The Global Digital Justice Forum, of which IT for Change acts as the secretariat, has issued a rejoinder to the open letter from tech community leaders and internet innovators to the United Nations, expressing their reservations that the draft text of the Global Digital Compact (GDC) being negotiated by governments may “mandate more centralized governance” that could be “detrimental to the world’s economies and societies.”
In its rejoinder, while recognizing the importance of the internet technical community to be engaged in the GDC process, the Forum terms the concerns raised by the tech community leaders about government takeover of the ‘successful multistakeholder Internet governance’ approach as misplaced and alarmist. The rejoinder calls attention to the fact that the GDC is explicitly grounded in a ‘multistakeholder’ approach, exhorting governments to work with the private sector, civil society, international organizations, the technical and academic communities and all other stakeholders, within their respective roles and responsibilities. It further urges the endorsement of the GDC for laying down the duty of member states to guarantee the public right of people to equal and full participation in the digital economy and society. The rejoinder also challenges the tech community leaders' assumption that the 'bottom-up, collaborative and inclusive model of Internet governance' was a reality.
The Forum believes that the GDC process is a beacon of hope, however small, to remedy the abominable capture of the digital commons and markets by Big Tech. Hence, it calls for a radical departure from the democratic deficit that has come to characterise the digital space today, and believes that GDC is one step in that direction.
Read the full text of the response here.