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On the occasion of the XIX Summit of the Francophonie , held on October 4 and 5, 2024 in France, the heads of state affirmed their support for the Partnership for Information and Democracy, founded in 2019 and bringing together 54 countries around the world, including 35 members of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF).
The Villers-Cotterêts call Pour un espace numérique intègre et de confiance dans l’espace francophone published on the same occasion shows that countries are seizing the challenges of the information space and calling on digital platforms to respect their social responsibility, a long-standing demand of the Forum for Information and Democracy.
Recognition of the right to reliable information
In line with the Partnership’s principles, the Villers-Cotterêts call recognizes the right to reliable information, and calls for this right to reliable and quality information to be protected. The call asks platforms to ensure that recommender systems allow for a diversity of information sources, and promote content labeled by independent professionals, such as the Journalism Trust Initiative, which includes over 1,700 media outlets in more than 100 countries.
A call to digital platforms in line with the Forum’s recommendations
The call to platforms includes a large number of the Forum’s recommendations, notably concerning access for researchers, data protection, transparency on terms of use, taking cultural and linguistic diversity into account, and cooperation with civil society.
It also calls for the development of ethical and responsible artificial intelligence. The voluntary certification mechanism for public interest AI proposed by the Forum could be one approach to encouraging this development.
Lastly, the recommendations of the call concerning elections and crisis could be further strengthened by drawing on the Forum’s policy briefs (Protecting Democratic Elections through Safeguarding Information Integrity & Enable Peacebuilding through Safeguarding the Integrity of the Information Space in Times of Conflict).
Implementation is key
The Forum welcomes this call and will watch out for its implementation. We call on platforms to take this call seriously and to respect their responsibility, but also on democratic countries to put in place the necessary regulations and public policies to ensure the full adoption of the call.
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