BDT Director Doreen Bogdan-Martin partnered with UN Under-Secretary-General Fabrizio Hochschild to convene and co-Chair the first of a series of five multi-stakeholder dialogues on the vital importance of strengthening global digital cooperation in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The meeting was joined by some 250 participants from government, industry, the international community and civil society, and featured high-profile speakers including Vint Cerf, internet pioneer and senior executive at Google; H.E Paula Ingabire, Minister of ICT and Innovation of Rwanda; Mitchell Baker, Chair, Mozilla Company and Foundation; Joakim Reiter, Group External Affairs Director with Vodafone; Carlos Lugo, Commissioner & Director, Communications Regulation Commission, Colombia; and Tiziana Bonapace, Director, ICT and Disaster Risk Reduction Division, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.
Discussions for this first dialogue focused around the urgent need for global connectivity assessments to ascertain the current state of network availability and resilience in developed and developing countries and LDCs, and to pinpoint connectivity gaps and possible priority solutions.
In her opening remarks, the BDT Director remarked that the COVID-19 crisis had served as a wake-up call to the world on the vital importance of connectivity, and particularly of broadband internet access.
"I think one of the things the unprecedented events of the past few weeks has dramatically illustrated is the vital, essential importance of connectivity. We in the international community share the conviction that all people must enjoy equal access to the same opportunities. And in the 21st century, leaving no-one behind means meaningful access to digital technologies," she said.
Latest ITU figures reveal that 3.6 billion people remain totally cut-off from the internet.
Ms Bogdan-Martin went on to urge leaders from government and industry to collaborate on a 'big dig' to get those without access connected as fast as possible. "No-one can now doubt the vital importance of getting - and keeping - the world connected, and of using the power of technology to improve our preparedness, our mitigation strategies, and our collective community response. We need to dramatically accelerate efforts to bring unconnected people and communities online," she said.
