Mr. Frane Maroevic:

It is my honour to contribute to the committee's deliberations on advancing international collaboration on online regulation. Clearly there is no need to stress that this is a transnational issue: that the committee has come together to discuss this issue speaks for itself. The initiation of the Grand International Committee is also a sign that the existing institutions and processes are not adequate to deal with these issues.

Most online interactions and data flows today involve multiple jurisdictions based on the locations of users, servers, Internet platforms or technical operators. Current frameworks for interstate legal co-operation struggle to handle this new digital reality. In many cases they hinder or even prevent co-operation. In some cases, they empower those who want to do harm or commit crimes.

How do we address issues such as the interoperability between the different norms; the interplay and the hierarchy between companies’ terms of service, national legislation, international treaties and commitments? Who sets the standards? What are geographically proportionate and relevant responses to these issues? How do we ensure the rule of law and transparency of all these processes?

How do we effectively co-operate to ensure that those who commit crimes and inflame hatred or violence are prosecuted? What is an appropriate punishment and what is the recourse for the victims? We need institutions for all these things because the most common forms of punishment and redress seem to be take-down of problematic social media posts or accounts.

In order to come up with workable answers, we need new international tools and institutions for Internet governance. This is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century that no one can solve unilaterally. In the absence of policy standards and appropriate frameworks, we face increasing tensions that trigger unco-ordinated short-term solutions. National laws are enacted to try to deal with transnational problems, resulting in a legal arms race that risks unintended and harmful consequences, including jurisdictional conflicts and unwanted fragmentation of the Internet.

The organisation I work for, the Internet & Jurisdiction Policy Network, is about to publish the first ever report on the status of global Internet governance which shows that globally there are more than 300 such laws or Acts. As the majority of them are not co-ordinated we risk fragmenting the Internet.

We need solutions that will bring values and rules-based international order to the Internet, while at the same time ensuring that our democratic institutions and all our fundamental human rights are fully respected. This is a colossal task and shows why Internet governance must be a multi-stakeholder process. In reality it is not because in most cases when we discuss inter-governance it ends up being an intergovernmental process. In a true multi-stakeholder process all three branches of the state need to work with the fourth estate, the media, along with civil society groups, academia and the companies. This is what the Internet & Jurisdiction Policy Network does as a multi-stakeholder Internet governance process. We bring together approximately 300 key stakeholders from governments, Internet companies, technical operators, civil society groups, academia and international organisations from more than 50 countries to work together to develop policy standards and operational solutions.

In recent months our contact groups, working in three separate jurisdiction programs on data, content and domains, produced a series of proposals norms, procedures and mechanisms that we call operational approaches and I would be happy to share them with the committee. The next focus for us will be on standards for recourse mechanisms, looking at issues of normative interoperability and transparency.

Regarding the committee's work I would like to highlight transparency, a matter mentioned by a number of people today, as one of the most useful tools in tackling disinformation. I am referring to establishing standards and mechanisms to deal with the abuse of platforms and technical infrastructure for political, financial or other gains.

Members of the committee know the challenges of regulating speech. The most problematic content does not fall neatly into what could be restricted under international human rights standards on freedom of expression. These issues are constantly evolving and changing, and artificial intelligence only contributes to the speed and complexity of the problems to be solved.

I call on the members of committee, as representatives of the people, to support a multi-stakeholder, transnational Internet governance process.