In January, the Republic of Estonia, a founding member of the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC), assumed the Chairship of the Coalition for 2025. Estonia succeeds the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which Chaired the Coalition in 2024.
Estonia’s Chairship will advance the FOC as a principal forum for like-minded governments to discuss and address issues at the intersection of technology and human rights. The Coalition’s role as a cross-regional partnership of countries comes at a pivotal time, as multilateral processes such as the WSIS+20 review will set the basis for the governance of digital technologies for the next decade and beyond. Furthermore, significant challenges to Internet freedom and exercising human rights online exacerbate the need to gather stakeholders, facilitate information sharing, engage in advocacy, and take diplomatic actions to collaboratively address concerning trends such as the use of Internet shutdowns, surveillance, and information manipulation.
On assuming the Chairship, Margus Tsahnka, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Estonia, said:
“We are at a pivotal point where the decisions made today will largely determine the foundations of digital technologies and e-governance for the coming decades, if not longer. This is why it is important for like-minded countries and partners across the world to make an effort to place human rights at the heart of discussions over the development of technology.”
As Chair, Estonia will guide the Coalition’s work on the following priority areas, as outlined in the 2025 Program of Action:
- Governance and use of digital technologies and the Internet
The Coalition is committed to ensuring human rights remain at the center of the design, use, and governance of digital technology and the Internet, and to protecting and advancing the multistakeholder approach. The Internet must remain free, open, interoperable, global, reliable, and secure, and digital technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), must be rights-respecting.
- Digital inclusion and digital public infrastructure
The Coalition aims to advance digital inclusion and meaningful access to technologies, which rests upon four key pillars: connectivity, digital literacy, civic participation, and online safety. Digital divides exacerbate the social and economic chasm between the Global North and the Global South, with marginalised communities being most affected. Recognising DPI as an important enabling component towards digital inclusion, the FOC aims to advance knowledge on rights-respecting DPI to promote inclusive connectivity and civic participation, and mitigate potential risks of exclusion, discrimination, surveillance and violations of privacy, as well as explore the contextual realities and differences between the deployment of DPI in the Global North and the Global South and explore mechanisms to redress the uneven impact of advanced digital technologies.
- Cross-regional engagement
The Coalition will continue efforts to facilitate the development of inclusive and informed positions, shaped through cross-regional engagement and dialogue with a diverse range of stakeholders. This is vital for the FOC to remain an effective platform to advance human rights, both online and offline, worldwide. Enhancing this engagement, especially with stakeholders from the Global South, will further strengthen the Coalition’s ability to ensure challenges and opportunities relating to Internet freedom and digital technologies are prioritized in national policy agendas and within key multilateral processes relating to the FOC’s mandate.
Estonia’s past Chairship of the FOC in 2014 saw the adoption of the Tallinn Agenda during the 4th Freedom Online Conference, which is a foundational document of the Coalition outlining recommendations for freedom online and forming guiding principles for the work of the FOC’s Member States.
Estonia will be supported by the 2025 FOC Steering Committee cohort, comprising Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, in addition to the 2024-2026 cohort of the FOC Advisory Network, which includes 30 representatives from civil society, academia, the technical community, and the private sector, and is co-Chaired by Elonnai Hickok (Global Network Initiative), Veronica Ferrari (Association for Progressive Communications), and ‘Gbenga Sesan (Paradigm Initiative).
To view the full Program of Action, including the goals, objectives, and activities of the FOC in 2025, visit the following link or view the document below. Subscribe to the FOC’s mailing list to receive updates on Coalition activities, outputs, and upcoming events.
