Issued at the close of the 2014 Busan Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) Ministerial Meeting, on the eve of the opening of International Telecommunications Union (ITU)’s 19th Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-14), the ‘Busan Declaration’ stressesd the “fundamental goal of building an inclusive information society enabling everyone to create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, and of attaining internationally agreed development goals and objectives.”
A statement issued yesterday from the ITU said the Declaration emphasised the importance of digital inclusion for people in developing countries and marginalised and vulnerable groups such as women, children, low-income earners, indigenous peoples, the elderly and persons with disabilities.
“Even though we have successfully brought three billion people online, we still have the unacceptable situation where two thirds of people in the developing world, and over 90% of people in the world’s 48 UN-designated Least Developed Countries, are still offline,” ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun I. Touré told the high-level meeting, according to the statement.
The meeting was attended by ministers from some 50 countries from across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Oceania.
