UNESCO and ITU Call for Inclusive Governance of Frontier AI

The leaders of two major United Nations agencies have issued a joint statement arguing that public trust in artificial intelligence hinges on inclusive governance structures that give countries and communities genuine influence over how these systems are developed and deployed.

UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany and ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin released the statement on September 21, 2026, framing AI governance as an urgent matter of equity and institutional capacity rather than simply technological advancement.

The distribution problem

The officials acknowledge that AI can expand access to knowledge, strengthen public services, and support scientific discovery. However, they warn that benefits will not distribute evenly without deliberate intervention. Unequal access to connectivity, skills, data, compute power, and institutional capacity threatens to deepen existing divides between societies and countries.

The statement identifies a fundamental asymmetry: some entities will design systems that shape everyone's lives, while others will simply live with those decisions. This dynamic extends beyond individual users to encompass entire nations that lack the technical infrastructure or regulatory frameworks to assess and govern AI systems on which their citizens increasingly depend.

From principles to practice

El-Enany and Bogdan-Martin emphasize that making frontier technologies trustworthy requires translating values, rights, and ethics into concrete policy, institutional capacity, and technical design. International technical standards play a critical role in this translation, turning principles like safety, transparency, and accountability into practical requirements that can be implemented and tested across borders.

The statement positions UNESCO and ITU as complementary organizations that combine human rights frameworks with technical standard-setting capabilities. UNESCO's Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence provides a global normative reference, while ITU's AI for Good initiative offers a multistakeholder platform. Both organizations invest in training for teachers, journalists, scientists, and creators whose work is being reshaped by AI.

Capacity as prerequisite

The officials place particular emphasis on capacity development and AI literacy. They argue that countries and communities need the ability to determine how AI serves their own priorities, languages, cultures, and social conditions. This requires a global commitment to ensuring that every child develops critical thinking skills for the age of artificial intelligence.

Inclusion, according to the statement, is not merely about consultation. It requires that women and girls, young people, persons with disabilities, and people across all geographies have the connectivity, knowledge, skills, resources, and institutional support to act meaningfully in AI development and governance.

Why it matters

As frontier AI systems become embedded in education, public services, and information systems, the question of who shapes their development carries profound implications for sovereignty, equity, and democratic participation. The UNESCO-ITU statement reframes AI governance as fundamentally about building institutional capacity in countries that currently lack the resources to assess or regulate these technologies independently. Without this capacity building, AI development risks becoming a mechanism that concentrates power rather than distributes opportunity.

The statement supports the Global Dialogue on AI Governance and the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI as existing mechanisms for this work. The officials measure AI progress not by technological advancement alone, but by whether it expands capability and opportunity, protects rights and dignity, and enables diverse societies to shape its future.

The details were first reported by UNESCO in the joint statement published on their website.