Agenda

Mapping to the WSIS Action Lines
The session maps to Action Lines defined in the WSIS Geneva Plan of Action (document WSIS-03/GENEVA/DOC/5-E, 12 December 2003) and grounded in the Geneva Declaration of Principles (WSIS-03/GENEVA/DOC/4-E, 12 December 2003), which recognises the central role of science in the Information Society (Declaration paragraph 7). These commitments were reaffirmed in the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society (WSIS-05/TUNIS/DOC/6(Rev.1)-E, 2005) and are now carried into implementation under the WSIS+20 review outcome (UN General Assembly resolution A/RES/80/173, December 2025) and the Global Digital Compact (2024).

Its core is Action Line C7. On e-health (Geneva Plan of Action, paragraph 18), the session operationalises the calls for reliable, high quality and affordable health information systems that protect privacy (18a), international standards for the exchange of health data (18d), and ICT-based support for medical and humanitarian assistance in disasters and emergencies (18f), applying them to genomics and precision public health through data visitation and secure processing environments. GERP and the DPTC instruments extend paragraph 18f to research during public health emergencies, disasters, and conflict. On e-science (paragraph 22), the session advances affordable connectivity and networking for research institutions (22a), open access on an equitable basis (22b), the long-term preservation of scientific data (22d), and metadata standards for its effective use (22e), giving effect as well to the Declaration commitment to universal access to scientific knowledge and open access publishing (Declaration paragraph 28). The African Open Science Platform, the AIDV data visitation work, and FAIR-aligned stewardship put these into practice for the global south.

The launch of the AI4GHR and CAI3R-science centres under the AICBC network and UN-ODET responds directly to Action Line C4 on capacity building (paragraph 11), in particular the creation of a critical mass of qualified professionals (11e) and regional and international cooperation to strengthen capacity in developing countries and least developed countries (11j and 11m).

The ethics and governance work serves three further lines. It addresses Action Line C10 on the ethical dimensions of the Information Society (paragraph 25), including awareness of the ethics of ICT use (25b), protection of privacy and personal data (25c), and continued research on ethical dimensions (25d), through the AIDV recommendations on informed consent and ethics committee review and through GERP. It supports Action Line C5 on confidence and security (paragraph 12) by protecting data integrity (12a) and privacy (12c and 12f) through privacy-preserving, sovereignty-aware data visitation. It serves Action Line C3 on access to information and knowledge (paragraph 10) through open access to scientific information and open archives (10i). GERP's regulatory and ethics preparedness advances Action Line C6 on the enabling environment (paragraph 13), including frameworks for the secure storage and archival of records (13h).

Finally, connecting African, Asian, and European institutions in a shared, interoperable framework realises Action Line C11 on international and regional cooperation (paragraph 26), including public-private partnership (26b) and mainstreaming ICTs to bridge the digital divide (26c), while the multistakeholder and sovereignty-aware design reflects Action Line C1 (paragraph 8), including the exploration of multistakeholder mechanisms for indigenous peoples (8f), a point of direct continuity with the sessions that follow on indigenous and community-controlled health data. The session thus carries these Geneva Plan of Action commitments from principle to implementation within the facilitation framework set by the Tunis Agenda (paragraph 109), under which WHO facilitates C7 e-health and UNESCO facilitates C7 e-science.

Mapping to the UN Global Digital Compact

The session maps directly to the UN Global Digital Compact (GDC), adopted on 22 September 2024 as Annex I of the Pact for the Future (UN General Assembly resolution A/RES/79/1), which reaffirms the WSIS Geneva Declaration and Plan of Action and the Tunis Agenda as its foundation. It advances GDC Objective 4 on responsible, equitable, and interoperable data governance, whose paragraph 48 commits states to interoperability between national, regional, and international data policy frameworks and tasks the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) with a multistakeholder Working Group on Data Governance at All Levels, reporting by the eighty-first session of the General Assembly. The session's data visitation architecture, secure processing environments, and attention to data sovereignty and the CARE principles offer working practice for exactly these questions of interoperability, benefit-sharing, and safe and trusted data flows. It also advances GDC Objective 5 on the international governance of AI for the benefit of humanity, under which the General Assembly established the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and the Global Dialogue on AI Governance (terms of reference in resolution A/RES/79/325, 26 August 2025), the first Dialogue convening in Geneva in July 2026 alongside this Forum. Through the launch of the AI4GHR and CAI3R-science centres, the session further serves GDC Objective 1 on closing digital divides, including the Compact's commitment to build capacities, especially in developing countries, to access, develop, use, and govern AI systems, and Objective 3 on a rights-respecting, safe, and secure digital space through its work on informed consent and ethics review.

Mapping to the work of UN-ODET

The session maps to the mandate of the UN Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies (UN-ODET), established on 1 January 2025 following the General Assembly's decision of 24 December 2024 and led by Under-Secretary-General and Special Envoy Amandeep Singh Gill, which serves as the UN system focal point for digital issues and leads follow-up on the Global Digital Compact. UN-ODET's central concern, that without deliberate capacity building resource-constrained countries risk becoming consumers rather than co-creators of technologies designed elsewhere, is the concern this session acts on by launching two capacity-building centres, AI4GHR and CAI3R-science, within the Global Network of Centres for Exchange and Cooperation on AI Capacity Building (AICBC) supported by UN-ODET. The session aligns with UN-ODET's coordinating role across the UN system, including its co-leadership with ITU and UNESCO of the AI workstream of the Working Group on Digital Technologies and its secretariat role for the Global Dialogue on AI Governance and the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI. It also responds to the Secretary-General's report on innovative voluntary financing options for AI capacity building (A/79/966, 2 July 2025) by demonstrating a concrete, institution-based model for building genomics, health data, and responsible research capacity in the global south.

Mapping to recent WHO outcomes on digital health and precision medicine

The session maps to recent World Health Organization outcomes on digital health and precision medicine. WHO is the lead facilitator, with ITU, of WSIS Action Line C7 on e-health, and at the Seventy-eighth World Health Assembly it secured the extension of the Global Strategy on Digital Health 2020-2025 to 2027 and a mandate to develop the successor strategy for 2028-2033, expressly aligned with the Pact for the Future and the Sustainable Development Goals (decision WHA78(22), 23 May 2025). The session contributes the governance instruments this strategy will need as AI and data-intensive methods enter health systems, including data visitation, secure processing environments, informed consent, and ethics review. On precision medicine, the Seventy-ninth World Health Assembly adopted a resolution on precision medicine (WHA79.8, 2026) recognising it as a shift towards predictive, preventive, and participatory health systems built on genomic and molecular profiling, and calling for ethical, equitable, and cost-effective implementation with particular attention to low- and middle-income countries. This is the policy space of the Human Genome Project II and the AI4GHR centre, and the session offers the ethics, consent, data governance, and capacity-building foundations that equitable precision public health requires.