Celebrating the United Nations at 75

 

As a global custodian of technology in the pursuit of peace, the ICT4Peace Foundation congratulates the United Nations on its 75^th anniversary. ICT4Peace was launched with the support of the Swiss Government in 2003. We helped define the framework for technology in peacebuilding through Paragraph 36 of the Tunis Commitment of the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2005. In the same year, the preface by late UN Secretary-General H.E. Kofi Anan to ‘Information and Communication Technology for Peace – The Role of ICT in Preventing, Responding to and Recovering from Conflict’ published by the UN ICT Taskforce with ICT4Peace presciently noted that,

ICTs are also critical tools in peacekeeping operations, including in logistics. Moreover, ICTs can help address the root causes of violent conflict. By promoting access to knowledge, they can promote mutual understanding, an essential factor in conflict prevention and post-conflict reconciliation. ICTs also offers ways to reveal human rights abuses, promote transparent governance, and give people living under repressive regimes access to uncensored information and an outlet to air their grievances and appeal for help.

Fifteen years on, the global relevance and enduring resonance of these observations do not surprise us. For close to two decades, ICT4Peace is privileged to be a trusted partner of and strategic advisor to the UN. We have helped the UN meaningfully embrace the growing potential of technology to strengthen peace, human rights and democratic governance. We work with a diverse range of UN agencies, departments and entities to explore, especially in recent years, significant socio-technological issues including:

1. The migration of communications to encrypted instant messaging apps and what it means for policymaking pegged to public data.
2. The resurgence of more tribal identities online, along with revisionist or exclusive histories, leading to the splintering of communities and an aversion to diversity.
3. Policies around tools and platforms used to define, deny or decry democracy and diversity that are often the very same used to strengthen civil society activism and advocacy.
4. The weaponisation of social media and possible consequences for democracy.
5. Aspects of and navigating a post-truth world, where veracity is valued but markers of it are increasingly evasive.
6. The role of traditional media as active agents of misinformation, leading to complex networked effects in news production and media ecologies.