Meeting Report

This WSIS+20 side event, co-organised by the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) and ARTICLE 19, took place in the context of the final negotiations on the WSIS+20 outcome document. Participants stressed that commitments to free, independent, and pluralistic media must be operationalised alongside efforts to build secure, inclusive, and affordable digital infrastructure.

ARTICLE 19 outlined key provisions and gaps in the draft outcome document, noting progress on DPI and information integrity but flagging weakened human rights language and insufficient attention to media freedom safeguards, including protections related to surveillance, encryption, and platform power. DPI was framed as extending beyond services to the underlying technical layers, requiring openness, interoperability, public oversight, and multistakeholder governance.

In this context, the Journalism Cloud Alliance was presented as a civil society-led initiative building a shared cloud infrastructure for investigative journalism. The initiative addresses the over-reliance on hyperscalers which increases security and surveillance risks, undermines technological self-determination, and limits accessibility and innovation due to the high costs. Such reliance on big technology companies also undermines both state sovereignty and journalistic independence. Governments and partners should support public-interest alternatives and help co-develop human rights-respecting shared infrastructure.

Government representatives from the Netherlands and Switzerland shared perspectives on implementing WSIS+20 commitments at national and international levels, emphasising the role of states in supporting independent media, protecting journalists, and advancing human rights-respecting approaches to DPI. Switzerland highlighted the importance of the Rights-Respecting Digital Public Infrastructure Principles by the Freedom Online Coalition which seek to ensure that DPI is built with a commitment to fostering responsible innovation and economic growth so societies and businesses can thrive in today’s digital economy, as well as national efforts to safeguard media professionals, while the Netherlands stressed the importance of international cooperation to counter disinformation and digital threats to journalism.

UNDP underscored that promoting free, independent, pluralistic media and advancing secure, inclusive, affordable digital infrastructure (DPI) are not separate agendas; they are mutually reinforcing pillars of democratic, people‑centred digital transformation. UNDP is building bridges between those two areas via coalition-building initiatives and efforts to ensure DPI development aligns with international human rights standards.

In conclusion: meaningful implementation, multistakeholder participation, and policy coherence across global digital processes are now essential to ensure that “public” in DPI truly means public interest, and power structures are addressed so the technologies respond to diverse societal needs.

Key Action Points and Takeaways

Digital governance is central to the advancement of media freedom. Stakeholders must support public-interest infrastructure for media, including alternative and cooperative models, to reduce structural dependency on dominant technology platforms and strengthen resilient and plural journalism ecosystems.

Media freedom is also central for the operationalisation of the WSIS+20 vision. Through the WSIS+20 commitments, governments need to integrate media freedom, journalist safety, and information integrity safeguards into their digital governance frameworks and their national DPI strategies.

Media freedom can be an enabling right for all other human rights and democratic values. To that end, governments must advance human rights-respecting DPI through openness, interoperability, public interest design, and multistakeholder oversight, including alignment with human rights standards and DPI safeguards.