Giacomo Mazzone
SG of Eurovisioni, NGO involved in the IG processes since Geneva 2003 and participating to all IGF and WSIS since their inception.
First of all congratulations to the two ambassadors for their appointment. You’ll need a lot of patience to put together all the pieces of this complicate puzzles.
We have in fact three pieces that need to be arranged in order to fit together: the GDC (that fixes the general objectives for the global digital transition), the IGF and the WSIS follow up.
It depends on you if the final outcome will work, so good luck !
But the point is that each one of these elements is needed for the sake of the success of the whole process.
- The IGF with its intersessional activities, NRI and dynamic coalition could provide the needed interaction with civil society, academia and technical community
- The WSIS follow up lead by ITU and UNESCO could ensure the link with the UN agencies and with the industry
- The GDC within the UN GA will ensure the legitimacy of the process at the global level and its interaction with government and multilateral processes.
If we agree on this picture, as others before me have said, it is indispensable to arrive to a unified roadmap as proposed by Swiss, with a clear share of duties and missions among all these processes.
A process that needs to become permanent where the San Paulo guidelines could provide the fundament, under UN umbrella, having as main goal to be:
- Human rights centered (data protection, …)where all UN rights have to apply to digital space
- Promoting fight to Disinformation, promoting and ensuring media integrity as preconized by G20
- Supporting policies for Meaningful access, including promotion of community networks
- Addressing Digital inequality, remembering that exist everywhere, not only in the Global South, but also in rich countries, because are linked to digital divide, to age, to gender, to literacy…
- Include in it the bodies that are dealing with climate change and disasters reduction, because are the ones that could benefit more from the innovation, from A.I., starting from Early Warning for All action
- Promoting Anti concentration measures, to avoid that only one voice will be heard over the Internet, that –on the contrary- was imagined by its founding fathers as a tool to allow the expression of all voices and to nurture cultural diversity.