The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has released a new policy brief aimed at helping legislators around the world to develop effective, context-specific legal frameworks for governing artificial intelligence (AI), as governments increasingly grapple with the opportunities and risks posed by the rapidly evolving technology.
Titled “Governing AI: Nine Emerging Approaches for Lawmakers Worldwide,” the 23-page brief addresses a concrete question that legislators around the world are grappling with, namely what regulatory approaches are available to govern AI.
It identifies and explains nine emerging regulatory approaches, each illustrated with laws and bills from different regions, and organizes them along a spectrum from light-touch to more demanding regulatory instruments, offering lawmakers a structured menu of options they can adapt to their national contexts.
The issue brief was launched in the lead-up to the first Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva, Switzerland, established by the United Nations General Assembly as an inclusive platform to deliberate on the most pressing AI challenges and advance the commitments of the Global Digital Compact and Pact for the Future.
According to the report, while many international processes focus on high-level principles and geopolitical dynamics, parliamentarians now face an urgent, practical question of how, concretely, AI should be governed in different national contexts.
The brief seeks to respond to this need by providing an overview of nine emerging
AI regulatory approaches, from principles-based and standards-based models to risk, rights, and liability-oriented frameworks, illustrated with laws and bills from all regions of the world.
It states that its purpose is to give legislators and their advisers a clear, structured menu of options they can adapt and combine when engaging in the Global Dialogue and in
domestic lawmaking, according to their legal traditions, institutional capacities, and national priorities.
According to the report, the number of laws explicitly addressing AI has grown steadily since 2016, while legislative debate on AI governance has intensified significantly over the past three years as countries seek to balance innovation with the protection of human rights and the public interest.
The brief identifies nine principal approaches currently emerging in AI governance, namely: principles-based regulation; standards-based regulation; agile and experimental regulatory mechanisms such as sandboxes; facilitating and enabling policies; access to information and transparency mandates; adapting existing laws; risk-based regulation; mandatory rights-based approaches; and liability frameworks that assign responsibility and sanctions for harmful uses of AI.
UNESCO noted that the approaches are not mutually exclusive and that many jurisdictions are combining several of them into comprehensive regulatory frameworks.
The publication guides lawmakers from relatively light-touch approaches, such as ethical principles and voluntary standards, to more stringent mechanisms, including legally enforceable rights and liability provisions.
Among the approaches highlighted is the growing emphasis on algorithmic transparency and access to information.
The report argues that governments and AI developers should provide meaningful information about AI systems, including how they were developed, the data used to train them, how they function, and how decisions can be challenged, to promote accountability, explainability, and public trust.
It points to frameworks in countries such as France, the Republic of Korea, and the European Union that have already incorporated transparency obligations for AI systems and AI-generated content.
The publication also underscored UNESCO’s continuing leadership in promoting ethical AI governance through its Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, adopted unanimously by the organization’s 193 Member States in 2021.
It said the Recommendation has influenced numerous national AI policies and legislative proposals and provides an internationally agreed framework for ensuring that AI is developed and deployed in ways that respect human rights, human dignity, inclusion, and sustainable development.
Recognizing that AI presents both significant opportunities and substantial risks, the report urges lawmakers to ensure that AI regulation protects fundamental rights while addressing challenges such as algorithmic discrimination, gender-based violence facilitated by AI-generated deepfakes, misinformation, mass surveillance, barriers to accessibility, and widening digital divides.
UNESCO also called on governments to adopt inclusive, multi-stakeholder approaches to AI policymaking by involving civil society organizations, academia, technical experts, the private sector, and communities likely to be affected by AI systems throughout the legislative process.
It argued that regulations should be grounded in evidence, tailored to specific policy challenges, and supported by adequate institutional capacity for implementation and enforcement.
Rather than prescribing a universal regulatory model, UNESCO concludes that effective AI governance requires countries to identify the mix of legal and policy tools best suited to their own circumstances while remaining firmly anchored in international human rights standards.
The organization said the publication is intended to support lawmakers worldwide in translating global AI principles into practical, enforceable governance frameworks capable of fostering innovation while safeguarding democratic values and public trust.
