WSIS+20 follow-up – from Milestones to Momentum: what comes next?
WSIS Forum 2026 – Geneva - 9 July 2026
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WSIS+20 follow-up – from Milestones to Momentum: what comes next?
WSIS Forum 2026 — 9 July 2026
Speakers: Paul Gaskell - Deputy Director, Digital Trade, Internet Governance & Digital Standards, UK Department for Science, Innovation & Technology; Matthew Shears - Board Member, Internet Society United Kingdom; Markus Kummer - IGF Expert, Internet Society Switzerland; Valeria Betancourt - Internet Governance Lead, Association for Progressive Communications; Dr. Charles Noir - Vice President, Community Investment, Policy & Advocacy, CIRA; Dr. Jimson Olufuye - CEO, Kontemporary Konsulting, Nigeria; Dr. Yik Chan Chin - Project Lead on AI, United Nations University, Macao
Moderators: Desiree Miloshevic Evans - President, Internet Society Serbia; Chair, RIPE NCC Cooperation Working Group; Dr. Olivier Crépin-Leblond - Chair, Internet Society United Kingdom
Opening and framing the implementation phase
Desiree Miloshevic Evans welcomed participants to a session organized by the Internet Society chapters of the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Serbia, and Germany. She explained that the discussion would move beyond celebrating the successful conclusion of the WSIS+20 review toward identifying concrete priorities and milestones for implementation.
She said the objective was to examine how institutional roles across the WSIS process, the Global Digital Compact (GDC), the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and related initiatives could be aligned, while avoiding duplication and strengthening coordination among governments, the technical community, civil society, academia, and the private sector.
Preserving the gains of WSIS+20
Paul Gaskell described the WSIS+20 review as a significant achievement, particularly given the uncertainty that had surrounded the negotiations. He praised the multistakeholder process established by the co-facilitators, including the informal sounding board, as an example of a UN process that had genuinely benefited from broad stakeholder participation.
He identified several important outcomes, including:
The permanent mandate for the Internet Governance Forum.
Reaffirmation of the 2005 Tunis Agenda principles.
Recognition of the IGF as the primary forum for Internet governance dialogue.
Looking ahead, Gaskell argued that implementation should be judged by measurable increases in participation from underrepresented groups. He singled out greater involvement by G77 countries, small and medium-sized enterprises, women, and younger participants as key indicators of success. The forthcoming IGF in Kenya, he said, represented an ideal opportunity to demonstrate broader global participation.
Turning alignment into reality
Matthew Shears argued that the WSIS framework and the Global Digital Compact shared substantial common ground, creating an opportunity that stakeholders should actively embrace rather than allowing the two processes to evolve separately.
He noted that Article 68 of the GDC explicitly envisioned the WSIS process and the IGF as central mechanisms for implementation. However, he warned that fragmentation remained the greatest risk if institutions continued operating independently instead of coordinating their work.
Shears said the multistakeholder model had gained significant credibility through the WSIS+20 process and now enjoyed greater recognition within international policymaking. Rather than reverting to familiar institutional silos, stakeholders should use that credibility to broaden the IGF’s agenda and incorporate GDC topics that previously had not formed part of Internet governance discussions.
He argued that the period leading to the 2027 GDC review presented an important opportunity to demonstrate that multistakeholder governance could address emerging policy challenges effectively.
Consolidating the IGF ecosystem
Markus Kummer observed that one of the major achievements of the review had been recognition that the IGF had evolved beyond a single annual meeting into a broad ecosystem including National and Regional Initiatives (NRIs), Policy Networks, Best Practice Forums, and Dynamic Coalitions.
He argued that the IGF should serve as the mechanism connecting the growing number of international digital governance processes rather than creating artificial distinctions between Internet governance and digital governance. The internationally agreed definition of Internet governance, he noted, already encompassed infrastructure, technical coordination, applications, and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.
The permanent mandate fundamentally changed the IGF’s position. No longer forced to focus on periodic mandate renewals, the community could instead concentrate on strengthening and improving the forum itself.
Kummer identified institutional consolidation as the next major challenge. Most intersessional bodies operated entirely through volunteers without legal status, making it difficult to enter contracts, receive funding, or undertake larger collaborative projects. While solutions would vary across jurisdictions, he argued that the ecosystem needed greater institutional stability without sacrificing its bottom-up character or introducing top-down control.
Financing remained the largest implementation gap
Valeria Betancourt acknowledged several important victories from the WSIS+20 outcome, including the permanent IGF mandate and closer alignment between the WSIS process and the Global Digital Compact. Nevertheless, she argued that the review had failed to address one of the most fundamental issues: financing implementation.
She welcomed the creation of the new UN interagency task force on financing and hoped its multistakeholder advisory group would help rethink how digital development was financed.
Betancourt argued that the task force should begin by examining why previous efforts had failed to deliver meaningful connectivity to large portions of the world’s population. Looking beyond headline connectivity statistics, she stressed the need to measure meaningful access rather than simple infrastructure deployment.
She proposed that the task force should:
Examine successful financing models from other sectors.
Identify structural weaknesses in current funding mechanisms.
Better understand how funding could reach local implementers.
Recognize the central implementation role played by civil society, particularly where governments lacked capacity.
She stressed that implementation could not depend solely on commitments and declarations. Without sustainable financial ecosystems that combined public, private and community funding, implementation of both the WSIS Action Lines and the GDC objectives would remain unattainable.
The technical community’s role
Dr. Charles Noir welcomed the explicit recognition of the technical community as a distinct stakeholder within the WSIS+20 outcome document.
He said technical operators could contribute practical operational expertise throughout policy development, ensuring that policy decisions remained technically realistic and implementable.
Organizations such as ICANN, the Internet Society and CIRA had accumulated specialized knowledge that should be brought into policymaking early, allowing infrastructure operators to identify potential implementation problems before policies were finalized.
Looking ahead, Noir hoped the IGF would increasingly produce practical, implementation-oriented outcomes that could guide technical deployment and infrastructure development.
National implementation in developing countries
Dr. Jimson Olufuye emphasized that many developing countries lacked the resources to participate in numerous overlapping international processes, making the IGF an especially valuable focal point.
He called for full implementation of the WSIS+20 outcome, particularly its endorsement of the São Paulo Multistakeholder Guidelines and recognition of power asymmetries among stakeholders.
National governments, he argued, should involve stakeholders directly when developing regulations instead of relying solely on internal governmental processes. Regulatory sandboxes offered one practical mechanism for collaborative policy development.
Olufuye encouraged greater sharing of successful national experiences, citing Nigeria’s National Payment Stack as an example of multistakeholder collaboration producing tangible improvements in financial inclusion.
He also stressed the importance of better statistical data. Countries should move beyond measuring broadband coverage alone and instead collect data reflecting meaningful Internet use, household connectivity, and digital participation.
Preventing AI governance fragmentation
Dr. Yik Chan Chin reviewed the expanding landscape of AI governance initiatives created under both the UN system and the Global Digital Compact, including the Global AI Dialogue, the Independent Scientific Panel, the Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies, and the UN Interagency Working Group on Artificial Intelligence.
She also highlighted several new initiatives announced during the Global AI Dialogue, including the AI Governance for Humanity initiative, the AI for Good Global Commission, a youth AI resource hub, and an international AI capacity-building network.
Rather than replacing existing institutions, she said participants at the AI Dialogue had emphasized building stronger connections among them while moving from broad principles toward operational governance.
Looking toward the second Global AI Dialogue in May 2027, she said participants had been encouraged to develop concrete, supported, and measurable commitments.
She argued that the IGF should work much more closely with the Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies and the UN AI working group to monitor implementation of the Global Digital Compact. To do so effectively, however, the IGF itself would require stronger governance, leadership, coordination mechanisms, and funding.
Strengthening the Action Lines
During the discussion period, Carl Gahnberg highlighted an Internet Society non-paper that had been developed with extensive community input.
He argued that while much attention focused on improving the IGF, the greater weakness lay in implementation of the WSIS Action Lines.
The paper recommended developing detailed implementation roadmaps that would establish clear objectives, measurable milestones, and stronger accountability for annual progress.
Questions on accountability and coordination
An online question from Pari Esfandiari asked how implementation could remain accountable to WSIS values rather than becoming simply another exercise in institutional coordination.
From the floor, Wout de Natris questioned whether the expanding role of the IGF required organizational reform. He distinguished between the annual IGF meeting, its growing intersessional work, and the increasing need to coordinate with external organizations, asking whether the MAG might require a revised mandate or stronger liaison mechanisms.
Responding, Markus Kummer pointed to existing coordination through the UN Group on the Information Society (UNGIS), noting that a new multistakeholder component was being developed. He said the MAG had already begun considering these questions as part of the IGF’s ongoing evolution.
Accountability through financing and participation
Returning to Pari Esfandiari’s question, Valeria Betancourt argued that accountability required a more realistic understanding of power imbalances within multistakeholder processes.
Implementation roadmaps would provide one layer of accountability, but meaningful accountability also depended upon creating sustainable financial ecosystems that combined public investment, private financing, startup support, and community-based funding mechanisms.
She emphasized that financing should not simply distribute money but intentionally build an ecosystem capable of sustaining long-term implementation while serving the public interest.
Final reflections
In their closing remarks, the speakers converged around several common themes.
Dr. Jimson Olufuye encouraged participants to become champions for WSIS implementation and actively promote the São Paulo Multistakeholder Guidelines.
Dr. Yik Chan Chin described the IGF as the UN system’s principal multistakeholder mechanism and urged greater consolidation so it could play a stronger role in AI governance.
Dr. Charles Noir emphasized the importance of co-accountability, arguing that multistakeholder governance succeeded when stakeholders held one another responsible for implementation.
Paul Gaskell supported stronger implementation roadmaps for the WSIS Action Lines, more practical and focused IGF outcomes beginning with the Kenya meeting, stronger support for the IGF Secretariat, and funding models that reflected the multistakeholder nature of the institution itself.
Matthew Shears concluded that while coordinating the expanding digital governance landscape would be challenging, the IGF now had an unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate the value of multistakeholder governance, provided it remained connected to national and regional IGFs.
Markus Kummer reiterated that the IGF could serve as the “glue” connecting the growing number of digital governance initiatives.
Closing the session, Desiree Miloshevic Evans encouraged participants to continue working through Internet Society chapters and other stakeholder networks to help build a practical implementation roadmap that would translate the WSIS+20 outcome into measurable action.
RESOURCES
WSIS Forum 2026 – Session 233 — the session page, agenda and speaker bios
Internet Society: From Commitments to Practice — the ISOC non-paper on WSIS+20 implementation priorities, plugged by Carl Gahnberg
Global Digital Compact — the GDC and its Article 68, referenced throughout by Matthew Shears and others
Global Dialogue on AI Governance — the UN AI dialogue Dr. Yik Chan Chin reported on (Geneva 2026, New York 2027)
Internet Governance Forum (IGF) — the forum at the centre of the discussion, now with a permanent mandate
São Paulo Multistakeholder Guidelines — within the NETmundial+10 Statement, cited by Dr. Jimson Olufuye
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) — Valeria Betancourt’s organisation, on financing and civil society
CIRA — Dr. Charles Noir’s organisation, on the technical community’s role
DC-ISSS / IS3C — the IGF Dynamic Coalition Wout de Natris raised from the floor
Global TechnoPolitics Forum — Pari Esfandiari’s organisation, whose question on accountability was taken up