When Member States adopted the Pact for the Future and the Global Digital Compact in 2024, they committed to harnessing digital technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), in ethical, inclusive, and human-rights-based ways. The goals include closing digital divides, managing technological risks, protecting rights, and ensuring that emerging technologies accelerate progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals. However, global commitments require translation into national action, particularly in classrooms, public institutions, and policy frameworks, where their real impact is measured. Costa Rica provides a concrete example of how these global principles can be operationalized at the country level.
Earlier this year, the United Nations in Costa Rica launched the country’s first National Guide on Artificial Intelligence for Educators, supporting over 65,000 teachers and nearly one million students as they began the 2026 academic year with safe and responsible access to AI learning tools. Developed in partnership with the Ministry of Public Education, UNESCO, and the Latin American University of Science and Technology, the guide translates global AI governance principles into practical classroom guidance, embedding safeguards for privacy, bias mitigation, and responsible use. The initiative demonstrates how AI can strengthen educational equity while avoiding the deepening of digital divides.
The success of the initiative relied on coordinated action under the leadership of the Resident Coordinator’s Office. The UN Country Team aligned global standards with national priorities, convened government, academia, and innovation partners, and ensured coherence across agencies. The Resident Coordinator system acts as a key connector, ensuring that global norms, national policies, and innovation ecosystems reinforce each other. Its strategic functions include convening for coherence, translating global norms into national frameworks, strengthening evidence and accountability, and enabling scale. In Costa Rica, this approach turned isolated digital experiments into a coherent national effort aligned with the Global Digital Compact.
Costa Rica’s example also reflects the UN 2.0 vision, which strengthens the UN’s internal capabilities across data, digital, innovation, strategic foresight, and behavioral science. Successful AI governance requires combining technical knowledge, risk awareness, behavioral insights, and long-term strategic thinking. Modernization is not simply about digitizing existing systems but redesigning them to manage technological change responsibly and inclusively. By combining innovation with safeguards and digital ambition with public trust, Costa Rica illustrates how these capabilities can be activated at the country level.
The lessons from Costa Rica are relevant globally. Through the Resident Coordinator system, countries can operationalize the Global Digital Compact by diagnosing digital capacity and governance gaps, establishing multi-stakeholder coordination platforms, prioritizing high-impact AI use cases, creating safe pilot environments, developing pathways to sustainable financing, and strengthening public trust. This model translates digital governance from aspiration to tangible institutional capacity. Costa Rica demonstrates that when global principles are aligned with country leadership, technical expertise, and coordinated support, an inclusive, safe, and sustainable digital future is achievable. The challenge now is scaling this model responsibly to other countries.
