World Summit on Information Society Takes Off in Geneval !

WSIS Forum 2015: Join UNESCO and its partners onsite or remotely!

© UNESCO

“Innovating Together: Enabling ICTs for Sustainable Development” is the theme of this year’s World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2015, co-organized by ITU, UNESCO, UNDP and UNCTAD. The Forum will be held in ITU and WIPO premises in Geneva between 25 and 29 May 2015 – but you can also join remotely!

UNESCO’s Deputy Director-General, Mr Getachew Engida, will be giving the opening remarks on behalf of the Organization on Tuesday, 26 May.  Together with the Heads of agencies of ITU and UNCTAD, Mr Engida will also co-chair the High-level meeting of the United Nations Group on the Information Society.

UNESCO will organize six sessions at WSIS Forum 2015. On Wednesday morning UNESCO will bring together high level panelists to discuss the topic “Making Empowerment a Reality – Accessibility for All”. The special focus of this session is on access to information and knowledge using accessible and inclusive Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for inclusion of persons with disabilities. UNESCO is proud to be organizing this high level dialogue, as the issue is of the utmost importance. Despite UN’s commitment to the rights of persons with disabilities, as well as technological progress, many persons with disabilities still experience barriers to access information. The high level dialogue seeks to raise awareness about disability issues and draw attention to the need of mainstreaming accessibility of ICTs for persons with disabilities in the post-2015 development agenda. The dialogue session will be chaired by Mr Indrajit Banerjee, Director, Knowledge Societies Division, Communication and Information Sector, UNESCO.

In addition, UNESCO will organize five more Action Line meetings focusing on Free, independent and pluralistic media and the Post-2015 development agenda; Culture and ICTs as drivers of sustainable development; Ethical dimensions of the information society and sustainable development; Access to information to achieve Sustainable Development Goals; and Teacher ICT competencies to support inclusive Knowledge Societies. All the sessions will attempt to raise awareness and find solutions to the emerging and on-going challenges present in information societies today.

Joining online:

For those unable to participate in this year’s WSIS Forum in person, the event can be easily accessed remotely by choosing the desired session on the WSIS Forum Agenda online and selecting the preferred type of remote participation (Webcast or Adobe Connect). Remote participants will be required to fill in a real-time registration form in order to access the session. Each session will have 10 to 15 minutes dedicated to the questions from remote participants. Onsite registration, as well as further information on remote participation is available on ITU’s WSIS Forum 2015 Website.