It took all of us to build the web that we have. It will take all of us to secure its future.

Half of the world’s population still can’t get online. For the other half, the web’s benefits seem to come with far too many unacceptable risks: to our privacy, our democracy, our health and our security.

Now for the first time ever, we have a global plan of action — the Contract for the Web — created by experts and citizens from across the world to make sure our online world is safe, empowering and genuinely for everyone. We invite governments, companies, civil society organizations and individuals to back the Contract and uphold its principles and clauses.

The Contract for the Web will become a strong mechanism for each party to be held accountable for doing their part to build an open and free web.

Questions or suggestions? Contact at contract@webfoundation.org.

References

This effort is guided by others’ past work on digital and human rights, including:

• African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms
• African Platform on Access to Information Declaration
• Internet Rights Charter, Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
• Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union
• Corporate Accountability Index, Ranking Digital Rights
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), European Union
• Declaration on the Digital Future, GSMA
• The Human Rights Principles for Connectivity and Development, Access Now
• Joint declaration on freedom of expression and the Internet, OSCE
• Mobile User Privacy Bill of Rights, Electronic Frontier Foundation
• The Mozilla Manifesto, Mozilla
• Internet Bill of Rights, Ro Khanna
• The Toronto Declaration, Access Now & Amnesty International
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations