BANNER: Photo of DTI Director Rose Jackson speaking at the ITU’s World Summit on the Information Society Forum, May 2024. (Source: Konstantinos Komaitis)

On Monday, May 27, Rose Jackson, Director for the Democracy + Tech Initiative (DTI) at the Atlantic Council, participated in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)’s World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum and AI for Good Summit in Geneva. As a speaker during the WSIS high-level day, Jackson was invited to discuss connectivity as a foundation for inclusive information access alongside ministers and national regulators.

The Democracy + Tech Initiative has been working with government, industry, and civil society partners on major debates taking place at the United Nations that could upend the open internet as we know it. Jackson and her DTI colleagues attended WSIS and the AI for Good Summit as part of this work, with particular focus on advancing meaningful connectivity and mechanisms to address global frustrations with the concentration of decision-making power regarding the internet in the United States and Europe.

Alongside the Internet Governance Forum, the ITU and its WSIS forum is the United Nations’ main mechanism to gather governments, technical experts, industry reps, and civil society from around the world to discuss matters of the internet and global development. This includes countries that have profound disagreements over systems of government, human rights, and much more. In the room were placards for the United States, Ghana, Cloudflare, and the National Democratic Institute, alongside those from Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Huawei. Jackson’s session included remarks from the Secretary General of Gabon’s Ministry of Digital Economy and New Information Technologies, the Executive Director of Colombia’s Communications Regulation Commission, the Chairman of Armenia’s Public Services Regulatory Commission, the Vice-Minister of Lithuania’s Ministry of Transport and Communications, and the Minister of Burkina Faso’s Ministry of Digital Transition, Posts and Electronic Communications. It also included the Iranian Deputy Minister for Information and Communications Technology.

Jackson’s intervention came as governments at the United Nations in New York negotiate the Global Digital Compact (GDC), which some states have used to propose duplicative processes that risk weakening the multistakeholder model of governance we rely on today.

During the session Jackson was asked the following question: “We have been discussing the connectivity gap for well over a decade now. What do you think the global community addressing this challenge is missing and who is best placed to make progress in connecting the unconnected?”

Below is her response as delivered, followed by her formal submission to WSIS for inclusion in the summary of conclusions.

When discussing connectivity, we often include the word “meaningful.” Connection itself is not a goal. Whether people can leverage that connectivity to speak and organize freely, collaborate, and make use of the internet to build businesses, share ideas, and interact with the world determines how “meaningful” their access is.

The power of the internet is its distributed nature, an infrastructure purpose-built to enable collaboration across all sorts of boundaries – be they national, political, demographic, or otherwise. The immense resulting benefits to society depend on this open nature and spirit of experimentation.

We will hear a lot this week about the 5.5 billion people online and the 33 percent of the world cut off from an increasingly central mechanism for modern life. But if we focus our conversations this week solely on countries, we will miss a significant part of the picture and limit our options for bringing truly meaningful connectivity to the entire world.

Of those 33 percent who are un-connected, women outnumber men by 17 percent – a gap that has widened over the past five years. When women do come online, they are often met with disproportionate harassment and targeting, particularly when they step into public roles.

But even for the 5.5 billion who are online, Freedom House estimates that only 17 percent live in countries with the ability to leverage that internet freely. We estimate about 40 percent of the global population lives in countries whose governments restrict their access to information and ability to express themselves as a matter of policy.

These government policies exist on a spectrum. They can include censorship, surveillance, content manipulation, weaponization of the law or extra-legal harassment against internet users, including in some cases imprisonment or death. Expert nongovernmental organizations like Freedom House put the governments of China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Myanmar on the far end of that spectrum.

But countless governments around the world – including democratic ones – use similar tactics less systematically, particularly in sensitive moments like elections, and often under the guise of national security.

The UN Declaration of Human Rights makes it clear that no one should be killed for using the internet. This too is connectivity.

To preserve what is good about the internet, while bringing more people into that space, and addressing longstanding issues with affordability, access, and ownership, we can chart a path that takes advantage of all we’ve learned over the last two decades, much of that right here through WSIS and the actional lines we work on.

At the same time, as much as WSIS has accomplished for global cooperation, we have to acknowledge change is needed. We cannot simply hope companies will fill these gaps. And we must face the reality that dominance of any single company or country’s technology inevitably leads to extractive and problematic dynamics. Connectivity is the definition of a multistakeholder challenge.

We have to get creative in leveraging what each sector has to bring to the table, in five specific ways:

The engagement around the Global Digital Compact (GDC) demonstrates the global excitement and desire to get this right. But as was affirmed at NetMundial just a month ago, the multistakeholder approach is the only way to make meaningful progress on connectivity. Civil society sits at the heart of those solutions, and must, therefore, be at the center of these processes.

When discussing connectivity, we often include the word “meaningful.” That is because not all connectivity is equal. Who is connected, how they are connected, and whether that connection is financially and technically sustainable matters a great deal. Whether people can leverage that connectivity to speak and organize freely, collaborate, and make use of the internet to build businesses, share ideas, and interact with the world also determines how “meaningful” their connectivity is.

According to the ITU, we have made significant progress connecting the unconnected. Nearly five and a half billion people around the world are estimated to have access to the internet. While that’s an astounding number of humans potentially in contact with one another each day, this still leaves about 33 percent of the world cut off from an increasingly central mechanism for modern life. As troubling as that number may seem, it does not tell the whole story. Focusing our conversation on connectivity with and about countries misses much of the picture and limits our options for bringing truly meaningful connectivity to the rest of the world.

The power of the internet is its distributed nature. The infrastructure underpinning it is purpose-built to enable collaboration, exchange of knowledge, and the free flow of information across all sorts of boundaries – be they national, political, demographic, or otherwise. The immense resulting benefits to society depend on this open nature and spirit of experimentation. Given that, the questions we should be asking are not about national-level statistics but returning to the who and how. In taking a closer look at the 33 percent figure, while women account for roughly half of the global population, they outnumber male non-internet users by 17 percent, up from 11 percent in 2019. When those women do come online, they are often met with disproportionate harassment and targeting, particularly when they seek to run for office or take leadership roles in public life.

Even when looking at the five and half billion that do have internet access, Freedom House estimates that only 17 percent live in countries with the ability to leverage that internet freely. Based on Freedom House’s research, ITU statistics, and other data, we estimate that approximately 40 percent of the global population lives in countries whose governments restrict their access to information and ability to express themselves as a matter of policy.

These government policies exist on a spectrum and can include censorship, surveillance content manipulation, and extralegal harassment against internet users (including, in some cases imprisonment or death). The governments of China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Myanmar sit on the far end of this spectrum, but many other governments employ similar tactics on a smaller scale. Freedom House estimates that 46 percent of the online public live in countries where authorities disconnected internet or mobile networks, often for political reasons.

So, when we talk about connecting the unconnected, we would be making a mistake to pretend doing so is a values-neutral endeavor. To preserve what is good about the internet, while bringing more people into that space and addressing longstanding issues with affordability, access, and ownership, we can chart a path that takes advantage of all we have learned over the last two decades. It is worth noting that much of that learning has come through this very forum and the WSIS action lines on which we collaborate.

To make real progress we cannot simply hope that companies will fill these gaps and must face the reality that dominance of any single company or country’s technology inevitably leads to extractive and problematic dynamics. Connectivity is the definition of a multistakeholder challenge. We have to get creative in leveraging what each sector has to bring to the table; working with communities to identify their needs and set the rules for their own access; governments offering financing incentives, blended resourcing, and collaborations with small and medium-sized industry players to provide the resources required to connect communities on their terms; basic protections for internet users ensuring that human rights can be secured online, particularly when it comes to data protection and privacy; open protocols and standards that ensure those newly online can connect to the world safely and reliably; and a recommitment to the distributed internet through which no government can dictate the rules for everyone else.

Though some want to suggest that connectivity and human rights are separate topics, they are inextricably linked. The Global Digital Compact, which countries are in the midst of negotiating, has demonstrated just how much thirst there is to make progress together on these issues. I hope we can build on that momentum at the Internet Governance Forum and next year’s WSIS+20 forum so that more of the world becomes meaningfully connected.

Rose Jackson, “Remarks at the International Telecommunication Union’s World Summit on the Information Society,” Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), June 3, 2024, https://dfrlab.org/2024/06/03/remarks-at-the-international-telecommunication-unions-world-summit-on-the-information-society-forum/.