Read this in full at: http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/presscenter/speeches/2012/09/23/remarks-helen-clark-broadband-commission-for-digital-development/

Helen Clark: Broadband Commission for Digital Development

23 September 2012

Remarks UNDP Administrator Helen Clark

Broadband Commission for Digital Development

Session 3: B more Informed:

International Policy Frameworks for an Enabling Environment
23 September 2012, 9:45am New York, Yale Club

It is a pleasure to be participating in this meeting of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development in New York, and to speak about the role of ICT in development.

When the Millennium Development Goals were developed in 2000, the vast potential for information and communication technologies (ICTs) to support development efforts was recognized; but so was the inequitable access to those technologies.

To reflect that, MDG 8 included a target to make the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communication technologies, readily available to people around the world, in co-operation with the private sector.

Where the global development agenda goes beyond 2015 is now being actively debated, and the role of broadband & ICTs as development enablers is more widely understood than it was in 2000. That’s not surprising - since then, access to new technologies, particularly mobile phones and broadband, has grown exponentially. According to the Broadband Commission report being launched today, The State of Broadband 2012, mobile phone subscriptions exceeded six billion in early 2012, three-quarters of which were in the developing world. This is up from approximately 725 million in 2000.
Growth in smartphones is projected to enable 3 billion people to access the internet in 2017, making wireless broadband a particularly promising way of participating in economic, political, and social activities, and for improving service delivery.

As cited in the report, the World Bank has estimated that a ten per cent increase in broadband penetration would yield a 1.21 and 1.38 per cent increase in GDP growth on average for high-income and low/middle-income countries respectively.

GDP growth per se, however, does not automatically lead to improved living standards for all, nor to greater equity, dignity, happiness, and sustainability. These outcomes must be pursued by complementary policies. Nor is greater human development an inevitable outcome of the spread of broadband and other new technologies in developing country markets. Broadband is a means to an end. Where its rollout is linked to global development goals and national priorities, it is a very valuable tool for advancing equitable, inclusive, and sustainable development.

Around the world we see truly innovative and low-cost uses of ICTs emerging, through public-private partnerships and social entrepreneurship, with potential for wide development impact.
They range from improvements in, for example,

healthcare delivery through remote consultations;
agricultural development through access to pricing information and extension services;
education and learning through online resources; and
banking services through mobile banking.

As emergency response tools in times of crisis, basic mobile phones with SMS capacity and phones with more complex mapping platforms allow citizens to monitor elections, track and report violence and crime, and provide logistical support in response to natural disasters and other crises.

UNDP has been working in ICT for Development since 1992. We see expanded access to broadband and ICTs supporting better delivery of services across the board, and engaging people in democratic governance through increased access to information and more transparency.

By the end of 2011, UNDP was supporting 211 e-governance projects in 94 countries.

In Kyrgyzstan, UNDP used crowdsourcing and Ushahidi mapping to help monitor Election Day incidents last year. Almost 3,000 text messages from peace monitors and concerned citizens were sent to the platform, increasing transparency around the elections. Observers could see the emerging picture “live,” and respond accordingly.

In the Philippines, UNDP helped establish e-hubs in select schools across the country, to enable citizens to exchange information, share knowledge, and mobilize support on issues such as poverty, corruption, employment, and education. This has helped empower citizens to hold their government accountable on development goals.

A common feature in all these initiatives has been to reach the poorest and most vulnerable people, and expand dialogue between governments, civil society, and citizens. In the latter respect, it is important to note the role played by ICTs and social media in the uprisings in the Arab States region over the past twenty months.

The 2001 Human Development Report, “Making New Technologies Work for Human Development”, highlighted the potential for ICTs to contribute to human development by removing barriers of social, economic, and geographic isolation, increasing access to information, and enabling poor and marginalized people to participate more actively in decisions which affect their lives. It warned, however, that new technologies could widen inequalities between North and South, and between rich and poor.

The ‘digital divide’ described in the Broadband Commission report being launched today is not just about the extent of the penetration of the technologies, but also about the quality of service and about disparities based on gender, class, geographic location, literacy, and disability.

At the global level, a woman is 21 per cent less likely to own a mobile phone than a man. In 2011, broadband connection costs in many developed countries were equivalent to one per cent of average monthly income, while in nineteen Least Developed Countries surveyed the cost equaled more than 100 per cent of average monthly income.

As international attention focuses on what should follow the 2015 targets set for the MDGs, the UN task team on the post-2015 Development Agenda has issued a first report arguing that “Globalization offers great opportunities, but its benefits are at present very unevenly shared.” It recommends a vision for the future which rests on the core values of human rights, equality, and sustainability, with inclusive social and economic development at the core.

Building on the outcome of Rio+20, this Broadband Commission has a critical role to play in advocating for the use of ICTs and expanded broadband as an enabler of sustainable human development, and as a tool for amplifying the impact of development initiatives.

In March the Secretary-General of ITU, Dr Toure, and I wrote to all UN Resident Co-ordinators and Country Teams to offer substantive and technical support to them in incorporating ICT for development in their country programmes, and in that way to help translate the Commission’s recommendations and thinking into practice. A number have already sought such support, and I hope many more will.

ICTs can also be used to ensure that the post-2015 development agenda is defined through inclusive processes, giving voice to those who are usually not heard.

To that end, UNDP is preparing - together with other UN development agencies - national consultations in more than fifty countries; at least nine thematic consultations on issues ranging from governance to food security; and, in co-operation with civil society, open consultations through a virtual platform aimed at ensuring broad-based participation.

I encourage all of you to engage in these consultations and be advocates for ICTs, including broadband, being key enablers of the post-2015 development agenda.

Read this in full at: http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/presscenter/speeches/2012/09/23/remarks-helen-clark-broadband-commission-for-digital-development/

By Kaitlin Mara @ 10:03 pm

A representative of Google and of the United Nations International Telecommunication Union today spoke of internet freedom in repressive regimes and censorship in Western democracies.

The same tools that allow democratic participation and the opportunity to bear witness to atrocity can be used for spam or surveillance, such as the tracking of Iranian dissidents through cell phones, said Robert Boorstin, director of public policy at Google.

Boorstin and Alexander Ntoko, head of corporate strategy at the ITU, spoke today at the 8-9 March Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy.

The Geneva Summit today announced a “Declaration on Internet Freedom” whichcan be read here.

Censorship in Western Democracies

Those worried about human rights should be careful about focussing too much on the censorship of “ugly regimes” said Boorstin, as in doing so they can be blinded to other worrying developments. The Open Net Initiative, he added, demonstrates the range of different forms of censorship taking place online.

One such development was the recent sentencing of three Italian Google officials for violating privacy laws, he said. The charge followed the posting to Google video of a clip of an autistic teenager being abused by several other teens. Google was alerted to the video two months after it had been posted and then took “about two and a half hours to take it down,” Boorstin said.

“No one would defend the content of that video,” he said, “but if you are criminally responsible for anything that appears on your website, that is going to have a chilling effect on what people are allowed to put up. And it’s going to encourage repressive regimes” that might want to criminalise or censor certain behaviour online. There are also practical considerations, as “every minute 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.”

One promising development is that the United States Treasury on Monday lifted a long-time ban on companies licensing certain kinds of software to countries such as Iran and Sudan, he said.

“This is a great accomplishment, this is something that human rights groups and companies argued for together,” said Boorstin, saying it was a “small step down a long road ahead.”

Internet Freedom where Speech is Not Free

“While there are no borders in cyberspace, global culture does not exist yet,” said Ntoko. “Global companies need to take into account that the internet will not from one day to the next” make value, government, and religious differences disappear.

This means companies have to decide how they will act when faced with censorship.

Speaking of the censored Google.cn that the company runs in China, Boorstin said: “if and when we pull out of China, I feel we will be taking away from the Chinese people a tool they have come to value because it is not Baidu [the Chinese government-run search engine] and because we do not censor as much as Baidu does,” said Boorstin.

But, he said, in China the company does not offer services such as Gmail or Blogger that would have required them to store data in servers on Chinese soil, as this would have left them vulnerable to demands that they share personal information of users.

In Thailand, YouTube was blocked for a time following the posting of a video about the Thai king that violated the nation’s lèste majesté laws. Eventually, Google agreed to take down the offending videos so that the site would be unblocked, seeing it better to take that action than to have nothing there, said Boorstin.

A recently launched Global Network Initiative, a collaboration between Google and Microsoft and Yahoo, is trying to draw up a “code of conduct on how internet tech companies should operate in repressive regimes,” Boorstin said.

Everything Is Mobile

Internet freedom cannot be discussed without recognising the importance of mobile phone technology, especially in developing countries.

Mobile phones have been the fastest spread of a technology in human history, said Boorstin. About two-thirds of the world’s population has access to mobile phones (and this probably underestimates real access as one phone can be used by an entire village) and 80 percent of mobile phone queries on Google come from outside the United States, said Boorstin.

Ntoko encouraged African policy makers in particular to work on creating an enabling environment for business, saying “speaking as an African… we can no longer continue to expect Africa to develop by waiting for handouts… Africa has to put in place the necessary environment to attract business. When that happens, there will be development.” Google currently has bases in South Africa and Kenya, said Boorstin, and said that the company has scouts evaluating other countries for potential projects.

When Is Censorship Appropriate?

Telecommunications networks are bombarded with complaints over what is in the networks, said Ntoko.

Reasons for wanting to censor content online include: technical reasons; the content is illegal within a particular country (and online censorship is an extension of offline censorship); social, cultural or religious reasons (promoting or protecting existing values); the prohibition of politically sensitive material, such as that which critiques the government; and national security reasons. National security, said Ntoko, is recently the most oft-cited reason for censorship, said Ntoko.

It is difficult to prosecute a crime when the criminal, the victim, and the weapon are in three different locations, said Ntoko. UN agencies are working on common laws across countries.

What happened to Google in Italy will most likely not happen elsewhere, said Ntoko. But a better understanding is needed of the liabilities for online content across different countries.

Ntoko said in terms of treatment of content on the internet, the ITU has been working with its members to come up with a common understanding among their national differences. “We need to see if there is any common element,” he said, so that a global company can know what to expect in different countries.

The ITU started with child pornography, and protecting children online, as a focal point as every country can understand it, and it has a unifying element as likely all countries will agree on its negativity.

But “anybody who attempts to find a universal declaration, vision of what should not be allowed on the internet is doomed to failure outside of a very small number of topics,” such as child pornography and hate speech, said Boorstin. Though he also said that he thought instructions for committing suicide or building bombs should not be online though he was not sure how they could be removed.

William New contributed to this story.

Kaitlin Mara may be reached at kmara@ip-watch.ch.