Opening Remarks by Malcolm Johnson, ITU Deputy Secretary-General
WSIS TalkX - ICTs for Inclusive, Resilient and Sustainable Societies and Economies (WSIS Action Lines for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals)
14 April 2021
Excellencies, dear members of the WSIS community, welcome to this session on the importance of ICTs and the WSIS Action Lines in accelerating progress towards the SDGs.
As we know, the world was already off track to achieve the SDGs on time before the COVID-19 pandemic, which of course has made things worse, disrupting progress and even undoing in some cases what had been achieved. This setback has made it all the more important to redouble our efforts to ensure that ICTs and the WSIS Action Lines put the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development back on track. At least the importance of ICTs has now been illustrated as never before, for healthcare, work, studying and keeping in touch with friends and relatives. However, unfortunately we still have almost half the world’s population still offline and unable to benefit from the technology.
More than 15 years after the second phase of the WSIS Summit held in November 2005, the WSIS Actions Lines are more relevant and important than ever. It was at the WSIS summit that the UN Secretary-General called for greater collaboration amongst all stakeholders, saying that if the benefits of the Internet are to spread around the world, we must promote the same cooperative spirit among governments, the private sector, civil society, and international organizations.
This spirit of multi-stakeholder cooperation remains at the heart the WSIS process so essential to harness ICTs to help achieve the SDGs and solve the world’s most pressing challenges, including the pandemic. The crisis we are going through has shown how interconnected and interdependent we are. We are all in the same boat and collaboration, cooperation and coordination are more important now than ever before if we are to overcome these challenges. We each must bring our own specific competencies to the table, pool our resources, and avoid duplication of effort to build more inclusive, resilient and sustainable societies and economies.
A central promise of the 2030 Agenda is to leave no one behind. It is more urgent than ever to work together to break down the major remaining barriers to connectivity and ensure everybody’s access to ICTs that are safe, attractive, and affordable.
We are very grateful to our excellent panellists for taking the time to join us for this session and we look forward to hearing from them about how we can enhance our cooperation nationally, regionally, and internationally – both in the public and private sectors.
