Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
State of the Union Address
ITU Council 2026
ITU Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland
[As prepared for delivery]
Mr Chair,
Excellencies,
Fellow Elected Officials,
Distinguished delegates and friends,
We meet at a moment of profound transformation.
The world is more connected than at any time in history. But it is also more fragmented, more uncertain, and more divided in terms of how that connectivity turns into opportunity.
It is precisely in moments like this that institutions must be resilient. And that the work we do here, as One ITU, matters more than ever.
Three years ago, I stood before you for the first time as Secretary-General and promised a fit-for-future ITU, built on our collective vision and three pillars of transformation.
In previous State of the Union addresses I presented our achievements under the first two pillars: Strengthening ITU's position on the global digital agenda; and second, building a solid network of strategic partners to advance universal meaningful connectivity and sustainable digital transformation.
This year, as we approach the Plenipotentiary Conference, I will focus on the third pillar: Building an ITU that is recognized for its organizational excellence.
An ITU that is agile, open and transparent, more innovative, financially stable, trusted and results-driven.
Amid a digital landscape, moving faster than ever, ITU is now better equipped to adapt and respond.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has helped us become more agile across our operations; starting with translation, where AI has supported expanded access to multilingual content and contributed to efficiency gains of 20 per cent.
We are now automating other areas across finance, HR (human resources) and event management.
As a result, delegates will enjoy a modern, AI-enabled experience at upcoming ITU events, including AI for Good, the WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society) Forum and PP-26.
You'll see live demos of some of these improvements just outside this room during Council.
We are making good progress towards a Union that holds itself to the highest standards of accountability and transparency.
Today, a fully staffed Oversight Unit combining audit, investigation, and evaluation functions is now operational.
We have a new independent Ombudsman function, shared with WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization).
And together with the Ethics Office, and Oversight — we have the capacity to sustain that openness and transparency.
ITU is now an organization where innovation comes from everywhere.
Today, nearly 100 staff have graduated from our ChangeMakers programme.
Their work has updated our recruitment processes, reinforced evaluation, informed our AI use policy, and led to a new AI-powered document search tool we are excited to showcase at PP-26 (Plenipotentiary Conference 2026).
We have also evolved the Head of IS (Information Services) role into a Chief Information Officer who is working closely with the Transformation Team to embed innovation across ITU.
Councillors,
ITU is an organization that lives within its means, and makes every Swiss franc work harder for you, and for all our members.
We have closed 2025 with a budget surplus, and savings have been put forward for your consideration, along with plans to reinvest these savings back into a Union that delivers more to its membership.
We have achieved full IPSAS (International Public Sector Accounting Standards) compliance with improvements to treasury, extrabudgetary funds, and budget allocation systems.
And we bring you a balanced budget proposal, which includes global reductions for the 2026-27 period, as well as tighter controls on spending and efficiency measures.
In recognition of the continued economic pressure on many ITU Member States we continue to refrain from proposing an increase in the contributory unit, which has remained unchanged since 2006.
And over three years, we have built a Union that the world can count on as a trusted partner.
Our membership has continued to grow and diversify, and we are on track to welcome more than 400 new members during this cycle.
Between 2024 and 2025 ITU entered into around 300 partnerships ꟷ all encouraging indicators of the trust stakeholders worldwide are placing in us to help advance our strategic goals.
This trust was also reflected when the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution that culminated in the WSIS+20 Review.
That resolution affirms ITU data as the gold standard for tracking global digital development progress and shows confidence in our ability to provide the evidence needed for informed digital policy and investment decisions.
Last year marked the 80th anniversary of the United Nations (UN), and with it, began a system-wide transformation called “UN80" to build a stronger, more effective UN that delivers tangible results to the people we serve.
As part of these UN80 reform efforts, ITU was entrusted to lead work packages on technology and developing an “Expertise-on-Demand" mechanism that directly informs our own review of ITU's regional presence.
Expertise-on-Demand will enable us to deliver specialized knowledge more efficiently, without requiring our physical presence in every location.
This reduces duplication and strengthens our overall impact on the ground.
We are proud to have been asked to lead these aspects of UN-wide reform and take it as a recognition of the impact of our own transformation.
In three years, we have moved from tracking activities to measuring outcomes.
The Strategic Plan implementation report before this Council shows our progress against the goals you set for us in Bucharest (at PP-22).
That same approach has us delivering on longer-term commitments including getting our new headquarters project back on track with minimal disruptions to business continuity so that we can keep driving results, thanks to you, MSAG (Member States Advisory Group), and our host country, Switzerland.
Councillors,
There is more to do in each of these six areas of progress and we will continue to deliver results through transformation.
But as you know, transformation is more than reconfiguring an organizational chart. It is driven by people: department by department, team by team, colleague by colleague.
That's why I am glad to report ITU staff are upskilling, adapting and learning new tools using their time — we're encouraging eight hours a month — as well as offering the space to innovate.
By now I hope you have seen our new Innovation Hub — a place where staff can experiment, try new ideas and share successes and failures ꟷ in a safe space.
Colleagues,
Transformation also depends on a healthy and energized workforce.
That's why we're implementing the ITU-wide Action Plan with targeted staff wellness initiatives: An outcome of last year's Staff Engagement Survey.
I would like to express my appreciation to the Staff Council for all their hard work and dedication to staff wellness over the past three years.
We have also been glad to see the first cohort of young professionals bringing fresh energy and new perspectives to every corner of this Union.
I thank every Member State that supported our YPP (Young Professionals Programme) for helping us invest in the next generation of ITU staff.
We also took time last year to recognize the contributions of more than 200 ITU staff who have served this great Union for 20 years or more.
They are proof that institutional resilience is ultimately delivered by people.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Our transformation journey is delivering results in the wider world we serve.
It's a world that increasingly depends on well-coordinated spectrum, on a safe and sustainable space environment, and on interference-free radiocommunication services.
Here I want to acknowledge Mario Maniewicz and his team. Mario has been leading much of this work for nearly a decade.
Under his leadership, the ITU Radiocommunication Bureau steered a successful WRC-23 (World Radiocommunication Conference 2023) in Dubai, managed 3,602 frequency filings between 2023 and now, some of which contain tens of thousands of satellites, and is now preparing for WRC-27 ꟷ with a space-heavy agenda ꟷ covering direct-to-device and lunar communications, and much more.
Mario, thank you for everything you have done for ITU.
Turning back to resilient digital infrastructure, the theme of World Telecommunication and Information Society Day (WTISD), our International Advisory Body on Submarine Cable Resilience — co-chaired by Nigeria and Portugal — is successfully concluding its work following this year's Porto Summit, which resulted in practical, non-binding guidance to strengthen the protection of submarine cable infrastructure worldwide.
I thank you, Mr Chair, for your leadership as Advisory Body Co-Chair.
I also want to recognize Deputy Secretary-General Tomas Lamanauskas for his leadership on digital resilience, from submarine cables to Green Digital Action, in line with this year's WTISD theme “digital lifelines."
This includes an expert report on critical digital risks that we look forward to sharing with you next week. And also spearheading work on digital infrastructure investment, including the Catalyzer, launched last year with UNCTAD (UN Trade and Development) at the Financing for Development Conference in Seville.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Just weeks ago the world watched in awe as the Artemis II mission streamed 4K video from lunar orbit encoded with the H.265 standard developed by ITU-T (ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Sector) showing what global collaboration on standards makes possible.
I want to acknowledge our TSB (Telecommunication Standardization Bureau) Director, Seizo Onoe-San, and his team. Seizo's leadership delivered a successful WTSA-24 (World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly 2024) in New Delhi.
Under his direction, ITU has strengthened its collaboration with other international standards development organizations.
ITU-T is now at the centre of global work on AI standards, from watermarking, to deepfake detection, to multimedia authenticity.
And combined, ITU-T and ITU-R (ITU Radiocommunication Sector) has approved more than 1,000 standards during this cycle ꟷ shaping technologies from quantum to next-generation media.
Councillors,
Resilient digital infrastructure means nothing if it cannot reach the people who need it most.
Here, let me acknowledge our BDT (Telecommunication Development Bureau) Director, Cosmas Zavazava, and his team who delivered a successful WTDC-25 (World Telecommunication Development Conference) in Baku last year — under the theme "Universal, meaningful and affordable connectivity for an inclusive and sustainable digital future."
That conference not only translated global digital development aspirations into concrete regional initiatives and action plans but also recognized the importance of safeguarding public telecom networks, essential to humanitarian services, during armed conflicts and disasters.
Councillors,
PP-22 adopted Resolution 191 on inter-sectoral coordination ꟷ asking us to deliver as “One ITU."
Allow me to highlight some of our collective achievements that have been accomplished in this “OneITU" spirit:
By the end of 2025 global Internet use reached 74 per cent, with 6 billion people online – more than ever before in history.
Our Digital Transformation Centres (spearheaded by BDT) reached more than 610,000 people between 2022 and 2025 ꟷ over half of them women.
Just last week we celebrated Girls in ICT Day, an initiative that has inspired girls the world over to study STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields and consider careers in the tech sector.
We've helped nearly 30 countries develop national disaster preparedness roadmaps.
And globally, 60 per cent of countries are now covered by multi-hazard early warning systems ꟷ a testament to our progress on Early Warnings for All.
But warnings are only effective if they reach people in time, and only 45 countries have mobile-enabled early warnings.
That's why ITU is stepping up to support especially LDCs (least-developed countries) and SIDS (small island developing states) in implementing these systems through the CREWS initiative, recognized by the G7 as a key action for extreme weather prediction, preparedness and response.
Our Giga initiative with UNICEF (the United Nations Children's Fund) has now mapped more than two million schools in over 140 countries — and is active in helping 49 countries and territories bring their schools online.
Our AI Skills Coalition, working closely with the ITU Academy, has expanded access to AI education for tens of thousands of learners, with 180 courses in 13 languages now available.
And our Partner2Connect Digital Coalition has mobilized more than 80 billion US dollars across over 1,000 pledges in 149 countries.
I thank everyone in this room who has made a pledge.
We have also scaled our field presence to support more than 140 countries with digital policy and technical assistance and look forward to discussions on ITU's regional presence during this Council.
But ladies and gentlemen,
Numbers only tell part of the story.
Last November I travelled to the Farchana refugee settlement in Chad.
What I saw there is something I cannot forget.
Families who had lost everything.
Young people who watched their schools, homes and cities disappear.
But in the middle of that settlement stood a connectivity centre, built in partnership with UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) and GSMA.
Inside, young refugees were accessing education.
Reaching family members across borders.
Beginning — piece by piece — to rebuild a life.
“That's what a digital lifeline actually looks like":
A room.
With an affordable Internet connection.
And a future being built inside it.
ITU's work on Connectivity for Refugees is now active in Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda, Mauritania, Egypt and Rwanda, advancing towards our goal of connecting 20 million forcibly displaced people by 2030.
Councillors,
Everything I just described took sustained effort, investment, and political will.
And pressures on all three are intensifying.
We know from experience that resilience is not a permanent state.
It is a practice that is being tested now more than ever.
But it's also never been more needed at a time when 2.2 billion people remain completely offline.
At the same time, multilateral institutions continue to face strong headwinds, funding cuts, and questions about relevance.
But when the cost of cooperation feels high, I urge you to think about what could happen without it.
Uncoordinated spectrum renders essential services unusable.
Unimplemented standards result in higher costs and technologies that cannot interoperate.
Unaddressed digital divides become AI-driven inequalities.
The case for multilateralism, ladies and gentlemen, in our sector, has never been clearer.
Technology is moving faster than policymakers can keep pace.
Which is why we must take every opportunity to close the gap.
One is coming up in just two weeks when regulators will gather in Ankara for GSR-26 (Global Symposium for Regulators 2026) to navigate the evolving digital frontier together.
The upcoming World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum (WTPF) in Nassau will convene stakeholders to build consensus on the emerging technology question that will shape our next strategic cycle.
I commend the Informal Expert Group for concluding its work with a forward-looking, consensus-based set of Opinions for the Forum to consider.
And in July, the first-ever UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance, — which ITU has been entrusted to coordinate alongside UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) —together with the AI for Good Global Summit, and the WSIS Forum, will take place back-to-back here in Geneva, reflecting the trust we have built in digital cooperation on AI, grounded in years of thought leadership in this space.
Together they will mark a defining moment and a meaningful shift toward practical outcomes and broader inclusion.
Councillors,
In just over six months we will gather in Doha for our Plenipotentiary Conference, to set the direction for the next four years of this Union's work.
The Strategic Plan implementation report before this Council will help us understand what worked, what needs strengthening, and what we must prioritize in the next strategic period.
But as we close this cycle and look to the next one, we know resilience is not sustained through austerity alone, but reinforced through strong efficiency measures, and reinvesting in what matters.
That is what continued resilience demands, and how ITU not only becomes, but remains, fit for the future.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the State of our Union.
A Union that made promises three years ago and continues to deliver.
A Union whose internal transformation strengthened external resilience — for institutions, for networks, and for the people and communities who need us most.
A Union that is clear-eyed about the challenges ahead, and strong enough to meet them.
The ITU has endured for 161 years because every generation that came before us understood that technology only serves humanity when we decide and organize ourselves to make it so.
From our inception, this organization has evolved with every new technology, kept pace with each new wave of change, and continues to do so today.
The case for what comes next is built on what this Union — together — has already shown it can do.
I look forward to continuing that work together, as we build a meaningfully connected, sustainable digital world for everyone, everywhere.
