Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and thank you for this opportunity to address CSTD.
I would like to start by informing you that the ITU, as the UN specialized agency for ICTs, deplores the widespread destruction of critical infrastructure, failure of telecom services and mobile phone outages that have occurred across Ukraine since the beginning of the war. The ITU Council, currently in session, has adopted a resolution on “Assistance and support to Ukraine for rebuilding their telecommunication sector”. As the war goes on, ITU echoes United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres’ call for the conflict to stop, and reaffirms the importance of telecommunications and ICTs for peace and development.
Turning to the work of the Commission, I commend CSTD for selecting “Industry 4.0 for inclusive development” and “Science, technology and innovation for sustainable urban development in a post-pandemic world” as its priority themes for this year’s session. Both of these themes are synonymous with advances in emerging digital technologies such as 5G, AI and Internet of Things—fields where the role of ITU is central in terms of standards and spectrum. In this, as in everything else, ITU’s objective is to ensure that all countries can benefit from this new wave of technological change equally, and that no one is left behind. However, most developing countries are not ready to use such technologies. Changing this will require forging and strengthening partnerships and developing international collaboration.
This is the essence of the WSIS Process.
During the ITU Council meeting the Council reiterated its support for ITU’s leading role in the WSIS process and highlighted the importance of the WSIS Action Lines in advancing the achievement of the SDGs. The Council appreciated the Secretary-General’s suggested roadmap on the 20-year Review of the WSIS beyond 2025. We were asked to further develop it for consideration at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference starting in September. The document has been shared with the CSTD secretariat and we look forward to working in close collaboration with CSTD in the WSIS Review process, including discussions in the UN Group on the Information Society (UNGIS).
I take this opportunity to encourage everyone to participate in this year’s WSIS Forum, which was launched two weeks ago and which will culminate with the final week to be held physically in Geneva from 30 May to 3 June.
This year is an important year for ITU, with three of our major conferences taking place in the span of just a few months. In addition to the Plenipotentiary Conference in September we had the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly earlier this month, highlighting how vital digital technical standards are to creating a more prosperous, sustainable and inclusive future for all, and in June our World Telecommunication Development Conference will be held in Kigali, Rwanda.
ICTs are essential to socio-economic sustainable development and ITU is in the business to collaborate with everyone to make sure we achieve this. We need to make every effort to continue to align the WSIS process with the SDGs—and fulfil the vision outlined by WSIS almost 20 years ago - of an Information Society where everyone everywhere can benefit from the opportunities that ICTs can offer. We can only achieve this by working closer together – at the national, regional and international level. Cooperation, coordination and collaboration are the three essential words!
I wish you all a very successful session.
Thank you.