opportunity of WSIS+20 for political innovations by enhancing the multistakeholder approach in the drafting of a reasonable “Output Document.”

The proposal of the European Union to establish a “Multistakeholder Sounding Board” is on the table. There are good examples—from the NetMundial documents to the IGF Messages—that multistakeholder drafting teams can produce good diplomatic language. With the political courage and diplomatic skills of the “WSIS UN Troika” as well as with the flexibility and goodwill of both UN member states and non-governmental stakeholders, a future-oriented outcome of the High-Level Meeting in December 2025 in New York is possible. This is an opportunity which should not be missed.

Below is the statement I delivered in the WSIS+20 stakeholder consultations on June 10, 2025.

Enhancing Multistakeholder Cooperation: More Dialogue is Needed in the WSIS+20 Process

I thank the two co-facilitators for their roadmap. Now we do have a clear timetable with milestones. It is good to see that the intergovernmental negotiations process is emebedded into many multistakeholder consultations. However, I see a problem in that both the roadmap and the modalities resolution are unclear about the interaction between the intergovernmental negotiations and the multistakeholder consultations. There is a risk that we end up with two parallel processes.

The design of the first round of governmental consultations last week in New York and the virtual consultations yesterday and today feed the fear that the whole consultation process will be organized as a monologue, a collection of statements by governments and non-governmental stakeholders. This would be bad. What we need is a dialogue and interaction, where non-state actors can comment directly to governmental statements and governments can react to proposals made by non-state actors. We need a space where both sides can ask questions and express agreements and disagreements to find out where the “rough consensus” could be at the end of the day, which is December 17, 2025.

It is good that the first steps have been open, transparent and inclusive. But the next step is to create an opportunity for real interaction among all stakeholders, governmental and non-governmental. According to the “Tunis Agenda,” governments are stakeholders and should be part of the multistakeholder consultations. And non-state actors should have an opportunity to follow the intergovernmental negotiations and have a right to express opinions in a reasonable way, either orally or in writing.

I was listening carefully to the statements made by governments on May 30, 2025, in New York. Here is where I agree and disagree.

I agree with the statement of the G77 and China that more has to be done to bridge the digital divide and avoid the emergence of an AI divide. And this is more than to bring the remaining two billion people online. It means investment in infrastructure and education; it means the development of a data economy and the building of AI factories in the global south. During the 1st phase of WSIS, the president of Senegal proposed the establishment of an intergovernmental “Digital Solidarity Fund” to bridge the digital divide. The recommendations of the “Task Force for Financial Mechanisms,” which were discussed at the Tunis Phase of WSIS, were never implemented. In 2005, the big tech empires, which dominate today’s digital world, didn’t exist. Those tech empires are the beneficiaries of the digital development of the last two decades, which was also enabled through the WSIS framework. I think it is now also their responsibility to pay back and to contribute to overcoming the new divides in the digital world. The proposals made by Abdullah Alswaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology of Saudi Arabia, at the IGF in Riyadh in December 2024 could be a good start for a new approach to enhancing digital solidarity.

I also agree with the proposal of the European Union to establish a “Multistakeholder Sounding Board.” Such a multistakeholder group could help in drafting elements of the expected outcome document. As we have seen in many other conferences—from NetMundial to the IGF—there is a lot of wisdom and knowledge in each stakeholder group, which can bring extra value. It would be a missed opportunity if governments would not use this potential.

And I agree also with Switzerland to give UNGIS a greater role in the next WSIS phase. UNGIS now includes nearly every UN organization. This is very natural because now, every UN organization has its own digital agenda. Bringing the various perspectives together is not only useful, but it also helps to avoid duplications and can create synergies. But UNGIS is a network of intergovernmental organizations. As Switzerland has proposed, it would make sense to give UNGIS a Multistakeholder Advisory Group as a right hand, where experts from the technical community, the private sector and civil society could contribute with additional perspectives.

I also support all proposals to make the IGF a permanent institution with a stable financing mechanism and to use the Sao Paulo Multistakeholder Guidelines (SPMGs) from 2024 to promote enhanced cooperation among all stakeholders.

I disagree with the statement of the representative of Iran to make “enhanced cooperation” a priority in the WSIS+20 negotiations. “Enhanced cooperation” is coded language. The Tunis Agenda bridged the 2005 controversy between proposals to establish an “Intergovernmental Internet Council” or to leave the management of critical Internet resources in the hands of the private sector. Part of the controversy was the special oversight role of the US government over the DNS A-Root Server, managed by ICANN. In 2005, any additions, deletions of modifications of TLD Zone Files in the A-Root Server had to be authorized by the NTIA, which is part of the US Department of Commerce. Some countries did see this special role of the US government as a violation of the UN principle of sovereign equality of states. The Tunis compromise proposed that the problem should be solved in “a process.” Whether the process should lead to a “Status Quo Plus” (an intergovernmental oversight body) or a “Status Quo Minus” (the removal of the US stewardship role) remained open. This was reflected in Article 68 of the Tunis Agenda, which “recognizes that all governments should have an equal role and responsibility for international Internet governance.” After the IANA transition in 2016, when the US government handed over the oversight of the A-Root Server to the “empowered community” of ICANN, the basic problem around “equal footing” was settled. Each government in ICANN is now on “equal footing.” The US government has just one vote in ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) as all the other 170 GAC members, including Iran. To reopen the debate around the establishment of an intergovernmental oversight body within WSIS+20 would be a waste of time. What is needed is enhancing the cooperation among stakeholders and including, in particular, stakeholders from the global south in digital policy development and decision-making.

I also disagree with the statement of the Russian Federation, which rejected the GDC, expressed some dissatisfaction with the multistakeholder approach and proposed a stronger role of governments. The idea to move from a “one-stakeholder approach” to a “multistakeholder approach” in Internet Governance was the result of a decade of discussions and culminated in the acceptance of the working definition for Internet Governance in the Tunis Agenda by 193 UN member states. To manage the problems in the digital sphere, it needs the involvement of all stakeholders: governments, the technical community, the private sector and civil society. Every stakeholder can bring additional knowledge and expertise to the table. This does not remove the special role of governments, but intergovernmental agreements on digital issues are embedded today in a multistakeholder environment. This is reaffirmed in numerous documents on the international level, which were also supported by the Russian Federation in the past. One example is the “Deauville Declaration” from 2011, which recognized that “the security of networks and services on the Internet is a multistakeholder issue. It requires coordination between governments, regional and international organizations, the private sector, and civil society.” This declaration was signed by Dmitri Medwedjew, then the president of Russia.

And I disagree with the statement by the United States, which proposed to decouple the WSIS Action Lines from the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is true that the SDGs do not have a strong digital profile. This is probably part of the different approaches between New York and Geneva with regard to digital policymaking. When the SDGs substituted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015, there was a lot of ignorance in New York with regard to the WSIS Action Lines. However, the reality is, that sustainable development can not be reached by ignoring the digital dimension. Today, each of the 16 SDGs has a digital component. Instead of decoupling SDGs and WSIS Action Lines, it would be better to think about a convergence and to move towards drafting “Digital Development Goals” (DDGs).