The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was held in two phases, in 2003 and 2005. Its Geneva Declaration of Principles declared the common desire of governments and other stakeholders ‘to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society’ that would enable individuals, communities and people to achieve their full potential, facilitate sustainable development and fulfil human rights.
Since 2005, while technology and services have evolved and the Information Society has moved from aspiration to reality, the outcome documents from WSIS have underpinned subsequent international agreements on digital development, including the Global Digital Compact adopted alongside the United Nations’ Pact for the Future in 2024.
The Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, which concluded WSIS, gave responsibility for the system-wide review of WSIS to the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and invited the UN General Assembly to undertake an overall review of implementation of WSIS outcomes in 2015. That 2015 review reaffirmed the WSIS principles and called for a further review by the Assembly in 2025.
The Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) has conducted annual reviews of WSIS implementation on behalf of ECOSOC since 2005,5 and published an extensive systematic report on WSIS implementation as a major contribution to the General Assembly review in 2015.
This report, commissioned by CSTD in 2024, has been prepared as a contribution to the twenty-year review to be conducted by the Assembly in 2025.
As anticipated by CSTD five years ago, it looks at the issues to be explored in the review through two lenses: the first (primarily in Chapters 1 and 2) focused on experience since WSIS, the second (primarily in Chapter 3) focused on trends and priorities identified today that will affect the future evolution of the Information Society and its relationship with other aspects of sustainable development and human rights.
It draws, in doing so, on the extensive work which CSTD has undertaken over the past two decades, wide-ranging literature from UN and other international sources, independent reports, and extensive consultation with governments, international organisations and other stakeholders.
