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ITU's governing Council opened its annual session with Julie Zoller of the United States of America chairing the meeting. The outgoing chair, Wonki Min of the republic of Korea, summarized the achievements of the 2015 Session of Council, conveyed his gratitude to all who had contributed, and expressed his confidence in the incoming chair to guide the Council in addressing the challenges facing it in the days ahead.
In her opening address, Julie Zoller quoted President Obama of the United States, who said that "our common bond, our common humanity compels us to act" on the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The chair observed that there is a common goal to "bring 1.5 billion people online by 2020, underscoring that connectivity is as important as other forms of infrastructure". She noted that Council 2016 will set the dates and venues for WTDC-17 and WRC-19, "enabling global development and global wireless technology as only the ITU can do".
The ITU Council is meeting from 25 May to 2 June. It is the first session of ITU Council to take place since the approval of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September 2015, and the Council will review the work of the Union within this perspective.
Delegates from the 48 countries representing the ITU membership of 193 States were welcomed by the ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao.
Eva Spina, Director of Spectrum Management Planning, Communications Area, of Italy's Ministry of Economic Development, was welcomed as the Vice-Chair of the Council.
Kirill Oparin from the Russian Federation was welcomed as the Chair of the Standing Committee on Administration and Management, while Vernita Harris from the United States and Abdourhamane Touré from Mali continue as ADM Vice-Chairs for the 2016 Council Session.
The 2016 Council agenda covers ITU's strategic, operational and financial plans, a review of preparations for upcoming events, and other key topics including cybersecurity and child online protection, accessibility for persons with disabilities, gender mainstreaming, and youth.
Secretary-General's State of the Union address
In his
'State of the Union' Address, ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao presented an overview of 2015 and the year to date. This included the successful outcomes of the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-15), which "concluded well in a good spirit of consensus, and resulted in a solid and stable international framework for the use of spectrum". The Secretary-General expressed his thanks to all the delegates involved, and specifically the Chair of WRC-15, Festus Daudu of Nigeria, and the Director of the Radiocommunication Bureau, François Rancy.
Several 'breakthrough' standards were noted for ITU-T, including one on optical transport networks, and ITU-T's G.fast standard for delivering fibre-like standards over copper lines, which is seeing excellent take-up and trials in diverse countries around the world.
ITU-D continues to focus on bridging the digital divide and maximizing the impact of ICTs to achieve sustainable development, with its work programmes and high-profile events on regulatory frameworks, technical assistance, and emergency communications.
Mr Zhao highlighted a number of upcoming events, including ITU Telecom World 2016 and WTSA-16. He concluded by noting that "ITU is making good progress in terms of efficiency, productivity, and cost reductions", and pledged to all Councillors and Member States that ITU staff and management "will improve our efficiency, without sacrificing quality". He assured Council of "our dedication and commitment to addressing the challenges ahead, and to fulfilling our mandate", and thanked Councillors for their efforts.
Anusha Rahman Ahmad Khan, Minister of State For IT & Telecommunication of Pakistan, observed that "today, the world faces extreme threats of terrorism, and the Internet is being used to facilitate the various designs of terrorists. There is a need for us to debate what steps ITU can take to curb terrorism on the Internet – if ITU and Member States can find the minimum denominators on which we can agree and guide Internet companies accordingly".
Signing of the WTSA-16 Host Country Agreement
During the inaugural plenary session, ITU Secretary-General, Houlin Zhao, and Tunisia's Minister for Communication Technologies and the Digital Economy, Noomane Fehri, signed the WTSA-16 Host Country Agreement. Mr Fehri expressed Tunisia's pride in hosting WTSA-16 "to help create a more prosperous, free and accessible world, and to make sure we deliver chances of equality of education to all our children, and transparent, efficient and paperless governments" using ICTs.
Charting Progress
The Deputy Secretary-General, Malcolm Johnson, presented the "Report on the Implementation of the Strategic Plan and Activities of the Union 2015-2016" (or "ITU Annual Progress Report for 2015"),
C16/35. This report focuses on the progress made towards the goals and objectives of the Union and the activities undertaken since the 2015 session of Council. The report includes a comprehensive set of 110 charts along with the corresponding performance indicators, and confirms ITU's commitment to being results-oriented with an evidence-based report on its activities.
For the first time,
C16/35 is published in a new layout format called 'typefi', allowing documents with complex layouts and sophisticated typographical composition to be available in different formats for print, online and mobile platforms. Most importantly, this format is also accessible for persons with disabilities. The report is complemented by an interactive online reporting and dashboards tool, which is now available at
www.itu.int/annual-report-2015. Spain mentioned that the city of Valencia has joined the project to evaluate the feasibility of ITU's key performance indicators for smart sustainable cities. With this addition,
C16/35 was approved by Council.
The ITU Secretary-General, Houlin Zhao, presented document
C16/68 which noted good progress in the implementation of the Plenipotentiary Resolution on assistance and support to Palestine for rebuilding its telecommunication networks, and related Resolutions. In the discussion that followed, Saudi Arabia expressed its commitment to continue supporting ITU and its activities.
The Council Highlights are provided as a service to ITU Member State Administrations. They are not official documents, and do not provide a substitute for the Summary Record; we nonetheless hope that Member State Administrations will find them useful and informative.
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