Key Takeaways
- The UN General Assembly adopted two AI resolutions in 2024, with the March resolution requiring human rights protections across the full AI lifecycle and attracting more than 120 co-sponsors.
- The UN’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, comprising 40 experts, began its three-year term on February 12, 2026, as the first global scientific body dedicated to assessing AI’s real-world impact.
- China’s World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization launched in July 2026 with 29 signatory countries, mostly from the Global South, positioning itself as an alternative to Western-led governance frameworks. Across all 54 countries of Africa, fewer than 1,000 GPUs are available to researchers and developers, according to Amandeep Singh Gill, the UN’s Special Envoy for Digital and Emerging Technologies. That figure sits behind almost everything the UN has done on AI governance since early 2024: two General Assembly resolutions, an independent scientific panel, a dedicated global dialogue, and now a rival governance bloc led by China that is pulling in lower-income nations faster than the UN’s own institutions can reach them.
The 2024 Resolutions
On March 21, 2024, the General Assembly unanimously adopted “Seizing the Opportunities of Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence Systems for Sustainable Development,” a resolution spearheaded by the United States and co-sponsored by more than 120 member states. It was the first time the General Assembly had directly addressed AI regulation. The resolution requires human rights protections to apply throughout the entire AI lifecycle, from design through to deployment, and states explicitly that rights which apply offline must also be protected online. Member states are urged to refrain from deploying AI systems incompatible with international human rights law or that pose undue risks to those rights. The resolution also calls for international cooperation to help developing nations access AI technologies and build digital literacy, recognising AI’s potential to advance the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
A follow-up resolution, sponsored by China and co-sponsored by more than 140 countries, was adopted unanimously on July 1, 2024. Its focus is narrower: enhancing international cooperation on AI capacity-building specifically for developing countries. It acknowledges the particular difficulties faced by the Global South in keeping pace with rapid technological change and calls for North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation to close the gap. Both resolutions are non-binding, but their unanimous adoption established a shared baseline of principles that subsequent UN bodies have built on.
Building the Institutional Architecture
Recommendations from the UN Secretary-General’s AI Advisory Body included proposals for an International Scientific Panel on AI, a Policy Dialogue on AI Governance and a Global Fund for AI. The General Assembly has since moved on two of those three.
The Global Dialogue on AI Governance held its first session in Geneva on July 6-7, 2026, co-chaired by the Permanent Representatives of El Salvador and Estonia. A second session is planned for New York in May 2027. The General Assembly established the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI in August 2025. In February 2026, Secretary-General António Guterres recommended 40 experts to serve on it; the panel began its term on February 12, 2026 and runs until February 11, 2029. It is described as the first fully independent global scientific body dedicated to assessing AI’s real-world impact across economies and societies, with membership reflecting geographical and gender balance, including Sonia Livingstone from the United Kingdom and Balaraman Ravindran from India.
China’s Parallel Play
China’s sponsorship of the July 2024 capacity-building resolution was one part of a broader strategy. Its Global AI Governance Initiative, launched in 2023, sets out its own principles for safe AI development. In July 2026, China formalised that positioning by establishing the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. WAICO launched with 29 signatory countries, predominantly low- and middle-income nations. The context for that number matters: a 2024 report from the UN Secretary-General’s AI Advisory Body found that 118 countries, overwhelmingly from the Global South, were not party to the major existing international AI governance initiatives. WAICO positions itself as a direct response to that gap, with an emphasis on technology transfer and development rather than the safety-and-rights framing that dominates Western-led frameworks. As Xi Jinping’s broader governance strategy has made clear, Beijing views multilateral AI institutions as a venue for advancing its own model, not simply participating in others’.
Gill’s warning that AI influence remains concentrated in “a few zip codes” captures the structural problem these competing initiatives are circling. The UN’s broader scientific reporting effort reaches 193 member states in principle; the GPU figure for Africa suggests the practical gap between principle and capacity remains wide. Whether the UN’s dialogues and panels can close that gap, or whether WAICO’s emergence fragments governance into competing blocs, depends on choices that have not yet been made, chiefly whether any of the proposed funding mechanisms, including the mooted Global Fund for AI, ever materialise with actual capital behind them.
Originally published at https://autonainews.com/un-pushes-ai-governance-as-china-courts-developing-nations/
Top comments (0)