 A warm welcome to the WISIS Forum 2018. I'm joined today by our WISIS Action Line facilitators who represent different UN agencies and help facilitate the WISIS Action Lines, ensuring the alignment between the WISIS Action Lines and SDGs. The topic for today's discussion is moving towards resilient and sustainable societies. I have here with me today Ms. Sasha Rubel, who represents UNESCO, UNESCO facilitates several WISIS Action Lines hours. And what are the key actions that UNESCO takes in the area of resilient and sustainable societies? Thank you Dutangili. As facilitator of six Action Lines for the WISIS process and co-organizer of the WISIS Forum, UNESCO has really focused on mainstreaming our work in support of ICTs for sustainable development around the four pillars of our concept of knowledge societies. And this with the intention really of centralizing the role of knowledge societies in ensuring sustainable and resilient communities. And this concept of knowledge societies is built around four principal axes. One is freedom of expression, the other is access to information. The third is cultural and linguistic diversity. And the fourth is universal and quality education for all. So when you look concretely at the work that we're doing in facilitating these six Action Lines, they're based around these four pillars and also on our work on ethics of the information society proposing a new concept that UNESCO has developed with our partners on internet universality which is based around the idea that the internet has to be rights-based, open, accessible to all and multi-stakeholder. So our work both at the policy level and the programmatic level both globally and with our field offices around the world is focused in mainstreaming these concepts of knowledge society and internet universality in our work across all fields of the six Action Lines that we coordinate and beyond. Thank you very much, Sasha. In fact, you know, inclusion and access for all is extremely crucial for all the VISTA Action Lines to be implemented. Thank you very much. I have here with me today also the Action Line focal point of C5, Cyber Security. ITU is the lead facilitator of this Action Line. Pritam, can you please share with us some actions that ITU is taking in the area of resilient and sustainable society vis-a-vis Cyber Security. Thank you, Gitanjali. This year is a milestone year for ITU and Cyber Security for several different reasons. First of all, it's, of course, the 20th year of the anniversary for the call for the VISTA Summit. It happened in our Plenty Potentiary Conference in Minneapolis in 1998. It's the 15th year of the Geneva Plan of Action where Action Line C5 was formulated. It's also the 10th year since, you know, as the sole facilitator for Action Line C5, ITU's high-level expert group came out with its landmark report, which also specified, you know, elaborated on the Global Cyber Security Agenda, which is a global framework for action on cybersecurity. It's also the 10th year of the Child Online Protection Initiative, which is an initiative which was launched in 2008 to empower children and protect children online. So under this framework, ITU has had significant activities going on. You know, we obviously, as a UN agency, act as a platform for international dialogue. We also do significant work on capacity-building. You know, for example, establishing national certs, helping countries develop their own national strategies, you know, the Global Cyber Security Index. We also have an entire group working on developing standards for cybersecurity. We have the Child Online Protection Initiative. So it's a, you know, there's a lot of activities happening and we obviously do it while collaborating with a lot of partners. It's a multi-stakeholder initiative. It's a member state. It's a private sector member, civil society, governments. So we have a very rich collaboration going on. Thank you. Thank you, Pritam. You highlighted a crucial point of multi-stakeholder partnerships to enable the success of implementation of any Action Line. I have here with me Mr. Marco Biso. Hi. Hello. Here's the Action Line focal point for C6 and C2, which is ICT infrastructure and enabling environment. Marco, can you please share some, you know, implementation success stories and any action from the ground that's happening in this area in the ITU? Sure. Hello, everyone. Hello, Gitanjali. And as you said, ITU is so facilitated for Action Line C2 and Action Line C6, which from my perspective, from our perspective, are two of the most significant and important Action Lines because they are, let's say, encompasses the underpinning elements of any kind of, let's say, sustainable and resilient society, ICT infrastructure, which is underpinning all the services that nowadays citizens are using, starting from the governments, into education, e-agriculture, and even going into the allocation of the spectrum, which is one of the fundamental elements in order for the citizens to use their, let's say, mobile services, right? And C6 is more related to the regulations, more related to the enabling environment in the sense of putting in place those policy capabilities that any country is in need in order to articulate better how the ICT environment should operate and should work. Now, I'm not going in detail in what the ITU is doing, but there is, of course, a huge amount of work that ITU is undertaking together with the other agencies from the standard-setting part into the, let's say, projects and activities to be rolled on the ground. And we are doing a vast amount of work in facilitating the, let's say, the development of those capabilities. But the main objective that we have, which is linked, of course, to the Sustainable Development Goal, is to actually try to bridge, to, let's say, reduce the digital divide. But still, after all these years of work by ITU and by all the other intergovernmental organizations and the ICT community at large, we still have a massive amount of population which is not connected. We are talking about four billion people. So what we are trying to do is to facilitate those kind of, let's say, process which encompasses the resource mobilization part, investment from private sector, let's say, commitment and engagement of the governments in order to, let's say, raise awareness on the importance of having, let's say, ICT infrastructure in place, enabling environment in place, having in place, let's say, that mindset that would enable governments to understand the importance of the ICT in the, let's say, social and economic ecosystem, if you want. Thank you very much, Marco. In fact, very important action lines for ensuring that the, connecting the disconnected and important to have innovation in ICT infrastructure, but also in ICT policies. Thank you very much, Marco. I have here with me also Ms. Maritza and she helps facilitate the WISIS Action Line C7 on E-Environment. So Maritza, what is the role of disaster management in particular? In building resilient and sustainable societies. Well, thank you, Gitanjali. We all here know that information and communication technologies play a critical role when we talk about disaster management activities and disaster risk reduction. ICTs are key when we talk about preparing for and respond to disasters as well as in monitoring the environment, establishing early warning and monitoring systems. ITU is very much involved in all phases of disaster management. For example, in preparedness, we help countries to establish, develop and design and establish national emergency telecommunication plans and also, for example, providing guidance on countries on finding what risks they are affected by and also analyzing which measures can be taken to reduce vulnerability of the country and also of communities. We have just concluded the establishment of two early warning systems in Sambia, which will help these communities to be more resilient and sustainable. And early warning systems are key and I am going to give or WMO is going to give more information about early warning systems. Thank you very much. Early warning systems and disaster management are crucial for resilient societies. Our last speaker is Neil. He represents the WMO that co-facilitates the WISIS Action Line C7 on E-Environment. Neil, what contribution does WMO make and what is the role of emergency systems in this? Thank you. The World Meteorological Organization is supporting its national meteorological and hydrological services to improve their multi-hazard early warning system capabilities with the ability to bring in new data from monitoring and forecasting systems as well as the way to communicate that information out to the communities in those situations. So in respect to that, it's not just about WMO's role in isolation. We work closely with ITU to get the information into the MET services as well as get the messages out to the community. And so we've developed a, in conjunction with the ITU, a checklist on multi-hazard early warning system implementation which covers disaster risk exposure analysis as well as the forecasting and monitoring of those disasters, the communication out to the community as well as educating and informing the community on how to respond to those disasters. So those checklists are a guide for national institutions as well as global institutions to develop those multi-hazard early warning systems a lot further. Thank you. Thank you very much, Neel. As you can see, the UN family is working as one to ensure that the WISIS action lines play a crucial role in achieving the sustainable development goals. Thank you very much and we look forward to welcoming you next year to the WISIS Forum 2019.