AIDECA joins UNESCO's Global Civil Society Organizations and Academic Network on AI Ethics and Policy

This is a major milestone for our organization. AIDECA is pleased to announce its official membership in UNESCO’s Global Civil Society Organizations and Academic Network on AI Ethics and Policy.

UNESCO’s Global Civil Society Organizations (CSO) and Academic Network on AI Ethics and Policy is a collaborative initiative that aims to facilitate advocacy, knowledge exchange, and collaboration to widen civil society participation in the global AI governance landscape.

Rooted in the implementation of UNESCO’s historic 2021 Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, this international network brings together global expertise to help ensure that technological transitions respect human rights, inclusiveness, and social justice.

AIDECA’s engagement also builds on its participation in IASEAI’26, the recent international summit of the International Association for Safe and Ethical Artificial Intelligence (IASEAI), hosted at UNESCO House in Paris. The second annual conference took place on 24-25 February 2026, followed by a workshop day on 26 February, and convened researchers, policymakers, industry leaders, practitioners, and civil society voices around safe, ethical, and beneficial AI.

For AIDECA, this integration is not only a recognition of our past commitments, but also a direct lever for action. We are officially joining two crucial thematic subgroups, where we will carry the voice of civil society from the South Mediterranean and advocate for a vision of shared digital sovereignty.

1. AI in the public sector

The deployment of artificial intelligence within local and regional administrations offers unprecedented opportunities for modernization. However, it also requires rigorous ethical safeguards.

Within this group, AIDECA will contribute its expertise on the use of generative AI in local policymaking and public affairs management. Our objective is clear: to promote technological solutions, such as natural language processing and RAG architectures, that are adapted to territorial administrative realities while ensuring transparency, algorithmic accountability, and inclusive territorial governance.

2. Empowering citizens and civil society

AI must not widen divides; it must help bridge them. Through active participation in this subgroup, we will focus on reducing the digital divide and the AI divide in the Mediterranean.

The aim will be to design mechanisms that allow citizens, especially young people and civil society actors, to become more than consumers of technology. They must become key actors in its regulation. AIDECA will bring lessons from its field projects to show how AI can become a driver of civic engagement and sustainable development.

Looking ahead

Through this dual engagement, AIDECA is consolidating its role as an interface between UNESCO’s global standards and local Euro-Mediterranean dynamics. Concretely, AIDECA’s field work on inclusive AI literacy and local governance replication is being scaled through the EuroMedAI platform, which extends responsible AI capacity building from Morocco to Tunisia and across the Southern Mediterranean. We are convinced that building ethical AI requires decentralized approaches rooted in territories and carried by a strong civil society.

We thank UNESCO for its trust and look forward to collaborating with network members to co-create fairer digital policies.