WSIS at 20: What the Zero Draft Gets Right—and What It Still Misses

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has always been a peculiar hybrid: part development agenda, part Internet governance framework, part UN coordination exercise. Now, twenty years after Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2005), the WSIS+20 Review “Zero Draft” has landed. It aims to set the future direction for the Information Society in a digital landscape that looks nothing like it did in the early 2000s.

At first glance, the Zero Draft is a tidy piece of UN drafting: it reaffirms, recalls, welcomes, and decides in all the expected places. But beneath the diplomatic prose, there are real shifts—some good, some less so. To understand where this draft moves the needle (and where it doesn’t), it helps to compare it with the WSIS foundations—the Geneva Action Lines, the Tunis Agenda, the 2015 WSIS+10 Review—and the newest kid on the block, the Global Digital Compact (GDC).

Importantly, the Zero Draft also does something that Geneva and Tunis only touched on: it puts human rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) front and center. In today’s climate of digital authoritarianism, culture wars, and democratic backsliding, that’s no small thing.

From Geneva to the Zero Draft: Continuity With Upgrades
Back in 2003, the Geneva Declaration of Principles promised a “people-centred, inclusive, development-oriented Information Society.” The Action Lines (C1–C11) set out everything from ICT infrastructure and e-government to cultural diversity and media. Two years later in Tunis, the agenda added a sharper political edge: it defined Internet governance, launched the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and made clear that the Internet should remain open, global, and interoperable.

The Zero Draft stays faithful to this DNA. It reaffirms the people-centred vision, but this time with an explicit anchoring in human rights and the UDHR. In an era where digital technologies are being used to censor dissent, monitor citizens, and spread disinformation, the clear linkage between WSIS implementation and universal human rights norms is a necessary bulwark.

It also repeats Tunis’ Internet governance definition and makes the anti-fragmentation ethos even more explicit, rejecting “state-controlled or fragmented Internet architectures.” Given today’s splinternet pressures—from data localization to sovereign DNS schemes—that bright-line principle matters.

But the Draft doesn’t just copy-paste the past. It adds upgrades Geneva and Tunis couldn’t deliver:

• Roadmaps and metrics. Action Lines are no longer just aspirational. Facilitators are asked to develop targets, indicators, and implementation roadmaps, reporting back by 2027.
• IGF permanence. What Tunis launched as an experiment is now declared permanent. The Draft even calls for a stronger IGF secretariat, better resourcing, and more meaningful participation from developing countries.

 
Comparing to WSIS+10 (2015): From Renewal to Permanence
In 2015, the UN General Assembly reviewed WSIS after a decade. The big outcome then was to renew the IGF’s mandate for another 10 years. There were also calls for better coordination, stronger linkages with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and improved measurement of progress.

The Zero Draft moves decisively beyond renewal. It locks in IGF permanence and ties its outputs to formal reporting streams—CSTD, ECOSOC, and the new GDC review cycle. Action Lines, too, are upgraded from “encouraged indicators” to mandatory roadmaps with metrics. This is more institutional consolidation than the UN usually manages.

Still, one thing hasn’t changed: enhanced cooperation remains fuzzy. Tunis tasked the system with finding ways for governments to cooperate more effectively on public policy issues. A decade and a half later, we’re still “recalling” working groups and “reaffirming” the principle without clarifying who convenes, on what authority, or to what end. The Zero Draft punts again.

WSIS and the Global Digital Compact: Who Leads, Who Follows?
The Global Digital Compact (GDC), agreed in 2024 as part of the Pact for the Future, is billed as the UN’s new umbrella framework for digital governance. But two decades on, WSIS remains the only process with both a developmental mandate and a governance track record. The Zero Draft makes that clear: it is WSIS—not the GDC—that anchors the vision of a people-centred, rights-based Information Society.

Far from being made redundant, WSIS provides the substance that the GDC needs. The Action Lines already cover connectivity, skills, e-government, media, and cultural diversity. The Tunis Agenda gave us the IGF. The Geneva and Tunis principles enshrined openness, inclusivity, and universality. The GDC, by contrast, is still a framework in search of content. In that sense, the Compact should be building on WSIS foundations—not the other way around.

The Zero Draft reflects this logic by linking the Action Lines with the SDGs and the GDC, embedding WSIS reviews into ECOSOC and CSTD processes, and feeding outcomes into the 2027 high-level GDC review. That’s a sensible sequencing: WSIS generates the substance, the GDC aggregates it.

Still, there are real risks.

• Mandate overlap. With Action Lines, the WSIS Forum, IGF, CSTD reviews, ECOSOC oversight, and the GDC cycle, the lines of responsibility blur. Who leads on AI, digital public infrastructure, or data governance? The Draft warns against duplication but doesn’t resolve it.
• Outputs vs. uptake. Permanence for the IGF is welcome, but without stronger pathways into intergovernmental decision-making, its discussions risk staying on the margins. The Zero Draft still doesn’t show how IGF or WSIS outcomes will concretely shape GDC or ECOSOC deliberations.

If the UN wants coherence rather than competition, the direction is obvious: WSIS provides the tested architecture; the GDC should follow its lead.
 
What’s Good in the Zero Draft

• IGF permanence with teeth. After years of uncertainty, this is a stabilizing signal to the IGF ecosystem—global, regional, and national. Calls for a stronger secretariat and better participation from developing countries are overdue.
• Human rights at the core. The reaffirmation of the UDHR and explicit integration of human rights across Action Lines is a crucial safeguard. In an age where digital authoritarianism is on the rise, this is not just symbolic—it sets a normative floor that authoritarian states will find harder to erode.
• Anti-fragmentation clarity. The outright rejection of state-controlled or fragmented internet models is a welcome safeguard at a time when the open internet is under pressure.
• Action Line modernization. Alignment with SDGs and GDC, plus requirements for targets, metrics, and OHCHR input, bring long-missing accountability.
• System coherence. By embedding WSIS follow-up into ECOSOC/CSTD and the GDC review, the Draft avoids creating parallel digital universes.
• Global South AI capacity. The proposal for AI research hubs and a fellowship programme shows responsiveness to today’s technology gaps and divides.

 
What’s Weak or Missing

• Enhanced cooperation déjà-vu. After 20 years, governments still haven’t agreed on what this actually means. The Draft just kicks the can further down the road.
• Financing is soft. There are ambitious roadmaps and capacity-building ideas, but no clear financing mechanism—no commitments from development banks, donors, or innovative finance. 
• GDC overlap. The division of labor between WSIS and the GDC isn’t defined. Without a clear task matrix, duplication is inevitable.
• The IGF’s outputs still struggle to influence governance. Simply ensuring its permanence doesn’t address the long-standing issue: discussions at the IGF rarely shape intergovernmental decisions in a consistent way. How can we explore ways to strengthen the IGF’s influence without transforming it into a negotiation forum? And what role could regional and national IGFs play in this process?
• Anti-fragmentation levers. Principles are nice; policy instruments are better. The Draft could go further by committing to interoperability standards, secure interconnection, and data-transfer safeguards.

The Issues to Watch
As negotiations unfold, here are the red-flag areas that need tightening:

• IGF permanence in practice. Will funding be secured? Will there be clear KPIs for IGF outputs?
• Enhanced cooperation 2.0. Who convenes, what’s the scope, and what outputs are expected?
• Action Line roadmaps. Will facilitators produce time-bound targets and resource plans—or just another round of reports?
• WSIS–GDC division of labor. A task matrix clarifying which forum owns which file is essential.
• Financing. Without money, the ambitions on connectivity, skills, and infrastructure in the Global South will remain empty promises.
• Anti-fragmentation enforcement. Will there be concrete policy commitments to back up the rhetoric?
• Human rights durability. Will the references to the UDHR survive the negotiation process, or will they be watered down by states pushing “sovereignty” over universality?

The Geopolitical Angle
Of course, all of this won’t play out in a vacuum. The WSIS+20 review will unfold in a geopolitical context that is far more polarized than in 2003, 2005 or 2015.

• The United States is unlikely to support language on gender equality, climate change, or sustainable development, given domestic political dynamics. Expect Washington to focus narrowly on anti-fragmentation and multistakeholder governance, while resisting expansive development linkages.
• China, by contrast, will seize the opportunity to position itself as a champion of the Global South, emphasizing connectivity, capacity-building, development and infrastructure—while carefully avoiding challenges to its own model of digital sovereignty.
• Europe will likely continue its regulatory evangelism. Brussels will frame itself as the guardian of rights, accountability, and “digital humanism,” but it faces a credibility gap: its global offer is mostly normative, with limited financing or infrastructure to back it up.

In short, WSIS+20 could become another stage where digital geopolitics play out: the U.S. guarding against multilateral mission creep, China presenting itself as development partner-in-chief, and Europe pushing values without resources. Against that backdrop, the Zero Draft’s commitment to human rights, the UDHR, and IGF permanence should be commended—not just as bureaucratic achievements, but as political wins in a difficult moment.

And credit where it’s due: in this fractured geopolitical climate, the co-facilitators deserve recognition for producing a coherent zero draft at all—one that not only listens to community inputs (especially on IGF permanence) but also has the courage to stand on human rights when many states would rather look away.