Frontier Centre for Community Empowerment FROCECE

The first Global Dialogue on AI Governance will be successful if it moves beyond discussion toward concrete, inclusive, and actionable global cooperation frameworks that reflect diverse regional realities, especially those of the Global South. First, success should be measured by the establishment of clear principles and practical pathways for equitable AI governance that prioritize human rights, transparency, and accountability. These principles must be translated into mechanisms that can guide both national and international regulation, not remain as high-level commitments. Second, the Dialogue should meaningfully include voices from marginalized and conflict-affected contexts. For regions like Isiolo County in Kenya, where communities face youth vulnerability, digital exclusion, misinformation risks, and governance challenges, success means that local civil society perspectives are not only heard but actively shape outcomes and recommendations. Third, the Dialogue should produce actionable commitments on capacity-building, particularly in digital literacy, infrastructure access, and AI readiness for developing countries. Without addressing the digital divide, AI risks reinforcing existing global inequalities. Fourth, a successful outcome would include agreement on how AI can be responsibly applied to public good areas such as peacebuilding, early warning systems, education, and civic engagement, while also safeguarding against misuse that could exacerbate conflict or radicalization. Finally, success would be demonstrated through sustained follow-up mechanisms, ensuring that the Dialogue is not a one-off event but part of a continuous, accountable process that influences global and national AI governance over time. In essence, the Dialogue will succeed if it creates a more inclusive, balanced, and practical global AI governance system that bridges the gap between global policy and local realities.

• Safe, secure and trustworthy AI
• AI capacity-building
• Protection and promotion of human rights
• Transparency, accountability, and human oversight

These four priorities reflect the most urgent governance needs observed in marginalized and conflict-affected contexts such as Isiolo County in Kenya, where digital transformation is rapidly intersecting with existing social and governance challenges. First, safe, secure and trustworthy AI is essential because communities with limited digital literacy are particularly vulnerable to misinformation, manipulation, and harmful online content. In fragile settings, this can contribute to social tension, inter-community mistrust, and youth radicalization. Second, AI capacity-building is critical to ensure that developing regions are not left behind in the digital transformation. Without investment in infrastructure, skills development, and digital literacy-especially among youth-AI risks deepening existing inequalities between urban and rural populations and between the Global North and South. Third, protection and promotion of human rights is fundamental to ensuring that AI systems do not reinforce discrimination, exclusion, or bias. In contexts where governance structures are already weak or uneven, safeguards are needed to protect vulnerable groups and ensure equitable access to digital opportunities. Fourth, transparency, accountability, and human oversight are necessary to build public trust in AI systems. Clear governance frameworks are needed to ensure that AI-driven decisions remain explainable, contestable, and subject to human review, particularly in areas affecting public services, security, and civic participation. Together, these priorities reflect a holistic approach to AI governance that balances innovation with protection, ensuring that AI serves as a tool for inclusion, peacebuilding, and sustainable development rather than deepening existing inequalities or risks.

Yes, there are several cross-cutting and emerging issues that are not fully captured by the listed thematic areas but are critical for comprehensive and context-sensitive AI governance. First, AI and conflict dynamics is an emerging issue that deserves explicit attention. In fragile and conflict-affected regions such as Isiolo County in Kenya, AI intersects directly with existing drivers of instability, including misinformation, hate speech, and youth radicalization. While related to human rights and trust, the specific role of AI in either escalating or preventing local conflicts requires more targeted consideration within global governance discussions. Second, digital inequality and infrastructural exclusion remains a foundational cross-cutting issue. Beyond general capacity-building, there is a widening gap in access to reliable connectivity, digital tools, and locally relevant AI systems. This structural inequality risks excluding rural and marginalized communities from both the benefits and governance of AI. Third, contextual and cultural relevance of AI systems is an important emerging concern. Many AI models are developed without sufficient representation of diverse languages, cultures, and local knowledge systems, which can lead to bias, misinterpretation, or exclusion of non-dominant populations. Fourth, environmental and resource implications of AI are also increasingly relevant. The energy demands of large-scale AI systems and data infrastructure raise sustainability concerns that intersect with global climate commitments. Finally, there is a need to recognize community-level governance and localization of AI oversight, ensuring that civil society organizations, youth groups, and local institutions are not only users but active participants in shaping AI governance frameworks. Addressing these cross-cutting issues will be essential to ensure that AI governance is inclusive, context-aware, and capable of responding to real-world complexities beyond high-level thematic categories.

In Kenya, particularly in Isiolo County and other ASAL regions, governance gaps in AI-related and digital transformation processes are closely linked to broader structural inequalities that affect peace, development, and social cohesion. One of the most significant challenges is the digital divide, where rural and marginalized communities have limited access to reliable internet, digital infrastructure, and AI-enabled services. This exclusion limits participation in emerging digital economies and weakens access to information, governance platforms, and public services. Another key challenge is the spread of misinformation and hate speech through digital platforms, which contributes to inter-community tensions and can accelerate youth vulnerability to radicalization. In contexts where trust in institutions is already fragile, unmanaged digital ecosystems can amplify conflict dynamics. There is also a governance gap in regulation and oversight of emerging technologies, including limited local capacity to understand, monitor, and respond to AI-driven systems. This creates risks of unaccountable decision-making and weak enforcement of digital rights and protections. At the same time, there are important opportunities. AI and digital technologies can strengthen early warning systems for conflict prevention, improve data-driven governance, and enhance civic education and youth engagement. They also offer new pathways for expanding access to knowledge, skills development, and economic opportunities for young people in underserved regions. Civil society organizations such as FROCECE play a critical role in bridging these gaps by promoting digital literacy, peace building, and community-led governance approaches. With the right safeguards and inclusive policies, AI can become a tool for reducing inequality and strengthening resilience rather than deepening existing divides. Overall, the most significant need is to ensure that technological advancement is matched with inclusive governance systems that reflect local realities and prioritize vulnerable communities.

The AI Dialogue can play a critical role in strengthening international cooperation by creating a structured, inclusive, and action-oriented platform that bridges global policy ambitions with diverse national and local realities. First, it can help harmonize global principles and governance approaches while respecting national sovereignty and contextual differences. By fostering shared understanding on issues such as safety, accountability, and human rights, the Dialogue can reduce fragmentation in global AI governance and promote more coherent standards. Second, the Dialogue can serve as a platform for inclusive participation of Global South actors, including civil society, youth, and local communities. This is essential to ensure that AI governance reflects lived realities beyond highly industrialized contexts. For regions such as Isiolo County in Kenya, meaningful inclusion would ensure that challenges such as digital exclusion, misinformation, and conflict risks are properly reflected in global discussions. Third, it can strengthen practical cooperation on capacity-building, including digital literacy, infrastructure development, and technical support for developing countries. This would help reduce the widening digital divide and enable more equitable participation in the AI ecosystem. Fourth, the Dialogue can facilitate knowledge sharing and best practices, particularly on the responsible use of AI in public services, Peace building, early warning systems, and sustainable development applications. Finally, it can promote trust-building among stakeholders by creating transparent mechanisms for dialogue between governments, the private sector, academia, and civil society, ensuring accountability and human oversight in AI development and deployment. In this way, the AI Dialogue can move beyond consultation to become a practical mechanism for strengthening global cooperation, reducing inequalities, and ensuring that AI governance is inclusive, responsive, and grounded in shared human values.

The AI Dialogue should build upon and connect with existing global and regional initiatives that are already shaping AI governance, while adding value through coordination, inclusivity, and implementation focus. Key existing frameworks include the UN Global Digital Compact, the Pact for the Future, and related UN system efforts on digital cooperation and human rights in the digital space. It should also align with the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, which provides an important normative foundation for ethical and human-centered AI development. In addition, emerging regional initiatives on data governance, digital transformation strategies, and national AI policies offer important practical lessons. The Dialogue can also build on multi-stakeholder platforms involving governments, civil society, academia, and the private sector, including existing digital cooperation forums and technical standard-setting bodies that contribute to AI safety and interoperability. From a Global South perspective, it is important that the Dialogue connects more intentionally with grassroots civil society networks and community-based organizations, which often work directly with vulnerable populations affected by digital exclusion, misinformation, and governance gaps but are underrepresented in global processes. The added value of the AI Dialogue lies in its potential to serve as a bridging platform that consolidates fragmented efforts, strengthens coherence across initiatives, and ensures that global principles are translated into practical, locally relevant action. It can also enhance equity by elevating underrepresented voices and ensuring that AI governance reflects diverse socio-economic and cultural contexts. Finally, the Dialogue can provide value by moving beyond norm-setting toward implementation-oriented cooperation, including concrete mechanisms for capacity-building, knowledge exchange, and monitoring progress in AI governance globally.

Different stakeholders can contribute meaningfully to the AI Dialogue by engaging in structured, inclusive, and action-oriented participation that ensures balanced representation and practical outcomes. Governments should provide policy direction, share national experiences, and work toward aligning regulatory approaches while ensuring that commitments are implementable within diverse national contexts. International organizations can support coordination, technical expertise, and facilitate knowledge exchange across regions. Civil society organizations, particularly those working in marginalized and conflict-affected contexts, should be enabled to bring forward lived experiences on how AI impacts communities, including issues such as digital exclusion, misinformation, and social cohesion. Youth groups should be meaningfully included as active contributors, not only as participants, given their direct engagement with digital technologies and exposure to both opportunities and risks. The private sector and technology developers should contribute technical expertise, share innovation practices, and commit to responsible AI development that prioritizes safety, transparency, and accountability. Academia and research institutions can support evidence generation, impact assessment, and development of ethical frameworks grounded in empirical research. In terms of format and structure, the AI Dialogue should be designed as a multi-level, continuous process rather than a one-time event. It should include regional consultations, thematic working groups, and a global synthesis session to ensure inputs are both locally grounded and globally coherent. Clear mechanisms for written submissions, interactive dialogues, and follow-up reporting should be established to maintain continuity and accountability. Importantly, the structure should guarantee equitable participation, including accessible virtual engagement, language inclusion, and targeted outreach to underrepresented regions such as the Global South. The Dialogue should ultimately function as a collaborative platform that not only gathers perspectives but also translates them into actionable recommendations and measurable follow-up mechanisms for global AI governance.

Several voices and communities remain underrepresented in global discussions on AI governance, particularly those from the Global South and marginalized or conflict-affected contexts. First, rural and pastoralist communities in fragile regions, such as those in Isiolo County, Kenya, are often excluded despite being directly affected by digital exclusion, misinformation, and emerging governance challenges linked to technology. Their lived realities are rarely reflected in global AI policy discussions. Second, grassroots civil society organizations and community-based actors working at the local level are underrepresented, even though they often have the most direct engagement with vulnerable populations and firsthand understanding of how digital technologies impact peace, cohesion, and development. Third, youth from underserved and marginalized communities are frequently included only symbolically, despite being the most active users of digital platforms and the most exposed to both opportunities and risks such as radicalization, unemployment, and misinformation. Fourth, indigenous and local knowledge holders remain largely absent from AI governance spaces, even though their perspectives are critical for ensuring cultural relevance, ethical grounding, and contextual understanding of technology impacts. To address these gaps, inclusion must go beyond token participation. The AI Dialogue should adopt deliberate outreach strategies, including regional consultations in underrepresented areas, financial and technical support for participation, and multilingual, accessible engagement formats. Civil society participation should be structurally integrated into decision-making processes, not limited to observation roles. Additionally, hybrid engagement models combining virtual and in-person participation can reduce barriers linked to geography and cost. Dedicated spaces for youth, community organizations, and Global South actors should be institutionalized within the Dialogue framework. Ensuring these perspectives are meaningfully included will strengthen the legitimacy, relevance, and effectiveness of global AI governance by grounding it in diverse lived experiences.

To foster meaningful and dynamic engagement, the AI Dialogue should adopt innovative, inclusive, and participatory formats that move beyond traditional panel discussions and enable co-creation of solutions. First, regional hybrid consultations linked to a global synthesis platform would allow stakeholders from different contexts to contribute in ways that reflect local realities. This is especially important for ensuring participation from underrepresented regions such as rural and conflict-affected communities in the Global South. Second, multi-stakeholder thematic working labs ("AI Governance Labs") could be established, bringing together governments, civil society, youth, technologists, and researchers to collaboratively design practical recommendations on specific issues such as AI safety, misinformation, or capacity-building. These labs should focus on producing actionable outputs rather than abstract dialogue. Third, community storytelling and evidence-sharing sessions can be used to surface lived experiences of how AI and digital technologies affect daily life, particularly in marginalized settings. This would help ground policy discussions in real-world impacts, including issues such as digital exclusion, youth vulnerability, and social cohesion. Fourth, interactive digital participation platforms with multilingual access and low-bandwidth design would ensure broader accessibility, especially for participants in regions with limited connectivity. These platforms could include live polling, structured feedback tools, and collaborative drafting spaces. Fifth, youth-led innovation challenges or hackathons on AI for public good could generate practical solutions related to Peace building, education, and governance, while strengthening youth participation as active contributors rather than passive observers. Finally, a continuous engagement model—combining pre-dialogue consultations, live sessions, and post-dialogue accountability tracking—would ensure that the Dialogue remains an ongoing process rather than a one-time event. Together, these formats would enhance inclusivity, strengthen ownership, and ensure that the AI Dialogue produces practical, grounded, and globally relevant outcomes.

Several existing policies, practices, and platforms provide useful examples of effective AI governance and offer practical solutions to emerging challenges. At the normative level, the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence provides a globally recognized framework that promotes human rights-based, transparent, and accountable AI development. It is particularly valuable for guiding national policies toward ethical and inclusive AI systems. The EU Artificial Intelligence Act also offers an example of a risk-based regulatory approach, distinguishing between unacceptable, high-risk, and limited-risk AI applications. This model demonstrates how regulation can balance innovation with safeguards, particularly in areas affecting public safety and fundamental rights. At the multilateral level, initiatives such as the UN Global Digital Compact and the emerging Global Dialogue on AI Governance provide platforms for inclusive, multi-stakeholder cooperation, helping to bridge gaps between governments, civil society, and the private sector. In practice, AI-driven early warning systems for conflict prevention have shown potential in improving Peace building efforts by identifying risks through data analysis and supporting timely responses. When combined with community-based monitoring, such systems can strengthen local resilience in fragile contexts. Additionally, open-source AI tools and open data platforms promote transparency and accessibility, allowing broader participation in AI development and reducing dependency on a small number of dominant technology providers. From a grassroots perspective, community digital literacy and civic education programs implemented by civil society organizations are critical in addressing misinformation, building trust in digital systems, and empowering citizens to engage safely with emerging technologies. Together, these examples highlight that effective AI governance requires a combination of ethical frameworks, regulatory mechanisms, inclusive global platforms, and locally grounded implementation practices that ensure AI serves public good while reducing risks and inequalities.