IGF 2026 WS #412 What digital sovereignty does and doesn't mean: global views

Description

Whilst this year's IGF celebrates the need for shared responsibility around the topic of digital governance, there is plenty of reason to think that this shared responsibility is being challenged. Policy documents from many parts of the world talk about local control, autonomy, and oversight. Although digital sovereignty is a leitmotif for many, it has been appropriated by different actors to mean different things. Herein lies one of the challenges: sovereignty only became a dominant principle of ordering the world because it meant the same thing to all actors. Indeed, sovereignty as one of the cornerstones of the UN charter, implies equality of treatment, and yet states and non-states are claiming the label. Yet the meaning of these digital sovereignty claims are not clear to all stakeholders in this global environment, where histories, contexts, and even language can shape perceptions of the term.

Taken to one extreme, discussions around digital sovereignty foreclose conversations about global cooperation. This obviously does not sit with declarations made during the WSIS+20 Review, or previous IGFs. So what is actually going on? Do the claims of a variety of actors around digital sovereignhood compromise the idea of a global internet? How do we even begin to talk about 'Sovereign AI'? Where are the boundaries of such claims? How do each of the actors frame digital sovereignty, not only from a perspective of 'ownership of production' but also in economic and social terms?

This workshop will bring together a diverse range of stakeholders from around the world to help participants get a deeper understanding of what 'digital sovereignty' means to them. Our contribution is based on a number of years of research in networks such as Giganet, Gig-arts, and participation in UN meetings on the topic.

Policy Question(s)

A. What does the digital sovereignty discourse emerging from your region actually mean? B. How does this digital sovereignty claim fit with global governance frameworks/institutions, such as WSIS and IGF? C. Can we start to think of a boundary, or limit to the claims of sovereignhood in cyberspace? D. How do we ensure that the territorialisation of key 'parts' of the internet does not contradict our ambitions for a shared global internet? E. Rather than a strict legal definition, should digital sovereignty be considered as a set of 'capabilities' to protect communities?

Expected Outcomes

The session should - first and foremost - stimulate interesting debate and conversation amongst participants. The topic of digital sovereignty is bound to be a popular one at this IGF, and yet, many commentators and practitioners to date do not seem to reflect much on the differences in understanding across different stakeholder groups and world regions. Our first outcome is to acknowledge that difference.

Secondly, we hope to start mapping out this difference by helping create an understanding of what features of digital sovereignty are common to all definitions, and what are different. This should help continue discussions throughout the IGF and beyond.

Finally, this will feed into ongoing research in the academic community of the facts of digital sovereignty, resulting in a broader report, based on observations from several years of participation at IGFs.

Format

Roundtable Duration (minutes): 60 Format description: A roundtable will enable full engagement between speakers (some online) and the audience. We will ask speakers to provide targeted responses of maximum three minutes per intervention. We aim to use the three minute rule to ensure and encourage speakers from beyond our speaking list. Our speakers are primed to be assertive, and yet stimulate conversation by raising particular perspectives. Our speakers are also brought together with the intention of voicing that difference: we have invited a heterogenous group of individuals to talk to the subject matter.

For an intense conversation about 'difference' (different understandings of digital sovereignty), one hour should suffice for this conversation. We feel that 60 minutes provides a good timeframe to structure a debate of this nature. We hope that the outcomes from this workshop will be shared in other ones as well.

Hybrid Format

Hybrid Format: We will have an onsite moderator and an online moderator who will be based onsite. The two will sit next to each other, and confer regularly, in order to ensure that balance between onsite and online moderation will be fair. We shall apply a three-miinute rule for interventions, roughly allowing up to 15 interventions during the session, where a participant can intervene more than once if they can help continue the flow of the conversation. As our session is designed with a specific outcome in mind, we will keep a rolling document open (google docs or cryptpad) open, to allow all to contribute notes if they feel uncomfortable in speaking. The moderators will also monitor this document (which will be shared on a big screen when an online participant is not talking), to respond to contributions, potentially asking for more insight from the author of each comment.

Organizers

Organizer 1: Jamal Shahin, University of Amsterdam and Vrije Universiteit Brussel Organizer 2: Dorijn Boogaard, NL IGF Organizer 3: Everton T Rodrigues, NIC.br Organizer 4: Stephanie Teeuwen, Brussels School of Governance Organizer 5: Bitange Ndemo, University of Nairobi

Speakers

Speaker 1: Qusai Al-Shatti, Private Sector, Asia-Pacific Group Speaker 2: Dorijn Boogaard, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG) Speaker 3: Everton T Rodrigues, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC) Speaker 4: Bitange Ndemo, Government, African Group Speaker 5: Stephanie Teeuwen, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)

Moderator

Jamal Shahin, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)

Online Moderator

Stephanie Teeuwen, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)

Rapporteur