 Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all WSIS stakeholders from all over the world who have joined us to celebrate the final week of the WSIS Forum 2022. We had 11 high-level policy sessions during the WSIS Forum's final week where more than 150 high-levels joined us, more than 40 ministers. We had a very interesting and engaging dialogue with recommendations. And I have here with me today high-level track facilitators who facilitated these sessions. So I'd like to welcome Paul, who moderated one of the sessions and he had a very interesting discussion and some of the key issues that were highlighted, of course, was bridging the digital divide, ICT infrastructure, cybersecurity and so on and so forth. So Paul, could you highlight some of the key recommendations that came out of your session? Yeah, sure. Thank you for the question. So I moderated session 11 which was concerned with the ethics in ICT and the cultural content created on the Internet and also gender mainstreaming. And most of the panelists agreed that currently the ICTs and the Internet are not very welcoming for local content and there needs to be a strong focus on local content creators who actually create in their own languages content for their own people. We need more tools to support translations and the creation of local content and especially also more and better education for these local content creators to raise the digital literacy on this planet. In terms of ethics, it was widely discussed that currently the Internet got more centralized and we have most of current technologies and future technology in the hands of just a few. So there should be a strong focus on decentralizing again the Internet to give back the power to the people who actually use it so they can control their own privacy, their own data and also create this local content which is needed because we need also to empower the users to be the content creators they can be. And of course gender mainstreaming was also a very big topic, especially during the pandemic. The first evidence shows that the harassment against women online actually expansionally grew due to the pandemic and it has severe implications for women online. We need safe spaces for women to participate online, create the content we need also from their side. And we also need to make the predators accountable so we need to find the violence and the crimes they commit to actually prosecute them. And last we also had a vivid discussion about the currently landscape of the media online. Currently journalists are on and offline under attack. There is a lot of miscommunication and misinformation online and it's a big challenge for all governments and organizations on this planet to actually manage the information and actually ensure that the quality of the news media outlets is ensured. Thank you very much Paul. Sounds like a very interesting dialogue. We are working with UNESCO on highlighting the role of ICTs in the decade of indigenous languages so we had a special track this year and a hackathon which involved a lot of innovation from people all over the world. And of course local content creation, the virtual sessions have allowed us to get people to do their workshops in local languages so that has been very, very useful for the WSIS forum as well. So thank you so much Paul. I'd like to move on now to Moira from IEEE and Moira also had a very interesting discussion where there were some really nice case studies which were highlighted, some of the challenges, some emerging trends were expressed by the high levels who were present in the session. Moira, can you share some of your impressions from the session? Yes, thanks potentially and yeah we did have a really interesting session. We had 11 high level speakers so it was a very dynamic session that had a lot of different perspectives. So the session was session number five called ICT applications and services and of course one of the key points is that ICTs really are a key enabler for all other sectors and a lot of vital services that we depend on in our daily lives such as education, healthcare, public services and more. And so ICTs have been a fundamental lifeline for people during the COVID-19 pandemic and with that we heard from some countries that their internet traffic increased by 50% during the pandemic and that they were able to manage that. But so this is really a critical foundation for our societies going forward. Some of the challenges though that were raised are also the continued digital divide and while countries highlighted the progress they've made in connecting the unconnected, there still is a lot of work to be done in that space. As well as digital literacy education, the end users of these services not all have the digital literacy skills that are necessary to be able to navigate and take advantage of the ICTs. So that's a big initiative for a lot of countries. Additionally, the gender gap was mentioned a number of times and several of the countries highlighted key programs that they have to increase the participation of girls and women in STEM, to have mentoring programs, to really help also women enter into the technology sector professionally speaking and to help diversify. So there are a lot of innovative and active programs to help address that. The governments talked about how ICT strategies, government strategies were key governmental priorities and were really helping in having a unified plan. Many governments are working with private sector to make the services available and in that sense they serve as a facilitator and try to bring together all the key stakeholders to facilitate the ICT applications and infrastructures for their societies. So I think overall there was really a vision laid out for how ICTs continue to help society be resilient and to address some of the challenges that still remain and we look forward to continue progress in that. Thank you, Moira. A really interesting discussion where I think some crucial things were highlighted like digital skills. This was also highlighted during the ministerial round table that we had yesterday that there has to be a lot of replication of training, capacity building, for all stakeholders to be included in this digital revolution. So thank you so much, Moira. We move on to Kevin. Kevin also won a WSIS prize yesterday, so congratulations Kevin. Thank you. Thank you. And he moderated a session on which actually covered issues around Action Line C6, enabling environment, a very important one for a safe, robust and inclusive information and knowledge societies to function. So Kevin, what were your main observations? Well, we had a very interesting panel with eight panelists from eight different countries. We had two ministers who were contributing and four from regulatory bodies and a private sector, a global private sector representative and another from a business association, international chamber of commerce. So very interesting different perspectives on the issue of enabling environment. It was a new area for me. I was a learner there as much as a facilitator. What I heard was that a big challenge for an enabling environment is, of course, connectivity and connectivity as multiple dimensions. There's of course the infrastructure. Additionally, though, there's the access and making sure that all people have access to the infrastructure they need and the devices they need. And thirdly is use. Accessibility without useful tools, content is not very helpful, so it has to be value adding services that are available so that people use, make use of the connectivity once they have it. We heard about the importance of a multi-stakeholder partnerships. It's not one, it's not the government alone, it's not any one sector alone. Needs include civil society, private sector and government working together on a framework that they agree to together. Regulation is not a bad word. In this case, in fact, a strong regulatory environment is important, but it needs to be transparent, it needs to be predictable and stable. I heard about the importance of investing in digital literacy and making sure that the education is there for people to be able to use the systems that are available. We also heard about the importance of the opportunities governments have for incentivizing private sector investment in infrastructure. Good example from Malaysia, where a licensing condition for the telecoms was to put money in a fund to allow service to be extended to commercially non-viable areas. We heard about e-government platforms that countries are introducing in Mongolia and others talked about the platforms, and that raised the importance for that to be enabled. As a viable system, it emphasizes the importance of extending access to everybody, making sure that rural areas are well served and that groups that are traditionally less able to access are given more attention. Women, people with disabilities, people in rural areas, the elderly and youth and so forth. Those are some of the themes that came across during the session. Thank you so much, Kevin. We would now like to move on to Ms. Meiling, who moderated the first high-level policy session. Meiling, welcome. Can you please share some of the impressions you had of the session, some of the challenges and opportunities that were expressed over to you? Thank you, Gitanjali. That's all. I'd like to say it was a surprise, because bridging the digital divide, I thought, okay, these are telco regulators and ministers, what are they going to talk about? They'd be talking about access, but no, it was so wonderful. They talked about infrastructure, funding mechanisms. They talked about multi-generations. They talked about multiple stakeholders. This is a far richer interpretation of bridging the digital divide than I ever expected. But then it becomes confusing and complex, because the range of initiatives spans such a broad area. It made me think, how can the ITU, how can the WISIS Action Lines actually set up so that we can help other countries learn from all of these different initiatives because they can't just listen to 60 minutes and kind of work out what to do. So it really triggered some thinking on my part. What's the next step to take these wonderful advances by passionate, committed people to actually be repurposed and recycled for other countries to bridge the digital divide? Thank you so much, Meiling. On that note, we would like to end this interview highlighting the fact that we heard many recommendations. Now it's time for action. So we would like to form a multi-stakeholder WISIS special initiatives which take forward these, like the WISIS gender trendsetters, the ICTs and older persons initiatives, the multi-stakeholder alliance on ICTs and older persons, and so on, so forth. So please be connected and please work with us all year long to make sure that the WISIS Action Lines help achieve the attainment of the sustainable development goals. Thank you.