With 15,000 online and 1,000 participants in Paris, including 45 heads of states and governments and leaders of international organizations, the Paris Peace Forum 2021 took place from 11th to 13th November with the aim of advancing tangible solutions to the huge amount of challenges brought about by the pandemic. This year, the fourth Paris Peace Forum focused on existing global governance gaps.
In relation to the sustainability of outer space, the participants in the event established the “Net Zero Space” initiative, calling on actors to achieve sustainable use of outer space by 2030 by decreasing the debris orbiting Earth. Furthermore, the fourth Paris Peace Forum also committed to making the digital environment safe for all children.
Сommenting on the importance of the initiative, Dr. Ronja Scheler, Programme Director, Paris Peace Forum, Körber-Stiftung, told DevelopmentAid:
“In the four years since its existence, the Paris Peace Forum has become the prime international platform for launching multistakeholder initiatives on the world’s most pressing challenges. The call for protecting children online is yet another expression of this. If leaders walk the talk on privacy rights, content moderation, and digital education, the call can become a key reference point in global efforts for the protection of children’s rights.”
The responsability of platforms is the core of our #DigitalServicesAct.
We need to tame the algorithms that spread illegal content, hate speech or disinfo.
It is the platforms’ responsibility to prevent this.
It is also ours, as regulators.
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) November 11, 2021
French President Emmanuel Macron and UNICEF, together with other actors including Amazon, Google, YouTube, Microsoft, and Twitter, signed an international Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace that was initially launched by France three years ago to protect children’s rights in the digital environment. The US and the EU also declared their willingness to join the Call. President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in her speech at the Forum, commented:
“The Call’s ambition has always been to reclaim the internet as a force for good. And now, three years on, the Paris Call is more relevant than ever. Throughout the pandemic, indeed, the internet has been a lifeline for millions of companies, and the only connection to our loved ones for so many of us. Yet, cyberspace has also become a more dangerous place, with rising threats against our critical infrastructure, our democratic processes, and even our personal health and safety, including our children’s.”
As well as this Call, a new International Fund for Public Interest Media was launched during the Forum, aiming to enable the development, sustainability, and independence of public interest media, specifically in resource-scarce and weak settings.
The Paris Peace Forum focuses not only on large deliverables but also supports those projects tackling issues related to the Forum’s objectives. The Call for Projects was launched in March 2021 and, since then, hundreds of proposals have been submitted by NGOs, firms, international organizations, states, and local governments. During the Paris Peace Forum 2021, 10 projects were selected by the committee to benefit from customized support for one year.
The President of the Steering Committee of the Paris Peace Forum, Trisha Shetty, noted: “The Paris Peace Forum will not end today. It will carry on through the work that we will invest behind the scenes over the course of the next year to support the 10 selected projects.”
Initiated in 2018 by French President Emmanuel Macron, every year the Paris Peace Forum brings together key actors in global governance to address issues related to peace. The forum aims to establish bridges between actors and advance solid initiatives by an overall strengthening of the multilateral order.
