The combination of multilateralism and multistakeholderism in global Internet policy making

Multilateral and multistakeholder approaches are indeed not mutually exclusive. We need both, and both need to improve. States have fundamental responsibilities and accountability as duty bearers for protecting and promoting human rights (and ensuring that corporate actors do so as well); for creating enabling policy and regulatory environments for development; for ensuring that there is equity in access to education, health and other social services and for growing and upholding the rule of law. While most of this plays out at national level, global targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) goals and interactions with other states at international and regional level play a role in building common ground and cooperation. Multilateral processes and institutions have a vital role in ensuring fair trade, peace and security, and cooperation between states, as well as in holding states accountable when they violate agreements. These institutions need be stronger, supported with political will and financial resources to maintain spaces where all states can be heard and participate in decision-making, irrespective of their wealth and power.

If intergovernmental processes and the institutions that support them are to be legitimate and effective they need to be more efficient, inclusive and accountable. They also need to collaborate with one another, share information and coordinate internally. Government representatives who speak and make decisions in multilateral forums need to do so informed by the interests and views of the citizens, communities, civil society organisations, businesses and technologists from the countries they represent. And they need to report back, debrief, check-in, debate, disagree, listen to criticism and act on it. They also need to interact internally when ‘at home’ with other government departments and public institutions.

Embracing and applying inclusive multistakeholder approaches and participating in multistakeholder processes is a way of achieving this interaction, transparency and accountability. In my view multistakeholder approaches should never be a used as a substitute for inclusive and accountable governance; but they can help make governance better, and, in contexts where there is a lack of functioning legislatures and state-led inclusive and accountable governance, they can help facilitate relationship-building and collaborative implementation among individuals and institutions from all stakeholder groups, disciplines and sectors.

However, rather than combining multilateral and multistakeholder approaches, I believe we need both; and both need to be effective and inclusive. Combining them risks undermining the role and responsibility of states to hold companies accountable for, for example, upholding rights, paying taxes, not harming the environment, and fair labour practice. In fact, it is the diversity, shared learning, and sometimes the tension between these multilateral and multistakeholder processes, particularly in their interaction with social movements and civil society, that often catalyses positive change in governance. A recent example of how multilateral and multistakeholder processes can complement one another is in the field of cybersecurity. In 2015 the United Nations General Assembly’s (UNGA) Group of Governmental Experts on Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security (UNGGE) agreed on norms for responsible state behaviour related to cyber conflict. The next round of GGE discussions in 2017 did not reach consensus, but, partly in response to this, a multistakeholder group, the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace, was convened to look at norms for both state and non-state actors that can help ensure the stability of cyberspace. When the GGE as well as another UNGA body, the Open Ended Working Group on security in the use of information and communication technologies were constituted in late 2018 they had the GCSC norms and a body of research that informed these norms to draw on, as well as the work of an industry-led initiative, the Digital Tech Accord initiated by Microsoft.

The need for a holistic approach to Internet Governance

Digitisation in general, and the internet in particular do not operate in an alternative or parallel universe, nor do related governance concerns. They cut across all sectors of society and the economy, from agriculture to gender equality to peace and security. I agree completely with the editors that a holistic interdisciplinary and cross sectoral approach is required. Taking this on board is a task not just for so-called digital cooperation or internet governance processes but for all sectors and disciplines. For example, the issue of fair taxation of internet companies, and unfair taxation of individual social media users (a worrying trend in several African countries) are internet-related but not internet specific. Free expression and association online and countering misinformation and extremist speech needs to be addressed online and offline, by technologists, journalists, feminists, educators and human rights defenders, social media platforms and national human rights institutions. Responding to the impact of more children being exposed to pornographic content cannot be addressed just through online age verification or content filtering, it needs gender sensitive responses from parents and sex education programmes in schools. Ensuring that the internet of things does not result in the violation of individuals’ rights to privacy is the responsibility not just of online platforms and service providers, but also of the manufacturers of “smart” devices and home appliances; and, by implication, the regulatory processes relevant to these sectors.

A holistic approach to internet governance must also include addressing and mitigating the harmful impact on the environment of increased digitisation. The production and use of digital technologies is likely to contribute to the climate crisis in proportion to their increasing share in the creation of e-waste and consumption of raw materials and energy. Internet and environmental governance processes need to join forces to create policy and regulatory frameworks that consider the environmental impact of the internet, from its development, the energy it consumes, to the production and disposal of the servers that run the internet and the devices used to interact with it.[1] We need manufacturing standards that will result in devices that last longer, that can be updated and upgraded and recycled. Environmental and digital rights activists and affected communities need to work together to hold companies and states accountable for measuring and mitigating the environmental impact of digitisation.

The idea of enhancing existing or creating new global mechanisms to frame the future development of digital cooperation.

Mechanism is a suitably open-ended concept. It can refer to institutions, norms and principles, treaties or processes. The need for new global mechanisms has been debated since the WSIS. India’s failed proposal in 2011 to the UNGA for a new Committee on Internet-related Policies (the CIRP proposal[2]) kept it on the agenda and lack of agreement on whether such a new mechanism is needed or not was the primary contributing factor to the inability of the Commission on Science and Technology for Development’s second Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation (CSTD WGEC)[3] to reach consensus in 2018.

We need to first enhance existing mechanisms before a justifiable argument for new mechanisms can be made. Existing mechanisms will have to change, and adapt to absorb digital cooperation and concerns as digitisation permeates almost all spheres of human, social economic and political development. In fact, to some extent creating new specialised mechanisms could undermine the adoption of a holistic approach to internet governance.[4]

An example of an existing mechanism effectively taking internet governance-related challenges on board is the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) through its internet resolutions, Universal Periodic Review process, and the recommendations made by its special mechanisms (e.g. the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion). All these have had a demonstrable impact; including on national legislation and initiatives monitoring companies compliance with human rights such as Ranking Digital Rights[5]. Linked to this is the work of the human rights treaty bodies who regularly review states’ human rights records with respect to the exercise of these rights on and through the internet.

What holds back progress in internet governance in my view is not the lack of mechanisms, but the lack of commonly agreed and monitored (and where relevant, enforced) approaches, principles, norms and values. The reason that United Nations’ human rights mechanisms have been relatively successful in taking on board internet governance is because they have a common framework of principles, laws and standards, and because the HRC agreed, in 2012, by formal resolution, that the rights that apply offline also apply online.

Internet governance for the future: facing kryptonite and vampires

In their framing text for this volume the editors point out that there is no single solution to the challenges of clarifying and consolidating digital cooperation and internet governance. I agree completely. There is no silver bullet, no single super power, superhero or super institution to coordinate or rule it all and save the internet from the forces of “misuse” and abuse. But, not believing in silver bullets or super powers does not mean that there are no vampires to confront in internet governance, or that there is no kryptonite that disrupts progress in digital cooperation or that may prevent achieving the positive goals[6] articulated in the HLPDC report.

Internet governance’s kryptonite – in my view – has two primary sources. First, is the fact that there is still no agreed understanding of how, from a public policy perspective, to conceptualise – and by implication, govern - the internet[7]. Without such an understanding, it is difficult to establish the agreed norms and principles that would form the basis of a common approach to internet policy and regulation, and maintain the overall stewardship that would get us closer to a more coherent approach to internet governance. There is general acceptance of the broad definition of internet governance – reflected in the WSIS outcome documents and affirmed during the WSIS +10 process in 2015 - and rough consensus that internet governance, like the development and management of the internet, needs to involve multiple actors and stakeholders. But exactly how and where this involvement should play out, and in particular, what the role and authority of governments and intergovernmental institutions and processes should be, remains contested.

Second, is the notion that internet-linked (or cyber or digital) problems, like digital exclusion, or violent extremism of misogyny online, need internet-based solutions. I am not proposing that internet policy and regulation should not consider, and address lack of affordable meaningful access, or the proliferation of online misogyny, hate speech and misinformation. But as long as there is social and economic inequality between and within countries digital exclusion will, in one form or another, persist. Similarly, as long as white supremacy, patriarchy and religious intolerance continue in the offline world, it will find its way online and can even be encouraged by ad-based business models that monetises sensationalised and extremist content. This is why we need a holistic approach to internet governance, as discussed above.

This brings us to internet governance vampires, there are many, and true to legend they are elusive, shifting shape and form. Like many vampires in literature and popular culture, they are also often not one-dimensional villains easily dismissed as being simplistically evil. But that does not make them any less dangerous, such as, for example, the large internet companies who, as described by Shoshana Zuboff, provide “free services that billions of people cheerfully use, enabling the providers of those services to monitor the behaviour of those users in astonishing detail – often without their explicit consent.”[8] But these companies have also provided free services, used for “good” causes and have used their resources to contribute to internet development and the expansion of access to infrastructure. They are far harder to dismiss and demonise than the global multinationals of, for example, the mineral extractive industry, even though their economic, social and environmental impact is probably even greater, and they pay, proportionally, less tax in the countries where they operate. Non-state actors (sometimes with the support of state actors) who use the internet to promote violent extremism, misogyny and hate speech are also vampires of a sort, infecting a platform that was viewed as a force for global understanding and peace, with fear and mistrust. States who shut down or disrupt internet services and violate the rights to privacy and free expression and association of individuals are also like vampires, casting a shadow of authoritarianism over those who use the internet to protest and demand democratic, transparent, just and accountable governance.

Internet governance for and of the future must find ways of overcoming its kryptonite and fighting vampires. The starting point, from my perspective is to reach agreement, formally and informally, that the internet is a global public good and that it should be governed and managed as such. This position is progressively getting more support as the internet has grown to be increasingly global and ubiquitous. It is also reinforced by the growing impact of surveillance capitalism and recognition that the behaviour and practices of internet companies need to be scrutinised and regulated.

This is not to say that the internet as a network of networks should be regulated, or that by referring to it as a public good that it should be controlled by governments. Quite the contrary. “Global public goods are goods with benefits and/or costs that potentially extend to all countries, people, and generations. Global public goods are in a dual sense public: they are public as opposed to private; and they are global as opposed to national. Like publicness in general, globalness is in most instances a matter of policy choice.”[9] I believe that if both multilateral and multistakeholder institutions and internet governance processes agree that we need to protect and look after the internet as a global public good, and then act on this policy choice, it will help clarify many current policy challenges. Recognition of the internet as a public good will provide clearer guidance to responses from policy-makers, technologists and activists to inherent abuses in internet business models, to some states wanting to claim national jurisdiction over the data generated by their citizens, or shutting it down when it is being used for political protest.

There is no better place to have this conversation than one where it has already started and where multilateral and multistakeholder approaches have been interacting since 2006: the Internet Governance Forum and its national and regional and intersessional processes (NRIs, dynamic coalitions and best practice forums). The global IGF needs to be strengthened; as do national and regional IGFs. There are many proposals on how this can be done, including, but not exclusively, from the APC to the CSTD WGEC[10] in 2017 and those made by the HLPDC in its report earlier this year.

Without putting the IGF front and centre of the future of internet governance I fear that the ground that has been gained in exploring internet governance challenges holistically, cooperatively and inclusively, will be lost.

[1] From the 2020 strategic plan of the Association for Progressive Communications

[2] https://itforchange.net/indias-proposal-for-a-united-nations-committee-for-internet-related-policies-cirp

[3] https://unctad.org/en/Pages/CSTD/WGEC-2016-to-2018.aspx

[4] A strength of the HLPDC report on digital cooperation is that it recognises the value of strengthening and building on an existing mechanisms like the Internet Governance Forum. However, it does not fully commit to this and also suggestions two other models for digital cooperation. Nevertheless, all three models proposed by the HLPDC have merit and useful elements to draw on for internet governance of the future.

[5] https://rankingdigitalrights.org

[6] I refer here specifically to the goals in the report quoted by the editors of this volume: “every adult should have affordable access to digital networks, as well as digitally-enabled financial and health services, as a means to make a substantial contribution to achieving the SDGs”; that “a platform for sharing digital public goods, engaging talent and pooling data sets, in a manner that respects privacy, in areas related to attaining the SDGs” is created; that “specific policies to support full digital inclusion and digital equality for women and traditionally marginalised groups” are adopted and ”a set of metrics for digital inclusiveness” agreed upon.

[7] The concept of the internet as a network of networks is itself evolving. The use of terms like ‘digital’ and ‘cyber’ reflects this evolution and this also adds a further challenge to consolidating ideas of “internet governance”.

[8] John Naughton in ‘The goal is to automate us’: welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism. The Guardian, 20 January 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-google-facebook

[9] https://nautilus.org/gps/applied-gps/global-public-goods/what-are-global-public-goods/#inge-kaul-and-raul

[10] https://unctad.org/meetings/en/Contribution/WGEC2016_m3_c12a_en.pdf