STATEMENT by His Majesty Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev
King of Nepal
16 November 2005
Mr Chairman,
Distinguished Heads of State and Government,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It gives us pleasure to be amongst this august gathering
here today to participate in this important Second Phase of the World Summit
on the Information Society hosted in this beautiful and historic city of
Tunis. My delegation joins us in expressing our sincere thanks to the
President and people of Tunisia for the warm welcome and generous
hospitality accorded us since our arrival here. We also extend our thanks to
His Excellency Mr Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations
for his vision and guidance in ensuring the success of this Summit and in
garnering international cooperation in this new and vital sector for global
economic prosperity.
Our thanks are also due to the Secretary-General of the
International Telecommunication Union, the Chairman of the Summit
Preparatory Committee and the members of the Executive Secretariat for their
untiring efforts in preparing for this Summit. We also wish to commend the
remarkable contributions of the civil society and the private sector in this
Summit.
While the digital revolution offers real development
opportunities for the economies of the World, the digital divide between
developed nations and the rest of the world sadly continues to grow. We
believe that there should be a mechanism to facilitate meaningful
participation on Internet Governance to accomplish the vision of the
Declaration of Principles of the World Summit on the Information Society. An
International Internet Governance System should be developed to harmonize
technical and policy issues to the advantage of the global community. We
also wish to add that sustained efforts should be made to ensure
participation of developing countries to make the system truly meaningful
and effective.
Nepal is committed to the Geneva Declarations of Principles.
We believe that the Internet, which has become omnipresent in our lives, can
be truly beneficial to humankind if a multi-stakeholder participation, which
is inclusive and transparent, can be developed.
We need to focus on how the global information revolution
could be made a development enabler in the real sense by contributing
significantly to reducing poverty and promoting all-round development in the
world. This would provide us with a great opportunity to accelerate the
process of bridging the gap between the haves and the have-nots in terms of
access to information technology. The international community needs to give
special attention to the needs of the developing, land-locked and
mountainous countries which face problems of promoting the use of ICTs due
to high infrastructure costs.
Nepal is committed to the common vision of the information
society and its key principles based on shared knowledge. Since the
initiation of the WSIS, my country has played a significant role in the
development and promotion of her ICT sector, recording impressive
achievements in all the eleven WSIS action lines despite her own constraints
and limited resources. The State's efforts have been further augmented with
the establishment of an autonomous High Level Commission for Information
Technology to enhance internal and external private investment and to
stimulate new economic sectors like e-commerce. It is a matter of
satisfaction that this has resulted in an ever-growing mutually beneficial
partnership between the government and the private sector in the field of
information technology.
We believe the time has now come for all of us gathered here
today to make a common commitment to implement the Declaration adopted by
the World Summit on the Information Society with all honesty and sincerity
to the benefit of all mankind. We wish the Summit every success.
Thank You! |