The United Nations’ main internet governance body looks set to host its next international forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In 2025, the UN may take its discussions on the future of an open internet to Russia. Holding the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), back to back, in authoritarian countries notorious for their surveillance and censorship of the internet risks making “a joke of the whole system,” one advocate says.
While the UN has yet to formally announce the host countries for either meeting, Saudi Arabia’s minister of communications and information technology, Abdullah Alswaha, seemed to let the news slip at this year’s forum in Tokyo, Japan, which began on Sunday and