The road from WSIS to WSIS+20

Twenty years ago, IT for Change was propelled into the WSIS process by chance. We embraced the opportunity to track and participate in a Summit-level UN process, curious but well-aware of the geo-politics of international negotiations. The internet had just been enlisted into the UN’s developmental imaginary as a catalytic instrument for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. This optimistic universalism endures even today in the AI-for-everything refrain. The marvels of the search engine were already established by 2003, and the information economy was on a new course. Yet, the potential of the digital network as a means to aggregate value and aggrandize power was not so evident – at least in the Majority World. Little did we know that the arc of technology was birthing a new geo-economic configuration.

Those were times when we wrote internet with a capital I. By the second phase of the WSIS in 2005, it was crystal clear that the internet as a global public good (a truism that was prevented from being represented as such in the outcome documents) would not bring transformative change to everyone equally. The technological status quo, led by a handful of corporations, was rapidly consolidating control over the architectures of the digital space (remember Lessig’s timeless treatise?). The network-data revolution, it seemed, would only yield crumbs for the South.

The network-data revolution, it seemed, would only yield crumbs for the South.

In the decade that followed the WSIS, we saw the tide of internet optimism and an uncritical celebration of digital multistakeholderism. Our voice – demanding scrutiny of the networks of expedient collusion and a real commitment to systemic accountability and justice – was often sidelined. The COVID moment was a turning point; already, the juggernaut of digital capitalism and its deep roots in neo-imperialism were evident in the Cambridge Analytica scandals and the resultant techlash. What COVID showed was the opportunism and depravity of the tech monarchs. The coming of the Trumpian world order presents a new low for global digital solidarity. The unrefusable largesse of Silicon Valley’s tech bros has expanded not just in scope and scale, but also in its devastating social impact. The world order – digital and otherwise – looks increasingly precarious.

The WSIS+20 discussions needed to tackle the conditions that enable these monumental issues. However, in a multilateral system that has been systematically enfeebled by fragmentation and one-upmanship, ideas of equity, fairness, and justice stand ignored. The ripple effects of an aggressive, cynical politics have been an unsurprising yet grievous loss for democratic vision and people’s rights. Even as the Global South is waking up to the deeply structural and infrastructural nature of the digital, the WSIS+20 outcomes seem to have sidestepped the axis of exclusion. Clearly, from the standpoint of the Majority World, the horizon for an emancipatory digital order needs fresh thinking and new pathways.

What Were WSIS+20’s Major Omissions?

The failure to institute a precautionary approach 

Civil society organizations had made a joint submission to the WSIS process, urging for the outcome document to include an explicit acknowledgement of the legal obligation of states to “apply a precautionary approach and to refrain from or cease the use of digital technologies that are fundamentally incompatible with international human rights law as committed to by States in A/RES/78/213 and A/RES/78/265”. With the GenAI juggernaut, the need for red lines cannot be overemphasized. However, the final text sidestepped even a minor reference to ‘do no harm’ safeguards in the design and development of digital public goods.

No concrete methods to tackle corporate power

The outcome document states that “equitable and meaningful inclusion in the digital economy requires efforts to tackle concentrations of technological capacity and market power in order to ensure that the benefits of digital cooperation are fairly distributed”.

The core injustices of the global digital economy arise from the runaway power of corporations. The WSIS+20 document needed to spell out a modality for dedicated inter-governmental dialogue to address the governance deficits in transnational data and AI value chains. From workers’ rights to environmental justice and taxation, the normative foundations of the international digital order need to be claimed and articulated towards just and fair global digital value chains. It may be true that a UN tending towards an existential crisis does not offer the right conjuncture to contemplate and cobble together future-proof norms and rules for global digital justice. However, fair distribution of the benefits of technology hinges on global norms and binding rules that can put people before profit. Vague commitments to curbing market power risk entrenching—rather than transforming—the deeply skewed structures that concentrate control in the hands of a few within the digital economy.

The lack of teeth in the financing mechanisms proposal

The Geneva Plan of Action’s financing proposals put their weight behind regulatory environments that could promote ‘ease of business’. The WSIS Declaration underscored the need for liberalising telecommunications and bridging the digital divide through market investments in the Global South.

Today, there is overwhelming evidence that the private sector does not invest in digital infrastructure capabilities in  ‘high-risk, low return’ contexts. As the UN SG’s report on innovative voluntary financing mechanisms for AI (2025) observes, countries that are in the most nascent stages of AI development “typically lack robust digital infrastructure, and the risk-adjusted rates of return on capital are often too low to attract adequate private investment”. Blended financing in this scenario just ends up de-risking private capital without directing it to policy priority sectors, something that Mariana Mazucatto argues with evidence.

Today, there is overwhelming evidence that the private sector does not invest in digital infrastructure capabilities in  ‘high-risk, low return’ contexts.

The writing is on the wall. Without dedicated public financing, countries in the Global South cannot build the minimum capabilities essential for independent AI futures. Unfortunately, the prevailing macroeconomic regime – with increasing sovereign debt burdens, weak commitments to ODA and exploitative tax and trade frameworks – makes it nearly impossible for majority world countries to mobilise the core public investments necessary for achieving digital equality.

The Outcome Document does not offer an innovative proposal in this regard. Wishful as it may be, unless we have a concrete pledge to build a global public financing mechanism for foundational digital capabilities, digital futures will remain deeply unjust. The principle of “Common But Differentiated Responsibilities” does apply to the digital context – built in large part from the resources of the Global South. Dominant countries and transnational digital corporations that have profited from digital colonialism need to make reparations by pooling in the highest contributions. Without a bold new mechanism, the proposal for an internal task force to assess the financing landscape is all but an attempt to find out what we already know!

What next?

Our plenary intervention urged greater ambition in the future trajectories of digital governance.

We urged for another innovation paradigm – South-led, decentralized, small, agentic.

We called for concrete actions for redistributive justice – contributions for digital infrastructure from major transaction levies on technology companies, respect for the right of all countries to tax cross-border digital services, and reform of international trade.

We also called for a normative framework for AI – an international AI constitution predicated on global democracy, and a Global Technology Assessment Mechanism to govern all emerging technologies.

These are not radical proposals; they are the common sense rooted in the realities of the majority.

It is vital for civil society to lead from the front – to reclaim the popular imagination and fill up the discursive vacuum through movement-building on digital justice. Another networked innovation paradigm – where polycentric alternatives and decentralised action generate the cartography of sovereign technology infrastructures – is possible. It is already evident in the prefigurative politics of many communities – demanding a human(e) future that engenders a society of radical sanity.