Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and thank you very much for joining us today at this session.
It’s a pleasure for me to be with you here today to celebrate the World Development Information Day which recognises the vital importance of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to help achieve economic, social and environmental development.
ITU’s mission is to connect the world and to bring the benefits of ICTs to all the world’s people. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the power and the promise of ICTs as never before. Literally billions of people have relied on ICTs for news, teleworking, remote learning, shopping, and staying in touch with loved ones. In ITU, we have continued our business working from home and through virtual meetings such as this, including this year’s WSIS Forum which actually increased the cumulative participation to over 15,000 participants from over 150 countries.
But as we know, 3.6 billion people around the world are still not connected to the Internet, mostly those living in rural areas and remote communities, which is why our core mission must be to connect everyone everywhere. Only then will the UN Sustainable Agenda be met.
ITU, with a diverse membership of 193 governments and over 900 sector members – mostly private sector companies in the telecom and Internet sectors as well as some 160 universities, is committed to leverage the potential of ICTs to deliver on the sustainable development agenda and create a more sustainable future. ITU has always been a strong supporter of the WSIS Forum as the leading global multistakeholder platform for information exchange, creation of knowledge, sharing of best practices, and forging of partnerships to advance development goals though ICTs.
Today, the WSIS Process is more relevant than ever before as it is now aligned with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which is so dependent on ICTs for its implementation.
To this end, the
WSIS-SDGs Matrix was developed by the ITU in collaboration with the UN Action Line Facilitators. It clearly shows the linkage between each WSIS Action Line and the 17 SDGs and provides a rationale for each. The matrix is available on the ITU website.
Every year, the WSIS Prizes competition is held to evaluate and reward individuals, governments, civil society, local, regional and international agencies, research institutions and private sector companies for the success of their efforts in implementing development-oriented strategies that leverage the power of ICTs and I am pleased that we have been joined today by some WSIS Prize winners who will share real examples of the tremendous efforts undertaken in implementing the WSIS Action Lines.
Last September the UN General Assembly proclaimed the Decade of Action for the Sustainable Development Goals in response to the reality that the world was not on track to deliver them by 2030. We therefore have to leverage the potential of ICTs as never before, to deliver on the sustainable development agenda and create a more sustainable future.
We need to work together to ensure that the ICT component becomes ubiquitous in the national sustainable development plans, and to collaborate and cooperate to avoid duplication and to pool our resources. Let us build on that momentum to make the world safer, more sustainable, and more connected – a world where no one is left behind and where everyone everywhere benefits from this technology.
I am very grateful to our distinguished panellists for joining us today. Many thanks to you all for making the time. I am sure we will have a very enlightening and fruitful discussion.
Thank you.