 Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished colleagues and champions for children everywhere. I'm thrilled to be with you today as the first special envoy for the ITU's Child Online Protection Initiative. It was created under the visionary leadership of the ITU and Secretary-General Hamidun Toure, and it gives me great pleasure here today to contribute to the safer Internet Day 2013, which this year highlights both the importance of online rights and responsibilities in building a safer online environment for our children everywhere. We continue to place great significance on deployment and access and adoption of the Internet throughout the world, and in fact the next billion adoptees will probably be mostly our youth and young people. Today information and communication technologies are the drivers of social and economic progress for us all. Today children and through their high-tech opportunities shine in their inherent creativity, innovation, and expression. However at the same time these dramatic changes associated with the spread of the Internet and technology everywhere also bring new risk to their safety and security, especially for our young children who are among the most vulnerable of our societies. The Child Online Protection Initiative or COP is an international education and empowerment framework for children and young people everywhere. COP provides a platform where collectively working together we can ensure a harmonized and comprehensive approach to some of these issues where we can share our best practices, our research, curriculum in schools, and even tips for parents related to the online protection of children everywhere. We will continue to work closely with our member states in order to ensure that the implementation of national strategies and policies will foster the online rights and responsibilities of stakeholders and above all will address the interests and challenges specifically of our children and youth. We will continue to undertake national case studies as we have already done and to hold regional meetings throughout the world with our COP partners, our brother and sister UN organizations and expand to include education and health ministers and experts throughout the world. As part of these meetings we are thrilled to announce that President Lara Chinchilla of Costa Rica and the ITU will be organizing and hosting the first global youth summit which will provide a global platform to engage youth from all over the world to join forces and create solutions for social good and able through the widespread access to ICTs. This will be a unique occasion for youth everywhere to advocate for their own online rights and demonstrate how this incredible resource is empowering them to fulfill their own dreams and their own careers. I invite policy makers and corporate private leaders alike, nonprofits and families, educators and our youth to help us by supporting our global initiative Child Online Protection to share best practices, research and everyday practical tips for how to ensure that our children utilize every single opportunity available in this new digital age and that we empower them while they're there online to navigate safely and with respect for one another across every single platform to achieve their hopes and dreams. So join us to celebrate Safer Internet Day 2013 realizing that indeed every day our children live in a connected global online world and need our guidance in the online world just as they do in the offline one. These are not only our children they are the future leaders of our nations and of this world. Thank you for your support and all you do for children everywhere.