 Welcome to the World Summit on the Information Society 2016 in Geneva, Switzerland, and I'm delighted to be joined by Dr Salma Abassi, Chairman and CEO of E-Worldwide Group. Dr Abassi, there's been a lot of talk here about bridging the digital divide. You're in one of the high-level sessions on this session this morning. What struck you? I think one of the most important things is for us to recognize that the digital divide actually is not just a bridge, it's very complicated. And the digital divide that exists is actually broadening, not just in the least developed countries, but also in developed countries. I have the opportunity living in the UAE, London and Nigeria. And I see this occurring everywhere. In the UK we are leaving behind the elderly people, people with special needs. And I think governments have to look internally before saying this needs to be done in developed countries. But when you look at the developing countries, the least developed countries, the situation is very complicated because you have the literacy divide, urban and rural divide. And then in the context of gender, the women are also at a greater disadvantage. And then you add to that, it's compounded with people with disabilities and the elderly. So it's very complicated and governments need to recognize that the divide is multi-dimensional. It's not just a simple bridge of connectivity, but all of these other aspects have to holistically be viewed. And of course we're hearing a lot about the fact that we've got targets and actions for bridging the divide, which as you say is very complex and needs to be seen holistically. I mean, do you think that we now need to move to a more action-orientated phase? Absolutely, absolutely. If I may say yesterday in the opening session, I heard a few very high-level people saying, now is time for action. And I had to say, oh my goodness me, what are they talking about? For the last 15 years, all the countries have been focusing at the men in development goals, by the way, which we missed a great deal of. And then now we have the 17 goals, sustainability development goals. So it's not an excuse to say now we'll roll up our sleeves and move. It's what wasn't working. Why did we not meet the previous targets and actually look down, drill down and actually work bottoms up? I think the high-level discussions are excellent. But let's come down to actually sharing at this platform some case studies of what's worked, giving time to showcase lessons learned, good and bad, so that countries can actually fast-track action on ground and save lives really. The other theme that's being discussed today here is cyber security. And there's a link with the digital economy. It's not just about technology, but it actually could be an opportunity to create jobs. Absolutely. First of all, in the context of cyber security, many governments are yet to create cyber security policies and people always basically deflect it to the IT people. That's incorrect. They don't understand that cyber security is in everything that we do and everybody is responsible for cyber security. Cyber security is actually as strong as the weakest link. Yesterday in the paper, the front page of the International Heritage Tribune was Bangladesh, cyber heist. Why? Because people in Bangladesh act basically hacked into the switch and they were able to do multi-million pound fraud. So to me, I think people have to realize that cyber security and the digital economy go hand in hand. We can't be afraid of doing financial transactions. I myself do not like to do anything online. Absolutely not. I don't feel confident anybody has correctly managed my private identity. And I'm old school. However, we're going to increase confidence and trust in the system. We need to be able to do some robust policies that are again all the way through the supply chain linked and monitored for effectiveness. In addition to that, I think a great opportunity is being missed for job creation in this space because in the Arab Spring, a lot of the issues were blamed Facebook, connecting everybody through social media to mobilize the youth, disenfranchise youth. So if the governments in Africa and the Middle East look at the digital economy, stand back and look at it, not as IT experts, but holistically in the ecosystem, you need everybody. You need people to work in call centers. You need people to actually deliver services and deliver products, etc. So when governments look at the human resource development plans, they should look comprehensively at the whole spectrum of what their capabilities are with their youth, their women, people, disabilities. They have to offer everything. So if they stand back, they can actually constructively engage people with different things to offer. People are assets. It's just how we look at them. I think that's very interesting because I was talking to somebody here yesterday who was saying exactly what you're saying, that cybersecurity is always seen as the domain of the techies. Actually, it should be fast-tracked to the C-level, to the C-suite, because it's all about the survival of their companies. Absolutely. Survivability. I mean, yesterday I was also talking to a gentleman who was saying that, you know, fraud, I think it was talk-talk, an issue that happened within talk-talk. You lose... See, trust is something like paper. Once you tear it and you've broken trust, you can never regain it. There will always be that thought in the back of the mind that something is wrong. So I think that rather than looking at cybersecurity as something complicated, there's more awareness that is required by government to show people that we are living in this digital space and cybersecurity are interlinked. It doesn't matter whether you're a bank doing transaction or whether you're a woman at home looking at your children's Facebook page, who are they communicating with. It is all integrated. So it's part of our life. You can't separate the two. And interestingly, of course, when you're talking about being very practical, one of the big concerns here, cybersecurity, of course, can be seen as positive, creating jobs, but there's a lot of concern about the misuse of cybersecurity, pedophilia, and all of the people who are abusing it. And you've come up with some very practical guidelines and criteria for protecting children. Absolutely. As a member of the H-Leg, the original high-level expert group in cybersecurity, and as a woman who lives in the UK, I mentioned to the Secretary-General then, Hamidun Tore, that what about children? And he said, Selma, come up with a concept. So sitting in England where you have terrorism, brainwashing online, you have pedophiles, you have human trafficking, we came up with a concept called Child Online Protection, which was awareness of the children, awareness of the teachers, and the community and, of course, the parents and the mothers in particular. This program, I think it was in 2006, it was adopted by Ratified at the UN, and now it's a global program, and many countries have worked on this. A couple of years ago, we wrote the National Policy for Nigeria. Now, working with UNESCO, we created another program called GECA, Global Cyber Ambassadors of Peace, and we launched this in the UK in schools near Canary Wharf, and it was really getting children to talk to each other, sharing peer-to-peer communication. Children never listen to us. They listen to each other. They learn lessons through cartoons, through videos, all sorts of interesting ways, not like we do. So we have to change the way we drive awareness because children will always do what you stop them to do, and children are trusting. So we have the issue of trusting that this person is really a six-year-old that I'm talking to, even though you're not allowed to be on Facebook if you're six, people click and lie about the age as you know, but then they also have to be able to have the critical thinking and ability to differentiate between misinformation, because that's the other thing that is happening in the digital open society that we're in. People are posting rubbish, and they could be saying anything awful, and you will just believe it. Dr. Salma Abassi, we could spend many more minutes talking about these issues, bridging the digital divide and cyber security, but thank you very much for your time. Dr. Salma Abassi, chairperson and CEO of the E-Worldwide Group, and please do tune into the ITU YouTube channel where you can see that interview and many other interviews about the impact that information and communication technology is having on the lives of people all around the world.