IGF 2023 | “Donor Principles for Human Rights in the Digital Age: Turning Principles into Action”

This event will officially launch the Donor Principles for the Digital Age and begin a multistakeholder engagement process to bring them to fruition. International development actors have an outsized impact on technological innovation, use and governance around the world through digital programming and related engagements. Despite increased cooperation on technology and democracy engagements overall, donors have yet to collectively articulate and adopt comprehensive safeguards that can help to ensure that donor-supported programs do not inadvertently facilitate the weaponization of, or adverse impacts caused by, data driven technologies and information. This is a gap in the development sector that international and local civil society stakeholders have called on donors to fill.

These voluntary, non-binding donor principles will provide an opportunity for donor nations to negotiate and agree upon a set of normative parameters for rights-respecting, democracy-affirming investments and engagements in digital contexts. They will be negotiated and agreed upon by FOC member governments from June – October 2023, with inputs from the FOC’s multistakeholder Advisory Network. This session will launch the principles, and kick off the process of implementing them. The Donor Principles for the Digital Age will reflect the high-level principles articulated in the Declaration for the Future of the Internet, but will be specific to international development.

Visit the IGF session page: www.intgovforum.org/en/content/igf-2023-open-forum-157-donor-principles-for-the-digital-age-turning-principles-int.