 It's wonderful to see you all again. I hope this finds you all in you and your families in in good health Welcome to the fifth and last in our series on COVID and digital technologies we've had very good debates on security and misinformation and on connectivity which are other major challenges that have been brought in stark relief to the fore by COVID. They predated obviously the COVID outbreak, but they have been put under a magnifying glass given the importance digital connectivity has had in continuing work study and our social lives under under COVID Today we talk about another major challenge and that is of digital and human rights and of course I think at the outset we before we talk about some of the challenges we have to emphasize The many advantages. It is thanks to digital. We still enjoy a right to health It is thanks to digital that we can still enjoy a right to education That is those of us who are connected. So there's no question that Digital has been a great enabler of our rights first and foremost For those of us who have the privilege of connectivity in this pandemic Having said that it has also led to some challenges One is and we spoke about that last time the prevalence of discriminatory speech and misinformation and child harms and other forms of abuse on on the web That is not new, but the internet has allowed it to proliferate on a scale That has not been seen before And I think we all agree that the moderation of platforms has been lacking in in that respect But the other side of it is also surveillance and again here Digital tracking of cases has been critical to governments and I'm sure we'll hear more from this from the very distinguished our minister of Korea, but digital tracking has been absolutely key to allow for Governments to keep people safe at the same time That that same capacity can also be used in ways that are intrusive Can also be in ways are used where where data is not anonymized and where privacy Is invaded and there are examples of of that In other countries and also there are concerns More broadly that some of the digital surveillance tools that have been adopted On an extraordinary basis and often in a justified manner will be continued In times when the justification ceases So that is is one Area I wanted to flag. I'm sure in in the in the discussion other areas Will also be flagged the whole issue not only about access to people's data and movements is a critical human rights concern that has been highlighted in this domain, but another as I alluded to is also the issue of content and appropriate content Where is the boundary between allowing freedom of speech on the internet and on the other hand curtailing misinformation that can often be deadly if if if taken seriously and curtailing also hate speech which likewise can be deadly If not adequately dealt with so those are some of the human rights issues that will come up That I think will explore more deeply today I Think if nothing else this highlights once again the need for better cooperation Across stakeholder groups governments industry civil society and across borders by definition these technologies Like covert itself does not recognize Borders and if we had to come up with adequate policy guidelines with adequate approaches That deal Up to the complexity of the issues we need much better cooperation between stakeholder groups as well as between states And that's the underlying impetus of these discussions We're very glad to be able to do this with our distinguished partners ITU Who've been in this business? for over a hundred and fifty years and in particular I'm very glad to do it with my my dear colleague at my colleague and friend Doreen Bogdan We're also very like in other we've been blessed with some extraordinary speakers I don't think it's a coincidence that many of them have been very distinguished women and once again today We have a very distinguished keynote Speacher speaker and that is a her ecstasy Joakim the Minister for an affairs of the Republic of Korea Who I had the privilege of working under in different capacities and to It's an extraordinary mentor And leader and I say that from firsthand experience. So with that Doreen over to you Thank you so much Fabrito and and actually on Sunday, it will be the ITU's birthday will be a 155 years old on Sunday So really nice to see everyone today. Good afternoon. Good evening and good morning and Big thanks for joining this fifth and final webinar in this series When Fabrito and I first discussed the idea of holding these dialogues I don't think we were entirely sure how well they would work We were breaking new ground in attempting to convene real-time High-level panel discussions with Q&A's with participants from all over the world And I think the experience has actually been a sort of revelation although We weren't able to do it in all six UN languages and I think that's an area we can we can hope to tackle in the future and we've Been able to really have rich and very interactive discussions and I personally learned so much from all of you And and Fabrito as you were saying, you know, it's thanks to digital It's really thanks to digital that we that we're here and that we've been able to have these discussions So in the past four weeks as Fabrito was noting we have taken a deep dive into some of the most urgent issues that the COVID-19 pandemic has raised in the context of digital cooperation So in weeks one and two as he noted We tackled national connectivity assessments. We looked at best practices for keeping networks resilience And also for extending their reach to most in need in week three We came to grips with misinformation and the real thread of fake news And of course last week looking at strategies to stem the rising tide of COVID Related cybercrime and also the need to focus more than ever on on keeping children safe online This week's discussion on public health and human rights are really just as timely the COVID crisis has demonstrated how Increasingly critical digital technologies are for for public health and of course playing a vital role in monitoring In disease control and of course in in medical research But at the same time the use of digital technologies is raising real concerns Fabricio noted of course the need to protect privacy Also to ensure accessibility and inclusiveness to enable interoperability between apps and systems We've heard last week that cyber security has become a major issue for health providers With targeted attacks on hospitals also research institutions And the current situation is also forcing us to rethink the role of tech in the governance of public health authorities The health sector is a highly complex environment and many of you know that far better than I From a technology perspective We need to factor in the vast network comprising the very latest cutting-edge systems Meshed with legacy equipment and also software that may be decades old We also need to factor in the problem of silos Which prevent the effective information sharing across different departments hospitals countries and of course considering privacy issues of extreme Sensitivity and we need to help clinics and hospitals and countries where resources are highly constrained To find ways to better leverage the enormous transformational power Of digital to bring the best health care possible to local people and communities And as always the need for multi stakeholder cooperation is absolutely crucial For us in this dialogue and in the previous every actor and I stress every actor In the digital ecosystem has an important role to play Whether it's an ICT regulator that's ensuring network resilience and availability to the mobile operator that can promote inclusive safe access To critical health apps to the infrastructure providers that can work on ways to assure seamless connectivity across systems and between institutions And write down to the governments that can ensure that the right privacy frameworks are in place While of course at the same time promoting responsible information exchange between institutions ministries their own countries and across national frontiers And this session is not just about using digital technologies for for public health But of course also about human rights and we must ensure always that our efforts to advance Digital solutions never impact on citizens fundamental rights and freedoms And the way that we implement and use digital technologies to promote public health Must remain compliant with the rule of law and it must respect an agreed set of core ethical values Privacy and data protection are power mount And really in our scramble to respond to this unprecedented global threat I think we really must also not lose sight of the need to protect hard-won rights because if If during this period of pandemic we push them aside It will prove very hard to to retrieve them once the immediate crisis is over And so with that ladies and gentlemen, I'm sure that you like me are impatient to hear from our stellar lineup of expert panelists And and with that if I may I would like to hand the floor over to our Incredible very capable moderator for today's session And that is Peggy Hicks the director of thematic engagement Special procedures and the rights to development at the office of the high commissioner for human rights Peggy the floor is yours. Thank you Thank you so much Doreen. It's wonderful to see you and appreciate you and thank you to the ITU and the special advisors office for this Amazing panel. I have to start out by saying that I'm very Impressed by your ability to save the best for last So you you put the public health and human rights discussion exactly where where it should be and we're very much looking forward to hearing the panel It's as you said a very diverse and talented group And they're going to speak to one of the most important as I said But also one of the most challenging issues for us to To really swear these issues of new technologies and the challenges in public health Both you and Fabrizio have introduced the subject of of all the many dimensions of this issue that we're currently facing So I won't repeat that but to just make two introductory points to help frame the discussion I think one of the things we often hear when we hear about public health and human rights is the The need for a trade-off or or how do we balance public health and and human rights? I wanted to start off just by by encouraging all of us to think about that as perhaps the one question That we really need to look at how these two things go hand in hand and how they reinforce each other So one of the things that we stress often is that effective public health responses Need to be grounded in human rights if they will secure public trust and therefore be as effective as we need them to be for example So the second point I'd like to make is simply that in doing that we need to really look at What it means to best leverage the potential of these new digital technologies And in our view effectively leveraging these technologies means that we need to find ways to design and deploy them That is consistent with and building in from outside human rights So even in an emergency we need to find ways to do human rights impact assessments, for example Particularly as the measures that are being deployed quickly It's all the more important that we look at how we build in transparency and oversight and how we can learn and adapt From mistakes that will and have been made as we move forward in these different areas So without further ado, I would like to move forward to this Wonderful group of panelists that you've assembled for us today Fabrizio has already said that we are incredibly fortunate to have with us The her excellency can what can the foreign minister of the Republic of Korea We know her best as the former deputy high commissioner for human rights So she she is unaccelerated in her ability to speak to this important topic We of course have also watched with interest Korea's personal experience with this pandemic and its ability to effectively flatten the curve So we're very much looking forward to hearing from you minister kang Could you please share with us your views and the experience of Korea and how you see that? Digital technologies can be used to prevent the spread of the disease moving forward. Thank you Well, thank you very much. I'm so happy to be joining all of you at the end of a very long And busy day, but excited and energized as ever It's wonderful to see some old friends on the on the video screen Fabrizio Pegi certainly, but also Doreen, thank you for the invitation And I do hope that many of my other former colleagues and friends in the un are tuned in Hello to everybody. It's uh, it's um, it's wonderful to be back in the crowd I think the cobit 19 has certainly plunged the world into a crisis that is unprecedented in its scope and depth And today even the top as a toll has reached more than 4.1 million confirmed cases and nearly 290,000 deaths around the world. There is still much That we don't know about this new virus But one thing we do know that it spreads very fast It is also very stealthy In that those without symptoms can spread the virus to others But in the fight against this pandemic We have at our disposal tools that we didn't have in the past And that is the many facets of the digital technology Which has brought great speed to our response to cobit 19 Indeed speed is vital in getting a handle on cobit 19 In particular the faster we identify those who have been in close contact with confirmed cases The faster it is to get them tested Isolated and prevented from passing the virus to others And digital technology enables us to gather analyze share and disseminate vast amounts of information with great speed And so in many countries including korea digital tracing has indeed been an invaluable tool In containing or slowing down cobit 19 And frankly without it it would have been nearly impossible in korea to preserve the free movement of people While fighting the fast spreading virus But as you have all pointed out the same technology that allows fast and precise Contact tracing can have adverse effects. There are legitimate concerns that the information so collected Can be detrimental to the privacy of the patients and those being traced They could end up in the wrong hands Are and they could be used by authoritarian governments to restrict individual freedoms and rights In my country the response to cobit 19 has evolved and adapted to the changing nature of the spread over the past three months And at every stage we have really grappled with the human rights implications of our measures We have carried out the three t's that is testing tracing and treatment Which are the key pillars of any infectious disease control with unwavering commitment to openness transparency and civic participation Openness to keep borders open to keep society open and preserve the free movement of people Transparency that is full disclosure about what we know and what we don't know Of the fast spreading disease and our government action against it and civic participation That is fully informing and advising the public and trusting them To protect themselves and others by taking the necessary measures in social distancing Rather than imposing mandatory restrictions such as lockdowns and travel bans The legal framework for the contact tracing methods was established in the aftermath of the mayor's outbreak in 2015 We amended the infectious disease control prevention act to allow health authorities To collect data on persons infected or likely to be infected such as credit card transaction history cctv footage And gps information and also to ensure the public's right to know Putting the law into practice in response to covet 19 gave rise to concerns that the information released to the public may be overly specific And detrimental to the privacy of the patients and so to address these concerns The korea center for disease control and prevention Laid out specific guidelines on the time frame and scope of publicly accessible anonymized information And now we are working in collaboration with local administrations and the korea communications commission to remove Expired contact movement information from the social media private websites and privately developed applications We have of course also developed an online platform Integrating all the data and movements of those tested positive And this has shortened the time required to map out the trajectory of each positive case From 24 hours to just under one hour And recently just as we entered the next more relaxed phase of social distancing We have encountered a new outbreak in infections In the aftermath of the consecutive public holidays from 30 april to 5 may The daily number of new infections spiked again to double digits Due to great group infections centered around some night clubs in the district and so And new infections traced back to the clubs are being found all over the country not just in south So our testing tracing and treatment regiments have quickly ramped up to contain this new outbreak But this has been particularly challenging for a number of reasons The clubs are crowded places where people come into close contact with lots of strangers The customers are largely young people who are very mobile And young people with the virus tend to have light or no symptoms And may be spreading the disease without even knowing that they are carriers of the virus And furthermore the new outbreak has brought to the fore deep-seated prejudices and even hatred against sexual minorities Sadly sexual minorities still remain in the margins of society and have yet to fully and openly enjoy their rights Some of the clubs where the group infections took place are gay bars And fear mongers on the social media have been propagating homophobic messages Fueling the reluctance of sexual minorities to join in the government's testing and tracing efforts We know that club hopping young adults are generally shy of revealing their nighttime activities to begin with and add to this the messages of hatred on the social media And that then the task of tracing the thousands of people who would presumably Have come into contact with the confirmed cases have been made especially challenging But I am confident that this upward curve will be brought under control very soon Under the circumstances while countering the hatred and fear with facts and messages of tolerance The government has changed policy to offer free Anonymous testing Accompanied by questions that relate only to movement So that sexual minorities and others who are reluctant to reveal their identities can feel safe In visiting the testing stations And indeed after the policy change the number of people coming to get tested has soared I think crises have a tendency to highlight the weakest links in the social fabric of communities that get by just under the radar for one reason or another For korea some of these have been secretive religious congregations undocumented foreigners and sexual minorities But crises are also opportunities to strengthen these links And I do hope that one of the legacies of cobit 19 in korea Will be strengthened protection and promotion of the rights of sexual minorities And other vulnerable groups so that they may become active and equal members in society I think korea's response to cobit 19 has been widely praised as a model for other open democracies to follow And we take that with great humility and I say without hesitation that the key has been trust The trust of the public that the government is trying its best and working very hard to protect them We have won this trust with full transparency Full disclosure even when we were bungling for example over the persistent shortage of facial masks And I don't think we can do any less vis-a-vis a highly demanding and vociferous public And a very energetic civil society So as government we thank the people because the people keep us on our toes and constantly drive us to do better The use of our advanced digital tools has certainly been instrumental But they alone would not have won the trust of the public In the end technology is only as good or bad as the use they are put to We have put digital tools to good use in the service of the people in fighting cobit 19 And that's how trust has been won I think we all know that multilateralism was challenged even before cobit 19 And as countries closed down and turned insular for the immediate goal of containing the virus within their borders Reviving multilateralism seems even more of an uphill battle But the virus knows no borders even closed borders cannot stop their infiltration We know that no country will be safe until all countries are safely protected from the virus And this will not happen without concerted global coordination and collaboration around multilateral institutions Whether in sharing experience and knowledge Assisting the most vulnerable countries and developing treatments and vaccines And as one of the first countries hit by cobit 19 Korea is ready to share and learn in all of these aspects And we hope to be a trusted partner actively supporting and participating in the efforts of the united nations and the WHO as well as the many other multilateral initiatives to overcome cobit 19 And strengthen our preparedness for the next global crisis health or otherwise. Thank you very much Thank you very much holster kang what a what a wonderful start to our series here I think you've you've actually answered many of the questions that I would ask and follow up and given time I don't think we'll we'll delve further But it was very good to hear you talk about the way that Korea has adapted its responses in light of this this new uptick and and the ways in which We need to be sensitive to some of the issues that are being exposed within our societies Due to this crisis and as you said to really learn from them and and hopefully to find ways to Make ourselves stronger and better going forward on on some of these areas of concern I should note for our participants that the minister has to leave our conversation fairly soon But we will now quickly move on to our next participant. Thank you minister kang The next speaker today. It will be dunya mayata bitch who is the council of europe's commissioner for human rights. We're very fortunate to have her with us And I will Note that each of our speakers Has four minutes to proceed Commissioner mayata bitch We wanted to hear from you how digital technologies can be used to prevent the spread of the virus while protecting human rights How how do we bring these together? Most successfully over to you dunya Thank you. Thank you. Peggy. I'm very happy to be with you today to discuss such a Topical issue the covet 19 pandemic has brought increased scrutiny on the intersection between digital technologies and human rights and I could not agree more with your Statement during the introduction when you mentioned the importance of not trying to balance but actually trying to make sure that The issues related to human rights and access to health Are intertwined interconnected So I think a democracy does not have to sacrifice privacy to protect health Privacy and other rights. I would say and governments. They must find the right balance between these two imperatives Or to find the best possible way to make it really Intertwined interconnected As I have stated recently in an opinion editorial That was published In a news outlet of several member states of the council of europe The health imperative must not become a carte blanche to snoop on people's lives Therefore digital technologies or tools should only be used If and as long as they fully respect the right to privacy and human rights safeguards protecting personal data The council of europe has developed a variety of standards in this field Especially the case law of the european court of human rights and the data protection Convention better known as a convention 108 And these standards offer some flexibility. I would say to adapt to difficult circumstances such as those We are currently confronted with and I was really happy to see how much Emphasis the minister put into multilateralism and importance of the work of the international Organizations and also fabrizio was mentioning a need for all of us to have more joint voices when attacking Tackling these issues Strong privacy and data protection safeguards must remain in place and according to the european court of human rights case law states Can collect we also have to be very much Realistic when we discuss this issue so states can collect use and store sensitive personal data such as health data Only under exceptional and precise conditions and these operations must first of all be based on a law Pursue a legitimate aim such as the protection of public health, of course and be strictly necessary To the aim pursuit I will not enter here into all implications of these requirements But I would like to highlight two of them Which seem to be particularly important in the context of our discussion today first proportionality In order to be human rights compliant any digital tool should be the least intrusive possible at the moment As fears for public health Increase people's acceptance of intrusive measures The governments of many countries are benefiting from a wider margin of maneuver to cope with the health crisis In such circumstances, it is crucial that independent and competent oversight mechanism control this proportionality of the measures Then the second necessity Digital measures should be lifted Once the reason for introducing them no longer exists and unfortunately we can already see That many of council of europe member states are not really going in this direction So my main point is here that once covet 90 no longer represent a threat to public health All these decrease and laws should be withdrawn This is an important point in my view because experience shows that intrusive measures introduced to face extraordinary circumstances Like terrorism or health crisis that we are facing now Often remain in place and there are many examples. Unfortunately or are transposed into ordinary law once the emergency is over It is therefore crucial that restrictions to the right to privacy be limited In time and subject to sunset clauses and that the regulatory measures do not become the new normality There are of course Other important there are of course other important requirements including informed consent anonymity The centralization encryption and transparency, but I think this will be addressed in more detail by other speakers So I would stop here with one last observation Beyond privacy and data protection concerns digital measures raise concerns questions of inequality And discrimination That also have to be considered. We need to close the digital device that still exists In europe and beyond and to ensure that digital devices are made available to the largest number of people possible This covet 19 crisis is giving me even more reason to do so And I do not think enough has been done in order to work on bridging digital divide No one should be excluded from potentially useful digital measures only because of insufficient access to the internet or smartphones Or digital illiteracy. That is also one of the huge problems So i'm curious to hear another speakers and i'm of course glad to answer any of your questions bedding. Thank you Thank you very much dunya. I think you frame the the discussion very well And and thanks as well for your final point about the digital divide and the inequalities That underlie some of these issues when we talk about the the potential here It's very very important not to really think about uh, who who can be left behind From those advantages as you've said and I also appreciated your your comments about the need for proportionality and the and the temporal restrictions and And uh oversight in terms of how this is being done. Hopefully we'll have time to come back to them But we're behind schedule now, so i'll move quickly on to our next speaker if you don't mind We are very very fortunate to have with us as well. Yashua Benjio who is the professor At the scientific director of milan university of montreal But he's perhaps best known for his world-renowned work on artificial intelligence He received in 2018 the turing award thought of as a noble prize For computing for his pioneering work in deep learning Professor benjio, we really would like to hear your views on how governments of the public can maximize the benefit of digital technologies in the covid World and any specific suggestions you would have based on your your in-depth knowledge of artificial intelligence technologies, please Thanks peggy Thanks everyone for being here Could someone put up the slides that I sent? So i'm gonna start anyways So what you see in the figure is a comparison of different Ways to deal with the crisis. We already know about lockdown and Not doing anything that's unmitigated the x-axis is the number of days from the beginning of intervention And the r is the quantity that we're most interested in controlling that is the number of patients that a Infected person infects What the message is here is that? Using digital tracing you can decrease the value of r that has already been shown But the new message is that using ai to integrate Uh many Sources of uncertain information about whether a person is contagious or not allows to decrease that are even further and and thus uh, you know, strike a better balance between the freedom mobility of people on one hand and the number of Cases can move to the next slide so The reason why this is possible is illustrated on this slide, which i'm sorry has too many Things and written very small, but i'm going to try to summarize the the slide summarizes A story of what could happen to jim Through a couple of weeks In three scenarios using manual tracing The standard binary tracing that almost every country is looking at right now and a form of risk Awareness that is based on the eye And what happens is that after a person gets uh infected without knowing it Thanks to the network effect and thanks to the predictive effect of machine learning um gradual signal of the probability of being infected can be communicated to the person and recommendations given to that person so that um the uh Person doesn't have to wait for the infect the other infected person to be tested In order to start getting signals that they should be careful and by Saving a few days sometimes even a week In terms of when they get these recommendations to self isolate gradually more and more You can greatly reduce the chances that somebody who is asymptomatic yet or pre-symptomatic Will infect other people there's already studies showing that When people are Have symptoms they the change their behavior. So what what machine learning here can do is give them Advanced warning a few days before they even have symptoms And it turns out that these couple of days before symptoms are the most contagious days And so having these early warning signals allowed to really drastically impact the The the r the rate at which a person can infect others. Can you move to the next slide? So now we have to do all this in in a way that uh is really strongly Focused on preserving human rights Obviously we want to preserve the health and safety of of people, but we also have to consider their freedom Privacy is is the thing that most people are concerned about with these kinds of applications But maybe something that has been raised earlier But many people don't realize is also there's a danger to dignity For example to avoid stigmatization of Vulnerable groups And so the apps that we are building and others I think should be built in such a way that the the data That is being collected is not Does not contain information for example about Contacts like who met whom when and where and the trajectories of people Neither to governments nor to A third parties that might somehow spy on on what is going on In addition The these applications should be built in such a way that if for example, I have the application and I cross paths or spend time with somebody Who might be infected? I don't get to have that information Even though it might be tempting from the point of view of protecting health and and similarly We don't want people to know that some location some house or some shop was visited by people with Who are infected Finally one thing my last point is about governance So I think in many countries there's this idea that Governments will be managing the data collected from people's phones using these Tracing apps, but actually there's another option Which is the one we are putting forward in canada and that is based on a data trust In other words, if an independent non-profit entity whose sole mission Is to protect the public protect their health protect their privacy protect their dignity And that is something that is you know, this kind of data trust as a intermediate Organization that doesn't have a conflict of interest Is something that is emerging around the world for Protecting people's data better. Thank you Great. Thank you so much. I think you've you've crept a lot into your four minutes I'll do a quick follow-up if we could Given your expertise, you've already sort of laid out some of the things that that we should avoid and looking at artificial intelligence And its use in this field won't breeze you most What you know, we're all having a bit of trouble going to sleep at night These days, but you know, what are you worried about in in terms of how you look at The temptations to some extent of using these technologies in a way that might cross some of those red lines you've noted There are many concerns, but the one I'm thinking about these days is That even in democratic countries where governments want to avoid having access to this kind of data and misuse it would still have employers companies that might want to have Access to this information sometimes for valid reasons that to make sure that the workplace is is safe but that you know The problem with the employer employee scenario is the employees Are basically You know, don't have the choice the if they want to keep their job They have to do whatever the employer is asking including revealing private information about their health which could be used against them So this is a use case. I think that maybe hasn't been considered enough Thank you. Yes, that does give us something to think about. Um, we'll move now on to uh, steve crown Who is vice president and deputy general counselor for human rights at microsoft Where he focuses with his team on internal policies and business practices As well as advocacy and external engagements that could serve to advance realization of human rights across the globe Steve it's it's good to see you and we'd like to hear your view on how digital technologies Can be designed in support of human rights and from the industry perspective How we can integrate human rights elements into the our use of digital technologies For example in the contact tracing apps that we've been discussing Thanks. Thank you. Uh, it's great to be part of this conversation. I'd like to start by Noting the comment that her excellency minister keng Made about the importance of trust that really is I think where we have to start with this So for the tech companies everything we do needs to be both beneficial, but also building Trust in the services we provide It's really difficult in four minutes to talk about how the digital Technology companies are playing their role here all the way from connectivity that notion of the digital divide and online communication The ability for us to have a conversation like this and take for granted that it will be in video We've seen increased in billions of minutes of the use of those sorts of services But on this issue of contact tracing Um, I would like to start with kind of the challenge and the challenge has been That for over a century, we've known that one of the most effective means of controlling disease transmission is to identify those who were Infected and then limit their exposure to those who are not More than a hundred years ago. We had this notion of typhoid. Mary somebody in new york who had helped spread the typhoid disease And it was done through manual detective work Today we can actually use digital technologies and the way that works with our modern Tracing apps is you take the bluetooth signal typically in a cell phone. Now, of course, not everybody has a cell phone They're not ankle bracelets. They might not have their cell phone with them at all time But it is a tool and the ability here is to take bluetooth signals get much closer approximations of distance and time between somebody who becomes known as infected and those who were In their orbit at some point and then alert both of them as appropriate Now one of the things we're most concerned about is privacy Which of course feeds into trust and so there's a lot of effort in the tech industry on how you can obfuscate to hide The actual human personal identity Of people who are participating in the system You can see that in the apple and google collaboration that Has received much attention. We at microsoft have done something on that later. I'll mention Something we published on that but The the notion here is that we can use these technologies to improve public health outcomes And we need to be very conscious about the human rights implications So let me very briefly touch upon those the human rights concerns that I think are foremost in this discussion our dignity Privacy of course, but there's also freedom of association and classic surveillance concerns about What are the knock on effects the secondary effects if if you know you're being traced and others might know that Do you limit with whom you meet and where and that sort of thing in a way that wasn't really the intention? And it's not what we want in democratic society. So it's this potential misuse for other surveillance purposes Um, I will say I think uh, the best means of getting after these concerns is to use the international human rights law Framework, I think it provides really valuable touchstone. So although people aren't talking as much about it as they might In the international covenant on civil and political rights In four point one article four section one There is this notion of emergency situations that might affect, uh, for example, public health And in that there are the considerations of you there must be non-discrimination We must continue to respect dignity. We must look at the lawful purpose. What is the precise reason for? Some compromise on the rights that we previously Protected in a particular way, but then it goes to the classic human rights notions of necessity proportionality and it brings in this idea of time bound Exceptions so, uh, of course privacy we see in uh article 17 freedom of association in 22 again These are touchstones that uh governments public health authorities all players all stakeholders should be looking at but then we have the syracusa principles which were Enunciated in the 1970s as states were starting to use some of these Derrigation rights in the international covenant And then those were actually Elaborated in this context. I think in a really helpful again a touchstone manner from the world health organizations Guidance with extremely drug resistance tuberculosis and the notion of how that might warrant and what are the limitations on the use of Government powers to address the disease. I know my time is going to run short. I wish we could have a much richer dialogue But I do have a colleague online And ben if you could please just include a link to our blog Microsoft did publish for a global consumption of blog titled Reserving privacy while addressing covet 19 and in there we set for seven principles We think ought to be deeply considered by all players in this ecosystem And some of those are things that we've already heard those include collect data only for Public health purposes not for other uses in surveillance. Um, we also think just based on our experience of Evil players in the ecosystem We ought to be collecting the minimum amount of data that will be useful and we ought to have safeguards to make sure that hackers and other misuses of the data are not likely to occur We also think that consent is A major piece of this of course it ties in inately to the notion of trust But there's also in here. I think we haven't spent enough time as a community the human rights community thinking about how do we know when it is in fact appropriate for people to stop to to scale back some of the Compromise that we might have been willing to entertain during the pandemic But how do we know that the emergency has passed not everyone is using article 4.1 of the international covenant on civil and political rights But again, I think that notion and that is a touchstone is something we ought to be paying attention to How we can help people Start scaling these back once we achieve greater victory in this battle. So with that, I'll stop to Save some time for others. Thank you. Thank you so much. Steve and I Really appreciate your Elaboration of some of those principles. I'd note that that analysis that you did of emergency measures is something that you can also find If people would like to within the OHCHR web Page on COVID-19. We've done a guidance note on that But Steve if I could follow up with you You and I have had many conversations about the UN guiding principles on business and human rights And I think it would be interesting for the audience to hear a bit more about how from within a company you're looking at What are your responsibilities to bring these things in? How do you look at assessing human rights impacts and to what extent our company is working across silos and and you know, you mentioned the the google apple core Collaboration, but how can we make sure we have some consistency and coherence in the approaches that companies are undertaking as well Yeah, well one of the I'll answer it in two ways. One is what we do internally and the other is a bit externally internally We have deep conversations across the entire company supported at the highest levels, you know, brad smith our president And what we try to make sure we're doing is as we have things that might have significant human impacts In a human rights sort of way Especially that my team is involved in those discussions. And so later today I'm in a conversation with a group that we have is on some other issues related to these sorts of uses of digital technology in this Extraordinary time to combat covid But I would say across the industry We recognize that this is again trust is critical to people's continued use and increased use of our technologies I think all of the companies are looking at how they can Do that in a built things in a responsible way and you mentioned the un guiding principles We are strong supporters of that. We believe that If we take seriously this notion that we have a Responsibility to respect human rights. We need to have this dialogue happening both internally and external Thanks very much Steve. Great great to hear that. We'll move quickly on to our next speaker We're very fortunate to have with us a fellow, uh, swiss citizen here as you'll hear who is the head of the lavatory for data security at epfl The federal swiss federal institute of technology His expertise is in the areas of privacy and security and mobile wireless networks and also in personalized health And he has a couple of slides to present to us as well professor How can personal data be used without violating privacy and other rights and what kind of requirements and principles do you think we should be thinking about professor Sure. Thank you very much and thank you for having me here. Thanks for setting up such a great event I mean, these are really crucial questions And i'm glad that you managed to to bring all these this wonderful contributors together So, um, yeah The the what i'd be happy to do here is to come up with a very concrete example On what could be done in order to fulfill The dual willingness to have on one side as what as was mentioned by by multiple speakers The the protection of dignity and and privacy But also on the other on the other side the ability for everyone to benefit from medical progress so if you Move exactly to the next slide So it's just an example of of a tool That we have developed with with uh in collaboration with the swiss hospitals And the goal here is to address One item that was mentioned by a previous speaker, which is the silos So medical data more often than not are just sitting in silos and there is not enough Exploitation of all the knowledge that is available there for notably data protection is one One one one obstacle clearly now It turns out that there exist techniques That make it possible to make computations on data without revealing the data and these are techniques that have been known And they are mathematically proven They've been known in career science for decades And that now have reached the level of maturity such that they can used they can be used actually in real practice So and it is possible to perform You know, uh operations such as statistics or machine learning operations while keeping the data Uh concealed and while keeping the data Where they are originally generated So you don't have anymore to aggregate the data in a single place Now you can move to the next slide So this is something that we have Deployed in three university hospitals in in swiss and jeniva losan and burn And we're applying this to the swiss person's oncology project. We apply this to Melano Melanoma data As a first let's say study case But more recently we have also start Started to use this in an international consortium to score approaches secure collective COVID-19 research and the purpose here is to show that Instead of the current in view of the current practice that consists in moving the data and typically concentrating all the data in a single place somewhat de identified Which is a tremendous risk in terms of privacy, right? It is actually possible to do things in a much Cleaner way by making use of the techniques that are well mentioned before so in the jargon This is called homomorphic encryption secure multi-party computation. These are the the techniques that are underpinning these these These tools and then you can find the description of which you can find on the websites that I have Put included here. So I think we can move I think everyone has seen this slide. So thanks for for showing this. So now to conclude Yes, I think you can you can just terminate the the the slideshow Thank you very much. So what what My main message here is to say well, we have to really work together to make sure that All the tools that are well established and are well known in in computer science are really put at the service of the of the of the fight against Let's say challenges such as the pandemic we are facing The tracing app has been mentioned by several speakers. They're well known. They're everywhere in the in the newspapers But they're additional let's say techniques that can be used and the ones that I mentioned And the ability to make this privacy conscious data sharing is I think also part of the of the of the let's say Toolbox that we we have to set up and we have seen how Unprepared we were on that front and the the price that we've paid for this is huge in the sense that it is taking Way too much time to understand exactly this what this disease is about And sharing the data especially in the first weeks It was even in advanced countries such as switzerland. It was even difficult to know how many people were infected How infections were happening and things of this kind so we're still Under-equipped, but now we are receiving this powerful lesson. And I think there's going to be a tremendous Let's say move forward in order to be better prepared and to move to to to act in a more cohesive and technically Let's see cleverly and appropriately engineered a set of of tools. Thank you very much Thank you very much professor. I I take your last point about the the fact that perhaps having been through this now We we are moving forward and and we'll have some of these foundations in place And I would refer back to minister Kang's comments that uh, it was their experience with the mers Epidemic that that put in place some of the measures that then allowed uh, korea to respond as quickly as it did I wonder if you might say a few additional words about how to take that message forward across countries and across continents as we see the curve Changing and developing Much more in in the global south in environments where some of these challenges might be even greater than what we saw here in switzerland So this is absolutely crucial that we find the ways to to deploy these tools right and to find also There is also a challenge in terms of business models Because funding this kind of initiatives is not easy right because it's not it's it's not obvious to see who is going to Financially benefit of these things. So we benefit if we help it say less privileged countries by making use of appropriate tools Well, it's it's unclear. So here international organizations, but also philanthropy has had a Both actually have a very important role to play to make sure that this is happening at an appropriate Pace right because the challenge is here. So we we need to respond swiftly Thank you very much. Um, we'll move next on to my un colleague, uh, Bernardo marino Who is the director of digital health and innovation at who? It's it's taken us a while to get to to our world health organization speaker But obviously your organization has played such a Central role in the response of the pandemic. So we're very much looking forward to hearing your views Bernardo on the threats to the right to health, but also the full range of rights and and how who is working to ensure that public health responses relying on new technologies are based in human rights in the pandemic response Please. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. And let me start by saying that The media and a lot of in a lot of researchers are starting to even label the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is the virus that causes covid-19 disease as a perfect virus and as we realize that It is a virus that Actually is settled in human as host It requires from all of us The best of us to really fight and fight it in to win the The the battle in this in three main fronts One is on the therapeutics vaccine. So I think that is Is to make sure that we have tests available We have we have a treatment available and vaccine available The other battlefront is the digital solutions, which is I think what we will be Discussing and with in a number of speakers mentioned A lot about this this this battlefront and the and and the third one One of the speakers mentioned on this is a cybersecurity. So In these three fronts, we need to be At best at our best But that comes On especially on the digital solutions and and and the health data Let's let's let's remember that health care sector Is it lags behind compared to many other sectors compared to financial sector compared to even to education on the digital transformation So the digital transformation of health care sector still Requires a lot of Of work and the kovid-19 pandemic is accelerating some of this transformation to ensure that That the sector quickly responds and scales up on the digital solutions to address The the challenges of the and then to arrive to to make sure that we fight this pandemic As quickly as possible with the best tools that we have Of course, of course ethical and privacy preserving That that that preserving tools that collect store user disseminate health data is crucial Because if We do not look at health data as With the same principle as human rights, then we will Not be actually addressing the we will be solving one problem in creating many others in the future To do that, of course, we need the International collaboration Share of information But also a good governance Let me take you back perhaps to to the the wcho constitution which envisages the highest attainable standard of health As a fundamental right for every human being So these right-based approach of to health In the digital ecosystem means the right-based Approach or the human rights of health data. So let's not and let's not Forget that At the core of of of a digital transformation The individuals are represented by data data sets that are somehow Created that digital identity. So we need to make sure that The rights that we all fought for and we all established as humans. We have the corresponding digital Whatever I think digital identity I I mean we as individuals have in that digital ecosystem That those human rights or those rights are respected and those principles are there too As we go through the pandemic Countries are some of them reviewing laws practices regarding data protection data sharing to ensure this adequate confidentiality at wcho we Are making sure that that the guidance to countries To to to ensure that the ethical use of data is is that there I did share a link to in the in the chat that that that Of one of those guidance But also we are bringing together countries and regulators because this is digital transformation some areas in in health Where health data is key? It's it's it's it's it's an innovation is a novelty and it's it's it's it's it's it requires new sets of of of rules that that therefore we are bringing Regulators of countries together. We brought them Two weeks ago to really discuss ethics privates and regulations of AI within that regulatory framework, so how can we Have best practices or shared common practices to ensure that that that we do not have an after after thought A reaction a reaction that we we think we think we should have thought earlier But we start discussing those and then ask those tough questions right now and they're trying to address that So so COVID-19 While accelerating the digital transformation or digital adoption in the healthcare sector Let's make sure it does not accelerate The privacy infringement or analytical use of data So the the guidance is from from the human rights commission from from wcho on on ethical use of health data is key and within Wcho we are also Taking the global strategy on digital health to our membership for approval and the the health data regulations Is one of the area that the that the that the wcho is is included in the strategy to make sure that as we Navigate through the digital transformation of healthcare sector We arrive all the benefits that it comes with with that transformation But also we mitigate all the risks and we use health data in an ethical way. Thank you Thank you so much and and and I think you've made a number of very important points about How we bring things forward on the digital side to respect rights As we do in in real life and and that transformation in the health sector in particular We'll move on to our next speaker because we're quite a bit behind the schedule now Professor urskaster is the executive director of the bergman kline center for internet and society at harvard and a professor of practice at harvard law school Ursk, we've heard a lot about the digital technologies protecting public health while respecting rights We'd like to hear more from you based on the work that that you're doing and the Research across the world researchers that you work with there at the the center and how can we Move forward on bringing human rights into our response in this area. Thank you Thank you so much. Thanks for having me and I would like to build up on the the previous speakers I'm struck by the fact like how Deep this digital dimension is of the of the current pandemic and I think that sets it apart from from previous pandemics actually And it's the word economic forum Published a great report showing Mapping the different technologies that are used currently to fight the pandemic and that's clustered More than 80 use cases already Which is impressive I think in addition to to this in here in here in digital dimension to the pandemic we also see How digital spheres and analog spheres are are interacting and I think taken together as we are considering human rights risks We need to keep in mind these interactions between digital and anti analog sphere And of course, also be aware that each of these different tools may come with different promises to bolster Human rights, but also with different risks. So I think that's kind of the first observation I wanted to share and something we in academia try to better understand Now if I'd have to pick one issue that I'm worried about I think one of the things many of these technologies do of course is the way we use it They're collecting data and we're collecting vast amounts of data And that at some point creates the issue that we may Introduce a new master layman's infrastructure For good reasons right now, but that as I was mentioned in the introduction already May live beyond the current public health crisis And so I do feel strongly that it requires a collective effort actually To put into place adequate safeguards Against the deployment of such a new master valence infrastructure Now I just want to highlight briefly one or two aspects that I think are important to consider and the first one Is a mindset challenge. I do think we collectively need to avoid some sort of a technical solution isn't trapped My feeling is that history is rich of examples that we tend to overestimate the short-term benefits of technologies And dramatically underestimate the long-term risks And so in many of the conversations, we're part of we're actually trying to Push hard to better understand how some of these invasive technologies that are mentioned Actually serve public health objectives quite often We are too fast to embrace technology without knowing actually how exactly the integration works With analog and offline Parts of the ecosystem Maybe just a second quick point, which is about the importance of continued risk assessment We already mentioned in many areas Public health officials need to work with private sector Companies and providers of technology and it's a it's a shared challenge again To make sure we engage in robust and integrated human rights impacts assessment Across these fears and particularly pay attention that we don't increase the vulnerability Of already the least protected members in society In these risk assessment contexts, I also feel we we need to pay attention to downstream and longer term Even unintended consequences. So for instance the risk of future monetization of of data that we are collecting today for public health reasons the last point A third point is as we Manage these risks that come with different technologies that we deploy currently It's also important that we Embrace the full set of instruments available To put safeguards into place. So legal measures were already mentioned But I think it's also important to embrace organizational and technological means Which I was briefly addressed using the example of encryption and distributed architecture So across these and I end there I would agree with previous speakers that transparency and accountability as key enablers of trust Will be decisive If we really want to prove the case and unlock the potential of digital technology as we fight the pandemic To the benefit of all people. Thank you Thank you. It was and thank you as well for being timely and Condensing your your comments. I wish we had more time to to delve into them Our final speaker today is Nadira Sambuli who is Was served as a member of the secretary general's high level panel on digital cooperation She's a researcher a policy analyst and advocacy strategist strategist and who worked for some time as the digital Equality director at the worldwide web foundation over to you, Nadira Thanks, Peggy So to the question before us, I think I'll speak to three things as well One is that we need to prioritize the proven over the probable Right now there's a disproportionate focus on the application of digital technologies to contact tracing Which essentially is really explosion notification However, there are other areas in which digital technologies could be more effective For example, the way drones have been used in Ghana to transport samples from remote areas to testing centers in cities And to transport protective equipment is a good example of appropriate take for the pandemic We've seen and heard what's that what's already in place already in place in various countries and systems Is what's generating success? And I think we can all agree that frontline workers do not need the additional stress of learning how to use a new app to digitize saving lives Supporting them in ways they have indicated and demanded is the appropriate and moral response Ours has already alluded to tech solutions And here I want to add that we need to stop things sometimes, especially and even as we try new ones We need to stop positing the digital technologies or the solution to everything and especially In arenas around which we're still establishing facts such as with covet The impulse that's driving the rush to apply digital technologies on the front lines of this pandemic is understandable We have the tools and expertise ready for deployment Which is laudable but the cost must be assessed before any damage or any further damage is done So that I think we need to say that if it's not right respecting it should probably remain on the shelf We've talked about safeguards and principles to guide deployment of digital technologies And these are important and welcome But they are also insufficient in auditing the political will that will drive the implementation and imposition of the proposed tools and tactics The role of the human rights corpus in addressing this is an urgent agenda And we need to capitalize on this moment to change the narrative on digital technologies and human rights The arc of digital technologies and innovation so far has been a move fast Test break and half-heartedly apologize later if at all approach That has normalized human rights infringements as a cost of doing innovation And making these key tenets an afterthought and an acceptable casualty And often we hear calls for bold action and truly bold ones at this time to me Are one that we must mainstream human rights and their indivisibility even for where there are trade-offs We need to start to account for their attendant duties and obligations to states corporations citizens in whatever groupings To uphold and protect human rights proactively I must say it's not solely for civil society to keep championing human rights And their work shouldn't be boxed to only decrying their violations In our report on digital Cooperation we introduced a declaration of digital interdependence It probably is something that all of us already understood But the challenge ahead is on how to implement our rights respecting digitalization or age of digitalization To me bold action in this age of digital interdependence entails building new tables if we can make small space in the existing ones So every sector every stakeholder group can proactively shape how digital technologies are conceived Deployed implemented and monitored in the communities they envision to serve This may slow down the pace and rate of innovation and deployment of digital tech But it may be the necessary price to pay to maximize the benefits and minimize their harms and especially to human rights This pandemic doesn't excuse us from sticking to this way of thinking and doing if anything it re-emphasizes its imperative. Thank you Thank you very much Niger and it that follows very well on Ursus points and and thank you for for talking to us very very concretely about what a human rights respecting response needs to look like and and that issue of of the proven over the Probable what we would like to see happen as opposed to what is happening and the need to move forward We've unfortunately, uh, I have not I should take responsibility manage the time as well as I should have We had hoped to have some additional respondents come in with With questions, but unfortunately Given the need for our closing remarks as well We will not be able to do that But I would like to acknowledge those who put their names forward Who we had hoped to see now, which is Antonio Antonini the deputy director of internal affairs at the mexican social security institute Mark Gio Camini the deputy manager for director for multilateral issues with the eu Mustafa Essa the distinguished engineer at Vodafone Renata Avila the executive director of the fundasin Citadano Telegetria in Chile and smitha Prasad the associate director for the center of communication governance at the national law university in india I'm deeply regret that we won't be able to to have those interventions Which I'm sure would have made our conversation even more rich and to all of you who I'm sure would have plenty of questions You'd like to pose as well. My apologies to you as well I did want to briefly pull out some of the key points and then turn the the plurover to our to our hosts What we have seen today is I think our speakers Despite the diversity of their experience really coming back to emphasize a number of key points starting with The importance of the need to work together across Both multilaterally across countries, but also across stakeholders and najira We started with that point at the beginning and najira filled it up for us at the end So it was it was very nicely bookended, but that is key We also have seen at the importance of openness and transparency In this I think for those of us that work on tech and human rights issues generally We know that this is a difficult field We know that things are moving quickly and that it is hard to keep up on some of these issues But that for me emphasizes the need for all of us to be very open about what is happening For us to be able to and that's my third point We need to be able to learn and adapt and the only way to do that is to be honest And look at the lessons learned to look at the good practices and share them very effectively A number of you starting with durin and dunya as well made the point about making sure that we Get this right because it is hard to roll things back We need to talk about All of this now because it will the temporal limitations of what we do need to be in place as well So that we don't see ourselves down the line at a place that we didn't intend to end up It's fine sometimes to put things forward in the heat of a pandemic But they don't make sense afterwards and we have to build that in to what we're doing as well And then I wanted to emphasize the points made by urs and many others about the importance of trust and data Steve crown and Yoshua all made the points about the need for us to build in protections around data Limited use the temporal nature the types of data that we're collecting and how it's being collected and for whom are all critical points I'd close just by noting My colleague from WHO's point about this being a perfect virus to some extent and then it does demand the best of us And I hope our speakers have given us some some clues as to how to how to derive that best That's necessary to build in human rights as we address this public health pandemic With that I'm happy to get the floor back to doreen book and martin the director of development and bureau at itu. Please doreen Thank you very much peggy and Really appreciate your your excellent moderation and and really a sharp summary It's been a very engaging 90 minutes. Not enough time. Unfortunately. I think we had it at one point some 300 participants Um, one thing that has really come out Clearly is that we do need to spend more time on this and we really need to find the right ways to fully leverage the potential of technology While at the same time ensuring The basic human rights and freedoms are not eroded Uh, I think it it's clear today and in our previous discussions that the clock is ticking I would say Uh, the covid crisis has really illustrated the urgent need for us to avail ourselves to the full power and potential of technology to deal with public health emergencies It does as you noted peggy and as Bernardo rightly mentioned it requires the best of us And I would also refer back to her excellency in the beginning When she mentioned, uh, it should drive us to do better. And as you mentioned, we need to be honest We need to adapt and as we wrap up our last five weeks of of these great Webinar discussions. I think it's important to reflect reflect on what we've seen what we've learned In our discussions on digital cooperation. Were we prepared for covid? Definitely not Have we coped? I think in some ways in terms of digital i'm speaking now. I think we've been creative We've seen a number of innovative practices that have been put in place to advance connectivity I think we've seen a lot of goodwill from the icte ecosystem But we've also seen lots of concerns On privacy on human rights on the security side But I think we we have And this is really important for me as a as a un entity. We've come together as the un Un partners have come together. We've come together as countries as companies as people And we need to remember that as as we move forward And so in terms of what's next and shifting now to the recovery side The un secretary general has rightly noted. We need to be thinking about building back better And when we do so we want to build back better and ensure that that digital inclusion is there that we do That we do get there and and reaching out to to the unconnected And finally just to to to stress the importance of digital cooperation I think covet 19 has made the case if anybody had a doubt It's pretty clear digital cooperation at the global level is absolutely essential And we need all stakeholders engaged because that vast potential Of digital can help us address and it can help us solve some of the world's biggest challenges But it requires our collective responsibility. So we all need to work together And with that I would really like to to especially thank thank fabrizio It's been a tremendous partnership. It's been a real pleasure to work with you And with your whole team and I thank you so much for letting us co-host with you These extraordinary five weeks of discussion and debates And of course a special thanks to junghee as well With that I turn over to fabrizio. Thank you Look, I'd like to thank I must apologize to our commentators. I'm sorry. This isn't the first time but Once again, we've haven't managed the time appropriately. Some have spoken too much But I would like to cede the floor to one of the commentators Because I think it's also very important we hear these discussions Including ours including today Too much dominated by voices from from certain parts of the world And I think it's particularly important to to enable that diversity. So I would like to cede some of my time To mr. Antonio atolini the deputy director of multilateral affairs of mexico To give us a perspective from a region from which we have not had today Thank you, mr. Speaker I would like to share some background information of what we have done in the mexican institute of social security first And the matter of digitization and human rights And then a specific application of how this is helping us guarantee and promote human rights for citizens In october 2016 the mexican institute of social security and the oecv signed an agreement to carry out a study To measure the impact of administrative simplification in order to estimate the savings of the reduction of time loads And develop a digit digitization and simplification program best based on best practices A cost benefit analysis was made of the reduction in time loads generated by these procedures And the that the institute had carried out in recent years Based on these findings recommendations were made to decrease these costs One of the most important results to which this study came to find Is that the average unit cost of having a face-to-face procedure? 84 in total were measured and evaluated is equivalent to four u.s. Dollars While the procedures carried out by the internet and the mobile application Had a cost of 39 cents of a dollar and 36 cents of a dollar respectively Taking into consideration the latter and the current public health emergency We currently have applied these findings to the inclusion to our social security network Of the vulnerable group of domestic house workers integrated into majority by women The mexican institute of social security launched a pilot program for the affiliation of domestic house workers with the objective of Guaranteeing access to social security for this historically discriminated group on equal terms as the rest of the workers The enrollment process can be carried out through the internet and its coverage includes all insurances available in our social security Access to health service child care disability and or a retirement pension Since the pilot program began in april 2019 up to this past january We have hit a record high number of 21 000 beneficiaries Due to the public health emergency of cobit 19 and the challenges faced by domestic workers In having their dues paid by the employers not being able to access financial service directly as banks and many other institutions are Currently closed online payment was enabled in order to maintain insurance and thus access to health Yet online payment is only enabled for workers with a single employer not to those who have more than one Something that happens quite regularly with domestic workers Challenges persist in times of crisis, but we are working to make this new normality work for everyone Especially for those who have been historically excluded from social security Thank you. Thank you very much and once again I must apologize to our other commentators. I'm glad we had at least one Who are very important things to share with us and with my deep apologies for our for our Deficient time management to the others Let me just say a few concluding remarks and we will have to go over time This has been quite a journey these webinars We've discussed many of the major challenges connectivity misinformation security human rights. Of course these challenges pre-existed um, cobit And i'm afraid they will continue to exist after cobit, but what cobit did um, is really multiply and magnify the challenges Uh, it also brought out the very best of digital technology But also highlighted some of the downsides the need to better control So as we heard today Uh digital has helped Keep up with the speed of this what our w-h-o called the perfect virus um, and has helped us Track what is What the minister of foreign affairs of korea said was a very stealthy Disease, so it has been absolutely key um, the surveillance aspect beyond the application of ai um, has been critical in Upholding freedom of movement because by having effective tracing mechanisms You can have much more sophisticated policies of containing the movement of some While allowing for the movement of most and korea has done that Um in in a way that i think is the envy of many parts Of of the world But there are also problems. There are problems with the spread of misinformation that we had about this often dangerous life threatening misinformation There have been problems in terms of the connectivity with the overwhelming traffic on the whole systems have proven very resilient, uh, but it has Created some difficulties and of course we had today of the many problems related potential problems related to Uh, surveillance But having said that i would like to come back to our first webinars I mean the problems that we're facing with digital Are luxury problems. They're the problems of those who are connected um, they are um, where you know that most of a large part of the world most women Uh, most excluded population would love to have those problems and they don't have them because they're not Um connected and that not connected means much more in the covet era It means you lose out on an education. It means you don't have access to digital health It means you don't have access to safe information Um on um the internet So if I have to draw three five, um priorities That for me come out of this webinar I would say the first is increasing connectivity The second is increasing connectivity and the third is increasing connectivity And then I would say the fourth is making sure that that connectivity is safe and secure And the fifth is making sure that that connectivity upholds human rights And as peggy pointed out at the beginning last means anything but least It's just as important that human rights compliance as everything else And the human rights compliance exactly what that means is a complicated issue There are it is not a straightforward anybody who thinks they have a straightforward answer I would be very wary of them. It's highly complex human rights norms were conceived of in a pre-digital era to interpret them for the digital era is a complicated undertaking which requires cross sectorial cooperation and cross governmental cooperation And that takes me to my concluding point. I think if anything We've learned from this that we need these sorts of exchanges these multi stakeholders exchanges these multiple perspectives And it's not so difficult when we have them actually to find common ground But we need to do more to systematize this To find that common ground to drive a global agenda forward The one increases connectivity two increases connectivity three increases connectivity But four and five also make sure that that connectivity is safe secure and fully human rights compliant and it's that sort of Joined up approach that we are promoting through the secretary general's road map Which we hope will come out in the next few weeks and which many of you have helped us with in particular itu And that sets out the framework for continuing this sort of approach But I'd like to finish by thanking you all by apologizing again to those who couldn't take the floor and to say This is the beginning and we look forward to working together more To run this marathon towards universal safe affordable human rights compliant access To achieve that goal for all within a reasonable time frame. Thank you all very very much And especially to my un colleagues To doreen to peggy To those who behind the scenes have made this possible in particular jong he who has been working night and day And and for a few hours beyond that to make all this possible So a deep deep thanks and may you stay safe may you stay connected and may you stay Human rights compliant all the best Thank you