Wikimedia Foundation at the United Nations: Remarks on Multistakeholderism, Digital Public Goods, and Internet Governance

December 2025 was a milestone moment for the Wikimedia Foundation: During the 20-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York City, the Wikimedia Foundation was invited to speak at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) hall about Wikipedia’s role in global digital governance.

The UN is the world’s leading organization for global policy setting. As such, it is a critical space for the Foundation to showcase Wikimedia’s model and advocate policies that support an open, resilient, and reliable internet.

The Wikimedia projects are part of a truly global movement. Accordingly, they are affected both by national regulations and even more so by international frameworks. For the projects to continue offering the sum of all human knowledge to everyone, everywhere, we need to make sure that those driving global digital governance understand how they work and why the digital commons are essential to a healthy and equitable online information ecosystem.

For these reasons, the Foundation and affiliates work extensively with the UN, its Member States, and other stakeholders at the organization and its various specialized agencies to advocate two issues:

• First, protection of the right of people to discover, report, research, curate, analyze, translate, and read facts on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects;
  
• Second, that national and international frameworks and regulations to address online harms not only account for, but also actively support, the community-led, public interest projects that create and maintain digital public goods.

Jan Gerlach, Public Policy Director at the Wikimedia Foundation, delivered the Foundation’s remarks. Jan drew the attention of the UN and its Member States to the role of digital public goods such as Wikipedia and Wikidata in supporting equitable access to information, innovation, and participation in the digital economy.

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Jan Gerlach, Public Policy Director at the Wikimedia Foundation, delivers remarks from the Wikimedia Foundation at the United Nations General Assembly hall in December 2025. Video by Wikimedia Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0, via YouTube.”

“Thank you, Madam President.

Your Excellencies, distinguished delegates, colleagues,

Twenty years ago, the World Summit on the Information Society may have felt like an experiment. It may have felt risky to bring in stakeholders outside of government to discuss and shape internet regulation, digital policy, and the information society that we want to live in.

But today, we see that what has started as an experiment has evolved into a very productive framework for effective collaboration between governments, the private sector, civil society, and the technical community.

Championing an open internet that supports freedom of expression and participation in culture, the economy, and society, these stakeholders have worked together to foster a mutually beneficial digital future for everyone.

However, in those 20 years, we’ve not only seen progress in digital policy, we’ve also seen the development of digital public goods: open-source projects that further the Sustainable Development Goals. These digital public goods have been built by the stakeholders that the WSIS process has brought together.

I’m honored to speak today on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, which supports a global group of volunteers who have built one such digital public good. It is called Wikipedia, and I’m sure everyone in this hall has used it, and I’m sure many of you continue to use it frequently.

This open and free encyclopedia is the result of online collaboration across borders and across cultures. The Wikipedia article about the United Nations, for instance, exists in 292 different languages, a greater number than the countries represented here. These are not just automatic translations, but they are individual articles that have in large parts been written from scratch using external verified sources in those specific local languages. This kind of volunteer work is only possible in an open internet that we must all support and defend.

The people who build Wikipedia and other digital public goods and the digital commons that we all share and participate in need a seat at the table of internet governance. This is the essence of multistakeholderism for digital policy.

Multistakeholderism is not just a hollow term, but a tool to involve the people who built the digital public goods that we need for a prosperous and peaceful future. Member States have already committed to supporting digital public goods in the Global Digital Compact. Now they must create the conditions for continued success in the WSIS process as well.

Thank you very much.”

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The Wikimedia Foundation is grateful for Wikipedia to be recognized on this global stage and will continue to work with the UN and its specialized agencies, its Member States, and other stakeholders to advocate free and open knowledge and represent the communities who sustain the digital commons worldwide.

In the coming weeks, we will share more about how, together with global partners, we can help shape an online world that prioritizes people, communities, and the universal rights to access, receive, and share information.

To stay informed on digital policy, Wikipedia, and the future of the internet, subscribe to our quarterly Global Advocacy newsletter! And if you want to know more about our UN engagement, please reach out to the Global Advocacy team—we value your feedback and interest.