Thanks, Alexey! It was great seeing significant participation from many stakeholders. We hope that the diverse points of view strengthen the Zero Draft. For those on the list who could not attend the meeting, the co-facilitators mentioned that they will share soon an updated calendar for upcoming consultations. They also mentioned that they’re expecting to release the Zero Draft in approximately a month. I’ve attached my remarks from the Internet Society. If any of you would like to discuss any particular topic further, just send me a message. Best, Isra Isra Rosas, Director, Partnerships and Internet Development Internet Society From: Alexey Trepykhalin via wsis20 <wsis20@icann.org> Date: Tuesday, July 29, 2025 at 2:59 PM To: wsis20@icann.org <wsis20@icann.org> Subject: [wsis20] ICANN's intervention at the WSIS+20 Informal Stakeholder Consultation Session Dear All, Please find attached ICANN’s intervention at the WSIS+20 Informal Stakeholder Consultation Session on 29 July 2025. Alexey Trepykhalin Senior Manager IGO and Government Engagement Follow-up WSIS+20 Informal Stakeholder Consultation Session on 29 July 2025 New York, United Nations 29 July 2025 Good afternoon, Ambassador Janina, Ambassador Lokaale, excellencies and esteemed colleagues. ICANN appreciates the opportunity to share our contribution to the Elements Paper and insights that could hopefully inform the Zero Draft of the WSIS+20 Outcome Document. On Internet governance: ICANN encourages the Zero Draft to reflect the evolution of the Internet and the multistakeholder model of governance since the WSIS Summits in Geneva and in Tunisia, and to recognize the achievements of the multistakeholder approach. This model has played a central role in ensuring the stable and secure functioning of the Internet’s technical infrastructure. Rather than reverting to legacy language, the Zero Draft should reflect the Internet’s continued success — enabled by 20 years of multistakeholder cooperation and contributions from all communities — and the need to sustain and strengthen that foundation. The Elements Paper already recognized that all stakeholders, including the technical community, “have an indispensable role in achieving WSIS outcomes.” We hope that the Zero Draft will use language that builds on and is consistent with the WSIS+10 Outcome Document and the Global Digital Compact (GDC). The GDC has recognized that “Internet governance must continue to be global and multi-stakeholder in nature” with full involvement of all stakeholders. The GDC also states that the Internet “must be open, global, interoperable, stable and secure.” The GDC acknowledged the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as the primary multistakeholder platform for discussion of Internet governance issues. The IGF’s mandate enables it to evolve with the Internet and the technologies that are facilitated by and built on top of the Internet. As such, the WSIS implementation beyond 2025 should leverage this existing and mature assembly. To remain fit for purpose, the IGF requires sustainable resources, a strengthened mandate, and the ability to produce actionable outcomes. Therefore, in addition to extending the mandate of the IGF, ICANN hopes that the Zero Draft examines practical approaches to strengthen the IGF for the future. Thank you. Thank you, Co-facilitators, for giving us the floor a second time. ICANN contributes directly to the WSIS action lines that promote local content, cultural identity, and linguistic diversity. We are honored that the Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) were cited in the Elements paper as helping to make the Internet more multilingual. Together with the Universal Acceptance (UA) program, these efforts advance a multilingual Internet by ensuring that valid domain names and email addresses work across all Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems. Widespread adoption of IDNs and UA is essential to bridging the digital divide, but also to opening the gateway to the next billion Internet users; sustaining language diversity; building trust in the Internet’s infrastructure; and reducing barriers to access for all communities. The roles of UN agencies who have contributed to the implementation of the WSIS Action Lines should be recognised and further supported. For instance, ITU has done a commendable job in tracking the achievements of and encouraging further WSIS Implementation, including WSIS stocktaking through its annual ITU WSIS Forum. In addition, UNESCO recently signed an agreement with ICANN to enhance the linguistic diversity in the digital world to make the Internet more accessible to hundreds of millions of users. These examples underscore the value of each component of the multistakeholders – governments, the private sector, civil society, the technical and academic communities, and international organizations. Their distinct roles and ongoing collaboration are essential to sustaining the WSIS+20 Framework and meeting future challenges. Thank you.

Dear all, Please find below my intervention at the WSIS+20 Informal Stakeholder Consultation Session on 29 July 2025. ---- Thank you ambassador. My name is Pari Esfandiari, representing The Global TechnoPolitics Forum, a not for profit research organization focused at the intersection of technology, geopolitics, and governance. The Elements Paper provides a very positive foundation. However, there are *conceptual limitations*. The Paper frames AI largely as a technical development challenge—a matter of capacity gaps to be closed. This misses the larger reality: AI is now a strategic infrastructure of global power. What we face is not just unequal access, but systemic asymmetries in who gets to shape the rules, own the infrastructure, and control the knowledge systems that AI encodes. Without attention to this, capacity-building risks becoming a substitute for genuine agency. There are also *normative weaknesses*. The Paper invokes ethics but avoids binding commitments to human rights-based governance. We need enforceable standards and meaningful oversight on transparency and accountability. Notably, the Paper avoids even naming surveillance as a systemic risk. This undermines its credibility on privacy and trust. Finally, there are *missing dimensions*, the most significant being the geopolitical context in which AI development and governance are unfolding. While the Paper notes that AI is concentrated in a few countries, it fails to examine what this means: the rise of a global computer oligarchy, increasing bloc-based governance, and regulatory fragmentation. It also fails to address how AI models trained on narrow linguistic and cultural data sets may suppress pluralism and reinforce epistemic centralization. And while *multistakeholderism* is reaffirmed, the Paper proposes no mechanisms to rebalance power. Where are the ideas for sovereign model validation, algorithmic oversight, or public-interest AI governance? Without such structures, multistakeholderism risks becoming performative. To conclude, the Elements Paper builds a useful base—but it remains rooted in a pre-Global Digital Compact worldview that doesn’t reflect the political stakes of AI in 2025. To move forward, we must reframe AI as a ground of power and design governance that prioritizes agency over access, rights over ethics, and justice over process. Thank you. -- Pari Esfandiari President *Global TechnoPolitics Forum <http://www.technopolitics.org/> * *Pario <http://www.parioconsultants.com/>- Architects of Ideas* info@TechnoPolitics.org <info@technopolitics.org> *Linkedin Profile <https://www.linkedin.com/in/pariesfandiari/>* Tel: +1-202*-735-1415* (Office) : +1-310-435-0888 (Cell) : +44-731-210-4049 (Cell) On Tue, Jul 29, 2025 at 7:58 PM Alexey Trepykhalin via wsis20 < wsis20@icann.org> wrote:

Dear All,

Please find attached ICANN’s intervention at the WSIS+20 Informal Stakeholder Consultation Session on 29 July 2025.

Alexey Trepykhalin

Senior Manager

IGO and Government Engagement

*Follow-up WSIS+20 Informal Stakeholder Consultation Session on 29 July 2025*

New York, United Nations

29 July 2025

Good afternoon, Ambassador Janina, Ambassador Lokaale, excellencies and esteemed colleagues.

ICANN appreciates the opportunity to share our contribution to the Elements Paper and insights that could hopefully inform the Zero Draft of the WSIS+20 Outcome Document.

On Internet governance: ICANN encourages the Zero Draft to reflect the evolution of the Internet and the multistakeholder model of governance since the WSIS Summits in Geneva and in Tunisia, and to recognize the achievements of the multistakeholder approach. This model has played a central role in ensuring the stable and secure functioning of the Internet’s technical infrastructure.

Rather than reverting to legacy language, the Zero Draft should reflect the Internet’s continued success — enabled by 20 years of multistakeholder cooperation and contributions from all communities — and the need to sustain and strengthen that foundation. The Elements Paper already recognized that all stakeholders, including the technical community, “have an indispensable role in achieving WSIS outcomes.”

We hope that the Zero Draft will use language that builds on and is consistent with the WSIS+10 Outcome Document and the Global Digital Compact (GDC). The GDC has recognized that “Internet governance must continue to be global and multi-stakeholder in nature” with full involvement of all stakeholders. The GDC also states that the Internet “must be open, global, interoperable, stable and secure.”

The GDC acknowledged the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as the primary multistakeholder platform for discussion of Internet governance issues. The IGF’s mandate enables it to evolve with the Internet and the technologies that are facilitated by and built on top of the Internet. As such, the WSIS implementation beyond 2025 should leverage this existing and mature assembly. To remain fit for purpose, the IGF requires sustainable resources, a strengthened mandate, and the ability to produce actionable outcomes. Therefore, in addition to extending the mandate of the IGF, ICANN hopes that the Zero Draft examines practical approaches to strengthen the IGF for the future.

Thank you.

Thank you, Co-facilitators, for giving us the floor a second time.

ICANN contributes directly to the WSIS action lines that promote local content, cultural identity, and linguistic diversity. We are honored that the Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) were cited in the Elements paper as helping to make the Internet more multilingual. Together with the Universal Acceptance (UA) program, these efforts advance a multilingual Internet by ensuring that valid domain names and email addresses work across all Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems. Widespread adoption of IDNs and UA is essential to bridging the digital divide, but also to opening the gateway to the next billion Internet users; sustaining language diversity; building trust in the Internet’s infrastructure; and reducing barriers to access for all communities.

The roles of UN agencies who have contributed to the implementation of the WSIS Action Lines should be recognised and further supported. For instance, ITU has done a commendable job in tracking the achievements of and encouraging further WSIS Implementation, including WSIS stocktaking through its annual ITU WSIS Forum. In addition, UNESCO recently signed an agreement with ICANN to enhance the linguistic diversity in the digital world to make the Internet more accessible to hundreds of millions of users.

These examples underscore the value of each component of the multistakeholders – governments, the private sector, civil society, the technical and academic communities, and international organizations. Their distinct roles and ongoing collaboration are essential to sustaining the WSIS+20 Framework and meeting future challenges.

Thank you.

_______________________________________________

Learn more about the WSIS+20 Outreach Network and review relevant resources: https://go.icann.org/wsis20

Read the public archives for this mailing list: https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/wsis20/

_______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.

-- Pari Esfandiari President *Global TechnoPolitics Forum <http://www.technopolitics.org> * *Pario <http://www.parioconsultants.com>- Architects of Ideas* info@TechnoPolitics.org <info@technopolitics.org> *Linkedin Profile <https://www.linkedin.com/in/pariesfandiari/>* Tel: +1-202*-735-1415* (Office) : +1-310-435-0888 (Cell) : +44-731-210-4049 (Cell)