auDA is pleased to report on the outcomes of the NETmundial+10 event, held in São Paulo, Brazil on 29-30 April 2024. This open multi-stakeholder event brought governments and international organisations, civil society, academia, business and the technical community from around the world together to strengthen multi-stakeholder internet governance and digital policy processes. It was held ten years to the month after the original NETmundial event in 2014, also held in São Paulo and focused on a broader set of internet governance topics.
The event was an important opportunity for all stakeholders to contribute on an equal footing to strengthen core internet governance processes and more recent digital policy processes. Its timing will allow the conclusions to shape decisions in processes such as the United Nations (UN) Global Digital Compact.
The outcomes of the event are shared in the NETmundial+10 Multistakeholder Statement and focus on three areas:
- Urging the full implementation of the principles for internet governance processes established by the original NETmundial, and calling for all stakeholders to make more use of multi-stakeholder approaches to internet governance and digital policy processes.
- Development of a set of Guidelines and Process steps as a “how-to” for effective implementation of multi-stakeholder internet governance and digital policy processes, to help their adoption including by multilateral policy processes. These are known as the “São Paulo Multistakeholder Guidelines” and are available in the NETmundial+10 Multistakeholder Statement.
- Suggested messages to contribute to ongoing global discussions about internet governance in the UN context about the importance of these principles in their work, with a particular focus on strengthening the Internet Governance Forum as a premier forum for charting our digital future.
The São Paulo Guidelines are an important contribution to raising the profile of thirty years of internet governance practice. The Guidelines are practical insights that all stakeholders can use to improve digital policy processes and make those policy processes open to a broader range of stakeholders. Too many of these processes at the global level marginalise input from any stakeholder other than nation states.
The call to change intergovernmental and multilateral digital policy processes to be more open to inputs from a wider range of stakeholders, supported by the Guidelines, could significantly improve how intergovernmental processes such as the Global Digital Compact do their work. Only action by governments could bring this change about, since governments set the rules for multilateral policymaking.
auDA called for an inclusive multi-stakeholder event such as NETmundial+10 in its Internet Governance Roadmap published in August 2023 and is pleased with the outcomes of the event. We will be taking the principles forward in our national, regional and international internet governance and digital policy work.
Learn more about auDA’s internet governance and public policy work.