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The UN just made a significant decision on who governs the Internet

Date:
Thu, 18 Dec 2025 11:30:00 +0000

Description:
The UN's Internet Governance Forum has gone from being an annual meeting to
being a permanent UN body.

FULL STORY

The UN General Assembly has reached a consensus on who should govern the
Internet, and it's good news for censorship, with a multi-stakeholder model
coming out on top. 

Under this governance, "Governments, the private sector, civil society,
international organizations, the technical and academic communities and other
stakeholders" will all have a say, which remains in line with the vision set
out at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2003 for a
people-centered Internet. 

"We reaffirm our commitment to the vision of the World Summit on the
Information Society to build a people-centred, inclusive and
development-oriented information society, where everyone can create, access,
utilize and share information and knowledge," the UN wrote in its outcome
document .

UN: no one single body should govern the Internet 

In its December 16, 2025, document, the UN acknowledged that a number of
developing countries still face barriers not just in terms of access to the
Internet, but also stakeholder participation in governance issues.
International cooperation, funding and private-public partnerships were
highlighted as some key solutions. 

The UN is also concerned about affordability and access to the Internet;
gender divides; the exclusion of vulnerable groups like older people,
Indigenous Peoples and migrants; human rights violations; the misuse of
digital technologies for things like cybercrime, surveillance and child
exploitation; misinformation and disinformation; and the environmental 
impacts of digitalization. 

The document, submitted by the President of the General Assembly and German
politician Annalena Baerbock, even has a whole section dedicated to 
artificial intelligence, in which the UN both acknowledges the tech's 
benefits for humanity and highlights unknown risks associated with 
development speed, scale and autonomy. 

Among the human-centric resolutions are demands for more education and
training, open-sourced models, accessible training data and broader access to
high-performance compute infrastructure. 

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has now become a permanent UN body,
whereas previously it was just an annual meeting. 

The next review is set for 2035, when the UN urges all stakeholders to get
involved across all stages of the process to "identify areas of continued
focus." 

======================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/pro/the-un-just-made-a-significant-decision-on-who-g
overns-the-internet

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