The future of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process will be one of the main topics of the 2025 Internet Governance Forum. Many in the IG community are heavily invested in the renewal of WSIS. They imply that if it is not renewed, there will be major, negative effects on the way we govern the Internet.

IGP believes that it is healthy and productive for the community to consider the possibility of ending WSIS. Its renewal should not be taken for granted. The benefits it delivers to civil society, the private sector and the technical community must be critically evaluated.

IGP is a small civil society organization based in an institution of higher education. As a long-time participant in the ICANN, IGF and WSIS process – indeed, IGP came into being in 2004 in order to support participation in the World Summit, we understand the great contributions WSIS made in the early days of Internet governance. However, we think the governance controversies that brought us all together around WSIS twenty five years ago (mostly about ICANN) are resolved. Today, the policy debates that take place under the “Internet governance” umbrella are really about the broader digital ecosystem – data governance, semiconductor trade, cybersecurity, social media platforms, generative AI and other machine learning applications – not just Internet connectivity. Most importantly, the center of gravity for digital governance has shifted. Digital technology has become enmeshed in geopolitical competition among powerful governments, and these states do not attempt to resolve these conflicts through participation in processes run out of the UN Economic and Social Council.

While the IGF still has value as a conference, there are many other places where discussions of Internet/digital governance take place, places where state actors and non-state actors can meet. The quality and practical impact of those other places sometimes exceeds that of the IGF. We have many options for engaging in digital governance discussions. The IGF may be one of them, but it may not always be the best one.

Continuing to participate in processes created in 2005 without evaluating whether they enable effective engagement in global digital governance does not serve the community of stakeholders. The community needs to recalibrate where and how governance takes place, and how to best participate in it. We believe the WSIS process has served its purpose and should end.

We support the continuation of the IGF, but believe that the Forum needs to be detached from the WSIS process and reformed. The IGF only has value if it returns to its original mission of being a place for open multistakeholder dialogue providing equal status to all stakeholders. No more segregated “VIPs,” no more separate tracks for Parliamentarians. There should be direct interaction among all stakeholders on an equal footing.

The UN, which hosts the IGF and the WSIS process, is a multilateral, state-driven institution. Making multilateral processes the center of global Internet governance discourse biases them against the multistakeholder model, or, worse, indicates to the public that nongovernmental institutions are subject to the approval of states and multilateral institutions.

We need to make it clear to multilateral institutions that our participation and support is not guaranteed. They have to compete for our time and attention, and they will be hollowed out if they don’t do a better job of it.

We suspect that the strong sentimental and material ties to the WSIS process among many people in the Internet community will make our call for the end of the WSIS a controversial position. If so, please view the controversy as a request for discussion, not as a hostile challenge. If you support the continuation of WSIS, please explain why. If you want to continue participating wholeheartedly in IGF, go ahead. If you, too, are re-evaluating your commitment to that process like us, let us know why. We will head to Oslo/Lillestrom with this thought in mind: civil society, the technical community, academics, Internet businesses and governmental representatives should use IGF 2025 to engage in an open and honest debate about the future of WSIS.

Those interested in a deeper understanding of the WSIS process, the evolution of Internet governance, and the reasons for our position, can read a background paper, “WSIS and the Future of Digital Governance.” It has been published on the IGP website.

The post Should WSIS End? A call for discussion appeared first on Internet Governance Project.