Global IGF 2024 Riyadh — In-Depth Report: Minutes Digest & 3-Line Summary

The 3-Line Summary

1. The 19th IGF met at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on 15–19 December 2024: more than 11,000 participants and over 300 sessions — the largest IGF ever — under the theme "Building our Multistakeholder Digital Future."
2. As the first IGF after the UN adopted the Global Digital Compact in September 2024, the forum focused on GDC implementation, AI governance and the digital divide. Its outcome, the Riyadh IGF Messages, set the stage for the WSIS+20 review in 2025.
3. Yet the host country cast a long shadow: 40 human rights groups protested Saudi Arabia's jailing of online critics, and the UN was later found to have edited the records of a human rights session — a forum that laid bare the gap between the ideals and realities of UN dialogue.

Welcome — this is the Japan IGF Support Organization. This in-depth report on Global IGF 2024 in Riyadh draws on official outputs, session records and on-site reporting. In a hurry? The three lines above and the diagrams carry the gist.

Conference at a Glance (from official records)

(See the source list at the end of this article.)

Discussion Digest — from the Session Records

Key exchanges extracted from session records and transcripts.

1. First IGF After the Global Digital Compact — Turning the "Blueprint" into Action

Sessions: Opening Ceremony (UN Secretary-General Guterres addressed the forum by video message)

"Digital technology must serve humanity, not the other way around"
— António Guterres (UN Secretary-General) [1][2][4]

• Guterres called the GDC "the blueprint for humanity's digital future" and urged guardrails and collaborative governance to implement it [1][2][4]
• Coming just after the GDC named the IGF the "primary multistakeholder platform" for internet governance, the forum repeatedly debated how to translate GDC commitments into national policies [1][2][4]
• How to align the GDC with existing WSIS frameworks — avoiding duplication and building complementarity — became a central thread [1][2][4]

2. AI Governance — Not a "Nice to Have"

Sessions: More than 30 AI-related sessions and High-Level Sessions

• "Governance of AI is not a 'nice to have'" — the Riyadh IGF Messages warned against regulatory fragmentation and called for risk-adaptive frameworks and Global South inclusion [4][8][2]
• Saudi minister Abdullah Alswaha urged closing the "digital divide, gender divide, and AI divide," stressing an AI governance model that addresses gaps in compute, data and algorithms [4][8][2]
• For the first time at an IGF, autonomous weapon systems were examined in earnest, extending the AI debate from economics and ethics into security [4][8][2]

3. Host Country Human Rights — Protests by 40 Groups and the UN's "Edited" Records

Sessions: Workshop "The UN Cybercrime Treaty and Transnational Repression" (co-hosted by Human Rights Watch and ALQST), and beyond

"These laws are routinely used to target peaceful activism and free speech"
— Lina al-Hathloul (ALQST) [6][7]

• In September 2024, 40 rights groups — Amnesty International among them — issued a joint statement calling the kingdom's hosting "deep hypocrisy" and demanding freedom for detainees like Salma al-Shehab (27 years in prison over tweets) and Manahel al-Otaibi (11 years for posts promoting women's rights) [6][7]
• After the forum, HRW revealed in February 2025 that the IGF secretariat had deleted the video and transcript of a human rights workshop and republished an edited version omitting Saudi cases; HRW's Deborah Brown urged the UN to "put an end to a climate of intimidation and censorship" [6][7]
• During the week itself an HRW researcher was threatened with badge revocation and materials were confiscated from Amnesty's booth — a chilling effect on civil society made real [6][7]

4. Digital Divide — "A Third of Humanity Is Offline"

Sessions: Opening Ceremony and connectivity sessions

"A third of humanity is offline today"
— Doreen Bogdan-Martin (ITU Secretary-General) [4][8]

"Mobile Internet is 14 times more expensive in Africa than in Europe"
— Doreen Bogdan-Martin (ITU Secretary-General) [4][8]

• The Riyadh IGF Messages noted that "cost of Internet access remains one of the main barriers" and recommended affordable access to services and devices plus digital literacy [4][8]
• Beyond raw connectivity, "meaningful access" — languages, skills and local content — recurred as the real measure of inclusion [4][8]

5. The IGF's Future and WSIS+20 — On the Eve of the Mandate Decision

Sessions: Closing Ceremony and WSIS+20 sessions

"The IGF must evolve to deliver tangible results"
— Vint Cerf (Chair, IGF Leadership Panel) [5][8][2]

• With the IGF's mandate (then set to expire in 2025) awaiting the WSIS+20 review, permanence, stable funding and visible outcomes dominated the closing ceremony [5][8][2]
• Discussions from over 300 sessions were distilled into the Riyadh IGF Messages — action-oriented policy recommendations on digital governance, human rights online and innovation — feeding into the WSIS+20 process [5][8][2]
• Norway was announced as the next host, passing the baton to the 20th-anniversary meeting in Oslo in June 2025 [5][8][2]

Three-Minute Short Talk — Your Questions Answered

Q. So what did the conference actually decide?

A. The IGF doesn't 'decide' — it's the UN's forum where governments, companies and civil society talk as equals. But this was the first large-scale gathering to ask how to implement the Global Digital Compact adopted just three months earlier, and its Riyadh IGF Messages fed into the WSIS+20 review the following year.

Q. What was the most contentious topic?

A. The venue itself. Saudi Arabia has handed down sentences like 27 years in prison over tweets, and 40 human rights groups called its hosting 'deep hypocrisy.' Criticism flared again when the UN was found to have edited the records of a human rights session after the forum.

Q. Why should I care?

A. The commitments voiced here — don't let an 'AI divide' harden, bring connection costs down — became shared reference points for national AI and telecom policy debates. And the forum set the stage for WSIS+20, where the IGF's very survival was decided.

What Is Global IGF? (for first-time readers)

Global IGF has met annually under UN auspices since 2006 — the one global conference where governments, business, civil society, the technical community and youth debate internet governance as equals (the multistakeholder model).

Why It Matters to You

What was discussed here becomes the baseline for national digital policy, platform rules and AI regulation worldwide within a few years. The principles confirmed at the 2024 meeting are the foundation of the "next rules" for the phones, social platforms and AI services you use every day.

Sources & References

1. IGF 2024 Outputs — UN IGF Secretariat (accessed 2026-07-10)
2. Era of AI: Internet Governance Forum closes with call for stronger multistakeholder action to harness digital promise and tackle threats — United Nations, press release (accessed 2026-07-10)
3. Internet Governance Forum 2024 — session reports — DiploFoundation (accessed 2026-07-10)
4. IGF 2024 Opening Ceremony — DiploFoundation (accessed 2026-07-10)
5. IGF 2024 closing ceremony: Shaping the future of internet governance — DiploFoundation (accessed 2026-07-10)
6. Saudi Arabia: Authorities hosting Internet Governance Forum while imprisoning online critics exposes deep hypocrisy — Amnesty International (accessed 2026-07-10)
7. UN Censors Criticism of Saudi Arabia at Internet Conference — Human Rights Watch (accessed 2026-07-10)
8. IGF 2024 in Riyadh: AI, WSIS+20 and the Global South（Wolfgang Kleinwächter） — CircleID (accessed 2026-07-10)

Quotes are translated or condensed from the records listed above. Bracketed numbers [n] refer to the source list.

Related links

• IGF official (NRI list): https://www.intgovforum.org/en/content/national-and-regional-igf-initiatives
• Japan IGF: https://japanigf.jp/
• Yuki Nakazawa's blog: https://nkzw.jp/category/igf/

Revision History

Rev. 1 — published 15 December 2024, 15:00 (Article published)

Rev. 2 — updated 10 July 2026, 14:28 (Fully revised into the in-depth edition: added the 3-line summary, minutes digest, short talk, source list and diagrams (all quotes verified against the listed sources))

— 中澤祐樹