The critical infrastructure of the Internet should be considered a Common Heritage of Mankind, Malta has argued in the United Nations.
Speaking as a conference which reviewed developments 10 years after the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+10), Alex Sceberras Trigona, special envoy of the prime minister, explained that small island states were particularly dependent on the digital economy, which was why Malta strongly supported the EU's work for a single digital market.
In its turn, this huge regional digital market required a global digital market operating within a reliable legal framework, such as the one that the Common Heritage of Mankind paradigm could provide.
Moreover, Dr Sceberras Trigona argued, it is becoming increasingly apparent that internet governance problems cannot be solved on a national basis alone.
In the 1960s Malta kicked off the process which saw the seabed recognised as the common heritage of mankind. Then in 1988 Foreign Minister Censu Tabone proposed in the UN General Assembly that climate should be considered as a common heritage of mankind. Within three months this led to the drafting of a U.N. resolution of Climate Change to reduce man-made actions which are at the root of such a change.