The European Commission is repositioning its forthcoming Digital Fairness Act to place online child protection at the core of the proposal, reflecting rising political and public pressure to address digital risks faced by young people.
At the CSTD Intersessional Panel for the WSIS+20 Review, the United Nations Group on the Information Society delivered a statement underscoring its role as the UN system’s coordination mechanism for WSIS implementation. UNGIS reiterated the need for explicit recognition in the WSIS+20 outcome document, stronger alignment between WSIS and the Global Digital Compact, and sustained multistakeholder engagement through platforms such as the WSIS Forum and the IGF.
The programme offers participants intensive online training on internet governance, along with skills-building in advocacy, communications, leadership, and project management. Selected Youth Ambassadors are matched with mentors from across the internet ecosystem and given the chance to attend a high-level internet governance event suited to their profile and regional context.
Speaking at the summit on European digital sovereignty in Berlin, French digital minister Anne Le Hénanff backed a 12-month freeze on obligations for high-risk AI systems, arguing that a temporary halt is necessary to give companies time to adapt and to avoid legal uncertainty during the transition.
Facts and Figures 2025 shows that while connectivity is expanding, the quality of access remains highly uneven, shaped by disparities in speed, affordability and skills. Only 4 percent of people in low-income countries have 5G coverage compared with 84 percent in high-income states, and mobile data usage in wealthy countries is nearly eight times higher than in poorer ones.
The European Commission’s new evaluation of the Digital Services Act outlines where the regulation overlaps with other EU tech laws and how these areas may affect compliance. The findings will guide the Commission’s upcoming digital fitness check, a broader effort to streamline the EU’s digital rulebook alongside the Digital Omnibus package.
The meeting comes as the EU prepares revisions to its AI and data rules and reflects a broader debate on competitiveness, industrial strategy, and security.
The FCC’s proposal to unwind the Biden-era rules comes despite earlier federal assessments that stronger, binding requirements were needed to address long-term, persistent access by foreign threat actors.
The Technical Community Coalition for Multistakeholderism has submitted its input on WSIS+20 Revision 1, welcoming the document’s constructive direction and its explicit recognition of the technical community as a distinct stakeholder group. While supporting the permanent mandate for the IGF and provisions to strengthen its Secretariat, the coalition calls for clearer commitments on sustainable funding, deeper coordination across the Internet governance ecosystem, and the reinstatement of strong language rejecting state-controlled or fragmented Internet architectures.
India has published the official Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Rules 2025, setting out the operational framework that will govern how personal data is collected, processed, stored, and transferred under the DPDP Act. The rules introduce a phased implementation schedule, new compliance obligations for organisations, and detailed procedures for consent, notice, breach reporting, children’s data, and cross-border transfers.
Civil Society Alliances for Digital Empowerment (CADE) is a project co-funded by the European Union.
