Opening address
at the “Global Symposium on Promoting the Multilingual Internet”
Geneva, 9-11 May 2006
H. Zhao
Director, TSB/ITU
Ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning.
Let me introduce myself. I am Houlin Zhao, the Director of the
Telecommunication Standardization Bureau of ITU.
On behalf of the Secretary-General of ITU and the Director-General of
UNESCO, as well as the Director of BDT and myself, I would like to warmly
welcome you to this symposium.
The Second Tunis Phase of the World Summit on the Information Society was
held in Tunis between 16 18 November and was a great success. 46 Heads of
States, around 200 Ministers, more than 800 entities including UN agencies,
private sector companies, journalists, and civil society organizations, in
total, about 20000 people participated in the conference and its side
events. The two summit outcome documents: “Tunis Commitment” and “Tunis
Agenda for the Information Society” were endorsed. During the conference and
its preparation process, more than 2500 projects were undertaken to bridge
the Digital Divide, it is clear to me that more needs to be done, and done
quickly. As identified by the output documents, ITU will have a major role
in coordinating the implementation of the Tunis outputs. ITU has addressed
the implementation issues at several important events such as the World
Telecommunication Development Conference held in Doha, Qatar in the middle
of March and the recent ITU Council-06 held in the end of April. ITU will
further address this issue at the forthcoming Plenipotentiary Conference to
be held in November in Antalya, Turkey. In the ITU Telecommunication
Standardization Sector, all Study Groups had reviewed the outputs of the
Tunis conference. Those new issues raised during the WSIS were taken into
account in the Study Group activities. For example, the Child Helpline,
which had not been brought to ITU before WSIS was addressed by ITU-T Study
Group 2 at its meeting in December 2005. Yesterday, 8 May, Study Group 2
further discussed this issue, and decided to take concrete action to help
find a solution for this request. Issues such as universal, ubiquitous,
equitable and affordable access to ICTs by all people, especially by
indigenous people and those people with disabilities, emergency
communications, disaster mitigation, all have been addressed by ITU Study
Groups from all three ITU Sectors. In May, ITU will organize several events
to address the WSIS themes. On 17 May, ITU will celebrate the first “World
Information Society Day” which was officially endorsed by the United Nations
at its General Assembly in March 2006.
As you know, ITU was created in 1865 which makes it one of the few
international organizations with a history of more than 100 years. From its
creation, ITU has taken on the mission of helping humanity communicate. The
Morse code and the telephone systems ITU worked on in the 19th century were
simply using technology to transfer human ideas by transmitting and
reproducing human voice and language. Without the advanced coding schemes
for voice, image, moving pictures, as well as the coding schemes for many
human languages which ITU has developed during the last decade and is still
working on, current improvements in the quality of life from ICT would not
be possible. However, ITU is aware of the fact that there is still a long
way to go to provide all mankind with an equal opportunity to enjoy these
benefits: the digital divide is very real. As far as the internet is
concerned, ITU has made enormous efforts to help the development of
internet, including: developing technical recommendations and offering
technical solutions, assisting policy debates and seeking compromises, and
providing capacity-building actions, etc. ITU has several Plenipotentiary
Conferences Resolutions on internet-related issues, in particular, a
Resolution on the “Role of administrations of Member States in the
management of internationalized (multilingual) domain names”. In connection
to this, ITU realizes that it is a fact today that internet services are
enjoyed by speakers of just a few of the major languages out of about 6000
in use around the world. During the WSIS processes, ITU noted a strong
desire for people to use their own languages to access the internet as well
as other ICT tools. By organizing this event, ITU has demonstrated its
determination to work on these issues. I would like to take this opportunity
to express our appreciation to UNESCO for their support in the organization
of this joint symposium.
Ladies and gentlemen,
We have established a three-day programme for you. In this programme, you
will find a wide range of topics which were hot during the WSIS debates, and
a number of experts who have reputations in the global family with their
specialized competences. Please allow me to express my appreciation to the
members of the steering committee who have worked very, very hard during the
last months to set up the programme and to invite the speakers. I would also
like to thank all contributors, speakers, moderators, and session chairs for
their kindness in accepting our invitation, and sharing with us their
knowledge and ideas. I would not like to conclude my short remarks without
expressing my appreciation to the secretariat staff from both UNESCO and ITU
who have spared no effort to coordinate and bring this symposium into
reality. Last but not least my thanks go to Mr. Direk Charoenphol for his
enthusiasm to join us as the Chairman of this Symposium.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I sincerely hope that you would find this Symposium very useful and enjoy
it.
Thank you for your attention.
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