The focus of this year’s 2018 World Summit on Information is “Leveraging ICTs to Build Information and Knowledge Societies for Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”.
ESCWA Executive Secretary, Mohamed Ali Alhakim headed to Geneva with a delegation comprising the ESCWA Director of Technology for Development Division, Haidar Fraihat, and ESCWA Chief of ICT Policies Section, Ayman Elsherbiny.
Mr. Alhakim will deliver a speech on Tuesday 20 March during the High-Level Strategic Dialogue Session on Multi-Stakeholder Partnership for the World Summit on the Information Society’s (WSIS) Implementation.
The most senior ESCWA official will also meet with other top officials to discuss joint cooperation, including the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG), Michael Møller, the Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), William Lacy Swing, the Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Houlin Zhao, the Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Francis Gurry, and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), Olga Algayerova.
Since the inception of the WSIS process, ESCWA has played a leading role in organizing regional meetings, profiling the information society in a series of biennial reports, and creating a regional plan of action for building the information society. ESCWA also launched an initiative entitled “Arab dialogue on Internet governance” as well as the Arab Internet Governance Forum (IGF). These activities contribute to shaping the future of the Arab region, raise awareness about the digital technologies, and stimulate launching national IGF in several Arab countries.
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For more information:
Nabil Abu-Dargham +961-70-993144; email: dargham@un.org
Ms Rania Harb: +961-70-008879 harb1@un.org
Ms Mirna Mahfouz: +961-70-827372 mahfouz@un.org
Mr Haidar Fahs: +961-70-079021 haydar.fahs@un.org
