Even as AI systems are becoming increasingly central to economic organization, public services and geopolitical power, governance approaches remain narrowly focused on downstream risks and harmful use-cases, leaving the underlying conditions of AI production largely unaddressed.
This issue brief advances a Global South perspective on AI governance. It proposes a set of structural non-negotiable conditions (baselines) that must underpin the development, deployment and governance of AI, and identifies corresponding thresholds where these conditions are breached (redlines).
It also situates these proposals within the broader vision of ReGenAI: A New Deal for the AI Economy, which calls for a reorientation of AI development toward meaningful work, diversified economies, pluralistic knowledge societies, and planetary flourishing.
The brief builds on discussions at the roundtable ‘AI Governance from the South: Redlines to Baselines’, co-organised by IT for Change, along with the Global Digital Justice Forum and its other member organisations—Data Privacy Brasil, Derechos Digitales, EngageMedia, ETC Group, Research ICT Africa, and Tech Global Institute—and other partners, the Ada Lovelace Institute, the Centre for Communication Governance (NLU Delhi), the Planetary AI Network (University of Edinburgh), and The Future Society. Held on 18 February 2026 at the India International Centre, New Delhi, the roundtable brought together over 40 researchers, civil society actors, and policy practitioners to examine the challenges shaping equitable AI development and to articulate governance priorities for the Global South.
Read the full brief here.