A/79/173 9. All of the above has led to a review, across the world, of relevant international documents on data processing and of local laws, with a view to modernizing them. In that regard, in October 2023, the Global Privacy Assembly (GPA) adopted a resolution aimed at achieving global data protection standards, in which it set forth principles to ensure high levels of data protection and privacy worldwide and emphasized a decades-old idea, namely, that there should be global standards on data protection and privacy. In the resolution, GPA therefore promoted certain principles, rights and other elements as important for achieving high levels of data protection and privacy, and resolved to advocate, promulgate and promote the principles, rights and other elements set out in the resolution, to ensure that they could be effectively implemented and applied in all contexts, particularly in the processing of data with new and emerging technologies and innovations. 9 10. In the resolution, GPA emphasized the importance of providing for the protection of personal data across borders with a range of transfer mechanisms, such as adequacy, model clauses, certifications and administrative arrangements, to ensure that protection travels with the data when the data cross borders. It also noted the benefits of building on commonalities, complementarities and elements of convergence in order to foster future interoperability between existing regulatory approaches and mechanisms enabling safe, trustworthy cross-border data flows. 10 11. Such international regulatory harmonization began in the twentieth century, with the Council of Europe, OECD, the United Nations, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union as the main stakeholders. In the twenty -first century, they were joined by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC), the Ibero-American Data Protection Network and GPA, formerly known as the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners . 12. In that connection, the Ibero-American Data Protection Network has stated that the “establishment of a harmonized framework for data protection at the global level has been the main basis for the adoption of the various current international instruments on data protection. The aim is to ensure that the development of global commerce is compatible with the protection of the rights of individuals, especially with regard to the protection of information concerning them”. 11 13. Lastly, mention should be made of cyberspace as the milieu in which millions of people in the world coexist. 14. Personal data circulate daily in cyberspace. However, the regulation of data processing arose in an environment in which cyberspace was not yet being discussed. In other words, the current socio-technological reality is not the socio-technological reality that existed when the first regulations on personal data protection were issued. __________________ 9 10 11 24-13146 GPA, resolution entitled “Achieving global data protection standards: Principles to ensure high levels of data protection and privacy worldwide”, October 2023. Available at https://globalprivacyassembly.org/document-archive/adopted-resolutions/. Ibid. Ibero-American Data Protection Network, “Guidelines for Harmonization of Data Protection in the Ibero-American Community”, p. 1 (2007). The Ibero-American Data Protection Network goes on to state that “therefore, the establishment of a homogeneous framework for the regulation of the right to data protection, either through the adoption of binding supranational instruments or of national laws enshrining the essential content of that right, will ensure the development of commerce in the area, facilitating the exchange of information between the various operators located in the Ibero-American States and between those States and third countries, in particular the States members of the European Union, without restrictions resulting from differences in the level of protection of the fundamental right to the protection of personal data”. 5/23