UNGA80: Putting A Floor Under The AI Divide In The South Mediterranean

We contributed to the UNGA80 (United Nations General Assembly, 80th Session) side session organized by EuroMedAI, Putting a Floor Under the AI Divide in the South Mediterranean, with our input on embodied and physical systems, edge computing, and resilient public infrastructure.

Related

• UN Global Digital Compact (GDC): AI Governance and Digital Infrastructure

• UNESCO: Science Report 8th Edition (2026)

UNGA80

The 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York in September 2025, under the theme of multilateral solutions to global challenges. UNGA80 marked a pivotal moment for international AI governance: it hosted the high-level informal meeting launching the Global Dialogue on AI Governance, building on the momentum of the UN Secretary-General's Our Common Agenda and the Global Digital Compact adopted in 2024. The session brought together heads of state, multilateral institutions, civil society, and the private sector to advance consensus on inclusive, rights-respecting digital governance frameworks. AI figured prominently across the high-level week, with multiple affiliate sessions and side events convened under the ITU-UNDP Digital@UNGA programme, reflecting the growing recognition that AI governance can no longer be shaped exclusively by a small set of technologically advanced states.

The session was further anchored by UN document A/79/966, which provided a structured assessment of AI capacity across member states, highlighting significant asymmetries between the Global North and regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, the Arab states, and the South Mediterranean. These disparities, spanning compute infrastructure, training data, regulatory capacity, and technical human capital, provided the empirical backdrop against which the EuroMedAI side event was conceived and delivered.

Putting a Floor Under the AI Divide in the South Mediterranean

Held on 25 September 2025, as part of the ITU-UNDP Digital@UNGA Affiliate Sessions during UN High Level Week, the event convened EuroMedAI network members alongside researchers, policy practitioners, and industry experts from across the region and beyond. The session was structured around a keynote snapshot on AI capacity in the South Mediterranean, followed by two panels addressing, respectively, AI governance, safety, and rights, and the structural conditions required to build sovereign, inclusive AI ecosystems in the region. Topics ranged from algorithmic sovereignty and smart city infrastructure to national AI readiness, African language data, and the resilience of public sector AI technologies in EU-MENA contexts. Our contributions focused specifically on embodied and physical AI systems, edge computing architectures, and the requirements for resilient public infrastructure, areas frequently absent from high-level governance discussions yet critical for the communities and services most dependent on reliable, low-latency, and locally governed AI deployment.

The event was aligned with the objectives of UN A/79/966 and positioned the South Mediterranean not merely as a recipient of AI governance norms developed elsewhere, but as an active contributor to their design. Discussions underscored that bridging the AI divide requires not only policy harmonisation and capacity building, but also structural investment in compute, data, and skills, the foundational layer beneath any governance architecture. Panelists and attendees engaged with practical pathways: from Morocco's national AI ecosystem strategy and lessons in language localisation for the Global South, to the role of cloud infrastructure providers and academic pipelines in building regional capacity for transformative and safety-critical AI.

EuroMedAI is a cross-shore network uniting researchers, civil society, and technologists across the Euro-Mediterranean region. Established following the Anna Lindh Foundation's ALForum 2025 in Tirana, Albania, it advances AI Governance, AI Safety, and AI Ethics through regional collaboration, with a commitment to co-creation, human-centred design, and inclusive participation across more than 17 countries on the northern, southern, and eastern shores of the Mediterranean.

References

¹ United Nations General Assembly. "Report of the Secretary-General on artificial intelligence capacity and governance." UN Document A/79/966. 2025.

² ITU and UNDP. "Digital@UNGA 2025: Affiliate Sessions Programme." International Telecommunication Union. September 2025.

³ United Nations. "Global Digital Compact." Adopted at the Summit of the Future, UN General Assembly. September 2024.

⁴ EuroMedAI. "Putting a Floor Under the AI Divide in the South Mediterranean: UNGA80 Side Event." September 25, 2025.

⁵ United Nations Secretary-General. "Our Common Agenda: Report of the Secretary-General." United Nations. 2021.

⁶ Anna Lindh Foundation. "ALForum 2025." Tirana, Albania. June 2025.