Why engaging with the United Nations is key to protecting free knowledge – Diff

December 2025 marked a landmark moment for the Wikimedia Foundation: After years of engagement within the United Nations (UN) system, the Foundation delivered remarks at the UN General Assembly Hall about the future of the internet.

As the most important organization in the world for proposing, discussing, and setting global policy, the UN is a critical space to display the community-led and governed Wikimedia model. There we can demonstrate why the model is an effective online approach to promote and protect an open, reliable, and inclusive internet—and how it delivers the promise of a positive vision of global internet governance.

We want the internet to remain global, free, and open so that the Wikimedia projects can continue serving billions in their public interest mission. To achieve this, especially when internet and technology regulation is rapidly expanding, we must persuade governments around the world about how critical it is to: support and protect those who make open knowledge possible, and preserve community-governed digital spaces in the age of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies.

None of these things can be taken for granted. Changes to the world and technology affect how people are accessing and sharing information online and, in many countries, how—or even whether—they can do so safely. In an increasing number of places, both people and online spaces are under threat. The Wikimedia projects are no exception.

To accomplish our mission—a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge—we must educate and collaborate with those who are deciding how we will react to these changes. Doing so is the only way to ensure a positive vision of the future of the internet.

In this blog post, we explain how we have worked to:

• Secure that our collective voice can be heard at the UN,
• Contribute to define the digital future,
• Achieve recognition and positive impact, and
• Lead conversations based on shared values.

Why the UN matters to the free and open knowledge movement

In the destructive wake of the Second World War, leaders of nations across the world united to create the first truly global organization in 1945. The United Nations would serve as a single institution where every country could eventually become a Member State to set global rules together. The goals were global security, strengthening relations among the world’s countries, and cooperating more effectively to establish and ensure standards for better social and economic conditions as well as fundamental human rights.

Today, the UN system serves its many functions by means of six bodies, multiple specialized agencies, and numerous programs and funds. Presently, 193 Member States work together daily to solve international problems through diplomacy, upholding international law, and delivering humanitarian aid. Even with the current challenges facing the UN, it continues to offer a platform for diplomacy and supports billions of people globally.

Since Wikimedia projects are part of a truly global movement, they are affected by national regulations and international frameworks alike. For the projects to continue offering the sum of all knowledge globally, those driving digital governance need to understand both how the projects work, and why the digital commons are essential to a healthy, equitable online information ecosystem. We engage across the UN system, Member States, and civil society to explain how open knowledge and the communities that sustain it ensure the quality of the world’s public information infrastructure.

Our world is marked by geopolitical tensions, the accelerated development of generative AI, growing restrictions on digital rights and freedoms, and the spread of misinformation. Driven in part by the concerns of civil society, UN Member States have worked hard to catch up, formulating and implementing stricter regulation at the national and international level. These frameworks are based on different visions of what should be the future of the internet. The open web that we have today is often contrasted with a more tightly managed internet. This surge of various kinds of laws can impact the Wikimedia movement in multiple areas: intermediary liability protections, content moderation, surveillance and privacy, copyright and intellectual property, and AI and data protection.

As the world changes, so does the environment in which free and open knowledge must continue to operate in order to survive. For all of these reasons, when the Foundation and Wikimedia affiliates work with and at the UN, we ask for two main things:

• First, to protect the rights of the people who discover, report, research, curate, translate, analyze and read facts on Wikipedia.
• Second, to support and protect community-led, public interest projects that create digital public goods when regulating the internet to address real harms. 

These are not abstract public policy questions: they are the North Stars that have guided our journey of engagement with the UN.

Securing our collective voice

The Foundation engages with the UN because the policies, norms, and decisions shaped there today will define what internet governance—and therefore the Wikimedia projects—will look like tomorrow. In our engagement with other stakeholders, we strive to protect the conditions that will allow us to realize our vision that everyone, everywhere, can participate in free and open knowledge.

During October 2020, we entered a pivotal collaboration with the UN, working directly with the World Health Organization (WHO) to make accurate health information available in hundreds of languages during the COVID-19 crisis. This worldwide initiative exemplified the public interest nature of the Wikimedia projects and their commitment to enabling access to reliable information in moments where information integrity is critical.

In order to more effectively represent the efforts of Wikimedians and other open internet advocates with the UN, the Foundation became an accredited observer at the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in 2022. This consultative status has allowed us to participate as a stakeholder in discussions that can have a critical impact on the Wikimedia projects.

These milestones demonstrated an understanding of the positive impact of the Wikimedia projects and volunteer communities and secured a formal voice that positions us to engage in shaping landmark digital governance frameworks in the years ahead.

Contributing to define the digital future

In recent years, two significant UN-level processes are shaping the future of the internet and how the Wikimedia projects can continue to exist online. One is the Global Digital Compact, a worldwide framework for digital cooperation and governance of digital technologies. The other is the review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 20 years later, which we will discuss later in this post.

The Global Digital Compact

In 2024, UN Member States negotiated a Global Digital Compact: a comprehensive global framework for digital cooperation and the governance of digital technologies and artificial intelligence. The Compact was approved unanimously at the Summit of the Future in September of that year at the UN headquarters.

While the Compact was being discussed and drafted, its various drafts were open to commentary and feedback worldwide. From the very beginning of the discussion and until the vote on the final draft, the Foundation and Wikimedians engaged extensively with the process.

In our contribution to the UN’s civil society consultation, we advocated that the Compact highlight the importance of human rights online and a multistakeholder governance system—that is to say, a system where not only governments, but also nonstate actors such as civil society organizations like the Foundation, Wikimedia affiliates, and the technical communities have a say in matters of digital governance.

We began a campaign, which included the Foundation and Wikimedia affiliates drafting an open letter together to advance three main requests. Published in April 2024, we called upon the drafters of the Compact to:

• Protect and empower communities to govern online public interest projects;
• Promote and protect digital public goods by supporting a robust digital commons from which everyone, everywhere can benefit; 
• Build and deploy AI and machine learning to support and empower, not replace, people who create content and make decisions in the public interest.

Our Compact campaign culminated at the Summit of the Future in September 2024—a special gathering where the UN General Assembly approved the Compact. At the Summit, the Foundation cohosted a high-level event. We brought together Member States, UN representatives like the Secretary General’s Envoy on Technology, and civil society actors, who spanned from Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, to academics and private sector representatives. We presented our vision of the internet and what is needed to protect digital public goods like Wikipedia, which are grounded in a robust digital commons and are essential for an inclusive, open, sustainable digital world.

We were encouraged to realize that our requests were shared by many others and also partially reflected in the final, approved Compact. At the same time, the efforts we committed to the Compact continued to build momentum for the recognition of two Wikimedia projects as digital public goods as well as lay groundwork for continued multistakeholder advocacy.

Achieving recognition and positive impact

Wikimedia projects serve as part of the world’s digital public infrastructure, informing billions of people across every region and over 300 languages. The projects operate using a particular model: led by our volunteer community, with respect for privacy, without for-profit incentives, and through open and free, reliable content that serves the public interest. Wikimedia volunteer contributors develop and enforce policies that ensure information integrity on the projects, providing valuable examples of how human agency, community-led governance, and citing reliable sources can create trust online.

Wikipedia and Wikidata recognized as digital public goods

The Wikimedia projects’ unique contributions to society worldwide as well as its commitment to constructive values led to two important recognitions in 2025: Wikipedia and Wikidata were acknowledged as digital public goods. The Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), a multistakeholder UN-endorsed initiative, included the projects in their registry of open-source software, data, AI models, standards, and content. Digital public goods are acknowledged as being created to benefit people across the world. They must fulfill other strict criteria, which include causing no harm, following best standards and practices, ensuring data protection and privacy, and contributing to the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Demonstrating how the Wikimedia model maintains information integrity

Despite Wikimedia having widespread brand recognition across the world and the recognition of the contributions that the projects offer the general public, government officials rarely understand open knowledge and community-led models. As a result, internet laws and regulations can risk ignoring or weakening these public interest platforms. It is crucial to explain to the UN and Member States how the web can be governed in the public interest: through transparency, community participation, and structures designed to protect human rights and information integrity rather than simply profit.

During 2025, the UN launched their Global Principles for Information Integrity. These principles seek to build fair, diverse, and inclusive online spaces, where people are empowered rather than exposed to disinformation, hate, or monopolized information flows. To highlight how the Wikimedia model and volunteer communities support these principles, we organized presentations and training to multiple UN agencies and departments. These exchanges helped create a better understanding of how Wikimedians collaborate to make sure that content on the projects is reliable. They also created more direct connections and involvement between the UN offices and volunteers in multiple countries, providing opportunities for continued conversations and lessons learned about knowledge creation and sharing processes as well as alternative models of digital governance.

Various other activities demonstrated in action how the Wikimedia model works and maintains information integrity. In 2025 alone:

• The Foundation and Wikimedia NYC organized an edit-a-thon at the United Nations headquarters during UN Open Source Week to engage with UN and Member States delegates, among other guests, and expand and update Wikipedia articles together.
• UN officials from the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC), United Nations Peacekeeping, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) attended Wikimania in Nairobi, Kenya, to join numerous panels hosted by Wikimedians and discuss information integrity in the digital age with volunteer contributors during a dedicated panel.
• During UNGA High-Level Week, the Foundation presented an international Wikimedian project to improve and maintain information integrity on extreme weather and climate-related events on Wikipedia and Wikidata. Recognizing the importance of this work, the Global Initiative on Information Integrity on Climate Change (established by the Government of Brazil, the UN Secretariat, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO]) awarded it a grant to continue and scale its available contributions.

These opportunities to connect Wikimedians directly with UN officials and processes help demonstrate how the projects work, provide spaces to voice the needs and concerns that underlie the creation and curation of open knowledge, and create opportunities for the UN and Permanent Representations to work with Wikimedians on promoting and protecting reliable information worldwide.

The project’s results and awarded grant show that Wikimedians’ efforts are already recognized as critical to maintaining information integrity and achieving UN-coordinated objectives.

Speaking through the world’s largest policy microphone

Throughout 2025, the UN conducted a 20-years review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+20) The WSIS+20 review assessed the state of global progress in using information and communication technologies for development and expanding online access in lesser-developed countries. This process included a high-level event in Geneva and concluded with the UN General Assembly’s comprehensive review in December.

During the UNGA High-Level Week in September, the Foundation joined the UN Digital Cooperation Day, where we reflected on the first year of implementation of the Global Digital Compact and discussed the WSIS+20 process with Member States and others during a dedicated roundtable. The Foundation highlighted the need for the WSIS principles to focus on digital public goods, online community-led projects, and the public interest internet.We partnered with a coalition of Wikimedia affiliates to engage with the WSIS review, seeking to promote the multistakeholder system, human rights online, and an internet that protects and promotes community-led spaces. Alongside Wikimedia affiliates and other allies, we signed a statement from Global Partners Digital that urged the UN and its Member States to ensure all stakeholders were meaningfully consulted during the last phase of the review.

The Foundation’s efforts culminated at the UN General Assembly’s comprehensive review in December, when we addressed the UN and Member States. Our remarks celebrated that the multistakeholder model brought forth by WSIS has been a successful and productive collaboration framework—which echoes Wikimedians’ belief that when people are free to self-govern, public spaces are more inclusive and open, enabling participation in the sum of all knowledge across the world. The multistakeholder model allows civil society groups like the Foundation and Wikimedia affiliates as well as the private sector and technical groups to have a say on how the internet works and contributes to the public good.

Our allies and we have a positive vision of the future of the internet: one where representatives from civil society, industry, academia, and other NGOs are included in such crucial debates and processes, ensuring their results are inclusive and beneficial worldwide. There is no larger policy microphone than the one which we used last December to share our hopes for the digital future we are already building today.

These 2025 achievements, from the DPGA recognitions to hands-on demonstrations to high-profile advocacy at the UN General Assembly, have solidified the Foundation’s leadership position for ongoing global digital policy conversations.

Leading conversations based on shared values

Making sure that Wikimedian voices are heard so they can explain what makes our model successful during these processes is not just a nice-to-have: it is an essential part of protecting the Wikimedia projects and promoting a community-led model of online governance, particularly critical in the age of AI and other emerging technologies.

In these challenging times of heightened geopolitical tensions and an uncertain digital landscape, participating in global policy spaces is more important than ever. At the United Nations, the Wikimedia movement can demonstrate a concrete, established, successful model of a community-led digital space that prioritizes trustworthy information, promotes human rights online, and reflects our core values: openness, human rights, and collaboration. It is a chance to show what an internet built around people and public interest and value can look like.

Going forward, our work with the UN and its specialized agencies, Member States, and our allies in civil society and the private sector will continue and deepen. We will:

• Strengthen Wikimedia’s presence in UN-led processes on digital governance, human rights online, and information integrity.
• Share evidence and lived community experience to inform policies that affect how knowledge is created, accessed, and preserved.
• Build alliances with governments, civil society, academia, and the technical community to protect collaborative, community-governed spaces.
• Elevate the voices of volunteers and communities—those who make free knowledge possible—across international forums, and
• Advocate a digital environment that safeguards open knowledge, supports public-interest infrastructure, and ensures equitable access for all.

The Wikimedia movement will continue to show up, contribute, and collaborate. Together with global partners, we can help shape an online world that prioritizes people, communities, and the universal right to seek, receive, and share information.

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