Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
Keynote address to the
ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2026 (PP-26)
First Plenary
[As prepared for delivery]
Mr Chair,
Fellow Elected Officials,
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
To highlight the unique value of our Union's highest governing body, I would like to begin by bringing us back to Bucharest.
As we closed PP-22, the world was still recovering from a global pandemic; one that made the vital importance of connectivity impossible to ignore.
Then, just 47 days later, ChatGPT was released.
Almost overnight, artificial intelligence (AI) moved into governments, businesses, homes, classrooms, workplaces and the centre of public debate.
But ITU Member States saw it coming.
In 2022, you adopted Resolution 214, giving ITU a mandate to help ensure that AI serves humanity through innovation, international cooperation and sustainable development.
That experience carries an important lesson for this conference.
While we cannot predict every technological breakthrough that will emerge before we meet again, we can strengthen the cooperation, expertise and institutions that help countries respond.
And if we do it together, we can help ensure those breakthroughs benefit all of humanity.
Because no matter where technology is developed, it will operate across borders.
And wherever technology operates, it must serve people.
That is the responsibility before us here in Doha, in a transformed digital world, where the stakes have never been higher.
When we met in Bucharest in 2022, just over 5 billion people were online.
That number has since reached 6.3 billion.
More people are accessing online learning, healthcare, and employment than ever before.
In four years, entirely new services have emerged.
Satellite systems are converging with terrestrial networks, reaching places beyond traditional infrastructure, supporting a growing space economy, and work on the next generation of mobile communications is advancing.
These changes are opening new possibilities, and also exposing us to new vulnerabilities.
The cyber-threat landscape has expanded.
While AI is helping us uncover hidden risks, it is also making them harder to contain.
Digital technology is now deeply intertwined with geopolitics, security and trade.
At the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly, four in five world leaders spoke of digital technologies.
They spoke of consequential choices about competitiveness, sovereignty, and strategic autonomy, with technology at the heart of those decisions.
When it comes to implementing those decisions, countries are showing how digital can drive development.
One great example: After more than three decades without a functioning national identification system, one least developed country moved directly to digital ID.
In just three years, they unlocked access to essential public services and new opportunities for financial inclusion.
In other countries, direct-to-device technology is connecting remote communities beyond the reach of terrestrial networks; some for the first time ever.
That is the promise of digital transformation: the ability to leapfrog persistent barriers, and open new paths to development.
At ITU, no country has to navigate the speed and scale of change alone.
International cooperation makes collective digital progress possible.
The past four years have shown what this Union can achieve when we combine our strengths.
Consider the journey from connectivity to opportunity.
Digital infrastructure can open doors to education, employment and so much more.
To walk through those doors, people also need affordable services, skills and the confidence that the digital environment is safe and secure.
ITU's work brings all these elements together.
For example, through Partner2Connect, partners from 149 countries have pledged more than 122 billion dollars towards meaningful connectivity and sustainable digital transformation.
Through Giga, UNICEF and ITU are helping governments plan how to connect millions of schools.
Our Digital Transformation Centres have trained over 750,000 people, more than half of them women.
And our AI Skills Coalition is reaching tens of thousands of teachers and students.
These efforts are mutually reinforcing.
Investment expands connectivity.
Connected schools and skills help people turn access into opportunity.
And ITU's award-winning technical work — from tackling harmful interference to enabling interoperability — provides the foundations on which digital opportunity depends.
At RA-23 (Radiocommunication Assembly 2023) and WRC-23 (World Radiocommunication Conference 2023)— members updated the Radio Regulations, celebrating 120 years this year.
And ITU-R (the ITU Radiocommunication Sector) continues to study the conditions current and future networks need to operate interference-free on Earth, and in space and even on and around the Moon.
In 2024, WTSA (World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly) advanced ITU standardization work in the age of artificial intelligence.
Across this cycle, members approved more than 1,200 standards, including tools to help identify AI-generated deepfakes, and a framework for secure quantum communications.
And the Baku Action Plan adopted by WTDC-25 (World Telecommunication Development Conference 2025) recognized the importance of resilient digital infrastructure that can withstand and recover from conflict and disasters, while addressing the unique needs of least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, and small island developing states.
These agreements take patience, expertise, and a willingness to find common ground.
They give countries and industry greater confidence to invest, to innovate and to build services that work across borders.
Colleagues,
The past cycle has also seen us come together to protect the networks billions of people depend on.
Our CyberDrills have helped build practical readiness to respond when critical digital infrastructure is threatened.
Through Early Warnings for All, we've made sure life-saving alerts can reach more people in time.
And in July, the International Advisory Body on Submarine Cable Resilience delivered recommendations to strengthen the systems carrying 99 per cent of international data traffic.
ITU has championed these efforts because we know digital resilience cannot be built in isolation.
It depends on cooperation across borders and must ultimately serve humanity.
That understanding also guides AI for Good: a year-round platform led by ITU and over 50 UN partners, combining policy support, sandboxes, standards, and skilling to help countries move from AI ambition to people-centred implementation.
It's an understanding that was reinforced at the Global Symposium for Regulators, where regulators exchanged experiences and adopted Best Practice Guidelines under the theme “Navigating the digital frontier."
And at the WTPF (World Telecommunication/Information and Communication Technology Forum), ITU members turned emerging policy questions into shared perspectives that informed many of the proposals before this conference.
These are different expressions of our Union's combined strengths: the ability to bring technology, policy and expertise together — with people at the core — so that progress in one part of the world can become opportunity for all.
Excellencies,
Supporting countries through so much technological change also requires ITU itself to transform.
And we did: by restoring timely audits, strengthening financial controls, and achieving full IPSAS compliance.
We also generated consecutive surpluses, strengthened independent oversight, and put our headquarters project back on track within the approved budget.
Our transformation programme is modernizing services, creating efficiencies, and supporting staff as they develop new skills and ways of working.
Our first Young Professionals are bringing fresh perspectives across the organization.
These improvements matter because members need an ITU they can trust. Trust with their resources, their priorities and their expectations.
That trust extends across the United Nations (UN) system and beyond. Together with ILO (International Labour Organization), UNDP (UN Development Programme) and others, ITU was entrusted to help bring specialized expertise closer to country teams through UN80 workstreams on Expertise-on-Demand and Technology.
The WSIS+20 review reaffirmed ITU's role in facilitating the multistakeholder model of digital cooperation.
And throughout the past cycle, partners from the G20 to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), to multilateral development banks, trusted ITU to spearhead broader cooperation efforts, from digital infrastructure investment to AI.
A great example is the first-ever UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance — co-coordinated by ITU and UNESCO — and held back-to-back with the WSIS Forum and AI for Good Global Summit during Geneva Digital Week, which gathered 12,000 participants from 167 countries.
The Dialogue built on our joint leadership of the Inter-Agency Working Group on AI, which helps the UN system coordinate support for countries navigating the opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The transformation I have just described reflects the profound commitment of ITU Member States, Sector Members, academia, and partners, supported by my fellow elected officials, and our dedicated staff.
All of us are deeply committed to a fit-for-future ITU.
The task before us in Doha is to decide how we build on this momentum, to reach further, respond faster and open opportunities for those still left behind.
With 2 billion people still offline, we must scale what we started in Bucharest: make connectivity universal and digital transformation sustainable: socially, economically and environmentally, for all people, everywhere.
What does that look like?
It looks like access to higher education, better paying jobs, and more effective public services.
It looks like more secure and resilient digital infrastructure that people can rely on in the face of disruption.
It looks like the capacity to benefit from emerging technologies, shaped by national priorities, while protecting people and planet from harm.
I have seen the urgency of these digital ambitions in my visits to countries around the world.
None more urgent than connecting displaced communities in places like Farchana and Melkadida.
I have met young people eager for a stronger say in how AI shapes their lives, women and girls determined to take their rightful place in the global digital economy, innovators, researchers and technical experts whose ideas can help anticipate and respond to technological change, and communities — from persons with disabilities to those recovering from disaster — for whom connectivity is an absolute lifeline.
That is why our draft Strategic Plan for 2028–2031 remains anchored in two goals: universal connectivity and sustainable digital transformation.
To achieve those two goals — while delivering digital progress for every Member State — we must continue to work as OneITU.
Because we know the challenges you, our members, face do not fit neatly within institutional boundaries.
Affordability, skills, spectrum, standards, cybersecurity, and resilience are interconnected.
ITU's response must be as well.
Radiocommunication, standardization and development must work together, combining global expertise with practical support on the ground.
That means a stronger field presence, with regional and area offices bringing us closer to the communities we serve.
It means continuing to invest in our people by strengthening talent, leadership and organizational excellence.
And it means continuing to modernize systems that help ITU deliver with greater speed, transparency and value, using AI responsibly where it can improve services and decision-making, resolving the backlog in spectrum filings, and updating the software that supports our essential work.
We will also continue to strengthen the links between strategic, operational and financial planning, and measure success by outcomes: more countries supported, more expertise shared and more people digitally empowered.
Any new work must build on ITU's core mandate, offer clear added value, and be matched by realistic resources.
That discipline will keep this Union focused, financially sustainable and able to deliver where you, our members, need us most.
In 1865, leaders of 20 nations met in Paris to address the challenges of a transformative communications technology.
They agreed on common rules that would help maximize the benefits of the telegraph — and lay the foundations for a new age of communication.
Across generations of technological change, from the telegraph and telephone to radio, satellites and the Internet, and now artificial intelligence, that understanding has sustained this Union.
Today, the technologies are vastly different. Our dependence on them is far greater.
But the responsibility remains ours: To connect every community meaningfully; to ensure systems can interoperate; to help countries benefit from AI and other emerging technologies through international standards; capacity-building and inclusive policy dialogue ꟷ especially when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable: our children.
That responsibility now comes down to the decisions we take here in Doha.
We need agreed priorities backed by realistic resources.
We need a shared commitment to implementation.
And we need continued willingness to work across differences.
Because no country can meet the challenges of a transformed digital world alone.
With those foundations, we will leave Doha with more than a strategic and financial plan for this Union.
We will leave with greater confidence to face technological developments we cannot yet foresee.
We will strengthen the digital systems on which communities around the world increasingly depend.
And we will open new possibilities for the two billion people still waiting to be connected, and for the young people ready to shape what comes next.
Over the past four years, we have shown what cooperation can achieve.
Now we must turn the decisions we take here into opportunities people can feel in their own lives.
Let us continue to move forward together as OneITU ꟷ here in Doha ꟷ and beyond.
Thank you very much.
Shukran.
