High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation

Ladies and gentlemen,
A very warm welcome to the Palais des Nations!

Ever since the League of Nations was established here exactly 100 years ago, Geneva has been the home of multilateralism. The place where nations from across the world come together to seek shared solutions to shared challenges.

UN Geneva is a global platform for multilateral dialogue, action and systems change.
It is the venue for agreements that might not have attracted great attention over the years, but that nonetheless have had lasting impacts on everyone’s life on this planet.

One example out of many that I often like to quote is the agreement made here in 1949 on road and traffic signs making them the same the world over. And today work is carried out on global standards for driverless cars.

Its agreements like these that demonstrate the great and indispensable value of multilateralism, and the tangible improvements it has brought to all of our lives over the past decades.
Progress that drives home the truth that multilateralism works.

Work continues as we speak - facilitating global trade flows, setting labor standards, eliminating and preventing diseases, and, of course, promoting digital cooperation. Today, these efforts implicate not just states and governments, but the full spectrum of international actors - from the private sector to civil society.

Geneva’s diverse ecosystem and pioneering mind-set have made it the place where digital innovation has flourished, including in the policy making space: It’s where the World Wide Web was invented; where discussions on technology and digital policies have been and are discussed and where important agreements banning whole categories of weapons technologies and applications and systems happened.

This is the backdrop for your immensely complex task.

The importance of which is only matched by the urgency to get it done.
We all know of the incredible promise of technology in helping us deliver the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, our global roadmap.

However, the dissipation of power brought on by the digital revolution also carries risks. We must therefore update, not abandon, our rule-book and we must strengthen our collective digital knowledge, both of which to ensure that these technologies are beneficial, developed responsibly and will not exacerbate inequality.

So far, advances in digital technologies have outpaced our ability to respond with a full grasp of their implications, and to keep up with appropriate regulatory frameworks and governance structures.

It is our fervent hope that you will help us keep up. To identify gaps, to think about how we can collaborate across international boundaries, policy silos, and professional domains; to raise awareness, and ultimately, to construct a digital future that is safe, trustworthy, and inclusive.

If we don’t succeed in humanizing technology, and educating and empowering people to engage, we’ll end up technologizing humanity - with little regard for human values, norms and freedoms.
All of us have a stake. All of us have a responsibility.

Neither governments, nor technology companies, nor civil society, nor anyone else can alone solve the challenges posed by rapid technological progress.

As Secretary-General Guterres said in his New Year’s Address: “When international cooperation works, the world wins.” If we remain divided, we all lose.

Thank you for being here. We all wish you every success in your daunting task.