Inspired by the “flower power” movement’s vision of a world free of power and control with people connecting to transcend (physical) borders, the internet was designed by Californian researchers to share knowledge and ideas, and instead of using mechanisms of command and control, decisions were taken in open-ended fora based on mutual trust and by means of “rough consensus”. This approach has allowed the internet to become a carrier of unprecedented societal and economic innovation.

With the spread of the internet and the growing impact of digital tools and services worldwide, we had to realize, however, that human beings do not behave more altruistically online than offline and that – in the absence of appropriate incentives and checks and balances – whoever has power is tempted to abuse it and criminals are using digital technologies like they used other technologies before.

In the past decades, globalisation and digitization have increased differentiation and interdependence of our economies and societies. Private sector actors have become important drivers of innovation and a few tech-startups have become global powers with massive influence on the rules and norms that shape our daily lives. While, on national and global levels, some people have been able to benefit from globalisation and digital transformation, others are falling behind or are afraid of doing so in the future. With the traditional governance systems on national and global levels becoming more polarized and failing to produce stability and trust and to balance inequalities, some people fear that digital technologies may be used to dominate to subdue other people or nations rather than to improve our lives.

In 1945, after years of killing each other using latest technologies (at that time broadcast, airplanes, submarines, etc.), former enemy countries in Europe decided to get together and to create mutual trust through engaging in rule-based economic (and then later also political) cooperation. On a global scale, the United Nations were created with the aim to foster peace and security through worldwide cooperation to solve international economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian problems, based on human rights, rule of law and on the principles of peoples’ equal rights and self-determination.

So how do we further develop this global cooperation and governance ecosystem to provide for freedom, peace, security and prosperity in the digital age?

At the UN World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva 2003 and Tunis 2005, we adopted a vision of an inclusive, people-centred and development-oriented information society. And in 2015 we agreed on the UN Sustainable Development Goals which represent a holistic vision for a better and more sustainable future for us all so that no one is left behind. These visions build on the values and principles established after 1945: fundamental rights and freedoms, rule of law and democratic self-determination remain key also in the digital era.

At WSIS, we all agreed that all stakeholders need to work together in order to achieve this vision. But since then, we have been stuck in abstract ideological debates about the role of governments and other stakeholders.

At least, the UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF)^[1], an open platform for multistakeholder-dialogue created by the WSIS, has played an essential role in identifying emerging topics, fostering mutual understanding and preparing the fertile ground for the creation of informal and formal networks of cooperation. The IGF has served us well over the last decade, as the information society was unfolding. But the IGF needs to be further developed to effectively interconnect – globally – the wide range of new issues and actors now taking part in and being affected by the digital transformation.

In its report titled “the age of interdependence” presented in June 2019, the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation identified some of the gaps in the current cooperation system. One is the fact that still not all stakeholders from all over the world are able to make their voices heard. So the Panel recommends to create a support function (“help desk”) to help stakeholders from small and developing countries to identify needs, opportunities and challenges and to provide guidance on where to invest their scarce resources so that they can also benefit from the opportunities the digital transformation offers.

In order to fill the gap between expert dialogue and political and economic decision making, the Panel proposes to connect multistakeholder experts and decision makers into horizontal networks that should cooperate and develop specific norms and solutions in an inclusive and transparent way so that they would be supported by all parties concerned and thus have a chance to actually be implemented.

In the past years, we have already seen a number of networks produce such norms and solutions, be it through initiatives of a more holistic nature such as the NetMundial Conference^[2] or the Global Commission on Internet Governance^[3] or others focussing on specific issues, such as the Internet & Jurisdiction Policy Network^[4], the Global Commission on Stability of Cyberspace^[5] or the “Tech Accord”^[6] and the “Charter of Trust for a Secure Digital World”^[7].

The High Level Panel recommends to connect these to form a multistakeholder network of networks “for cooperation and regulation that is adaptive, agile, inclusive and fit for purpose for the fast-changing digital age”. The Panel proposes three concrete options for the set-up of such networks. These merit to be discussed broadly, also here at the IGF in Berlin. While all three models have their merits, we propose to build on existing mechanisms such as the IGF and develop these further.

Since we know that human beings are not only good and altruistic, we need to develop a rule-based cooperation and governance system that creates the right incentives for all state and non-state actors to respect these values and principles and to use digital technologies to facilitate and not obstruct the achievement of the SDGs.

In this context, I would like to share with you the experience that Swiss people made, that it is actually possible to create such incentives and which has fundamentally shaped the political culture and system of modern Switzerland: in the civil war of 1847, the general of the army of the progressive-protestant cantons – knowing that they would win the war – was convinced that both sides would be better off in the future sharing the same country, if his side would not apply a “winner takes it all” approach and provoke feelings of hatred and revenge. But rather, both sides should sit together and start building a governance model based on inclusive, participatory, consensus- and compromise-oriented decision-making procedures following a federated and subsidiarity-based approach that would allow both sides to maximize freedom and self-determination and to keep exercising different religions and cultures and thus enable sustainable trust and pragmatic cooperation. After less than four weeks of war and not more than 100 people killed, he managed to convince the other side to stop fighting and sit together and build the architecture of the modern Swiss Confederation. Since then, there are regular intense debates and hard-fought popular votes about the balances between competition and solidarity, with the people winning at any one time knowing that they’d better voluntarily compromise with the losing side, as they might be on the losing side in the next decision. This experience has helped the Swiss people cooperating for freedom, peace and prosperity and avoiding war and destruction. And I hope that this may serve as an inspiration in the discussion of the HLP’s recommendations with a view to develop a cooperation and governance architecture that allows us all to benefit from digital opportunities where no one is left behind.

^[1] http://www.intgovforum.org/multilingual/

^[2] http://netmundial.br/

^[3] https://www.cigionline.org/initiatives/global-commission-internet-governance

^[4] https://www.internetjurisdiction.net/

^[5] https://cyberstability.org/

^[6] https://cybertechaccord.org/

^[7] https://new.siemens.com/global/en/company/topic-areas/cybersecurity.html