Data justice at the heart of AI governance
A panel at the WSIS Forum 2026 in Geneva, between the UN working group on data governance and the civil society watching it.
A seat at a United Nations table
On 8 July 2026, in Room K of Palexpo, I took part in Session 385 of the WSIS Forum, the United Nations summit on the information society that ITU hosts in Geneva. The session, organised by IT for Change and moderated by Anriette Esterhuysen of the Association for Progressive Communications, put three questions on the table: what data justice is, what stands in its way in the present international order, and how the UN CSTD Working Group on Data Governance can meet the Global Dialogue on AI governance.
The working group is due to report to the 81st General Assembly with recommendations on equitable and interoperable data governance. The panel was built as a dialogue between its members and civil society observers, and the programme listed me by the thing I actually am: a physicist and DevOps engineer from Nyon, in the room next to an ambassador, a researcher from the ETC Group and the organisers.
Exhibit 1DiagramRead left to right
Who was in the room
A working group of the United Nations on one side, civil society on the other, three questions in the middle, and a report to the General Assembly as the place where the answers are meant to land.
Exhibit 2PeopleCredit where the work was shared
The panel
- Anriette EsterhuysenModerator; Association for Progressive Communications.
- Nandini ChamiIT for Change, the session’s organiser.
- Soledad VoglianoETC Group.
- Ambassador KahPermanent Representative of The Gambia to the United Nations Office in Geneva.
What I could bring to the room
Not a theory of data justice, but practice. Twenty years of handling scientific data in the open: releasing collision data under CC0 so that anyone can use it, building low-cost computing so that a laboratory in Mérida can keep its own data, designing a children’s contest around the smallest possible collection of personal data, and a public-AI prototype that keeps what an official source establishes visibly separate from what a model explains.
That is the perspective I think these processes need next to the legal and political ones: someone who has had to decide, in code and in budgets, who gets access, what is stored, and under which licence. The session is on the record; what I said in it and what I think of it now belong in my own words below.
Exhibit 3ResourcesOpen the thing itself, not a description of it
Where to go from here
Exhibit 4Looking backOne dated note from inside the story
Looking back
July 2026, when it happened
Forty-five minutes, one room, a question I have been answering with systems rather than with words for twenty years.