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TWN Info Service
on WTO and Trade Issues (Jul26/03) Southern civil society groups call for fair AI governance Penang, 6 July (Lean Ka-Min) – Denouncing the emerging AI order as lacking legitimacy, civil society organisations from across the developing world are advocating “a South-led AI paradigm” that promotes development, human rights and environmental sustainability. Ahead of the first United Nations Global Dialogue on AI Governance, the Global Digital Justice Forum (GDJF) and the Global South Alliance (GSA) issued a joint statement calling on the Dialogue to redress the injustices blighting the present development of artificial intelligence and to work towards an equitable AI governance regime. The first edition of the Global Dialogue, which will bring together representatives from governments, the private sector, academia and civil society to discuss international cooperation around AI, convenes in Geneva on 6–7 July. The GDJF and the GSA are networks of developing-country civil society groups concerned with digital rights and justice. The Global Dialogue is taking place amid rising concern over imbalances in AI innovation even as application of the technology continues to grow. AI models from the United States dominate the market: an analysis by the think-tank RAND of website traffic to the major large language model (LLM) platforms revealed that US LLMs captured some 93% of global site visits in August 2025, compared with only around 6% for Chinese models. The US and China, the two countries leading the way in AI development, have differing approaches when it comes to governance of the technology. As exemplified in “America’s AI Action Plan” released by the White House in 2025, the US is pursuing deregulation as a means of spurring innovation in order to maintain its competitive edge and preserve its dominance in the sector. In contrast, the Chinese government has outlined a vision of global collaboration on AI to deliver equal rights and opportunities for all countries and shared benefits for humanity. Against this background, the GDJF-GSA joint statement contends that the current trajectory of AI innovation “has consolidated the neocolonial structures of development”. The prevailing inequities, say the GDJF and the GSA, are founded to a large extent upon exploitation of the Global South’s resources, “[f]rom the devalued, dehumanizing labor that is essential for training AI models to the critical minerals, land, energy, and water” required for the production and operation of AI infrastructure. “[C]ommunities in the South continue to provide the scaffolding for the AI economy and society, without the voice and power to shape and benefit from this paradigm,” the statement says. Given this imbalance, the GDJF and the GSA call upon the Global Dialogue “to deliver on a South-led AI paradigm, anchored in a vision of rights-based development, respectful of planetary boundaries, and committed to intergenerational justice and human rights”. The statement demands an end to “AI extractivism” as characterised by “the violation of human rights, the erosion of democratic processes, the abuse of the environment, and the discrimination and invisibility of marginalized citizens in AI-driven decision-making in public services”. Instead, “AI innovation must embrace the precautionary principle. It must be ethically and transparently developed, democratically accountable, and grounded in a globally agreed minimum floor for meaningful and dignified work, pluralistic knowledge, diversified economies, and planetary flourishing.” The GDJF and the GSA also propose that international AI cooperation be informed by the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” between developed and developing countries. They maintain that the unequal global economic order seriously undermines the development of digital infrastructure and human and institutional capabilities in developing countries. Rectifying this requires global commitments to support “the development of regenerative, locally-led AI infrastructures and models in the South”. In addition, the GDJF and the GSA urge the Global Dialogue to address corporate impunity in the AI field. They assert that the proposed binding UN treaty to protect against corporate violations of human rights should be “adopted without delay and appropriately future-proofed against the specific risks of harms and abuses in data and AI value chains”. Further, a “global moratorium on the sale and use of AI systems that pose a high risk to human rights (such as remote biometric recognition, social scoring, spyware, and AI-driven autonomous weapons) is urgently needed”. The civil society statement also says that the global governance of cross-border data flows must respect development sovereignty instead of following a “one-size-fits-all” logic. Additionally, “the governance of the non-personal data commons requires a societal approach that includes safeguards for collective privacy and the rights of communities to steward the use and re-use of their data resources in innovation ecosystems, together with strong personal data protection rights”. Inequalities in access to computing resources, or compute, are another source of concern for the GDJF and the GSA. They note that “[t]he foundational infrastructure of compute is controlled by a few corporations”, and that “[e]ven open-source AI models are often dependent on closed/proprietary infrastructure systems for their hosting and distribution”. In light of this, they call for “a global facility for public compute”, through which a distributed network of AI research centres coordinated by a central hub can be utilised by researchers from developing countries. The civil society coalitions conclude by reiterating that the present model of AI innovation “is not working for the majority”. They call upon the Global Dialogue to “move the needle with conviction and courage towards people’s participation, planetary wellbeing, and public value. Anything less will not do justice to the people of the South.”
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