This insight was co-written by GIFCT and the GIFCT Operating Board
Since its inception, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) has held multi-stakeholderism as a core principle, drawing on valuable input, expertise, and feedback from civil society and governments. This is reflected across its many workstreams, including Working Groups; GIFCT’s academic research arm, the Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET); and global multi-stakeholder workshops, events, and partnerships. Recently, multi-stakeholder input has helped shape updates to the Incident Response Framework, informed reports and publications, and contributed to key events and discussions that guide GIFCT’s work on cross-sector harms and responses.
Over the past several years, GIFCT’s Operating Board has worked closely with government and civil society partners to assess how multi-stakeholder engagement can best advance GIFCT’s mission and our collective objective of making online spaces safer as the organization continues to mature and the threat landscape evolves.
This year, to reflect the evolving needs of the organization and its stakeholders, GIFCT’s Operating Board and leadership have been openly discussing how to further strengthen the governance and effectiveness of the Independent Advisory Committee (IAC), ensuring that it is well positioned to engage civil society and governments and provide substantive input into GIFCT’s work. Consultations with GIFCT member companies and with representatives from civil society and governments have provided insights that continue to shape this process. A clear theme emerged throughout these consultations: the multi-stakeholder engagement model should prioritize impact.
Specifically, the evolved model should facilitate the participation of diverse global voices, offer flexibility to accommodate a range of civil society organizations, and ensure that inputs from the IAC can meaningfully inform GIFCT’s work. This focus allows GIFCT, its Operating Board, and IAC members to maximize value, better align external input with GIFCT’s operational needs, and enable more timely and targeted collaboration to inform the organization’s priorities.
The current proposal for a multi-stakeholder model is informed by several rounds of feedback and reflects an ongoing process, not a final outcome. It integrates insights from government and civil society so that the advice and inputs from external experts can inform GIFCT’s operations, alongside the inputs from GIFCT members, and it creates more targeted opportunities for substantive engagement to engage directly on key GIFCT issues.
Through this evolved model, the IAC will focus on providing substantive expert input into GIFCT’s work. This includes input on GIFCT’s strategic priorities, technical work, and tooling; Working Group themes; research priorities for GNET; incident response protocols and reviews; and threat landscape trends and analysis. As an advisory body, the IAC is not designed to oversee GIFCT governance or individual member companies. Within this role, IAC members can continue to raise concerns, challenge assumptions, and bring human rights and other considerations to these discussions.
As this process continues, GIFCT and its Operating Board will keep identifying opportunities to support effective engagement with our multi-stakeholder community to advance our shared mission. We remain committed to ensuring that our work is informed by feedback from our global, cross-sector partners and grounded in our human rights and transparency commitments.
