ITU World Summit on the Information Society Continues in Geneva | WTO: Decarbonising the Steel Sector | Education in Humanitarian Operations Gets a Boost
ITU World Summit on the Information Society Continues in Geneva | WTO: Decarbonising the Steel Sector | Education in Humanitarian Operations Gets a Boost
WTO: Decarbonising the Steel Sector | $826 Million for Education in Humanitarian Operations | WSIS Forum Global Summit Continues in Geneva
Presented by Microsoft
The imperative for digital transformation and public-private partnerships in Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
As part of an ongoing commitment to the mission and ambition of the United Nations, Microsoft served as the co-chair of LDC5 / Private Sector Forum, where they explored ways that digital development can become a reality. Learn more here.
WTO: Decarbonising the Steel Sector
A series of panels to discuss decarbonisation of the steel sector took place at the WTO, led by the Director-General, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, with the participation of private sector including Arcelor-Mittal’s CEO, H.R.H. Princess Abze Djigma, Chair, H.R.H. Princess Abze Djigma Foundation, Initiator and Leader of The Initiative MAMA-LIGHT®️ for Sustainable Energy. The first panel was moderated by Emma Farge, Senior Correspondent at Reuters in Geneva, and a subsequent panel was moderated by the UK Permanent Representative to the WTO, Ambassador Simon Manley. WTO’s Deputy Director-General Jean-Marie Paugam spoke on the role of WTO.
Watch the panels here.
ITU
World Summit on the Information Society 2023
Addressing Climate Change
To register click here.
Innovation and Access to Technology to Address Climate Change
By Maya Plentz
What a difference 3 years make. I started the UN Brief in May 2020, during the lockdown in Switzerland. I few months before I had approached a tech newsletter in Brazil to explore contributing stories to them, to write about how emerging tech was playing out at the UN. The pandemic made me shift gears, and I started The UN Brief.
We had 300 subscribers then, now more than 12K.
Our climate change and digital divide are our most popular stories.
When I was an international news editor at UN Radio, at UN Headquarters in New York in the early 2000’s, producing their first website, and the daily news and long features, Brazil had 4.000 people with access to the Internet.
Now there are close to 200 million people with Internet access.
The first ITU World Summit on the Information Society took place in 2003. It was a huge affair with 190 plus countries participating, the telecoms eager to deploy in the developing world. Huge financial opportunities for all involved. Regulation was scoffed at. The commercial Internet was just taking off. Issues of governance were just starting to be discussed.
Fast forward 20 years later. We had, just a few weeks ago, the first UNESCO Global Summit for platform governance and freedom of expression. Now we have to look at tech innovation and tools that will advance, that will permit us to get to the next level of prosperity, redistributed wealth, while using the Internet to increase sustainable international trade, healthcare across borders, and support biodiversity in the high-seas.
We have to:
First: We have to commemorate the agreement on the Treaty of the High Seas. Technology will play an immense role on the discovery and cataloguing of species, so national programs for innovation must invest in research in the deep sea. We have private and public partnerships like the Tara Ocean Foundation, but we need more.
Second: We need to address skilling of women and girls in digital tools so they can actively participate in the digital economy and partake of its bounties. Better paying jobs, creating tools, developing programs, not mindless underpaid soul-crushing data entry. We have to stop below poverty level jobs being shipped to the Global South.
Third: We need a skilled force in engineering, math, and natural sciences with a broad education in the social sciences, the humanities, the arts. For that we need to partner with private sector actors: Salesforce, Microsoft, and Google. They are proactively working in partnership with the UN and the ITU to deploy training and tools in the developing world, the LDCs, and in Sub-Saharan Africa.
These private sector partnerships are fundamental for government sector administrators and UN officials to acquire the knowledge necessary for them to evaluate the technologies that they employ and acquire for their organisations.
The private sector has another role too: they can also help scale up commercial opportunities, with governance and policies in place that create shared wealth.
But none of these aspirations can take place unless governments and multilateral organisations invest in media literacy and digital infrastructure. Both within their institutions and in the programs that they roll-out.
Biodiversity
“The Ship Has Reached the Shore” UN Ambassador for Seas, Ms. Rena Lee
High-Drama at the UN as the Treaty of the High-Seas, a Legally Binding Instrument to Protect Marine Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdictions, is Agreed Upon by UN Country Members, Private Sector Actors, Academics and Researchers, and NGOs
There is a very good piece on the New Yorker about it. Link below.
Books
Challenging the Misconceptions of the United Nations: Promoting a Greater Understanding One Blog at a Time, Michael C. Curtin, M.A.
The book is a treasure trove for historians of the UN, it provides insights in the characters and the most intense negotiations of the last decade at the institution.
The compilation of blog posts by Michael C. Curtin, Challenging the Misconceptions of the United Nations examines the narrative on the work and purpose of the United Nations by its detractors, and highlights the positive outcomes that are often drowned by the noise created by those that antagonize the organisation.
Mr. Curtin is an adjunct professor at Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, New Jersey, where he teaches courses in Political Science. He also teaches International Relations at Seton Hall University School of Diplomacy & International Relations, and teaches a course on the United Nations at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
He was a writer and editor at the United Nations Association of the United States of America, Northern New Jersey Chapter, which provided him a platform to write and advocate for the UN. His work was also published by International Policy Digest.
“Over the course of its seventy-five-year history, the world body has had to endure numerous—mostly unfounded—criticisms of the vital work it performs each day. Considering the negative perceptions of the UN, an important question needs to be posed: As the only international organization capable of doing many of the things it does, if it did not exist, what would replace it? No substantive responses follow this query other than its critics stating that it should be abolished. The view that the UN has outlived its usefulness, as some would have you believe, is misguided. Moreover, in an interconnected world, the belief that unilateralism is the approach to take in the twenty-first century is extremely shortsighted.” Michael C. Curtin
Swiss Government
Education in Humanitarian Settings
US$ 826 Million Pledged
Source: ECW
On February 16th world leaders announced over US$826 million to Education Cannot Wait (ECW) to support the education of 222 million girls and boys.
The announcements were made at the ECW High-Level Financing Conference on 16-17 February in Geneva, Switzerland “where 17 donors announced pledges to Education Cannot Wait, including five contributions from new donors – a historic milestone for education in emergencies and protracted crises and ECW”.
Just over one month into the Multilateral Fund’s new 2023-2026 Strategic Plan, these landmark commitments already amount to more than half of the US$1.5 billion required to deliver on the Fund’s four-year Strategic Plan and reach 20 million children and adolescents.
Worldwide, 222 million children impacted by conflict, climate change, forced displacement, and other protracted crises urgently need quality education.
Environment
WTO
Ending Harmful Fisheries’ Subsidies
Switzerland, Seychelles, and Singapore so far ratified the document agreed upon at the last WTO Ministerial Conference, to end harmful subsidies, protect the environment and livelihoods of fishermen, and provide oversight to fishing in the high-seas.
Mark Your Calendars
20 March - Fish Week
27 March - A Week Dedicated to Agriculture
Turkey’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the WTO Alparsian Acarsoy, was appointed the new Chair for the Agriculture committee.
What is the role of the WTO’s Agriculture Committee?
“They have the responsibility of reforming agricultural trade rules and to contribute to ensuring food security for all, the broad objective of the agricultural negotiations is enabling families to put food on the table.” Amb. Alparsian Acarsoy
Higher Education and Trade for LDCs
LDCs in the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference