The United Nations and the Internet: It's Complicated

MacKinnon, Rebecca. "The United Nations and the Internet: It's Complicated." Foreign Policy, August 8, 2012.

From the article: "The immediate threat to the Internet as we know it is the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) scheduled for December in Dubai by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a U.N. body whose remit has thus far been limited to global telephone systems. …. the United Nations is actually useful. While it is clearly the wrong organization to coordinate Internet standards and regulations, the world body has played an essential function in establishing a human rights framework for Internet policymaking on a global scale. Thanks in no small part to U.N. human rights-focused institutions, a global consensus is growing that the Internet's development must be grounded in the principles enshrined in a set of global human rights agreements, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its two associated covenants." Read more