By connecting the world and fulfilling everyone’s fundamental right to communicate, we strive to make the world a better and safer place.

Among technological developments, national and international policies, and the many diverse interests of commercial businesses, there needs to be an organization that safeguards everyone’s fundamental right to communicate.

The ITU is that organization. With 192 member states and over 700 sector members, ITU puts great emphasis on its accountability and transparency. Communication is not only the subject of our efforts, it is, increasingly, the means by which we achieve our goals. Working with partners and members from around the world, what we do affects everyone on the planet – our work is truly global. And we believe that communicating openly and honestly is the only way to get the job done.

It is our task to ensure that people around the world can communicate with each other in an efficient, safe, easy and affordable manner. It is our responsibility to be proactive about what the world might need in the future, not just what it needs right now. We will do our utmost to get everyone to work together – government and industry alike – to come up with solutions that work: for sharing knowledge, developing tools, and building and safeguarding networks.

There are serious challenges facing us. The growing role for ICTs holds great promise, but it can be abused. Breakthroughs in communications bring not only benefits but also new dangers. Global cooperative agreements have never been more necessary, yet at the same time, the sheer speed of development makes this all the more difficult. This means we must not only work hard, we must work smart: creating effective partnerships, making efficient teamwork central, and finding ways to do more with less. When doing things better proves not enough, we’ll show the courage to do things differently.

In the coming years, ITU must take the lead in many areas: ensuring security in cyberspace, the efficient use of radio-frequency spectrum and satellite orbits, promoting appropriate strategies and policies, encouraging infrastructure development to bridge the digital divide, and the use of ICTs to mitigate climate change. We are the first and last stop for establishing workable standards to provide global telecommunications for everyone, including the disabled and disadvantaged. To realize all this, we know that it is not enough to be only communication specialists; we also have to be specialized in communicating.