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Digital Dialogue: Digital Diplomacy and Civil Society Advocacy

  •  10th October 2024
     4:00 pm - 5:00 pm

đź“… 10 October 2024 | đź•ź16:00-17:00 CEST | đź’» Online |
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The October 2024 edition of the Digital Dialogue will look at Digital Diplomacy from a Civil Society point of view. Once again, get informed and inspired by a thought-provoking panel with experts invited by CvicTech Africa (CTIN) in Johannesburg and the ICS Centre in Berlin.

Civil Society Organizations tend to favour regulated digital spaces in order to end what is considered to be a free for all situation that benefits a few tech platforms. Hence, CSOs welcome negotiation processes where Governments sit down and discuss the digital future of the planet’s population. Hence, there is strong civil society participation in the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF), even though this long-standing process does not produce negotiated outcomes. The best it can hope for is to inform and inspire policy-makers in the public and the private sector. The Global Digital Compact organized by the UN is a rather recent process but has the ambition to come up with a final text. The first draft has already solicited more than 6,000 comments by interested parties, such as CSOs, governments, and companies. But is there really reason to rejoice? Other processes called Compact (on corporate responsibility, refugees, and migration) also produced non-binding documents. However, some observers doubt that these processes had a measurable positive impact on human rights and social justice. The situation is compounded by parallel negotiation tracks, much less known than the GDC. Questions whether humankind are cyber citizens, cyber consumers, or potential cyber security threats aren’t trivial and hence it might necessary to keep an eye on the ongoing WTO negotiations on E-Commerce and the Cybersecurity negotiations