 Your Excellency, Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda, Chair of the Broadbank Commission, Carlos Lim, President of the Slim Foundation, Co-Chair, my dear friend and colleague, Madun Toure, Secretary of the International Telecommunications Union, Excellencies Commissioners, dear friends. Let me on my side also welcome you to the annual meeting of the Broadbank Commission for Digital Development. A few floors below this building is the Mahagany Panel Library of the Yale Club. It is a beautiful place for reading. It's very calm and quiet. And this calm and quiet, I believe, couldn't be further from the theme than bring us together here. Broadband, we know, is one of the fastest-growing technologies ever, always expanding, constantly developing. And yet, I think what we can find jointly in common with the Yale Club Library, it is our deep belief that knowledge must be shared to grow. We find it in the belief technology is not an end in itself. It must support the full development of every woman and man. In times of change, it is more important as ever to remain true to the values we share, the values of equity, justice, and dignity for all. This, I believe, is the spirit guiding the Broadbank Commission for digital development. And in this spirit, allow me to welcome each of the commissioners, and most especially, our new commissioners, Dr. Sukchei Lee and Dr. Anne Bivro. Let me thank once again our two co-presidents, Paul Kagame and Carlos Slim Elou for their leadership. And I'm particularly pleased also to credit my co-chair, co-vice chair, Dr. Amadun Ture for his tireless commitment. This annual meeting, ladies and gentlemen, comes at the right time, less than 900 days before the deadline of the Millennium Development Goals, at a moment when the international community is shaping a new global agenda to follow. This July, the United Nations Secretary-General issued a report accelerating progress towards the MDGs and advancing the United Nations Development Agenda beyond 2015. The report highlights remarkable progress made across the world, but it recognizes this has been insufficient and highly uneven. Next Wednesday, the United Nations General Assembly will hold a special event on achieving the Millennium Development Goals to identify gaps and motors to accelerate progress. This is why our message has never been more urgent than right now. All reports point in the same direction. We need accelerators and cross-cutting multipliers to achieve progress across all the Millennium Development Goals. Broadband and broadband enabler applications are an accelerator and a multiplier whose global rollout carries vast potential for inclusive and sustainable growth. It can be a most powerful way to create and share knowledge, to widen learning opportunities, to enhance freedom of expression. But as we always say, this does not happen by itself. It requires leadership. We cannot just invest in technology, we must invest in an ecosystem. This report we will launch this afternoon. The State of Broadband 2013 makes this very clear. Broadband connectivity is not a panacea by itself. Supporting infrastructure must be accompanied by support to applications and services with investment in relevant content in local languages, drawing also on indigenous and traditional knowledge. This is why, together with European Union Domain Name Registry, UNESCO is analyzing the uptake of multilingual domain names. The results are reflected in the 2013 report. Access alone is not enough. It must be combined with right skills with digital literacy. Major infrastructural issues remain for global broadband access, but core debates are shifting today towards the use of broadband. We must work together to ensure the further development of an open, free, interoperable and multilingual internet that enhances freedom of expression that protects the privacy of its users. This is another message of the 2013 report. All these, I know, are complex issues, but they must not affect our unwavering commitment to freedom of expression on all platforms for all men and women. In this respect, I wish to underline the importance of women's empowerment through broadband. I thank all members of the Commission who contributed to the excellent report on this theme. For UNESCO, the power of broadband and mobile technology must be harnessed to reach the unreached girls and women with quality learning opportunities. This is a breakthrough strategy for progress on all the millennium development goals. And for this, our experience shows, we cannot just build technology onto learning. It must be integrated into learning. Empowerment doesn't come from technology. It comes from skills and opportunities to use them. It comes from trained teachers. It comes from open education resources. UNESCO is working at each of these levels. So, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, broadband can become a foundation for the knowledge societies we need for the 21st century. But this requires effective public policies. It calls for innovative alliances with the private sector. It will take vision and planning. And this is our core message as we accelerate towards 2015 and set a new global development agenda to follow. Thank you for your attention.