Global Digital Compact: Civil society support essential to success

When it comes to advocating for progress on freedom of expression, Anna Oosterlinck is an expert on the processes within the UN system. As Article 19's Head of UN advocacy, she has closely followed the negotiations and reviews on the Pact for the Future documents over the past year. The final versions of the documents showed renewed recognition for the importance of independent journalism and public media as a pillar of democracy and sustainable development. But from a digital rights perspective, the documents don’t go far enough, Oosterlinck says. She spoke to DW Akademie just after the UN General Assembly adopted the texts.

DW Akademie: Are you delighted that we now have a finalized Pact for the Future?

Oosterlinck: Yes, definitely. At some point this month, a lot of diplomats here in New York did not think it was going to happen. Especially toward the end, as a small number of delegations were proposing a lot of last-minute amendments — basically focusing on watering down the text. Many thought, ok, maybe we will not have any Pact at all. But now it has been adopted by consensus of 193 member states of the UN. That sends a strong signal.

To make this happen, the African Group cleverly countered Russia's last-minute attempt to undermine the process.

Yes, the Africans did it in a way that is really beating Russia where it plays best, and that is through the rules of procedure. They asked the assembly to vote against considering their last-minute amendments. The Russian proposal was definitely intended to sabotage the whole process. So it was great that the Africans responded as a group. Because the Pact for the Future is a very important document for these countries. It contains a lot on sustainable development and other things close to their hearts. It is great that they stood up and said, no, we are not playing this game.

Attendees at the Summit of the Future witnessed the adoption of the Pact for the Future and the Global Digital Compact.

Let's take a closer look at the Global Digital Compact (GDC), an annex to the Pact. Are you satisfied with the final text?

As all these documents had to be agreed by consensus based on intergovernmental negotiations, we have seen compromising across the board. But we have to differentiate between the principles the GDC starts with and the text further below. The principles contain mostly the human rights language we have advocated for. That is for us the biggest win. Then, however, when it comes to articulating how these principles are to be applied to the different sections the text is less clear, and we see some gaps.

For example?

In the AI Governance section, you do not see human rights mentioned. That is very concerning for us. We're missing the commitment to human rights throughout the whole life cycle of these technologies — from the pre-conceptualization to trade and transfer. This omission may have consequences for national and international legislation. Also, the text does not differentiate between different AI technologies, which is problematic. Because you don't necessarily need the same type of approach to, for example, generative AI as to biometric technologies.

Another example is term "meaningful connectivity" under objective 1. The document lacks specificity of what this actually looks like. Meaningful connectivity does not only mean that people have WiFi. They also need electricity, a device, digital literacy, literacy, media literacy etc. So there are some things where we say, that's a good starting point but not enough. We need to build on that.

We also miss red-line language for digital technologies. We believe that digital technologies should be banned if they are not in compliance with international human rights law — whatever the technology may be.

In general, we would have wanted the full breadth of human rights obligations reflected in the text: International human rights law, international humanitarian law and international refugee law. But this opportunity has not been used. And this is on purpose. Some states want more space here when it comes to national security and warfare.

What about the paragraphs on disinformation?

We were also not entirely happy with them. They might be misused to take action that is not in line with freedom of expression standards and free protest and international human rights law. We see major problems with national disinformation laws which are used to crack down on dissent, civic space, human rights defenders and journalists — and civil society as a whole.

The media development community and many other organizations travelled to New York to make civil society's voice heard at the UN Summit.

Another issue that has been hotly discussed in recent weeks is multistakeholderism. For example, the idea that governance of the internet has to be conducted by all societal actors — including civil society — through the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). What do you see in the text now?

There were clear attempts to water down and undermine that mutlistakeholder governance model. They were not really successful. But the text now does not reaffirm this model strongly enough. And the paragraphs that addressed the funding of the IGF were taken out. That means we have a lack of clarity here.

Another example is the "Independent International Scientific Panel on AI" that will now come — a multidisciplinary, independent scientific panel. It is not a multistakeholder panel. We don't know what this panel will look like, who will be sitting on it and what their mandate will be.

And then we will have a "Global Dialogue on AI Governance," which is an inter-governmental dialogue. So the concern is that some stakeholders will be excluded. My opinion here is: If we want to make this a genuine reality, we must turn this into a multistakeholder effort. The lofty goals that the governments have set out in this GDC cannot be achieved without having private sector companies, academia and local civil society on board.

Interview: Jan Lublinski