The United Nations' main internet governance body looks set to host its next international forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In 2025, the UN may take its discussions on the future of an open internet to Russia. Holding the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), back to back, in authoritarian countries notorious for their surveillance and censorship of the internet risks making "a joke of the whole system," one advocate says. While the UN has yet to formally announce the host countries for either meeting, Saudi Arabia's minister of communications and information technology, Abdullah Alswaha, seemed to let the news slip at this year's forum in Tokyo, Japan, which began on Sunday and ends Thursday. In a short speech before the plenary, Alswaha ran through some key issues facing the IGF, including generative artificial intelligence and the digital divide.

At IGF 2019, several policy initiatives, reports, and publications were launched or used as background material for discussions.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM DAY 1 WHERE IS IQ'WHALO? What will our generation be remembered for? This year marks the second IGF attended by UN Secretary-General António Guterres. His opening speech last year – together with French President Macron's speech – carried substantive reflections on the state of global digital policy, and an encouraging vision for the digital developments ahead of us. This year's opening speech couldn't be more different. Characterised by examples of how the Internet is being misused and exploited, Guterres gave a stark account of the profound issues which are affecting today's technology and tomorrow's developments. 'It is for me an enormous frustration to be that today, not only we are still building physical walls to separate people, but that there is also the tendency to create some virtual walls in the Internet also to separate people.' The three main divides – the digital divide, the social divide, and the political divide – are still profound.