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In September 2022, UNESCO initiated a consultation process for the Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms. This process was developed through different rounds of focused consultations with diverse individuals and organizations from all stakeholder groups, coming from various regions and three stages of open consultations where stakeholders from the different sectors presented inputs to evolving drafts of the document. The entire process engaged people from 134 countries and generated 10,414 comments.    

After the second stage of consultation, which received 3,236 comments, UNESCO opened Draft 3.0 of the Guidelines for a last stage of public consultation, which started on April 27 and ended in June 27, 2023. 

During this period, UNESCO received a total of 6,214 comments from 1,062 submissions made by people from 70 countries. 

To bolster the participation of groups that had not been able to participate in the first and second phase (mostly from the global south and from vulnerable communities), UNESCO extended its partnership with the to implement a deliberative consultation approach[1] that aimed to deepen the understanding of different key perspectives and solutions to be addressed in the Guidelines, to support stakeholders in organizing their own independent community consultations, and to boost inclusive participation worldwide. 

In this stage, participants responded to seven key questions:

1. Should we look to a principle-based document or a document that guides the review and implementation of regulatory processes?
2. What types of digital platforms should be included in the scope of the Guidelines?
3. How should a multistakeholder approach in a regulatory process look?
4. Does Draft 3.0 suitably incorporate these points? Are we missing something else about content management?
5. Future Proofing. How can we ensure that the guidelines are flexible enough to adapt to new and emerging technologies?
6. Are there specific elements that should be considered to ensure the guidelines are sensitive to gender and intersectionality?
7. Are we missing something?

Individual responses were gathered through online and physical forms in English, French, and Spanish. Subsequently, every comment was compiled, de-identified, and reviewed to develop the next draft of the Guidelines.
 

[1] Previous rounds of consultation had surfaced a number of areas where multiple perspectives needed to be reconciled. The deliberative consultation approach supported participants to engage with these key questions through three phases: 1) a learning phase, where participants were introduced to a question and to each of the competing perspectives - the perspectives, in most cases, were shared directly by the organizations and stakeholder groups who had put forward the view in previous consultations; 2) a deliberation phase, during which participants were hosted in small-group discussions to consider and weigh the different perspectives through dialogue; and, 3) a feedback phase, where participants filled out private survey forms to indicate their preferred perspective and the reasons behind it. Individual responses were gathered through online and physical forms in English, French, and Spanish. Subsequently, every comment was compiled, de-identified, and reviewed to develop the next draft of the guidelines.

DATOS IMPORTANTES

This round of consultations brought in voices, especially from the Global South and from vulnerable and marginalized communities, that had not been heard before in previous phases.

Materials were developed and support was offered to empower stakeholders and community-based organizations to host their own deliberative consultations. The organizers received training to host engagements and to facilitate small group deliberations. Additionally, I4Policy provided 27 microgrants to allow the participation of under-resourced communities.

The 44 independent community consultations expanded inclusion and increased the diversity of participation of the consultation, 72% of the respondents reported that they had not participated in any public consultation in the last six months and more than 82% had not previously engaged with the consultation on the UNESCO Guidelines. 
 

responses were gathered through online and physical forms in English, French, and Spanish. Subsequently, every comment was compiled, de-identified, and reviewed to develop the next draft of the guidelines.

UNESCO hosted in-person consultations around the globe, during World Press Freedom Day celebrations in New York City, USA and Lusaka, Zambia; the Internet Freedom Forum in Stockholm, Sweden; and RightsCon in San José, Costa Rica. The remote UNESCO-hosted consultations spanned numerous time zones, targeting a wide diversity of stakeholders.

For an in-depth review, the complete database of anonymized* public comments on Draft 3.0 of the Guidelines is available for  here.

*UNESCO removed identifiable information, such as names, organizations and email addresses. UNESCO also sought to remove, to the extent possible, comments that may indicate the identity of the commenter.