Deep Dive consultation on Digital Inclusion and Connectivity for the Global Digital Compact
March 2023
The Global Digital Justice Forum
The Global Digital Justice Forum made an input at a Deep Dive consultation on Digital Inclusion and Connectivity for for the Global Digital Compact on 27 March 2023.
The consultation was geared towards hearing inputs from states, civil society actors, and corporations on the following challenges:
- How can governments, international organizations, private companies, and civil society work together to close the digital divide and improve access, skills, and meaningful connectivity for all?
- What actions should be taken to enable digital inclusion for all?
- What policies, frameworks and programs have proven to be most successful and should be scaled up and adapted to other contexts to foster digital inclusion?
The input foregrounded the fact that to be included online is a basic right, given the rapid digitalization of most services and entitlement programs. In the context of the large digital divide, any movement towards inclusion and connectivity should center the lived experience of the people at the margins of society. To that end, it provided some key actionable policies to move towards meaningful digital inclusion:
- Dedicated public finance funding for a new global work program to equip Low and Middle Income countries (LMICs) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) with public digital infrastructure, including public platforms, data, and Artificial Intelligence
- Foregrounding digital and infrastructural capabilities
- Shifting investment and government policy to promote ecologically sustainable, gender just alternative platforms
- a strong rule-of-law approach which outlaws digital services which erode our human rights.
To learn more about the intervention, read it in full.