 Good morning to WISIS stakeholders from the ITU headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. We welcome you all to the WISIS Forum 2017 and hope you are participating on site or following us remotely today. I'm here with all the WISIS Action Line facilitators. These are the UN agencies that are facilitating the WISIS Action Lines. The topic of this interview is promoting prosperity and eradicating poverty. This is also the topic of the HLPF this year. We have also produced a publication that highlights on the key messages and links the different WISIS Action Lines with this topic. I have here with me today Ms. Sophie from the International Telecommunication Union. She is the Action Line facilitator for Enabling Environment Action Line C6. Hello Sophie. What role do enabling environments play in eradicating poverty and promoting prosperity? Well good morning Gitanjali. Thank you for inviting me to this session. So eradicating poverty and the enabling environment. Today we see ICTs really being recognized as an enabler for economic and social development. We see how ICTs provide opportunities for all individuals around the world but for that we need the enabling environment. We need to ensure that these ICTs can develop in a way that there is solid reliable infrastructure to many people around the world but that also that users know how to use the ICTs and that there is trust in the network services applications and the content and that is what the enabling environment does. We create that framework so that there can be the connectivity the use and the trust so more than ever especially since it's cutting across the sectors it's important today. Thank you Sophie. We are now moving to Deniz who is the Action Line facilitator for C1, C11E government and C11. These action lines are facilitated by UN DESA. Deniz how crucial is it to include this linkage and to highlight this linkage between ICTs and SDGs in the national development plans? Thank you Gitanjali. So as you mentioned ICTs are cross cutting enablers for all the development plans and also you mentioned that high-level political problem is taking place in July in New York so what we are trying to do is integrating these strategies in national development plans and international development plans. Last year 22 countries presented their development plans in high-level political forum. Unfortunately we haven't seen much of ICTs in their development plans so what we are trying to do here this week is raise awareness about linkages between e-strategies and national development plans. Thank you very much Deniz and I am sure digital skills are a key component of e-strategies and definitely they should be a component of the national development plans. I have here with me with Miss Susan Shaw from the International Telecommunication Union. She is the facilitator for WISIS Action Line E-Employment. This is co-facilitated by ILO and ITU. Susan how can digital skills be used to further the employment skills of the EU? Thank you very much Gitanjali. So yesterday during the WISIS opening ceremony we heard from the ILO Deputy Director General who launched a new campaign called Digital Skills for Decent Jobs for Youth and this campaign seeks to mobilize investments in digital skills development to train five million youth worldwide with job-ready digital skills. This is necessary because what we see from the employer side is there will be at least 10 million jobs that will go unfilled between now and 2030 unless employers can find people with digital skills. So if we can equip youth with digital skills we can help eradicate their poverty and promote prosperity. Thank you very much. Thank you Susan. We have here with us Scarlett from Unktad. Unktad is co-facilitating the Action Line E-Business with UPU and ITC and this year digital trade has emerged as a very important topic and Scarlett may I pose you this question that how does digital trade actually have an impact on promoting prosperity and eradicating poverty. Thank you Gitanjali. Yes digital trade has emerged as a main topic for this WISIS forum but I would like to point out that it's also in other international fora. There is a momentum in discussing digital trade at the World Trade Organization among the G20 countries and digital trade can certainly contribute to very specific goals and targets to empower women entrepreneurs by giving equal access to ICTs, by helping build up ICT infrastructure and services that support innovation and also inside of Call 17 there is a target to expand the exports of these developed countries and considering all the obstacles that they face or particular circumstances they face definitely electronic commerce and digital trade has the potential to help them reach global markets and global value chains. Thank you Scarlett and to enable this building capacities in ICTs is extremely crucial. We have here with us today Ms Susan Telsher and she is representing the Action Line on capacity building Action Line C4. Susan what role does capacity building or building capacities of people and nations in ICTs have in promoting prosperity and eradicating poverty? Thank you Gitanjali and building capacities on ICT is preconditioned to have any impact of the use and access of ICTs. If people are not skilled and knowledgeable to use the ICTs effectively and efficiently there will be no impact in terms of development and growth. For example if you ask people in low income countries and low income households of why they are not using ICTs and internet it is often not because they are not available or they cannot afford it because it's often because they don't know how to use them best for their own benefits and that's very very important especially if we want to achieve the SDGs of reaching everybody and leaving no one behind and in addition to create prosperity and reduce poverty ICTs are very important for economic growth which leads to poverty reduction but if you have a business sector that is not able to use ICTs in their business processes or to create innovation it is very difficult to achieve growth and all that requires a skilled workforce and enabling environment so we also have to build capacities of the policymakers in order to allow this to happen and to lead to prosperity and growth in the countries. Thank you Susan it is also very crucial to educate people on the importance of EE waste, of EE environment and of being conscious of the carbon footprints that ICTs can leave. I'm here today with WMO, UNEP and ITU who are the action line facilitators for the action line on EE environment. Omar is from WMO and I'd like to ask him Omar what role does education in climate change play in reducing in generating awareness to reduce poverty and to promote prosperity? Thank you Jitan Jali as you know climate change is one of the biggest threats that human are facing today and rising awareness among people decision makers as well as experts is very important about climate change. For example monitoring extreme events and climate hazards is important and those extreme events and hazards are actually responsible for more than 70% of people casualties. So from education to expert level we need education and we need tools such as ICT tools and in this regard actually we promote the use of ICT to reach out the most of the people in the world. Thank you Omar being conscious of EE waste is very very important and it's an important contribution for all of us to our planet. I have here with me Ms. Francesca from UNEP who focuses on the EE waste component of EE environment. Francesca what role does EE waste play in this entire process of EE environment? Thank you the sound management of EE waste is very important and it is important because it avoids the exposure of children and women to toxic chemicals and it avoids pollution which can stay in the environment for a long time and to to reach environmentally sound management and to arrive to establishment of green jobs and jobs we can which can create opportunities in developing countries it is important that all the stakeholders take responsibility on it so the ministries the private sector the civil society they all have to play a role and for example the ministries can set policies to have a level playing field for example private sector ICT producers or retailers can set up take back systems and civil society can raise awareness of EE waste and support take back systems and all this can lead the country to prosperity because of the new jobs that can be created in the recycling sector jobs which will contribute because this will be in the recycling sector also to reducing GHG emissions to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. Thank you Francesca you highlighted on the important point of collaboration and partnership and we can see the dedication from three UN agencies on this topic and we wish you the very best. Hello Orhan. Orhan is the facilitator of Action Line EE environment from the international telecommunication union and Orhan what role is the ITU playing in the area of EE environment to eradicate poverty and to promote prosperity. So basically I would like to say that ITU does quite a lot of echoing what our colleagues in WMO and UNEP do but as well on top of that we we do initiatives like we are trying to promote the presence of of environmental issues in the ICT policies. So basically we want our stakeholders to be aware that we can use ICTs but we have to be prudent in using it we have to be careful and also it's it's important what we do at our level that ICTs can bring the message to the individuals. So once you have the message on environment to individuals then policy stakeholders are those individuals who can basically make those right decisions and so on. Thank you. Thank you Orhan. It is my great pleasure to have Ms. Hu from UNESCO. She is the Action Line facilitator of C9 media. Ms. Hu what role does media play? Of course media should have a very important role in promoting awareness as all of them said promotion of awareness is extremely crucial for all the different action lines. What role does media play in this? Thank you. Thank you for this very interesting question. Actually media I mean all forms on all platforms whether traditional whether it's digital they really play a such an important role in engaging citizens in raising awareness as you said and also to help with the access to information and the knowledge which are so important to help every society to eradicate poverty and solve the issues in the development and that's why we are really promoting this media's role and enhancing the role to contribute to the SDGs but we have also recognized I mean the digital environment is changing so fast it also pose so many challenges to do this for example the issues of privacy which didn't exist so much in the before 2015 but now it became one of major challenges to deal with the new media internet government that's why this year Action Line C9 we are really focusing on this new challenge of privacy how we can protect the media freedom in terms of also protecting a source protecting a privacy of the citizens I mean these two rights they are so important and interdependent in digital environment if there are no privacy and no free expression no media freedom so that's why we are trying to protect the both rights which also correctly highlighted in the outcome document of WSS review I mean in the post 2015 to advance all human rights online offline is a priority area to support the media's role to contribute to the SDGs thank you miss Hu without in fact without proper ICT infrastructure none of the Action Lines can be implemented properly and none of the ICT projects would be as successful we have here with us Mr Desiree who is the Action Line facilitator for C2 ICT infrastructure and I'd like to ask him you know infrastructure has such a crucial role to play so what is your most important message to ensure that ICT infrastructure plays this important role in eradicating poverty and promoting prosperity thank you for this question yes indeed infrastructure is crucial in order to reduce poverty the key message for ITU to our member states particularly regarding the developing countries is to build on the infrastructure first of all the broadband infrastructure as the rest can continue for instance building broadband infrastructure using wireless technologies where we are focusing on connecting schools and hospitals so that in rural areas so that people can really enjoy the usage of the ICTs in particular I would mention that ITU in particular we are we have developed new standards on optical cables that are really changing the lives and connecting people using this kind of broadband networks at a very cheap very cheap price it's very interesting and we can continue working on that and it will allow people to have for instance mobile payment facilitating trade in rural areas and this really will lead to poverty reduction thank you thank you Desiree and the topics you touched upon in fact are also crucial for gender empowerment and gender mainstreaming I'm very happy to note that so many of our action line facilitators are women and we have the opportunity to introduce you to miss Verona from UN women gender mainstreaming is a cross-cutting action action in all the different action lines and I'd like to ask you Verona what role does gender mainstreaming in ICTs play and how can this help achieve the sustainable development goals thank you Jitanjali and I'm really very pleased that gender mainstreaming has been mandated by the WISIS review outcome document and I think it's appropriate because the sustainable development goals also emphasize the critical or indispensability of gender equality and women's empowerment in the achievement of all the sustainable development goals so in fact besides having a sustainable development goal on gender equality and women's empowerment gender equality indicators are also cut across the different SDGs including a target on enhancing technologies and including informations and communications technology to empower women and girls gender mainstreaming in digital in in ICTs is very important because we know that the that girls are still that women and girls are still very much behind in terms of access to ICTs usage knowledge of ICT technologies and we've heard in the opening high level opening yesterday that the jobs 90 percent of the new jobs will be in in this area and so it's really important for all of us here on the action line facilitators and we appreciate it very much to take ownership of bringing in gender equality and women's empowerment into the areas of work relating to ICT developments and I'm very pleased that I'm here today and that I I hope that we will continue to collaborate we're here in partnership with all of you thank you thank you very much Verona my last panelist is Mr Yaroslav Ponder he represents the ITU WISIS team who is coordinating the WISIS process we are making several efforts Yaroslav we have the ITU and SDG WISIS matrix we have the yearly publications which highlight the focus of SDGs and ICTs what is our vision and what are we planning to do in the coming years to ensure this crucial linkage between WISIS and SDG processes? Good morning Guitangeli I think today already this interview is the demonstration how the UN family is working together united to strengthen the one UN delivery and our objective now through the WISIS action line framework is to ensure that we are applying the WISIS action line framework as the foundation for the advancing achievement of the SDGs this is the reason why the WISIS SDG matrix became so crucial and in the central point of any discussions in the field of the ICTs for SDGs because this provides for us the clarity what we should do and how we should build also the partnerships leading towards the implementations the one point very important development since 2015 is also the action at the regional level and this is something what we are experiencing since 2015 observing that we are connecting the dots at the regional level with the one aim to strengthen the implementation at the national level and the regional level making sure that all relevant stakeholders including private sector and civil society technical community and the other stakeholders are working together to make the world better by 2030. Thank you Yaroslav indeed this collaboration the one UN framework and the regional connecting the dots at the regional level this interview was a live display of how we as the UN are working together with all the different multi stakeholders all across the world at the national regional and international level to ensure that we contribute to our best in enabling ICTs to play a huge role in advancing the sustainable development goals we thank you very much for following us and we hope that you will enjoy the rest of the Vices forum 2017 thank you very much