Insightful and thought provoking discussions among distinguished panel members:
- Brad Smith, president of Microsoft;
- Doris Leuthard, former president of the Swiss Confederation;
- Amandeep Singh Gill, former co-executive director of the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation’s Secretariat;
- Jovan Kurbalija, head of the Geneva Internet Platform and former Co-Executive Director, Secretariat of the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation
Amidst the conversations on the role of Geneva in Digital Cooperation, it was mentioned that:
- the Swiss Digital Initiative (including GAFAM) to promote ethics in the digital world will to be officially launched on World Economic Forum 2020
- Geneva is where ‘Technology meets Humanity’ referring to the early technologies, the birth of the Red Cross
- ‘De-ideologizing’ the issue of data which ranges from private data, scientific data, business data and that emphasis on those specificities is important when discussing regulation on data
- Inclusiveness is one of the most pressing challenge in view of ‘not missing out on opportunities’
- only 5% of articles about Africa on Wikipedia are written by Africans yet optimism was echoed about Africa’s growth and digital transformation
Interestingly, alluding to the Cloud Act (a United States federal law enacted in 2018) and bilateral agreements, @Jovan Kurbalija referred to the creation of the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) in 1865 after bilateral agreements could not properly address issues relating to Telegraph Exchanges. The International Telegraph Convention was indeed a precursor of multilateralism, many decades before the creation of the League of Nations.
The recording can be found here .
Y. Kitaw
PhD Fellow in Governance and Policy Analysis at UNU-MERIT Maastricht University
Personal website: kitaw.info | LinkedIn | Twitter