 I would like to welcome you all here. I'm very much privileged to be the moderator of this roundtable on women in ICT. I was just joking before Dr. Alhasa Aljaber from Qatar, because I've seen every many arenas where she's the only lady in Iran. And today I am taking her seat. And I can feel the heat that she was going through. I'm sure most of the ladies here, whenever you are representing your countries or your organizations, find yourself in that situation. And this has to change. And I think it's starting today without change, where I'm alone here. But I'm really privileged that we have women leaders around us in this panel. We have Mrs. Biti Lohu Jai from Senegal, who is representing the Minister of Communication, who cannot be with us here today. I have Ms. Laura Olga, who is the Secretary-General of the Ministry of the President's Office in Gabon, former Minister of Telecommunications. She was one of the best ministers we've seen. And I'm very proud to have her here. And she is a member of the Board of Directors of the African Development Bank, and also former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of President Bongo at the time, Bongo Oundiba, the former president. So we're happy to have her here. Yasna Matish is not with us so far. Maybe she will be joining us later. I've seen her during the conference. I don't know if she is still here. We have the Minister of Communication, my brother Musa Benhamadi is not here with us. The advisor to the Minister will be joining us. We have, again, as I mentioned, Dr. Ahesa Aljaber. Dr. Ahesa is Secretary-General of ICT Qatar. She is the architect of the modern connected Qatar. And I'm very proud of that, a member of the Program Commission. And I can truly say that I'm very proud of what she's doing. We have a diverse Deborah Tate, Deborah Taylor Tate, former Commissioner of FCC, and currently Special Envoy of ITU, Secretary-General on Child Online Protection, because she has passion for this. And she has done a lot in this area. And we are really, really proud of that. We have Kereja Geriani, Secretary-General of Arab Information and Communication Technology from Tunisia, former Secretary and the Secretary for Communication in Tunisia. She brought internet to Tunisia. And really, to her credit, a lot of things has been done, including the organization of the World Summit on Information Society in Tunis, 2005. We have a diverse minister, Amrbola Johnson, who needs no introduction. We have seen her in all instances seeing how she came from private sector and she is re-dynamizing the sector in Nigeria. That was, I must frankly say, that was already booming. And she added her personality and her energy into it and it's moving. And Nigeria is a fun place to make business today. Thanks to that. I have the representative of the president of Costa Rica. President Chinchi, as you know, is the champion of protecting children in the cyber space. When I created this global cybersecurity agenda, I flew to Costa Rica and then at the time spoke to former president Oscar Arias Sanchez, who is a former, I was a Nobel Prize winner. As you all know, he won the Nobel Prize in the 80s for refusing to creating an army. You know, Costa Rica is the only country in the world that doesn't have an army. And he was asked to fight the rebels. He fought the rebels with a microphone and he won. And he made peace in his country. He won the Nobel Prize then at the time. And there is peace and prosperity in this country. When President Chinchi came in power, Laura Chinchi, I asked her if she would continue this task to be the our patron for the global cybersecurity agenda. She said, yes, I will continue, but I want something more concrete, even more at the time when we were trying to find some tangible things to do. And protecting children online was a priority. And she has agreed to be the patron of that. And we are very honored to have you here representing President Chinchi today. So it's a great pleasure to be here with you to moderate this roundtable. Our focus today is on women and girls in ICT, a topic of great importance to ITU and to the world in general. Gender equality is a founding principle of the UN and ensuring equal opportunities for men and women in the ICT sector is vitally important to ITU. The role of women is key in reducing poverty and promoting socioeconomic development for themselves, for their families, and for their countries. Educated, empowered women create productive, strong economies and societies where women are fully represented and are more, those societies are more peaceful and stable than those that are not. To quote the UN Secretary General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, equality for women and girls is not only a basic human right, it is a social and economic imperative. Getting women and girls into ICT is vital for a number of reasons. ICTs facilitate the promotion, the provision of education and job training and they also improve access to healthcare and participation in economies and civil societies. And in a world where 95% of all jobs now have a digital component, encouraging women and girls in ICT is critical. So, you know, women CEOs now lead 18 of the 500 companies, the Fortune 500 companies, sorry. This is a welcome increase on last year because there were only 10 last year but it's still far from a parity. 10 out of 158 independent ICT regulatory authorities are also headed by women and Dr. Hesa Al-Jabbar is one of them. That's also very, very insufficient. So, our challenge is to increase women's access to ICT globally through increased global connectivity, broadband connectivity especially, create demand among women and girls for careers in the sector, increase the number of women in ICT education and encourage the private sector to attract, promote and retain women over the long term. And especially, we need to do something to increase the level of women participation. When you look at statistics, you can say number of women in the company is sometimes you have 50%. But as you go in the pyramid, in the scale of responsibilities on the top, I mean, there's less and less women in terms of percentage. One thing I've done in ITU and I would like to ask the panelists today to tell me what can be done to increase it. One thing that I've done when I was elected in 2007, I looked at the job postings when we were publishing the position in the requirements that we publish. We say 10, 15 or 20 years of continuous experience. By simply removing the world continuous, from that, we open up a big field here because it was discriminatory to women who decided to have a child and take time of a year or two to take care of that kid, which is a very big responsibility. That way, I was able to hire ladies at D2 position. In fact, the highest ranking lady in the UN system, below the elected officials, is a D2, is Doreen Bogdan in my office. She is the head of the SPM. She is the mother of triplets. When she had the triplets, she took almost two years off to take care of the kids. To me, that was even a better parameter. If she can take care of triplets, she can take care of me and the ITU. Yes, because it's a planning, advanced planning, no panicking, one start crying, the other one also, and then you have to plan when you're going out. And today, I'm a happy man because anything I think of, she just, it was done already because she already thought about it. That's the power of women. I always joke by saying that women are analog and men are digital. No offense, it was being more advanced than others, but it's just for being able to, women are able to, to think on many issues at the same time, solve many problems at the same time, while women can only do one at a time. When I'm watching my TV, my wife is here, when I'm watching TV and she asks me a question, I can't answer because I'm watching TV. You know, that's the thing. And the analog signal, of course, can carry many carriers, many signals in the same carrier, and the digital is one signal at a time, one impression at a time. That's why the analogies stops there, but I must say that women can really solve many, they can multitask and men cannot. So when you are solving a problem, I always find myself asking both men and women, and it's amazing to see that attacking the issues from different angles, and that's good for the brainstorming that I put, and that helped me really make the right decisions. So let me also tell you that we at ITU have declared a women NICT day, the 4th Thursday of April, every year. This year's girls in NICT day included more than 1,300 events, held in nearly 90 countries, and included the participation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel with hundreds of events held at schools across Germany. We also used the occasion of Girls in NICT Day this year to launch a new three-year campaign. Tech needs girls, including advocacy, events, Girls in NICT ambassadors, and the further development of the Girls in NICT web portal. And just last week on 11 October, the first UN International Day of Girls, we launched a new prize in conjunction with the Tech Needs Girls campaign. The first award will be made on Girls in NICT Day next year in 2013. Together, ladies and gentlemen, we can now bring women and girls into ICT and develop this enormous and tapped human potential from the bottom of the pyramid up for the good of all of us. And on that note, I would like to open the floor to my distinguished panelists. I will start from Deborah Tate, from left, we go from left to right. I sure as not have any political connotation. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead, please. You have the floor. Thank you, Mr. Secretary General for your presence today. And thank you to all the gentlemen who are in this room. Thank you for your support of this issue going forward. We don't wanna blame you, we just want to encourage you. I don't think you had any other choice with all the strong women in your life, but to take these issues on. And I was going to tell all of you about many of the specific commitments that the Secretary General has already stated, but I thank you. I was going to give the example of the first CEO being hired at the ITU that is a female. These are important choices, and these are choices that each of you have. Thank you for the launch of the ICT and Girls. And last week, actually, I spent most of the week at an event in Seoul, Korea on behalf of the ITU regarding women in ICT called Women with the Wave. And in many ways, we were cresting the wave, and in many ways, we were still underneath the wave. So I wanted to share a little bit with you about how women are portrayed on the screen and behind the camera. There is still a dismal lack of women in ICT jobs generally across the entire world, although it gives us an opportunity to be equal. Even in Korea, last week, it was just released that it is the number one, continues to be the number one most connected nation in the world, the 17th largest economy, and ICT is exploding there, but there are only nine non-family board members on Korean's top Fortune 100 companies. Women make 39% less than men for the same jobs. A recent Harvard study showed that there was a link behind women who had been hired in India at call centers, and ICT job granted not the highest paying one, but at least jobs in an ICT call center, and there was a direct correlation between how the girls of those mothers were treated, raised their educational attainment, their health, and that they saw themselves finding a path to prosperity. And how are we doing in the US? Well, the Secretary General said a couple of things. We are actually 90th in women in official positions. I think that is terrible. 17% of parliaments worldwide, and there are fewer than that as members of Congress, and in fact, last election was the first time that we actually lost members of women in Congress. One study, however, I found very interesting that if women had the same access to land, to property ownership, to seeds, fertilizer, and water, that their crop yields would increase 20 times and feed 150 million more people. What an untapped natural resource you all have in your country just by giving women a chance. We must utilize ITCs to ensure that every person on the planet is connected, but until we do, we will still have a data gender gap, and we can't fully employ or deploy this great natural resource of women to their full potential as economic drivers, as political leaders, and most importantly, as peacemakers. I love the example of the female president of Kosovo, who wanted to be a police officer. She went through training, she became a great police officer, she climbed up the ranks of leadership, and then she was elected president. We often say in the US, if little girls can see it, they can be it. The president of Kosovo is an incredible example in a war-torn country that any little girl can aspire to be a leader in the free world. Women jumpstart jobs, expand opportunities by creating jobs and drive economic growth around the world from leasing cell phones, as we know in villages, to creating a banked economy, to world-class scientists, and even astronauts. Women are entrepreneurs are in every single tiny village, an urban center, but they're often part of an invisible economy, but a very real economy. The panel has a lot of interesting projects, and I would like to applaud Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton for her EDGE initiative, and OECD for launching their gender initiative, and as I said, the SG for launching girls in ICT. Positive results for women, for their families, the communities, and entire society. And why is it important? It's important because women focus on human rights, on justice issues, education for all, and the economic renewal, yet they often are overlooked. Other global initiatives, I'm sure, that will be discussed have to do with new systems to monitor sex violence in over 20 countries, and DOJ is encouraging countries all across the world to increase penalties and update their laws regarding accountability of women. Georgetown University a few weeks ago launched an institute for women, peace, security, and development. I really encourage any of you all to reach out to Georgetown. We have an opportunity. All of you in this room can change how you do business in your region or your nation. Hire more women, provide mentorship programs to keep them in the workforce the way that the SG did, pay them fairly, provide leadership training so they can become a CEO or go on the board. Hire them in groups or bundles. This has been shown that when you hire people in groups, there is so much more diversity of the new Hirees, and keep those girls in school and especially in STEM classes. The technology of this decade will give us the chance to get and provide data to guide our decisions and maximize the impact of women. ICTs are the next great equalizer for the next decade. They provide technologies that don't care if they're used by male or female. They allow the democratization of data with the power of analysis. Together, whether by wave or wire, you can give a voice to the voiceless. So do something for women. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, David. You know, when I met David's husband, I was very happy to meet him because I said, I know there is behind every strong woman there is a man, so I was very happy to meet him. That's the new rule now, and we are behind. Before I give the floor to Karecia Geriani, I would like an Excellency Minister, Daisy Maria, to say a few words first, and you will understand why. Please, Daisy, please. Muy buenos dias para todos mis compañeras y compañeros de la mesa. Thank you very much. Good morning to all of you, my partners in this endeavor. I come from Costa Rica, a small country located in Central America. We have a population of 4.5 million inhabitants, and 50% of our population is made up of women. In our country, we now have a law, a gender equality law that makes it mandatory for all powers in our republic, the legislative power, the parliament, and also the judiciary and the executive power to give posts to at least 50% of the posts to women. So we have this gender equality law now in place that does give us a very interesting scenario. It creates the right environment. And in fact, 50% is just the minimum provided for by the law, and this percentage and reality can be surpassed. Some of these positions are elected positions, and we do sometimes have more women than 50% in some of these positions. The country has been progressing and advancing considerably in some of the areas touched upon here by Mr. Thuray. We now are in a position to invest in education and health and to better distribute our resources also. We now have universal health system in place and the free-for-all kind of system and also the same for education, primary and secondary level education, and always with a view, of course, to keeping the gender balance. We are a country that not only is characterized by its rich flora and fauna and by its fame as a privileged tourist destination, but one also where we've seen a lot of progress in terms of technology and ice it is in particular, and which have made the country an important hub for innovation and technology in the region. A study conducted not too long ago by a higher advisory body, CAATC, and also UNIMER research from a sample of about 100 of, a total of 500 companies in the ICT industries shows that the country does have a great potential to become a premium technological destination on a global level. The Costa Rican market is also a prime destination for the sales of these products. In fact, 55% of all ICT companies do currently export their services and products to Latin America as well as to the United States and Europe. Moreover, the sector continues to innovate its offer of products and services, which is again an indispensable trade if what wants to become indispensable and competitive. We have seen that about 86% of the companies have improved the quality of their solutions and 80% have actually recently released a new product or service. This context creates a lot of environment for new industries, technological industries, which are now the driving force behind our economy basically from their focus on ICTs. And we continue to rely on these companies to help us build a Costa Rica that continues to provide well-being to our populations. We now have a new president-elect, a woman, Mrs. Laura Miranda, who has been the advocate of very important projects like digital signature, digital government or e-government, and that again are based on ICTs. Thanks to these initiatives, our president-elect was the recipient in January of 2009 of an important prize awarded by the Link Americas Foundation, a prize that she shared with Hillary Clinton and the Nobel Prize laureate, Stephen Schum. Costa Rica understands quite clearly that ICTs are an important tool for social, economic, and political development. We understand that it is important to continue to invest, not just time, but also material resources to increase the inclusion level that we see in these areas. We have to continue to promote university, technical education, as well as financing of business, women, intrapreneuring women with a lot of gender balance to the extent possible. Women currently working in ICTs, as well as those who aspire to do so, will have to face many challenges, but they're also gonna be given, they're also gonna be given a number of opportunities that will allow them to grow in these scenarios, in these markets, and to also strengthen their presence in this labor market. We're now working on such issues as telework and increase of the number of scholarships to middle and college students, and of course also a number of other processes geared at increasing the process of inclusion, both along the vertical and the horizontal axis. We also have increased the participation of women in the labor market, which grew from 20% in the 1970s to 39.4% over the last years, according to a study conducted by the National Institute of Statistics in Costa Rica. In this context, the national and international context now allows us, or allow us, to manage our responsibility in a shared fashion and that will necessarily involve the private sector and the government in such a way as to increase the number of opportunities and give a new drive to the government policies and the technological advances that will allow us to continue to innovate, not just the ICT sectors, but also the health related services therein. We understand that public health is an important network that congregates the actions of millions of individuals geared at improving the quality of public goods and ultimately geared at providing everyone with a level of well-being that they deserve. Public health is an important policy and it is our duty to keep it up to date with all the necessary technologies and everything out there, in terms of knowledge and information, everything that we need to take full advantage of all the tools that are now at our disposal to increase the integration of our population and reinforce the concept of people-centric health. In this fashion, all the ICT tools that we currently have are an important tool for our country and will help us create the necessary opportunities that we want to make available to business and intrapreneuring women. Thanks to technology, I am convinced that we will be able to give new inputs to our businesses and allow everyone a platform on which they can display their ideas, products on a national and international level. This provides you with an overview, so to speak, of Costa Rica, but I wanted to also say that in our country, we do still deal with some products. We have 20% of our population still under the poverty line. We have still a high degree of adolescent pregnancy and we still battle that. And we also have a high number of women who are single mothers and who are the subject of violence. And these episodes of violence very often do lead to homicide in the field of health. We consider that Costa Rica has to do more and we hope to be able to do more now that we can rely on the ICTs, which will allow us to better plan all the initiatives that we need to set in place to reach those women who are currently in their homes. We have to increase coverage. Currently, we have 30% of our homes with access to internet. In the rural area, the coverage is of about 20%. In the urban areas, that coverage is of about 35%. Ownership of computers is around 40%. And pretty much the entire population has now access to mobile telephony and we also have a number of people, most of the population again, with access to TV. We, in terms of digital divide, rank as average to low level. And we now understand that with this new push, this new impulse will be in a better position to take full advantage of these technologies and hopefully it will push the country forward. I'm actually myself a product of this system. I am originally from a family, a low income, average income family and I was fortunate enough to be able to access the public education made available to our population in Costa Rica. I am a biologist by education and I later translated to a more health specific setting. But at the same time, I have four children of my own. I have a house to look after and I was only able to keep all these balls in the air and juggle all of that thanks and great part to all the technologies that were made available and that continue to be made available to all of us. So I wanted to share with you the experience that we have in our country and to say that I, as a minister, am doing all I can to promote the development of these technologies to increase our reach and to increase also awareness about the individual regarding the self care. Thank you, Minister Corrales. Yes, you understand why I wanted to give you the floor because Costa Rica and Rwanda for my knowledge is only two countries in the world that have reached that 50-50 distribution level so far. 50% in government, 50% in parliament and I hope that the list will be longer. Now I'm hearing that it's almost 60% now in Costa Rica so the men here will join me, will go back there and fight for our men's rights very soon. If you don't stop there. So Madam Minister, please stop. We also need to be part of it. We're going to be. Sorry, say it again. One translation of what you said. That's the same thing affects the men in Costa Rica. We do have a universal health system but we have a strong focus on maternal and children care. We now are trying to tilt the system somewhat so it also serves the men better because we do have men that are sometimes not particularly assisted. So we have, of course, no concern in terms of prenatal care and things like that but we do have to look into things as such as prostate cancer and things of this sort. In fact, trying to get the balance is one of the reasons why when I was elected I also decided to have a paternity leave in case of family. And I'm serious, I'm serious. We have a paternity leave. When you have a baby, father also have the right to take a few days to go and take part of it, take a baby as well. I believe it's part of the family well-being and those other things. Little details, but it's important. We need paternity leave too. Hey, come on. Come on. Come on. Can you hear me? You have the floor. Thank you, Mr. Secretary General and President de Session. I would like to address you first, address my thanks to you for your presence. Me too. Do we have a translation from French? From French? No, we don't. Yeah, I can speak. English translation is available from French. English is on the channel too. Yeah, please. I know you can, so no problem. Oh, I can speak in French. There is translation, yes. Translation is available on channel too. Right here. Thank you. Sorry, I prefer speaking. So I would like to start by thanking Mr. Secretary General first for your support to women. You are one of the biggest supporters of women in the telecommunications sector and I would like to thank you for that. I would like to thank you for your invitation and to thank you for this very privileged partnership that we enjoy in our organization, the ITU, as well as our efforts that we undertake together and that concern the gender equality in this particular sector. It is true and I would not like to go into many details and statistics. We have the example of Costa Rica, which is an excellent example, but we are very far yet from achieving the goal throughout the world of this gender equality or rather balance if we would like to be more specific. We cannot always achieve equality in every single domain, but we can seek a proper balance. Our world cannot develop without one of its halves taking part in this process. Therefore, today it is important for women. Women's role in society is important as a mother and an entrepreneur as a manager of a company, which is itself, its family, its household is also considered a corporation. Therefore, women should move from the role of users to producers of technology. The figures are optimistic. The latest figures of the 2011 statistics, they state that 80% of users of ICT are female. Even among the users of Facebook, 80% are women. And here we can see the actual presence of women in this hierarchy of decision makers. Even this effort to bridge the gap in the use of ICT, increasing the presence of women and the access in ICT and even in politics, when we know that a woman's vote has the same value as a man's vote. But unfortunately, the amount of participation in political life is not the same always. This being said, in the Arab world, the part of the world from which I come from, we need to say that Arab women were able to recently show their role as users of ICT. And especially over the past few years, they have increased the participation in the movement witnessed in our region and in many of our countries, such as Tunisia, which is quite active in social media, which were able to, and social networks. Tunisians were able to claim their rights as human beings, as citizens, through social networks and also their rights as women. And here we have a few examples of those present around the table. Dr. Hessa is one example. And you would see also Mrs. Nasreddin, who is the Palestinian Minister of Telecommunications. Also in Algeria, the Ministry has a woman heading it. These are a few examples. And in terms of statistics, we see that many women are active and we are still far from achieving proper equality. But in the Arab world and in the Arab region, we see differing amounts of distribution. But today, the main preoccupation is to reinforce the gains that Arab women have achieved in terms of policy. We need to absolutely reinforce that role and to preserve these gains, because there's always a risk of losing what we have achieved and to go backward in our gains and regress. We are not in favor of positive discrimination or affirmative action, but if that were the only solution in order to see more women achieving decision-making positions, then maybe this would lead to actual positive discrimination in that field. A few more words on the specificities of rural women who remain, who still did not manage to be part of the information society. And therefore, we need a better level of organization with regard to training, a training of rural women on the mobile applications and, in particular, anything to do with mobile payment. And these are the efforts that we are undertaking along with other Arab international organizations. And we do have an annual program that we run for the benefit of rural women. Such programs are run in order to provide help to Arab women. And one of the main preoccupations is favoring and fostering youth unemployment and specifically women's, young women's employment. Today, we see that many youth are entering the ICT field, but we need to see further amount of women in that field. Especially, they do have a certain identity within the FX department, but they need to have further involvement and further realistic representation. Therefore, we see today that there are networks of Arab women in ethical networks, and they benefit and they undertake the training of young entrepreneur female leaders. And I would like also to focus a little bit on Palestinian women, those who are struggling on a daily basis for their survival. And their use of the ITC measures, such as mobile phones, and you may very well know that Palestinian women are scattered around the country and they have some difficulties of movement from one part of their country to the other. And the use of mobile phones, they enables them, enables people to stay in touch with their families, especially Palestinian women. And we have a program in that regard that is dedicated to Palestinian women to enable the use and the training, training them on the better usage of information and having a better access to it. I think that's mostly what I wanted to present to you, as has been said many times by Mr. Toure. It is allowed to dream. We are allowed to dream in ITC. All our dreams have been made true today. And we see this phenomenal development in the sector. We can all still dream and seeing the presence of men in this room today and this bears witness to the sort of equality that we seek. And we still seek the support of men in that regard. Women prove that we need to prove that we can achieve some of these dreams. And we can attain a level of representation of women in the ITC sector. And that would be ever closer to that equality that we aspire to. When we hold all these fora and workshops, the presence of women has usually been more associated to participants who are receivers rather than providers. But now we are seeing a better picture. And therefore, we thank you for taking part in this forum and for achieving these realities. Here, I would like to thank you, Madam Minister, for the communication of the information technology of Palestine and there, Madam Nassir. Please, welcome. Thank you. I will pass the floor to the Minister of Communication of Senegal. Madam Diaye. Minister Diaye, you have the floor, sir. I thank you, Mr. Secretary-General. Senegal is honored to take part in this round table about women and ICTs. Allow me first and foremost to convey an expression of solidarity and best wishes for success from his excellency, the President of Senegal, as well as the members of his cabinet, especially as we are dealing with a subject which is very dear to his heart. Senegal finds that the change in the field of telecoms, whose main characteristic is deregulation and the appearance of new services and actors, places our confronts us with new challenges. We therefore have to, in fact, bring governments to act appropriately. The Senegal needs to stress and intends to stress the importance of ITU in the field of telecoms. We also seek to uphold the need to promote a balanced growth in the field of telecoms which should now enable us, in fact, to overcome the digital gap. My country is currently, in fact, establishing a strategy in the digital world and planning our strategy of passage from audio, from the analog to digital world. At the Plenipotentiary Conference that met in Guadalajara in 2013, the international community, in fact, set itself the goal of facilitating the equal social integration of men and women in the ICT environment to guarantee better representation for women in positions of responsibility and administrations. Senegal has, in fact, dedicated its entire plans here within a national plan and, in fact, has provided part of the financing in the 2012 budget. I would like to point out that Senegal, in fact, has expressed a determined intention to bring about equality between men and women. This has led to a national strategy for gender equality. This has set out the government's clear vision on this matter and which seeks to achieve two goals. One, to establish the appropriate environment for this equality and to include the gender perspective in all our programs. Program and law on equality in 2010 is, in fact, an attempt to uphold all the achievements so far in this field, especially at the level of decision-making. We, within the framework of the promotion of the inclusion of men and women in ICT, rather young girls and women in the field of ICT, I would like to point out the plans to include them in quality education and to include ICT education at mid-level and upper-level educational levels. We are also seeking to provide teaching and training opportunities at a young age. Thus, young children receive quality education and this is achieved through the public information regarding ICT. We are also seeking to bring about an overall implementation of telecoms in the field of work. We are seeking, as well, to promote the use of ICTs in the field of trainees with a view to further develop equality between boys and girls in accents to ICTs. The government of Senegal intends over the next few days to bring about the integration of boys and girls in this field and this should enable girls to access ICTs and to identify the reasons why, in certain segments of the population, young girls face barriers. This will, of course, require us to bring about a change in behavior and attitudes. For further information on all these initiatives, I would like to invite you to visit our internet site, www.womenteak. I was going to ask you to limit your speaks to three minutes and you did it marvelously. I'm going to now go on this side and ask Mr. Mizyan to take the floor on behalf of Minister of Communication. And then, Dr. Raisa, you'll be next. OK. OK, OK, all right, OK, OK, OK, thank you. Mr. Secretary General, Dr. Ahmadoun Turei. Mr. Secretary General, Dr. Ahmadoun Turei, and Minister Hassab Al-Sa'ala. Excuse me, Mr. Minister, the post will begin according to the information section. Allow me first and foremost to express my regrets for the absence of our minister who has attended the opening but who unfortunately is unable to attend today's meeting. And on behalf of the Minister, I believe we have three minutes, allow me there on behalf of the Minister, in fact, to give you a general outline of our actions. Measures taken to help women to access ICTs are part of our overall government policy. This policy is aimed at improving the status and condition of women. Women are called upon to play a first-class role since the very beginning of our national independence. Women represent about 50 percent of our population. Our constitution in 2008 improves women's participation through representation within the administrative and parliamentary process. I would like to also point out that 145 women were elected at the latest legislature in May 2012, thanks to a law adopted one year earlier regarding women's participation. Seven percent of women were represented in the previous assembly. This has increased to 30 percent. So women are now enjoying a wider representation and participation. And all political parties are now required to field 20 to 50 percent candidates. In 2015, Algeria has achieved the third millennium development goal, namely eliminate all differences between boys and girls in the field of education. Therefore, on the background of this information, you may measure the progress we have achieved in the field of ICT. We are playing an increasing role here to improve the status of women. Here, Algeria and its government have in fact planned their activity on the background of global achievements through education, transfer and technology integration of job opportunities. 40 percent of women occupy posts in the administration. We have increased the number of high officials in all government administrations. A large number of women are members of the boards of governors of many institutions. And overall, enterprises are encouraged to increase women representation amongst their staff and to encourage teleworking and training. As part of a celebration of the International Day for Young Girls, we have taken major decisions to favor certain categories of women and to encourage women managers. We even, women reporters in the various sectors will be provided free training in ICTs. We are also launching a competition for the best websites and best software applications regarding women participation in ICT. I would like to stress that the director of the regulation authorities in my country is a woman. We are seeking, therefore, for women to be as well-informed as men in this field. In three minutes, I was trying to give you all the information available, says the speaker. And I apologize for the speed. Women are therefore trained for use of ICTs and they are now becoming an important factor in our societies to help promote equality between men and women. We are therefore seeking to bring about greater independence of women. We have a portal that is dedicating to women who wish to be informed as to the latest trends regarding our efforts, it is known as Dunia Mag. I would like to also point out that in the rural world, we are launching efforts to facilitate the access of rural women to ICT by creating rural centers. These centers will be increased from 2000 to 3000 by 2004 and will especially dedicated to the training and the increasing of information regarding ICTs. We also encourage women to access the Internet through a dedicated campaign. We, in fact, are providing SIM cards which provide access to the Internet, also through providing assistance in the field of professional integration and creating special posts for women. In the efforts undertaken by our government, we are trying to encourage the employment of young women graduates and providing with information on the management of ICTs. We have, in fact, succeeded in hiring a large number of women in an institute which is the National Institute of ICTs. Thank you, Mr. Secretary General. Thank you. Many efforts have been made, but I am grateful that you have achieved great progress in this field. However, 34 percent is not enough. You have to try to achieve more. We are better than some, but not as good as others. I would like to recognize in this room ministers from Libya, from Côte d'Ivoire, from Uganda, from Gabon, and from Liberia. I don't know if I miss any of the ministers in this room here. I would like to welcome and Mauritius, of course. And Vrundi, who is a lady also, you can say, the only two ladies in the crowd there in relation to Palestine. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you. I will now go to Minister Omobola-Junson in Nigeria. We hope to have enough time to make some question and answers. I want this session to be very interactive, and I will have a question to the panelists here. What are the key factors that will enable us to reach our goal? One thing that I would like to leave in this room here. Madam Junson, you have the floor. Thank you, Secretary-General. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I think the first thing I'd like to say is that every single woman in this room today is actually an exception to the rule. Every single woman is an exception to the rule. And just very quickly to read us some statistics of what is the rule, particularly in African countries and developing countries all over the world. One girl in seven marries before the age of 15, more than a quarter of girls will be mothers before they're 18, 70 percent of children that are out of school are girls and the resultant effect is that women are less literate than men. In nine out of 17 countries studied in Africa, being female negatively affected the probability of having e-skills and the chances of a woman benefiting from the advantages of an information society are one-third less than men. So clearly these are hugely alarming statistics. We're dealing right now with the case of a young girl in Pakistan that was shot simply because she wanted an education and she's struggling for her life right now. So this is a very big issue and I think I really want to commend the ITU and Secretary-General for taking on this challenge in a very, very committed manner, particularly in the way that ICTs can help to reduce a lot of these alarming statistics, these very scary statistics that we're seeing in developing countries. I think that just three points I want to make, if ICTs can be a tool for inclusive development and really what we're seeing is that women are excluded from a lot of the development that is going on in the world right now, there are three things that we need to look at. We need to look at connectivity. We need to look at access and we need to look at adoption of these ICTs for women. In terms of connectivity, what we find is that many of the women that are at the bottom of the pyramid are women that live in rural areas and so therefore the importance of getting connectivity to those rural areas becomes critically important for developing countries. In Nigeria we're using our universal service funds to very actively incentivize our private sector operators to take connectivity to those rural areas at a cost that is affordable and at a speed that also makes sense. Looking at access, you know, even when we get the connectivity there, many of these women they're poor, they can't afford these devices. They can't afford the access to what we have to pay for minutes on mobile phones or for data. And so therefore we need to also begin to address our minds. So how do we get these women to access the internet, access mobile networks and all the benefits of that? And one of the ways that we have done that is really around targeted subsidies. We have a program in Nigeria right now where farmers will be getting their subsidy for fertilizers over the mobile phone. Now when we started this pilot we realized that first of all there wasn't connectivity to many of the rural areas where these farmers are. Secondly, 70% of rural farmers are actually women and that's because many of the men have gone to the cities and of course these women don't own devices. So what we're doing right now is figuring out how we can actually get cheap devices to these women as well so they can get the fertilizers. Another thing in terms of access is that in one of the states, my state in particular, when a woman is pregnant she's encouraged to, when she registers for antenatal clinics, she gets a phone. And what that phone does is that she can be reminded about her next antenatal clinic. She can also be given information via SMS on the progress of her pregnancy. She can be given, she contacts the health center. And in a country where maternal mortality is one of the highest in the world, this particular very simple SMS device is saving a lot of lives. Access again, public access venues are very important. They've been mentioned. Women do not feel safe or secure in cyber cafes. When you go to a cyber cafe in many of these developing countries, the first thing when you open up the computer, the first thing you see is porn. Many women don't want, they don't like cyber cafes. So you've got to figure out a way for those that can't even afford this device, like I said, we've got to find ways of actually getting them to access the internet in a safe manner that they're very confident and comfortable in doing. And again, we've done some of these community communication centers. Some of them are run by women. We find that women are actually much better costumers of assets than men are. And so the ones that are run by women tend to be much better kept and much better utilized than the ones that are run by men. And finally, in terms of adoption, when we get connectivity, we get access, we need to get these women to adopt these technologies. Social reasons, cultural illiteracy, women are slower adapters of these technologies. And so therefore what we need to do is make ICTs more relevant to their lives. I've given the example of health, I've given the example of making it important for the economic empowerment. And very quickly, just one very graphic example, we're running a program in Nigeria. It's called UIN, Youth in Enterprise. What it is basically is that you apply on the internet. It's a grant program for young businesses. You apply for the grant on the internet. You're shortlisted. Then you submit your business plan on the internet. That is reviewed. And you get all, everything is done by technology. We ran a very successful pilot with 18 to 40 year old for men and women who was very successful. And we decided to do one for women. The second phase was just for women only. And the biggest challenge we had was that a lot of these women didn't have access to the internet. They couldn't use technology. And so we're really struggling to make sure that we keep this thing technology driven. But it was just a very glaring example of how women are not as comfortable or don't have access to technologies that we assume. Final thing very quickly. Women and girls in ICT, again, I want to commend the ITU for that. We have to move women from being just users and consumers of technology to being the actual designers and producers of that technology. I graduated with a degree in engineering 30 years ago. There were just five girls in my class of 80. My daughter graduated incidentally from the same university, different discipline, but also engineering. Five girls in a class of about 100. 30 years, nothing's changed. And I think that initiative is actually a very important one to get women more interested and seeing ICTs as a veritable, it's a career, it's a very, it's an area where you can actually make a career in. It's an area where you can actually make an impact, whether in the business world or in the social, what I must encourage women and girls to really go into technologies as a means of solving some of these problems. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Angola. Thank you. When you say that women are better managers than men, I will not dare to contradict you. I'll be in deep trouble. So I will just pass the floor to Laura here. Thank you very much, Mr. General. I'd like to, first of all, I'll speak in French, sorry. Bonjour à tous, en particulier à Monsieur et Mme des ministres. Excellencies, the minister is in charge of ITC. Mr Secretary General, I would like to thank you for the opportunity of allowing all of us to discuss a serious international issue, which is the issue of women's development and their economic development and the many respective issues with regard to their access to ICT. We've listened to the experience of many countries, including Costa Rica, who has undertaken a very appreciable effort in terms of the empowerment of women, but we are witnessing different issues in many countries like Nigeria where we have problems with connectivity and accessibility. In 2003, the President Omar Bongo said during a summit on the right to information that he would make the issue of access to water, electricity and ICT a main goal for development in his country. His successor was elected according to a vision based on three pillars. And I don't need to talk about the first one with being a green Gabon with natural resources, but he insisted on a Gabon that provides services and namely ICT services in his campaign. And therefore, ladies and gentlemen, we see that once again women are left aside because they don't have the necessary knowledge, they don't enjoy the opportunity that many other women who had the chance to be trained and educated. I'm talking about rural women, I'm talking about the victims of a young prostitution and we do have responsibility with regard to this category of women because these women without any revenue who are left to their own devices and as single mothers, they constitute a social category that would lead a revolution with many bad consequences to our economies and the stability of our countries. Therefore, what I want to insist on here today is to call for the Secretary General, not only the Secretary General of the ITU, that we all have to be ambassadors of women in developing countries for efforts to be mobilized in order to realize projects that enable women to regain their dignity and to give a smile back to women and in this sense, this is why I was appointed Minister of ITC with the objective of launching programs in order to stimulate ITC development in our country. The Director of one of the Specialized Centers has found itself overwhelmed with the number of women who wanted to have access to education in ICT and therefore she had to create its special projects in order to take care of these women who want to go into that field of activity. And we see also an emergence of online media in our country and we are starting to see some positive reaction with regard to these efforts. So to summarize, this is a call for you, Minister Secretary General, to come visit us and also try to mobilize efforts in order to favor this cause for women. Thank you. I can tell you that all of us here in this room will be ambassadors for this cause so I'm very happy to share that with everybody. It reminds me a dinner two weeks ago in New York during the General Assembly where my colleague the Director General of UNESCO was in the dinner, Irina Bokova, and she was praising me for being the father of the Broadband Commission. And of course we did this thing together so I told her, no, no, no, it's our baby. And then I realized, how am I talking to a lady and saying our baby? I said, no, what I mean is your baby and my baby too. It's not our baby, so just to be correct here. He was kind of finding myself in trouble. So all of here will be the father of this thing, you know, together. Dr. Haesar, you have the last word. Thank you, Dr. Hamdon. I just like first to ask a question because you mentioned that ITU, you have a woman day and you mentioned it, it's in the first of April. Fourth of April, yeah, because I thought you mentioned first of April, I thought, why you're using the full day for a woman day, okay. I know that I think, all of us, we heard a lot about women and ICT and I know that I have pages that I can share with you what we are doing in Qatar for women and how we are empowering women. But I thought, what's happened this morning, there is a small incident happened which 100% it changed what I will share with you today. I was checking out from the hotel and I was, I mean on the line and in the front desk in front of me, there were two very professional women, they were fully covered, I mean, both of them, you can't tell that they are coming here either to attend a conference or maybe a consultant. And then they are asking the front desk manager if they can extend because they would like to have a late check out and he was not very professional to them which is, it's fine. But then one of them told him, yeah, but when we checked in, you did not let us check in early, we checked in 9 p.m. instead. I was very surprised when, I mean, he saw her in a very, I would say to me, it's in a very unpolite way. He laughed and he told her, yeah, because we'd like to keep beautiful women outside. And at that, and I'm talking here about very prestigious hotel, it's one of the, and I would say that woman, I realize, no matter what we will be empowering women, we will educate and I would say, she could be my daughter, your daughters, your sisters or, and no matter how we will be empowering women, how we will use ICT to educate them to still, I think we should really educate the society. We should really, we as parents, as a brother and sister, I do not think that, and I can't tell, she was very upset, she could not even said anything and I could see tears in her eyes. And I think maybe one thing we should do as a society, we should really empower women to just stand for their right and their right, I know that it would be good if they would be elected or be the CEO, but it's the basic things to be respected from the society. So this is point number one, point number two, I know that we're talking a lot about mentoring, empowering and one thing I always feel it kind of, we can set a lot of policy to empower women, a lot of program or I assure you, if this will not come from within the society, if this change will not come from a woman within the society and somebody in this group in this community believe in it, it will be very interesting speech, we will give a very nice book, we will maybe, and we will feel good that we really did good for good things for the woman, but the way I see it, unless this come from from within the community itself and even if that would be slow, we do not need to because changing or empowering a woman through ICT and I'm one woman who ICT had empower my life extensively and when I graduated any years ago, I will not tell you when that, I was a civil engineer, I could not work as a civil engineer because I'm from Qatar and usually engineering was not very accepted a professional at that time. What I did, I thought maybe this things is for me to change my study and went and started IT, started computer science and I changed my study after spending five years as civil engineer after I get my degree, I realized that I could not work as engineer and ICT had really empowered my life but I still believe two things to empower woman, number one, we as parents, we should really empower our girls to stand for their right and their right, it's not to be elected, just to be treated like men when it come to respect. Number two, if there is any changes, we think that we'd like to do it, it should come from within the community, not from outside. Thank you, I feel like to read anything about Qatar, I think you can go to ICT Qatar website, we have been doing a lot of great things and thanks. Wow, that's right, it's very, yes, we are short of time but I would like to go around the table, we don't have time for questions and answers, unfortunately, I know some of you may have some questions but I would just wanna go over around the table, just one word, what needs to be done and Dr. Hesa has already set the stage for that from your standpoint, what needs to be done, if you have one thing to say to a leader, what needs to be said to him or her for the decision to empower women, I'll start with Debbie again, one word. You know I have five. I was always told when you ask one for a woman and she gives you five, okay. One is this whole concept of hiring in groups, hiring in bundles and it's called bundles actually because when you hire a group of people, you see whether there's diversity in that group, when you just hire people one at a time, you don't really know whether you're hiring of diversity. Okay, good, thank you, Karia. To decision makers, to all the ministers who are present here, I would like to tell them please encourage women to be up to the level of taking decision and help them out because as Dr. Hassa said, it is very difficult for women in the start, in the beginning of their careers to be able to achieve what they want and so please help them out to be able to be capable of extraordinary things and most of all, we need to help the young engineers and help them to achieve the post positions of decision makers please. Please one word. I would like to tell decision makers, you have to be courageous, you have to dare go beyond boundaries to achieve what is needed. It's deliberate and committed inclusiveness. Deliberate? And committed inclusiveness of women, six words. Ms. Lara, thank you, Mr. Secretary-General. The advantage of private and public partnerships in order to enable the decision makers to achieve what they really want to achieve. We actually need political will and also community-oriented public services, also education and education for change. In my opinion, we need women to fight in order to act and to achieve results on the legislative side and to achieve results in that regard, thank you. Any more word to add? Just parents, I think parents should really raise their kids equal boy or... Very much, I think, I always say time is the only thing we never have enough, unfortunately. And I'm not the one who invented days with 24 hours. If it was me, I would have done much better than that or a girl more than that. But we will stop here this session, but you've seen how wonderful our panelists were and they deserve a really good round of applause.