Last month, CDT previewed its platform at the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS), a United Nations-sponsored meeting focused on the importance of human rights considerations in internet standards. The panel emphasized how privacy, accessibility, and freedom of expression are vital for democratic and equitable digital governance. The discussion centered on incorporating these core human rights considerations into the processes to develop internet technical standards.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations specialized agency for digital technology, has overseen the WSIS process from its inception. The ITU is a "multilateral" agency, traditionally serving as a forum for government-to-government negotiations and agreements.
However, our panel highlighted that nation-states cannot address technical standards alone. While U.N. member states have signed the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, civil society's role is crucial to ensure essential rights are not overlooked when technologies are designed.
Governments often struggle to effectively police each other, and some show little interest in protecting human rights despite official endorsements. Civil-society watchdogs can highlight human rights issues globally without being entangled in state-to-state diplomacy complications.
Civil society organizations face significant barriers to participating in standards-setting bodies like the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). These challenges include finding knowledgeable staff to understand complex technical issues and affording travel costs to international meetings. Additionally, technical discussions are typically held in English, posing translation difficulties for non-English-speaking organizations.
Our WSIS panel agreed that governments need to support civil society participation. Including civil society delegates in national delegations to ITU discussions would enrich and make conversations around human rights and internet standards more inclusive. Instead of multilateral discussions, these should be multistakeholder, involving representatives who can address issues some states might prefer to ignore.
More than five decades ago, when researchers developed the technology that birthed the modern internet, few could have predicted its extensive impact on our lives today. Now, technology standards have become critical sites for extending human rights accountability frameworks. These conversations must include civil society voices.
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