The future of the internet is rooted in how it is governed, and as such, the principles that underly its governance. There is no shortage of internet governance principles, with around 20 sets originating from UN bodies, to regional organisations, to civil society initiatives, to multistakeholder processes and beyond. The NETMundial Principles on Internet Governance of 2014 built on previous work in this field taking into account more than 180 contributions from all stakeholders around the globe and set out a roadmap for the future evolution of internet governance.
Despite this extensive and valuable work, there is more that can be done to adopt and implement key aspects of internet governance principles in order to make it more open, participative, transparent, accountable, inclusive, equitable, collaborative, distributive, and conducive to meaningful participation from all stakeholders.
The discussion at this session will focus on how to deepen adoption and implementation of existing internet governance principles. Specifically the session will:
- Take stock of the various internet governance principles and status of implementation.
- Build on implementation of existing principles to make them more relevant to the post WSIS+10 process
- Link implementation of WSIS outcomes and NETMundial principles at the national and regional levels
- Build on the innovative processes used at NETMundial and WSIS+10 to make sure that WSIS+20 is more inclusive at all levels, and more forward looking.