Internet Governance/Advocacy

2024

IT for Change made a submission* to the Working Group on Artificial Intelligence constituted by the Forum on Information and Democracy.

The Working Group invited inputs on three critical areas: (i) development and deployment of AI systems, (ii) accountability regimes, and (iii) governance…

2024

IT for Change’s Executive Director, Anita Gurumurthy, participated in a roundtable discussion at the WSIS+20 Forum High-Level Event 2024, titled, ‘Unlocking Multistakeholder Cooperation within the UN System: Global Partnerships for Open Internet,’ on 29 May 2024. The roundtable discussion aimed…

2024

The United Nations is developing a code of conduct for information integrity on digital platforms in close consultation with a broad range of civil society groups. The objective is to establish a gold standard guiding actions to strengthen information integrity while vigorously protecting human…

2024

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…

2024

Anita Gurumurthy, Nandini Chami, Amay Korjan, Eshani Vaidya, Sandeep Radhakrsihnan, and Merrin Muhammed Ashraf, prepared inputs that fed into UNCTAD’s Issue Paper on Data for Development. The input comprehensively discussed issues of neo-colonial dynamics of data economy, infrastructural and…

2024

IT for Change's Merrin Muhammed Ashraf participated in the virtual consultation convened by the co-facilitators of the Global Digital Compact on 22 August 2024 and delivered a statement on Rev 3.0 GDC on behalf of IT for Change and the Global Digital Justice Forum. The statement flagged some…

2024

Anita Gurumurthy represented IT for Change at a session titled, ‘All Hands on Deck: Shaping an Inclusive Future of AI’ on 6 February 2024. The discussion was held as part of UNESCO’s ‘Global Forum on the Ethics of AI 2024’ in Kranj, Slovenia.

Artificial intelligence (AI) processes and…

2024

On behalf of IT for Change, Merrin Muhammed Ashraf submitted comments on the recently released UNESCO Consultation Paper on Regulatory Approaches for Artificial Intelligence (AI). The Consultation Paper is part of a broader effort by UNESCO, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and the Internet…

2024

On 13 February 2024, Merrin Muhammed Ashraf represented the Global Digital Justice Forum and IT for Change at a virtual consultation convened by the co-facilitators of the intergovernmental process for drafting a Global Digital Compact, which would be annexed to the Pact for the Future. The goal…

2024

On behalf of IT for Change, Merrin Muhammed Ashraf submitted comments on the recently released OECD Draft Recommendations on Information Integrity. The draft Recommendation aims to provide guidance for policy makers to promote information integrity in line with the universal human rights of…

2024

IT for Change submitted a response to the Zero draft of the Pact for the Future, which was launched on 26 January 2024, as a first step towards the negotiations of the agreement in September 2024 within the Summit of the Future. Engaging with each chapter of the draft of the Pact, our submission…

2024

On 21 February 2024, Shreeja Sen represented IT for Change and the Global Digital Justice Forum at a virtual consultation, seeking feedback on the Zero draft of the Pact for the Future, which was launched on 26 January 2024. In line with the written submissions, Shreeja's inputs emphasized that…

2023

A data-propelled tendency for economic concentration and the policy deficits that have fueled the rise of Big Tech companies have brought to the fore a critical realization – market power is coterminous with data power and the entrenched control of Big Tech over the data value chains is at the…

2023

The Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act of 2023 has rightly been criticised for failing to uphold good consent and data subject rights. One provision that has been largely overlooked is Section 16, which pertains to the transfer and processing of personal data outside India. Section 16…

2023

In the last few years, data has been likened, aside from the hackneyed comparison to ‘oil’, to any number of tangible entities such as mineral deposits, dividend deposits, and even the Alaskan Permanent Fund. Metaphors as a tool could re-entrench existing power asymmetries or resist them,…