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UN Global Digital Compact

UN-GDC-2024 · UN · resolution

Source: https://policywindow.org/wiki/un-global-digital-compact

Generated 2026-07-01T01:52:26 UTC

Summary

The Global Digital Compact (GDC) is Annex I to "The Pact for the Future", adopted by the UN General Assembly as Resolution A/RES/79/1 at the Summit of the Future on 22 September 2024. It is a non-binding, soft-law political framework (a General Assembly resolution / annexed compact), not a treaty — it sets out objectives, principles, commitments and actions for global digital cooperation rather than legally enforceable obligations. It is the first comprehensive UN-wide framework touching AI governance. The text is organised around five objectives; Objective 5, "Enhance international governance of artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity," is the AI-specific core (paras 50-63 in the annotated numbering). Its operative AI commitments are largely hortatory: States commit to assess AI implications, support interoperability of AI governance approaches, build AI capacity especially in developing countries, and "promote transparency, accountability and robust human oversight of artificial intelligence systems in compliance with international law" (para 55). Crucially it created two new UN bodies — an Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and a Global Dialogue on AI Governance (para 56) — later operationalised by Res. A/RES/79/325 (Aug 2025), with the 40-member Panel appointed Feb 2026. Information-integrity provisions (para 36) call on companies to incorporate safeguards into AI model training and to identify, label and watermark AI-generated content. The Compact is development-oriented throughout, emphasising capacity-building and equitable access to open AI models, open training data and compute. Verification: the official English primary source at un.org was fetched directly and cross-checked against the Digital Watch annotated text; provision excerpts are close paraphrases/verbatim from those sources, and paragraph numbers follow the annotated edition (the un.org HTML omits numbers).

At a glance

Adopted: 2024-09-22
Effective: 2024-09-22
Status: in force
Primary source: Global Digital Compact, Annex I to "The Pact for the Future", UN General Assembly Res. A/RES/79/1 (adopted 22 September 2024), UN Doc. A/RES/79/1 (2024).
Source URL: https://www.un.org/pact-for-the-future/en/annex-i-global-digital-compact

How to cite this article

APA

Policy Window. (2024). UN Global Digital Compact [Wiki article — Instrument]. https://policywindow.org/wiki/un-global-digital-compact

Chicago

Policy Window. 2024. "UN Global Digital Compact." Wiki article (Instrument). https://policywindow.org/wiki/un-global-digital-compact.

Harvard

Policy Window (2024) 'UN Global Digital Compact', Wiki article — Instrument, available at: https://policywindow.org/wiki/un-global-digital-compact.

OSCOLA

Policy Window, 'UN Global Digital Compact' (Wiki article — Instrument, 2024) <https://policywindow.org/wiki/un-global-digital-compact> accessed [date].

BibTeX

@misc{policywindow-un-global-digital-compact,
  title  = {UN Global Digital Compact},
  author = {Policy Window},
  year   = {2024},
  howpublished = {Global Digital Compact, Annex I to "The Pact for the Future", UN General Assembly Res. A/RES/79/1 (adopted 22 September 2024), UN Doc. A/RES/79/1 (2024).},
  url    = {https://policywindow.org/wiki/un-global-digital-compact},
  note   = {Primary source: https://www.un.org/pact-for-the-future/en/annex-i-global-digital-compact}
}