British football expert Mark Langdon made this comment in the 22 June episode of The Guardian Football Weekly podcast, reviewing matches earlier on in the FIFA World Cup 2026.

Dubbed “the most digitally connected World Cup ever,” FIFA 2026 was brought to audiences through AI-powered highlights, real-time data visualisations, and video streaming.  I asked my go-to LLM (large language model) to apply social listening tools for a sentiment analysis of African social media chatter about Bafana Bafana’s [the South Africa national team] participation in the World Cup.

The result: “deeply divided” feelings, with historic solidarity overshadowed by a significant backlash driven by regional tensions. “South Africa’s 2-0 opening loss to Mexico became a major ‘hate-watch’ event, driven by several factors,” most importantly, xenophobic violence and treatment of African migrants in South Africa.

The LLM results further indicated strong initial pan-African solidarity for Morocco, followed swiftly by social media backlash after a controversial statement claimed to have been made by Morocco’s Sports Minister was circulated online. The backlash over the fabricated quote was compounded by “political friction, including disputes over Western Sahara and allegations of anti-Black racism.”

Conversations on the street in Nairobi and on social media recalled an incident from last year’s Africa Cup of Nations tournament. Africans had not forgotten the “Towel Gate” grudge where a Moroccan player snatched a Senegalese player’s towel.

Finally, in the deciding last match, Africans overwhelmingly favoured Spain over Argentina, 88%, according to a poll by the Spanish sports daily Marca. African support for Spain was fuelled by “a mix of sporting grievances, politics, and social justice concerns.”

Growing up in Kenya with the Saturday evening TV show Football Made in Germany made fans out of us. [The football league] Bundesliga, [football team] Bayern Munich, and [star goalkeeper Harald] Schumacher were household names. Simple, benign, good fun that brought families with a television set together.

Fast forward several decades later to the FIFA World Cup 2026. “The beautiful game” evolved into a complex spectre somewhere along the way. The lenses through which the game is viewed are layered with factors that have nothing to do with purely football. In FIFA 2026, the conditions to observe the interplay between digital connectedness and the politics of sports and identity, were in place.

Rather than passion for the game itself, politics, race, and perceptions about justice mattered more on the continent. A contagion of outrage informed by past and present events spread in borderless online communities, flowing parallel to the real-time streaming of the game. Reactions on social media encouraged copycat responses.

Africa remains the underdog in world professional football, in other sectors, and more ways than could be counted. In this World Cup however, we took home an invisible trophy.

The inaugural Global Dialogue on AI Governance marked the first time, as speakers noted, that every UN Member State had a seat at the table to discuss artificial intelligence opportunities and risks; bridging AI divides; ensuring AI is safe, secure and trustworthy; and protecting human rights.

António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, struck a somber note in his opening address. Calling artificial intelligence “an experiment…being run on our own societies – without a plan, and without consent,” he issued three warnings: its speed, which outstrips our institutions’ ability to govern; its power, “concentrated in a handful of companies, and in a handful of countries”; and truth:

A machine-enabled lie can now persuade as effectively as the truth – and authentic evidence can be dismissed as fake.
Further eroding the integrity of our information ecosystem and undermining trust.
A society that cannot agree on what is real cannot defend itself.

The preliminary report of the International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence was also released – a must-read for anyone wanting to understand “the state of AI”.

As Panel co-chair Maria Ressa explained, the report reflects consensus among its 40 independent members, based on the evidence. “Consensus,” she said, “means you move to the centre.” So, she added, “This is the floor of our concern, not the ceiling. And that is alarming enough.”

The report points to major gains in science, health, and education – alongside serious risks to information integrity, growing vulnerability, and increased abuse, especially against women, girls, journalists, and marginalized populations.

The two days were filled with speeches, many alternating state representatives with civil society voices. But “dialogue” – especially with those who hold power – seemed non-existent at this initial stage.

The Global Dialogue overlapped with the increasingly high-profile AI for Good Global Summit – a technology expo with staged areas for companies and organizations to showcase products and services or pitch problems that need solving. A sign of its growing popularity: for the first year it charged admission for most attendees, with a premium fee for the “Centre Stage” sessions.

Alongside impressive demonstrations of technology improving accessibility and scientific research, it was clear we remain captivated by humanoid robots – and that the allure of what we could do still overshadows what we should do. Its popularity and the claim of its organizers (International Telecommunications Union-ITU in partnership with other UN agencies, with the Swiss Government as co-convener) that it is “the United Nations’ leading platform on Artificial Intelligence” raises real questions about how it relates to – and where it is steering – the Global Dialogue.

The third event has had a longer, more inclusive history. The vision of the World Summit on the Information Society calls for a “people-centred, inclusive, and development-oriented Information Society,” and for over 20 years it has served as the primary multistakeholder forum for implementing communication and digital commitments. This is where community networks, human rights organizations, regulators, and private sector providers share sessions and plenaries – albeit alongside high-profile State sponsors.

No doubt because Geneva’s main conference centre, Palexpo, was fully booked by the Global Dialogue and AI for Good, the first two days of the 2026 WSIS Forum were held at ITU headquarters, down a construction-strewn road. The low-key setup – magnified by a confusing warren of hallways and meeting rooms – gave the impression that WSIS was the poor relation of digital governance.

The setting improved once the Forum moved to Palexpo for the rest of the week, but compared to the three halls buzzing with people (and robots) at AI for Good, the atmosphere stayed muted.

While the WSIS vision remains unfulfilled, it is still the platform that addresses the entire information society, including the digital environment. The Global Dialogue was full of speeches calling for meaningful community involvement, respect for human rights, equal access, and transparency; it is the WSIS Forum where actual efforts at community and multistakeholder cooperation are demonstrated as models for further action. It is far from a perfect, all-purpose governance and financing platform – but it is the most inclusive in focus and participation.

There is yet another significant platform coming up in a different time and place – the United Nations Internet Governance Forum – to be held in December in Nairobi, Kenya. Its 2026 theme is “Governing the Internet in the Age of Intelligence: Our Shared Responsibility.” Its mandate, linked to the WSIS process, is to bring diverse stakeholders together to shape digital public policy across both public and private sectors.

As the WACC delegation navigated these three meetings last week – and looks ahead to the IGF – we are left wondering where the most effective action on digital justice will actually happen.

Each forum has a role, and each needs WACC’s advocacy on equity, participation, and accountability. But the links between best practice, multistakeholder dialogue, public policy, and sustainable development have not yet been forged, and the still largely unregulated development of AI raises a hard question: which forum, or combination of forums, will have real impact?

Speaking at the WSIS Forum, Jennifer Chung, Chair of the IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group, directly addressed the need for coordination, collaboration, and cohesion among these four platforms – essential to implementing the Global Digital Compact and to the power of multistakeholder cooperation.

Digital justice is needed more than ever, and WACC is committed to making sure the voices and experiences of those advocating for equity, participation, and accountability are heard loud and clear in every one of these forums. But that takes all of us.

Follow these processes. Read the reports. Speak up when your national delegation takes its seat at the Global Dialogue, raise questions about community involvement in the latest AI tech, and share our stories of how technological solutions work for all at WSIS and the IGF.

Most importantly, take action where you are. Digital justice is not only decided in Geneva or Nairobi – it is built in the communities where access, literacy, and safety are still out of reach.

Support your local community media. Champion digital literacy where you live. Push back against disinformation in your own networks. The forums will keep meeting. Whether they deliver justice depends on what we do between them.

Images: (clockwise from top) participants at WSIS, ITU/Pierre Albouy; speaker at the Global Governance on AI, ITU/Antoine Tardy; AI for Good Summit, ITU/D Woldu. All photos on ITU’s Flickr profile, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. 

The message that Africa’s role in artificial intelligence is an investment agenda reverberated across fireside chats, workshop presentations and exhibits at the recent “AI Everything Kenya” conference with the tagline “Home to the Most Innovative AI, Cybersecurity & Tech Showcases in Africa.” The event attracted the type of participants it was designed for: venture capitalists, government delegates, and technology innovators. Civil society actors were far fewer. Concerns about digital rights, inclusion, equality, and ethics were expressed only occasionally.

Numerous conversations regarding AI are taking place, but seemingly with little, if any, convergence across them. One constellation of discussions revolves around trade, innovation, and investment. Another debates digital justice and human rights on the internet. AI is applied for noble purposes as much as for nefarious ones. There are drones that map crop disease, small language models that cater to African communities, and generative AI trained on African publications. At the same time, AI is used in lethal autonomous weapons and for domestic mass surveillance.

AI Everything Kenya was a masterclass on the technical aspects of AI: how to prepare to raise a financing round, how to integrate AI into security strategies, how to build AI-ready use cases aligned with International Telecommunications Union (ITU) standards in various domains. With the exception of a handful of sessions, the conference lost an opportunity to grapple with issues of rights, opportunities, and freedoms. “What does it mean to safeguard our humanity?” Pope Leo asks in his recent encyclical letter, Magnifica Humanitas: “The risk extends beyond misuse. […] The quality of a civilization is measured not by the power of its means, but by the care it is able to offer, by its ability to recognize the other as a face not merely as a function […]. Technology can also support this mutual care between people, for example, by providing tools that help us anticipate and organize things, without undermining human freedom and judgment.”

In The Great Transformation, political economist Karl Polanyi argues that the idea of a market disembedded from society was a utopia and as such, could not exist without annihilating the human and natural substance of society. A protective counter movement would emerge to prevent disaster and create stability. Extending Polanyi’s critique of market fundamentalism to the AI revolution, it could be argued that the current over-enthusiasm about AI is bound to create an AI ecosystem that is disembedded from the social. Pockets of dissent rise, but the free market persists despite the problems it has brought on.

Likewise with the AI revolution, the momentum is at an all-time high and is likely to be amplified despite the concerns that have been raised, including displacement of human labour, environmental costs, algorithmic bias, and AI-enabled violence against women and girls. As long as the siloed conversations continue, with industry in its corner and conscientious civil society in another, the risks to society and community will continue into the distant future.

Image generated by WACC using Canva Magic Studio

The plot could easily have been from a Netflix dystopian thriller.

“The Russian Guy” approaches ordinary women and girls leading ordinary lives, one walking her child to school, another stocking supermarket shelves, and a young girl walking by.

“Hello. What’s your name? You look beautiful. Come with me.”

He has sex with them in his rental apartment. The entire encounter is captured on video through his Ray-Ban META smart glasses. He posts the videos on his private Telegram account and porn sites for paying followers, while shorter clips have gone viral on TikTok and Instagram. Rumors swirl that he is HIV positive. Evidence indicates that hundreds of women and young girls across Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa have fallen prey.

The spectrum of technology-facilitated gender-based violence has fanned out yet again into an even more grotesque form.

First, it was humans operating in the dark web. As the range of tech tools expanded, so did new ideas emerge on how to amplify violations against women and girls. Grok, the AI chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, enabled image-editing to create non-consensual sexualized images of women. With “the Russian Guy,” otherwise known as “Yaytseslav,” AI-powered wearables in the form of eyewear with hidden cameras have raised the stakes. His prey were unaware that the blinking light at the corner of the frames was a recording camera paired to a smartphone.

The gender AI divide – inequalities between women and men related to access, use, development, and representation in AI technologies – one that is wider for less tech-savvy women, implies that the room for AI-amplified violations can only expand.

Yaytseslav’s case is also a cautionary tale on AI ethics and regulation. Despite public outrage in Ghana and Kenya and calls for his arrest, he remains active, posting content on social media.

The Cyber Security Authority in Ghana invoked Section 67 of the Cybersecurity Act, which criminalizes the non-consensual recording, publication, or distribution of intimate images or videos. By then, he had travelled to Kenya, where the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act 2018 provides similar grounds.

Legislation is of little value, however, when perpetrators can move freely between jurisdictions. The scale of Yaytseslav’s actions might have been reduced if comprehensive, regional and/or international AI regulatory frameworks had been in place to serve as a deterrent.

That the events are presently unfolding in the Silicon Savannah in Kenya, a country that is one of Africa’s frontier tech nations and one of the region’s top AI policymakers, is alarming.

Regulation must cover AI-amplified gendered violence, exclusion, exploitation and misogyny, beyond the often-touted economic benefits. Rather than a patchwork of dispersed national laws, standards must be harmonized across the region. They must be enforced by a powerful regulator able to stand up to the Global North’s big tech firms on all facets of technology.

Photo: Ground Pictures and People Images composition

Recent headlines I read run from the latest attempts by Donald Trump to own Greenland to Taylor Swift becoming the second–youngest ever inductee to the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

There doesn’t seem to be a connection, but there is – digital technology.

Whether it’s the semi-conductors and modern military planes that need critical minerals or the algorithms in streaming services that can magnify popularity, the influence of digital technology permeates all aspects of our life far beyond what most people realise.

This was the topic of WACC Europe’s most recent online discussion, led by network member and AI expert Erin Green. The event highlighted just how important WACC’s resources on digital justice are to raise awareness of informed use and identify issues requiring advocacy.

But the discussion also raised the question of what would happen if journalists themselves took a digital justice lens to the news stories they are reporting and highlighted this red thread running through them.

So often, the development and use of digital technology come under the “Tech” section of the news.  Here, even if you are reading the section religiously, you can easily miss the enormity of digital’s impact.

The Greenland saga is not only about mineral extraction but surveillance technology. It is also connected to the vital importance that tech spending on AI developments has for US economic growth – adding to the U.S. government’s insistence on unregulated development even over safety concerns.

A salacious story of Prince Harry taking Associated Newspapers to court may garner little sympathy for the combatants, but it should remind us of all the digital tools that make it possible now to listen in, scrape data, and track movements of even the least of us.

Water scarcity? It’s a climate change story or a private industry scandal and, increasingly, an artificial intelligence dilemma. Will AI identify environmental solutions before the massive data centres being built to increase its power further drain communities dry?

More apparent digital connections can be seen in other stories, from local impact – an AI-generated image of a damaged railway bridge in northern England posted on social media that caused rail companies to cancel trains – to international horror when Internet shutdowns hide violent repression.

There is of course other news related to digital technology that is positive, from health breakthroughs to exposure of human rights abuse that leads to justice. But digital justice issues are the red thread running through our news and lives – making this the common focal point for informed use and advocacy.

Communication rights campaigners know much of this already. The danger is that we think this is obvious to everyone else.

This is why we need to make sure people take the first step and learn about the connected, deeper issues of our digital lives. Part of the value of WACC’s Just Digital course is that it does exactly that – it highlights the many justice issues linked to the digital ecosystem driving our world today.

Let’s ensure that the red threads of digital justice are visible in our families, schools, workplaces, community organizations, media, and more. When realities are exposed, steps towards justice can finally take place.

Photos: Hadrian/Shutterstock, Toeizuza Thailand/Shutterstock, Tada Images/Shutterstock

Photo: Digital justice, Just Digital, WACC Europe, digital technologies, media

Both at the WSIS+20 High-Level Meeting in July in Geneva and in the negotiations involved in drafting the outcome document in the months since, WACC and its partners have emphasized the centrality of human rights in all aspects, and by all actors, of the Information Society.

With that in mind, there are some elements in the last published version of the draft document that civil society coalitions have welcomed.

The Global Digital Rights Coalition (GDRC), in their November 20 statement on Revision 1 WSIS+20, welcomed elements of the document which reaffirm “the value and principles of multistakeholder engagement,” anchor the WSIS in international human rights law and UN systems, uphold “the independence and diversity of media,” and clarify “the obligation of States and the responsibilities of the private sector to uphold human rights in all aspects of the governance of digital technologies.”

Just as clearly, though, much needs to be strengthened for a clear people-centric path forward. The GDRC continues to call for strengthened language and explicit references that would, among other things:

• Prohibit the use of digital technologies fundamentally incompatible with human rights.
• Emphasize the duty of the private sector to conduct human rights due diligence on their products.
• Restore language on the urgent need to counter and address all forms of violence.
• Strengthen references to information and democratic processes by referring explicitly to social media and AI-generated or manipulated content.
• Respect and protect human rights throughout the life cycle of AI systems.

Will the final approved document be strengthened or weakened in the end? Will adherence to human rights – not to mention environmental safeguards – be enshrined in the text and affirmed by member states, or will economic interests and political control win the arguments?

In either case, all of us in civil society will need to be prepared for the implementation of both the 2024 Global Digital Compact and the outcomes of WSIS+20. With privately driven technological advances far outstripping the ability of states to control, intense engagement is required of civil society in pressing for accountability, transparency, human rights, and economic and environmental justice.

In their response to the Zero Draft in October, the Global Digital Justice Forum stated:

“An optimistic approach can still be pragmatic but only if attentive to the unease and aspirations of those in the margins; those hopeful of a better digital tomorrow. This must first honestly acknowledge that a profit-centric technological revolution has failed to open up pathways for a people-led, inclusive, and development-oriented information society. This mainstream digital paradigm must be replaced by an alternative public technological paradigm that distributes the innovation dividends of the data and AI revolution.”

If we truly want a people-centred, inclusive, and development-oriented information society, we will need all our voices and actions to ensure it happens.

Photo: ITU/Pierre Albouy, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

However, as the infrastructure needed to support the growing artificial intelligence sector is built, the extractivist dimension of the digital is reaching new levels of complexity. On the one hand, there are the environmental implications of this infrastructure, which is creating water stress in places like Mexico, Chile, and Spain thanks to massive data centres, many of which emit enormous quantities of greenhouse gases. 

On the other hand, there is the economic impact. Most of these data centres are established without contributing in any meaningful way to local development. For instance, just this past week Open AI announced the construction of a US$25 billion mega data centre in the Patagonian region of Argentina. The announcement made no mention of whether the data centre “would create local employment, boost local industrial production, be based on environmental impact assessments, or include any Argentinian national oversight of strategic infrastructure,” says Natalia Zuazo in an article published last Friday in El Pais.

But what exactly do we mean by “extractivism”? Generally speaking, the concept of extractivism refers to an economic model that extracts value from regions thought of as “empty,” “barbaric,” or “primitive” and that are perceived to contain resources that are available for outsiders to exploit. Usually, this type of extraction generates next-to-no economic benefit for local communities, even if local elites enrich themselves quite significantly. Extractivism also tends to destroy natural ecosystems in its quest for revenue, create “serious social and health threats on the local populace,” and fuel local conflict between and among communities and private actors. This model is also highly dependent on international prices, leading to frequent boom and bust cycles that undermine long-term economic development. It is usually perpetuated by weak and corrupt institutions at the local, subnation, and national level and predatory, rent-seeking behaviour by local and national elites.

This definition seems to apply to the situation Argentina quite clearly, where a foreign multinational is seeking to benefit from the vast natural resources of the country without leaving much economic development behind and with few checks and balances. And the country’s government appears more interested in attracting foreign investment for its benefit and of the elites it represents than in establishing clear oversight mechanisms or in fostering sustainable local development.

In this context, WACC believes we need to take urgent action to address this issue. We believe states should work diligently to establish clear guidelines that protect natural ecosystems, set out clear national oversight mechanisms with real tools to enforce regulations, and mandate data centres to contribute to local and national development in the form of knowledge, technology, and financial benefits transfers. We also call on states to respect Indigenous rights, mainly obligations to ensure free, prior, and informed consent, when approving the constructions of data centre infrastructure.

Furthermore, and in line with “Water and energy nexus,” the July 2025 report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, WACC supports the notion that “[s]tates and international institutions should promote a moratorium on the development of data centres and provide clear information on their water and energy consumption and the risks that they pose to climate change, the sustainability of aquatic ecosystems, the human rights of impoverished populations and the survival of vulnerable productive sectors.” This moratorium should remain in place until these risks have been effectively mitigated.

WACC looks forward to being part of continued civil society pressure to ensure that the calls for a more equitable digital world eventually turn into reality. We encourage people, communities, and civil society organizations everywhere to join us in these efforts.

Image: © cnv-studio via Canva.com

The Internet is the world’s digital lifeline. For the approximately 5.6 billion people connected to the Internet (some 70% of the global population), access is essential.

The entire Internet cannot be switched off, but governments and other actors can temporarily disrupt or restrict access by shutting down major server providers, filtering traffic, manipulating routing systems, and even sabotaging infrastructure. This is censorship.

At the time of writing, there have been 107 Internet shutdowns around the world since September 2024. Top of the league is India, followed by Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Pakistan, Algeria, and Iran.

The Washington Post (16 September 2025) reported on the situation in Afghanistan, noting that, “For many Afghan women, the internet has been an escape amid increasingly draconian restrictions following the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul in 2021.”

Previously, according to the Post, “many women attended online classes, learned foreign languages with the help of e-books and traded cryptocurrencies in the hope of becoming financially independent. Some have tried to make up for the closing of movie theaters, the shuttering of gyms for women and the banning of music by turning to YouTube videos.”

All that has changed. The Taliban’s Internet shutdowns aim to silence women and curtail their aspirations. According to The Guardian (23 September 2025), “The Taliban leadership is reportedly not only considering cutting broadband services but also extending the ban to internet services offered by telecommunications companies, which would stop people getting online using mobile data.”

The USA doesn’t do shutdowns – at least, not yet. But the Trump Administration has concocted its own version of criminalising public communication and censoring free speech. It conducts surveillance against people and groups that disagree with its policies, screening social media for protest and dissent.

Trump is also prone to suing media companies he has accused of bias, including CBS, ABC, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Trump’s Federal Communications Commission held up the $8 billion merger of the media companies Skydance and Paramount in part because of alleged news distortion at Paramount’s subsidiary CBS. The merger was approved only after Paramount settled a case with Trump related to an interview CBS broadcast with former Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Silencing and censorship have become weapons of mass subjugation. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube played a critical role in the Middle East pro-democracy uprisings known as the Arab Spring. They enabled activists to organize protests, share information and footage of government repression, and raise global awareness of the ongoing events. Since then, such protests have come to depend on the Internet which – in retaliation – governments have increasingly sought to control.

Crucially, the Internet is a digital enabler of the right to assembly and association enshrined in Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as in other rights-based instruments. Article 20 facilitates Article 19 (guaranteeing freedom of opinion, expression, and the right to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas regardless of frontiers) – but both were drawn up before the digital era.

Digital justice imagines a rights-based world that seeks to ensure equitable, democratic, and humane governance of technology to prevent harms and to promote equality for all. It must now include measures to outlaw Internet shutdowns as a form of censorship inimical to democracy.

Photo: SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images

UNESCO’S statement in response was a diplomatic shrug, underlining that they were prepared anyway for such an eventuality. After two previous similar actions by the United States, the Agency had worked to decrease reliance on US funding and increase contributions from elsewhere. One journalist thinks that the withdrawal will be a blow to UNESCO’s work, even while acknowledging UNESCO’s response.

Most know UNESCO as a body that preserves ancient temples and declares World Heritage Sites. However, the agency actively works to protect freedom of expression, counter hate speech, disinformation and misinformation, and promote ethical AI governance.

UNESCO has survived without US funding before. The United States left in 1984 and came back, left again in 2017 and then rejoined in 2023. But each withdrawal no doubt chips away at the Agency’s stability.

According to UNESCO’s statement, the US contributes only 8% of its budget. Therefore, leaving now is not catastrophic from a financial standpoint, but it is not nothing. Some of UNESCO’s programs may slow down if member States and philanthropies do not fill the void.

Politically, however, the US exit will create a vacuum to be filled by other actors, some whose ideas about rights and ethics may be at loggerheads with the international consensus.

If you are worried about algorithms amplifying hate speech, AI promoting misogyny, or governments weaponizing cybercrime laws to clamp down on democratic dissent, you should care about what happens to UNESCO. It is one of the few spaces where global standards on these issues are being set. It’s clear that global civil society must intensify actions to insure gains in these areas of rights.

The United States’ withdrawal from UNESCO is a pattern. This isn’t the first breakup, and it likely won’t be the last. The question is, who steps up next?

Photo: The UNESCO logo on the Hanoi Ceramic Mosaic Mural, the world’s longest mosaic wall, Hanoi, Vietnam. Credit: Claudine Van Massenhove

That transformation – with all its positive and negative real world impacts – is part of the information eco-system under scrutiny at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) +20 High Level Event being held in Geneva, 7-11 July 2025.  

The forum brings together government ministers, regulators, UN leaders, industry executives, and civil society advocates from over 150 countries to take stock of efforts since the Geneva Plan of Action, agreed in 2003 and set in motion in 2005, and make recommendations for the next phase of the world’s digital transformation.

Outcomes will contribute directly to the UN General Assembly’s 20-year review of WSIS, scheduled for December in New York, which may also take into account the implementation of the Global Digital Compact agreed at the UN Pact for the Future in September 2024.

Despite long-running civil society campaigning from the first WSIS, the gaps and solutions highlighted by the governments and their corporate partners have primarily focused on technical responses to access rather than a comprehensive, rights-based approach. Will this High-Level Event prove any different?

At this event, one of the international forums where civil society can significantly take part, WACC will be actively participating to foster local to global voices and community-focused solutions, adding its weight to broader civil society pressure for a people-centred information society.

Under the slogan, Communication for All: From Connectivity to Community, WACC will be stressing that 20 years on, we need a new digital paradigm, one rooted in communication rights and built to serve the public interest, not private profit.

This call is echoed by our civil society partners. At the opening session of the Internet Governance Forum on 23 June 2025, the Global Digital Justice Forum, of which WACC is a member, along with IT for Change, delivered a challenge – and a vision of hope:

 We must reject the human-made dystopia that threatens to consume us; we must build digital governance together. The democratic deficits of the present digital order actively harm those at the margins – communities seeking legitimacy for visions of a digital society accountable to the planet and to future generations. At the Global Digital Justice Forum, we believe that there is no paucity of ideas to make real a global internet community connected by an ethic of pluralism, made up of the many smalls that are differently beautiful. These worldviews of another digital paradigm – demonstrated by social movements, workers’ organizations, tech communities, and civic groups everywhere – need a radical democracy of inclusive institutions.

Will our voices be heard? Sometimes the impact we make seems tinier than a drop in an ocean of political and private self-interest. But that will never stop those of us committed to justice, equality, accountability, and inclusion.

You can join in the advocacy at WSIS+20. WACC will hold the session “Communication is Humanitarian Aid: Safeguarding Rights in Times of Risk” on July 10 at 16:00-16:45 (UTC+02:00), and WACC General Secretary Philip Lee will speak during the Leaders TalkX session on 14:00–14:30 (UTC+02:00). Register for remote participation to follow sessions, and contribute your questions and insights on WACC Global’s social media channels or by email.

Our movement is growing, and together we will make a difference.

Image: ChatGPT