Skip to main content
UN Tech Envoy Event

Paving the Way into the Future of Cyberspace: The Global Digital Compact

February 24, 2023 | ESMT Berlin | Auditorium IV
One of the goals of the "Summit of the Future" is to develop a "Global Digital Compact" (GDC) to provide some guidelines on the future of cyberspace to governments, NGOs and the civil society. In this lecture, the UN Tech Envoy Amandeep Singh Gill covered all issues around the GDC.

In 2024, the UN will host a global "Summit for the Future". UN Secretary General António Guterres has proposed, to use this gathering of world leaders to adopt a "Global Digital Compact" (GDC). The GDC is aimed to give governments and non-state actors from civil society, the private sector, academia and the technical community some guidelines how to move into the future of cyberspace. Digitalisation is one of the UN priorities since Guterres took his office in 2017. In 2019, he established a "High Level Panel for Digital Cooperation" which recommended in its final report "The Age of Digital Interdependence" (June 2019) to give digital and cyber issues higher priority in global policy development.

In July 2020, the UN Secretary General published a "Roadmap on Digital Cooperation" which includes activities in fields like digital development, human rights, artificial intelligence and cyberstability.  The "Roadmap" included also plans to enhance institutional mechanisms as the establishment of a new Office for an "UN Envoy of Technology" and to further develop the UN based Internet Governance Forum (IGF), established by the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2005, towards an IGF+. In 2022, a new IGF Leadership Panel, chaired by the father of the Internet, Vint Cerf and the Peace Nobel Prize Winner, Maria Rossa, was nominated and the Indian diplomat Amandeep Singh Gill was appointed as UN Tech Envoy. One of the priorities of both the IGF Leadership Panel and the UN Tech Envoy is now the preparation of the Global Digital Compact.

In December 2022, the IGF in Addis Ababa discussed in detail the various issues related to the GDC process. All stakeholders are invited to comment on the proposed outline until March 31, 2023. In September 2023 an ministerial UN meeting will discuss first drafts. Another IGF - in Kyodo in October 2023 - will enrich the interim results by another broad multistakeholder discussion. The landing place for the GDC will be the UN Summit on the Future, scheduled for September 2024 in New York.

In his lecture the UN Tech Envoy, Amandeep Singh Gill, covered all issues around the GDC and discussed the opportunities to contribute to the GDC process.

This registration only event was co-hosted by the United Nations Association of Germany (DGVN), Internet Governance Forum Germany (IGF-D) and the Digital Society Institute (DSI) at ESMT Berlin.

Click here to read the summary of the event.

Paving the Way into the Future of Cyberspace
Paving the Way into the Future of Cyberspace
Paving the Way into the Future of Cyberspace
Paving the Way into the Future of Cyberspace

Impressions

Impressions

Downloads