Shaping Safe and Inclusive Digital Futures: Key Takeaways from the GEYC EU-Matter Delegation at WSIS 2026
17-07-2026
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2026 arrived at a critical juncture for global digital policy. Organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) alongside UNESCO, UNDP, and UNCTAD, this landmark event stood as the first major global forum following the historic WSIS+20 United Nations General Assembly review. Anchored in a renewed international mandate, the forum focused on putting people-first digital commitments into physical practice. It addressed urgent issues across international artificial intelligence governance, cybersecurity, and emerging digital public infrastructures.
Representing the critical perspectives of young people, educators, and youth workers, the EU-Matter delegation from GEYC (Group of the European Youth for Change) joined the summit completely online. Despite operating via remote participation, the delegation was fully immersed in the forum's strategic pathways. They advocated directly for Digital Citizenship Education (DCE) to be recognized as a fundamental societal right. By interacting with sessions throughout the week, GEYC’s virtual delegation bridged regional European youth initiatives with a global multi-stakeholder ecosystem.
Below are the structured insights, virtual session highlights, and direct outcomes compiled by the online delegation.
Online Delegate Perspectives & Session Highlights
Theme 1: Redefining Digital Citizenship & Human-Centered Inclusion
Gabriel Brezoiu
Session: Redefining Digital Citizenship: From Internet Safety Rules to Empowered, Informed Citizens
"To have an empowered digital citizen we need to give them all the tools that should be inclusive and resilient. We always need to be sure that data protection is in place. Awareness is also very important, we need to have more materials we have online in an easy to understand way."
Irina Roșca
Session: Rising from the Margins: Co-Creating Inclusive Digital Learning for Every Child
"Inclusion cannot be reduced to access. Connectivity, devices and digital platforms represent necessary conditions, but not sufficient ones. Meaningful inclusion depends on whether children feel psychologically safe, respected and sufficiently empowered to engage in learning."
Ecaterina Bordei-Laiu
Session: WSIS Action Line C7 E-government — Inclusive e-government services
"The Digital Divide is real - 2.2 billion people are still offline. As we digitalize, our duty is to ensure no one is left behind. Multi-channel is the way forward — True inclusivity means combining digital portals with human touch points. Whether it's a kiosk, a mobile unit, or a local service center, accessibility must be adapted to the user's preference, not just the system's design."
Theme 2: Transforming Education, Research, and Work in the AI Era
Alexandru Iordan
Session: The Future of Education and Research in the AI Era: Equipping Young People for Tomorrow
"You can outsource thinking, but you cannot outsource understanding. Machines can increasingly retrieve information, synthesise arguments, generate code and propose plausible explanations. Understanding, however, lies elsewhere: recognising hidden assumptions, identifying insufficient evidence, transferring knowledge across contexts and deciding when apparently convincing outputs should not be trusted."
Alexia Rotaru
Session: AI, Digitalisation and the Transformation of Jobs: Ensuring Decent Work
"Technology alone is not enough—effective policies, cooperation between governments, employers and workers, and continuous investment in skills are essential to ensure that AI contributes to decent work and benefits everyone."
Theme 3: Governance, Cultural Diversity, and Geopolitical Equity
Amalia Niculescu
Session: Measuring what matters: Embedding gender equality in AI governance through gender-specific indicators
"AI systems reproduce and amplify discrimination and exclusion, and women, girls and marginalised groups are disproportionately affected by these harms. Transformative indicators—indicators that go beyond measuring women's access to technology and instead capture whether women actually shape it: whether they invent, own or govern digital systems—would be better."
Giulia Mîndroc
Combined Thematic Focus: WSIS Action Line C8 Cultural Diversity; The Monoculture Problem in AI; International Law AI Governance
"Indigenous and endangered languages are now more vulnerable than ever, and the problem is one of epistemic justice — which of humanity's values are represented and preserved in a digital future, and which are not? Cultural diversity has been described as a democratic, scientific, geopolitical imperative, which is not about preserving the past, but creating and preparing for the future."
Adriana Verghelet
Session: Access, Agency, Voice: How communities in the Global South are shaping another technological world
"Western-centred software and one-size-fits-all solutions strengthen structural inequalities. AI creates progress only if it reflects the diversity of humankind — otherwise it only widens the digital gap."
Alexandra Oancea
Session: Digital Justice and Cultural Integrity
"Technology is only relevant when it serves people, yet current development risks leaving many behind. To solve this, digital inclusion must be built on three core pillars—physical access, affordability, and usability (accessibility)—while tailoring skills to the specific needs of different groups. Ultimately, communities must transition from passive consumers to active creators."
General Conclusions
The combined findings of GEYC's online delegation outline three critical takeaways for the European youth work sector and international tech regulators:
- Moving Past Simple Connectivity: Closing global digital gaps cannot be reduced to simple infrastructure distribution. True inclusion demands safe environments, tailored digital literacy, and deep human support frameworks to move users from passive consumption to active, creative participation.
- The Evolution of Cognitive Literacy: With generative AI rapidly taking over information retrieval and synthesis, higher education models must pivot toward teaching independent validation, critical verification, and epistemic agency. True technological literacy now centers on knowing when to question machine outputs.
- Preventing Monocultures in Governance: Robust global digital cooperation requires multi-stakeholder participation that protects multilingual systems and gives marginalized regions equal design capabilities. Ethical "red lines" must remain transparently defined to ensure emerging tools protect human rights rather than amplify existing social inequities.
Next Steps
GEYC will integrate these macro-level insights into its regional programming, including the European Digital Citizenship Education Week framework and the EDU@GEYC network of over 130 schools. By translating global milestones from the WSIS Forum into concrete, peer-led digital competence workshops, GEYC ensures young Europeans remain active leaders in our shared digital transformation.
Explore the delegation's interactive live coverage on LinkedIn and Instagram by searching the hashtags #WSIS2026 and #EUMatter.