 Welcome to the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2018, PP18, here in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today by two chairs of committees. They are Samira Bilal and Celina Abdullah who are in fact here on a historic occasion because what we have today is in fact four chairs of committees who are women and it's the first time in the history of ITU, in the history of the plenipotentiary conferences that we have four chairs representing here by women. So I'd like to honour that occasion by talking to you and by starting off by asking you Samira, what does that mean to you? That's mean to me, I'm very proud to be a chair in the highest policy body of the ITU and I would like to thank the Arab region that they elected me to represent them as a chair for this committee. Also I want to thank the Secretary General and all her delegations that they accept my name as a chair for committee too and I hope I'll be helpful and powerful. Great, thank you. And Celina perhaps we can get your impressions on this? You know Max, I've been in this for almost 20 years and I never would have imagined that I would be chairing a committee at the PP in this timeframe. It means a lot to me personally and it means a lot to the Asia Pacific region that we have a woman candidate for a substantive committee. It's difficult for us and whatever committee that you're chairing at the PP it's always going to be difficult, it's not an easy task and for me you might say it might be the highlight of my career. I'm from a developing country and for that reason alone I think it means a lot on all counts. Thank you. Samira, you have risen to a high position in an environment which is primarily dominated by men and I just really wanted to find out were there any particular challenges for you in reaching this position? On opposite it was I have a support from my country department to participate in all events of the ITU. So I'm working for a long time representing my country in all the events of the ITU since 1994 from PP 1944 until now I go through maybe four SG, Secretary of the ITU, Mr Picatariani election, Mr Tsoomi then Mr Hamdontore and now Mr Zahau. So I think it is not a challenge for me to the opposite. It was very support from my country for that. Great. Thank you. Now Selena, we have more women than men at this conference chairing decision making in committees. Do you think that that could have an impact on our digital future? I think it all goes very well for the future and it certainly shows and it displays what the ITU has been working towards. ITU has been championing women and girls in ICT and I think this is the perfect example of showing everyone that it can be done. If it's a flavour of the future probably we'll have to see a 50-50 between maybe this PP, there are four ladies at the next PP, there will be four men. But certainly I think this is the tipping point and from here on onwards I do expect that there will be more women. Thank you. Samira, an aspect of the fact that gender balance and gender mainstreaming is encouraging more women in adopting and taking on careers in technology and adopting ideas that that is a career path that they should choose. How do you think we could encourage more women to take up careers in technology? We should instruct the member states to let the ladies work in the ICT fields and communication and also to let them have a training course in ICT and communications issues so they learn more. I think the ladies will be very helpful if they participate fully in the ICTs field. About four in ten delegates at this Penny Potentiary Conference of Women, what do you think could be done to increase the participation of women delegates? Probably everyone would have to make an effort in allowing women to hold higher positions internally first or domestically first and from there they would be able to find their way to global conferences. So we're terribly encouraged, I think four out of ten is good and hopefully that figure will be higher at the next PP. Great, and a final word from you? For me, I feel that ITU, the Resolution 17 now is active. As we see that there is equality between the gender or maybe we can see the ladies has more position than the men now in this high policy body of ITU. And Selina? Coincidentally Resolution 70 has been dealt with in my group and we have a very optimistic stand. We hope that it will actually be the first resolution to be dealt with in the WGPL. So I would like to thank you and thank the ITU for this opportunity. I think it's excellent that I have this opportunity to be with three other strong women and I look forward to the future. We'll be catching up with the other two chairs later on as well in our series of interviews. But thank you for joining us today and we look forward to catching up with you again in the future soon. Thank you.