Organization: ITU

The following speech was given by ITU Secretary-General, Hamadoun Touré, at the Arab Telecom & Internet Forum 2012 conference in Beirut on 2 February 2012. Read it on the ITU website.

Your Excellency, Nicolas Sahnaoui, Minister of Telecommunications, Lebanon;

Dr Rima Khalaf, Executive Secretary, ESCWA;

Eng. Saud Al Dowaish, CEO, STC Telecom Group;

Khalid Bal Kheyour, CEO, ARABSAT;

Mr Raouf Abu Zaki, CEO, Iktisaad wal Aamal;

Excellencies,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure to be here with you in Beirut today for the opening of the 11th Arab Telecom and Internet Forum 2012.

This event is particularly timely, coming as it does on the first anniversary of last year’s events across the region, in which information and communication technologies – ICTs – played a key role.

The ITU Council met between 11 and 21 October 2011 in Geneva. Its key decisions are outlined very briefly below.

Photo: ITU

The nine-day session reviewed 76 input documents, including 20 contributions from Member States. Twenty-seven formal texts were adopted. The most significant were:

• The creation of the "Council Working group on International Internet-related Public Policy Issues." (previously a less formal 'dedicated group'). There was some controversy over the working group's approach and its member-state-only membership.
• A decision to focus the 5th World Telecommunication Policy Forum in 2013 on the key Internet resolutions agreed at the 2010 Plenipotentiary (101, 102, and 133)

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is continuing its difficult journey toward the 21st century in Geneva this week.

Picking up where the organization’s Plenipotentiary in Guadalajara a year ago left off, the ITU Council has been considering a number of proposals concerning the Internet and, not for the time, has hit the Internet’s culture of openness head on.

Following literally days of discussions spent trying to bridge the gap between a closed inter-governmental culture and the Internet’s open approach to policy, a series of odd compromises has been struck.

Key among them is future discussions of the “Dedicated Group on international Internet-related public policy issues”. The DGIRPPI (the worst acronym we’ve seen for a while) is transitioning to a more formal Working Group designation and is the hub of most of the work that emerges with respect to the Internet.

The ITU however finds itself stuck between two competing models and facing contradictory language over how to make that transition.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is continuing its difficult journey toward the 21st century in Geneva this week.

A top-level meeting between Russian Premier Vladimir Putin and ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré in Geneva earlier today spent a significant amount of time focussing on making the international organization more relevant to the Internet.

A press release from the ITU identified global access to ICT as the main discussion topic. However, discussion of Internet governance and how to increase the ITU’s role within it was added to the agenda at Touré’s request, we understand, most likely in response to the G8 Declaration in Paris last month that saw no mention of the ITU in a long text about the Internet.

According to the press release, “Mr Putin referred to the importance of information technologies, in particular Internet services, which have a key position on the international agenda.”

ITU's role in implementing the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society

The Plenipotentiary Conference of the International Telecommunication Union (Guadalajara, 2010),

recalling

• Resolution 73 (Minneapolis, 1998) of the Plenipotentiary Conference, which achieved its aims in regard to the holding of both phases of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS);
• Resolution 113 (Marrakesh, 2002) of the Plenipotentiary Conference, on WSIS;
• Decision 8 (Marrakesh, 2002) of the Plenipotentiary Conference, on ITU input to the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action and the information document on ITU activities related to the Summit,

recalling further

the Geneva Declaration of Principles and the Geneva Plan of Action, adopted in 2003, and the Tunis Commitment and the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, adopted in 2005, all of which were endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly,

considering

Strengthening the role of ITU in building confidence and security in the use of information and communication technologies

The Plenipotentiary Conference of the International Telecommunication Union (Guadalajara, 2010),

recalling