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Manushya at WSIS+20: Confronting Class Inequalities for a Decolonial Digital Future 💻🌏
- Manushya Foundation
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
On 14 October 2025, Manushya Foundation’s Digital Rights Advisor, Jean Linis-Dinco, represented the organization at the WSIS+20 Stakeholder Consultations, a key UN platform reviewing global digital governance. With only three minutes to speak, Jean delivered a sharp and uncompromising message: the digital world is far from equitable, and global frameworks must confront real power imbalances rather than gloss over them for the benefit of the 1%.
What is WSIS+20?
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is a UN platform that sets global standards for how the digital information society is governed and accessed. Every 20 years, WSIS reviews progress and outlines priorities for the coming decades.
The WSIS+20 Stakeholder Consultations brought together Member States, civil society, and other stakeholders to present inputs on the Zero Draft of the WSIS+20 outcome document. Over two days, discussions covered topics including bridging digital divides and enabling environments for digital development and the digital economy.
For Manushya, the consultations provided a critical opportunity to push for truly inclusive digital policies.
Confronting Power Imbalances in Digital Spaces
Jean opened her testimony by highlighting a core issue in the draft outcome: the flattening of real power hierarchies. She explained that treating corporations and workers as equal partners ignores systemic inequities.
“This framing erases class dynamics, pretending there is no difference between a worker in the Philippines earning 50 cents an hour labeling images for AI, or a cobalt miner in the Congo, and the executives who profit from their labor.”
Without acknowledging these disparities, global digital policy risks reinforcing exploitation while presenting itself as inclusive.
The extractive and colonial expansion of corporate digital monopolies
Manushya also challenged the draft’s framing of environmental and technological crises as purely technical challenges. Jean argued that this ignores the profit motives driving digital expansion and environmental degradation. “The extraction of lithium, cobalt, and rare earth minerals”, she noted, “continues patterns of colonial exploitation, underpinning the very networks we rely on for connectivity.”
She further pointed out that the expansion of global digital networks is often presented as a universal achievement, but in practice, it consolidates power in the hands of a few corporations based in rich countries.
Digital Rights Cannot Float Above Reality
While the WSIS draft stresses that offline rights should be protected online, Jean highlighted that these promises are fragile in exploitative systems. She asked critical questions:
“What does privacy actually mean in a world where data itself is commodified? What does freedom of expression actually mean on platforms designed to privilege profit over truth?”
Digital rights cannot exist as abstract ideals. They must be grounded in material realities and address the inequalities and power imbalances directly impacting people’s lives.
Manushya’s Call to Action
Our call to action on the future of digital is direct and uncompromising: If the WSIS really wants to leave a mark in this day and age, it must begin with an argument that digital infrastructure must be decommodified and technology must serve collective needs rather than lining the pockets of corporations.
Manushya Foundation will continue advocating for a digital future that is decolonial, intersectional, and feminist, ensuring global digital governance serves communities first, not corporate profit.