The Global Digital Compact (GDC) is expected to “outline shared principles for an open, free and secure digital future for all”. Just as international cooperation is critical to protecting the planet’s health, international collaboration and cooperation are needed to pursue the benefits of digital technologies while mitigating their risks. The GDC must be based on universal standards that adopt a human rights-based approach and must also recognise the differentiated impact that information and communications technologies (ICTs) have on women, girls and people of diverse genders and sexualities. The core principles of the GDC of openness, freedom and security must be infused with an intersectional feminist perspective to ensure that the ongoing digital transformation of our economies and societies can usher in a gender-just world that is affirming to all individuals and their path to self-actualisation.

Read more about the Principles here:

The principles:

1. Ensure concrete commitments to protect the digital rights of women and girls and marginalised groups

2. Guarantee freedom from technology-facilitated gender-based violence

3. Promote universal rights to freedom of expression, privacy, peaceful assembly, and participation of women and girls in all their diversity in all aspects of life

4. Ensure universal, affordable, accessible, and safe internet access for all

5. Demand strict action against harmful surveillance applications and high-risk AI systems and set safeguards to prevent discriminatory biases

6. Expand women’s participation and leadership in the technology sector and digital policymaking

7. Prioritise strategies that reduce the environmental impact of new technologies

8. Implement measures for states and transnational corporations to ensure data privacy, governance, and consent

9. Adopt Equality-by-Design principles and a human-rights-based approach throughout all phases of digital technology development.

10. Re-shape the participation and role of women in accessing and using digital technology. And address its potential impacts on labour and entrepreneurship.

With negotiations between member states on the GDC starting soon, we must align the voices of people and organisations working on the gender and digital agenda so that we can inform governments about our expectations about what should be in the final agreement.

The more of us who can align, the stronger our collective voice will be.

Will you support the ten feminist principles by signing on?