Digital inclusivity – Connecting the next billion

Fostering digital inclusivity and multilingualism in the global internet landscape

During a session moderated by Chris Buckridge, discussions centred on digital inclusivity, multilingualism, and the challenges of connecting the world’s population to the benefits of digital technologies. The session reflected on the goals set by the World Summit on the Information Society nearly two decades ago, which envisioned a digital future accessible to all, regardless of language barriers.

Elena Plexida of ICANN highlighted the organisation’s efforts to build a secure, resilient, and inclusive global internet infrastructure. She emphasised the importance of internationalised domain names (IDNs) in fostering digital inclusivity but acknowledged the challenges in achieving universal acceptance. With only 10% of websites and 23% of email servers supporting IDNs, much work remains to be done.

Dr. Bhanu Neupane from UNESCO discussed the organisation’s initiatives to preserve linguistic and cultural diversity online. He pointed out that despite significant progress in internet connectivity, with over 5 billion people online, content in just 14 languages dominates 91.4% of the internet. UNESCO’s efforts include promoting multilingualism in cyberspace, documenting global linguistic diversity, and working closely with ICANN to enhance the multilingual internet.

Audience members contributed to the discussion by highlighting the challenges of connecting the remaining two billion people who are still offline, many of whom reside in remote or underserved areas. They pointed out that even with domain names in native languages, the lack of content in these languages remains a significant barrier. Concerns were also raised about cybersecurity and the trustworthiness of online services, with one participant noting the reluctance of some individuals, such as their mother, to engage in internet banking due to security fears.

The session concluded with a consensus on the need for increased advocacy and policy support to promote digital inclusivity and multilingualism. There was a call for stakeholders to continue pushing for an internet that preserves linguistic and cultural diversity, and for governments to be more vocal about the challenges they face in this regard. The Global Digital Compact was mentioned as a potential framework for action in support of these objectives.

The discussion underscored the importance of creating awareness and building robust local technical capacities, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. It called for a collective effort from all stakeholders to ensure that the digital future is truly inclusive and reflective of the world’s rich linguistic and cultural tapestry.

Mr. Chris Buckridge:
Thank you, everyone. Welcome. My name is Chris Buckridge. I’m going to be moderating this session. It’s entitled, I want to get this right. Sorry, Digital Inclusivity Connecting and Exclusion. So, I’m here this week talking about the World Summit on the Information Society and how we’ve achieved or are aspiring to achieve the goals that were laid out by that process nearly 20 years ago. And what was envisioned then was a digital future where everyone can experience the benefits of digital technologies. That really very ambitious agenda was set and prioritised goals that included closing the digital divide and a commitment towards multilingualisation of the internet, which was laid out in the Tunis Agenda 2005. We’ve made significant progress in that area to bring benefits of digital technologies to more people than ever. We now have more than two thirds of the world’s population online. And we’ve also learned a lot of valuable lessons regarding how to overcome challenging obstacles and find effective solutions. What we know is that simply having access to the internet doesn’t ensure digital inclusion. And while some individuals are still not able to access digital technologies because they don’t have the connectivity, there are many others who also are unable to take full advantage when they’re because of the lack of capacity or the inability to navigate online. And efforts to connect the next billion need to acknowledge the importance of digital inclusivity. So, today what we are planning is a discussion on strategies that have been undertaken by the technical community, the private sector and international organisations to foster an inclusive digital environment that embraces linguistic and cultural diversity. And hopefully we’ll be able to get some insights about innovative approaches and initiatives aimed at enhancing the DNS and technology infrastructure to accommodate a broader spectrum of languages and scripts, while also promoting accessibility and affordability of internet access. We have a couple of speakers with us in the room. Dr. Bhanu Nepenge from UNICEF. There’s Elena Flexida from ICANN. We had hoped to have the Minister from Burundi, Minister of Communication, Information Technologies and Media with us. I think she’s unable to join us, but may join at some point during the session. We hope that she’ll be able to. But I think probably it makes sense for us to kick off the discussion here. Maybe on the technical side, this is coming from, these are sort of two aspects of the discussion. The aspect of the technical infrastructure and the aspect of the content that is online. The grounding and the foundation there seems to be technical infrastructure. So Elena, could you maybe elaborate a bit on the progress that ICANN’s made towards multilingualization of the internet since the Tunis agenda in 2005, and maybe some of the significant challenges still remain? Thank you, Chris. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here.

Ms. Elena Plexida:
Good morning, everyone. Yeah, as you did mention, the foundation, the technical foundations, right, it’s the beginning of it all. We need a sound technical foundation for everything to come on top. And as you might be very well aware, ICANN is part of the family of technical organizations that are working to maintain the technical foundations of what make the internet global. And that sound, that’s there, that’s secure, that’s resilient, due to the work of these technical organizations and the communities that come together around them with the stakeholder way to govern these technical foundations. So they’re there. We know we have the global internet. Fantastic, that’s great. But as Chris said, is that enough to say that we have inclusiveness? And the answer is really, no, it’s not enough, because there are some barriers that you cannot overcome just by putting people online, and namely the language barrier. Since 2005, and the commitments of the Tunis agenda, the ICANN community, the other technical organizations, of course, that are involved, they have worked to enable the so-called internationalized domain names. So you have domain names that are not just in Latin script. The technical world is, for better or for worse, dominated with the English script so far. But going forward in the future, where paper might not even be there, and everything being digital, we might want to rethink that and make sure that the languages and the culture does survive two, three generations down the road. So we have those internationalized domain names right now. ICANN has enabled 26 scripts in non-Latin. Those are covering more than 386 languages. That’s there, it is happening. In two years’ time, from now, 2026, there’s going to be a new round of top-level domain names. So there’s going to be another expansion of the Internet. We’re hoping that this will give the opportunity for even more internationalized domain names, and it should be that way. And what is the barriers, though, that still remain? Yeah, we have them. We have the internationalized domain names. Do they work? Not ideally. So today you have something like 10% of websites recognizing them, and you have something like 23% of email servers supporting internationalized email addresses. Well, needless to say, this is not good enough. So what is called technically universal acceptance, acceptance among email servers and websites of these different scripts, is something that is absolutely fundamental and needs to happen. ICANN is very much invested in that. And of course, we’re working on this in partnership with many, many other organizations, including UNESCO, and thank you so much for that. Vanu will refer to that as well. So that’s the challenge for the future. Universal acceptance of the internationalized domain names. And if I may finish with that, just to make it a little more personal. Okay, everyone understands the principle of inclusiveness and culture. I will talk about my grandmother. My grandmother, I love her dearly. She’s 85 years old. She has her own iPad and other devices. She drives everything, everything. She goes online. But in order to find what she needs, I’m Greek, by the way, so my native language and the only language of my grandmother is Greek, which is a different script. For her to go online, she has to ask me to get her to the website that she wants to read. Of course, the content of the website is in Greek, but she cannot do the search because she doesn’t recognize the Latin characters. So she cannot even use a search engine to go there. I need to help her get on the website that she needs. With the internationalized domain names and universal acceptance, these kind of things will be overcome. This is what we’re talking about here. Thank you. Excellent. So I mentioned the two sides, the technical and the content. I

Mr. Chris Buckridge:
think there are obviously a lot of linkages between those as well. That anecdote, I think, speaks to that, that there is a link between how accessible content is, even if it’s in a different language. It still relies on the infrastructure having that element there. But Dr. Nepain, I’d like to ask you a bit about the steps that UNESCO is taking on that other content side, trying to preserve linguistic and cultural diversity in the digital space. Maybe you can share some successful projects or initiatives.

Mr. Bhanu Neupane:
Thank you so much, Chris. Just to take the lead from what Elena just noted, quite interesting. Let’s just reflect on what was happening in 2003 when people were talking about the WSIS Forum and then trying to come up with a different access line and so forth. At the time, quite interestingly, the world only had 608 million people who were connected by internet. Now we are talking about 5.64, as per recent statistics that have come out. Quite interestingly, we have developed and we have, in fact, managed to connect almost 5 billion plus people by internet. But sadly, 91.4 percent of the total content that is available online are only available in 14 languages. The world speaks about 7,000 languages, which are still alive, which are either spoken or signed. But we have documented all the languages around the world. Since the dawn of civilization, 8,324 languages have ever been spoken. There may be a couple more, but this is what we have managed to document thus far. The real issue is why 96 percent of the total domain names are only in English or in other Latin script. This is the key concern that we have. Quite interestingly, in 2003, when the world was discussing WSIS access lines, at the same time, UNESCO’s member states were also discussing multilingualism in the cyberspace. They agreed on a recommendation called Multilingualism in the Cyberspace. It actually had three lines. The first, it will try to see how multilingualism will connect to the development. Then, the other was the status of multilingual content and systems in cyberspace. That was the second thing. The third thing they wanted to see was the status of the facilitation of access to networks and systems. Back in 2003 itself, the member states had said to come up with a new internationalized domain name so that many more people not speaking mainstream languages will get connected. That was the thought then. Every four years, what member states do is they actually report back to UNESCO’s General Conference, where all 193 or 194 countries get together, what type of efforts they have undertaken. This has been the primary effort that UNESCO has at the moment. At the same time, when the COVID hit, it actually opened many people’s eyes. They were trying to reach out to different people or communities in different parts of the world. They found out that many of the systems and tools and processes that they had developed were in different languages, and the people were not understanding it. People had to go through serious suffering as a result. In 2022, the UN has now a new resolution, and it is trying to reach the Internet with many other different languages. UNESCO being in the forefront of that one. UNESCO is also one of the co-leads of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, so it is doing quite a lot on that one. It has already received 11 national accent plans for the international decade, so what they will do from 2020 to 2032. One of the strategies, the access of the pillars to this strategy also includes a digital strategy, how to empower indigenous communities with digital tools and services. We are doing that. The other thing that we have done is we have started to document the global linguistic diversity online. There are lots of languages that we have created. Currently, it documents, as I was saying earlier, 8,324 languages. It is not only that. What we have done is we have decided to co-create this atlas. Instead of sending researchers in different corners of the world, we have asked the governments to provide the data to us. Governments are providing, so 127 countries have nominated their focal point. They are taking the spectrum of how diverse their linguistic sphere is, and they are reporting it back. At some point, our system gets used by about 176 people simultaneously on this system, and they will be feeding the data. We are getting that. What we also did was something that we had already done with ICANN in 2009 to work together. We have decided to revive it because now we have found that it is not only developing tools, content, and processes, but also let us embark a little bit more closer together in internationalizing our domain names and GTLDs. We are now working very close together. From next year, we will be organizing a universal acceptance day together, which is on the 28th of March, which is celebrated, to see to what extent the world’s internet has become diverse. We are doing quite a lot, not only from the international decade of indigenous languages, but also from the multilingualism and the cyberspace context. Thank you very much. A heads up to everyone. I am going to ask a couple more questions here,

Mr. Chris Buckridge:
but I would like to draw on some of the expertise in the room. If you have comments or questions, please be ready to jump in. Elena, before we go to that, I think Bhanu mentioned the work that ICANN and UNESCO are doing together, and obviously, getting a lot of the feedback from governments. What else is ICANN doing? How is it collaborating with other stakeholders like local communities and private sector to progress this initiative

Ms. Elena Plexida:
to make the internet more accessible in multiple languages? Thank you, Chris. Indeed, the collaboration with UNESCO is one very important collaboration. UNESCO has a very big platform, ICANN is working for that, and partnering with UNESCO to expand the universal acceptance days, events. This is a data that emerged last year. We had something like around 50 events in more or less the same countries. These are awareness events. As I said before, we need universal acceptance, but people need to know that this needs to happen, right? So, that goes back to your question about who else we need to partner with. Of course, we’re already working on it, but more needs to be done. First and foremost, governments, not only through UNESCO, but alone. The governments themselves have to push for that. The governments themselves have to ask that for their own citizens. India is one of the countries that has realized the potential for internationalized domain names and internationalized internet, really, and are already pushing through that. My colleague was sharing with me some examples that I’m not really sure I can reproduce for you the right way, about the Indian government being able to, using internationalized domain names, create an application for their citizens, which enabled them then to be able to ask for loans in their own language, because they were not able to do that before, either because they were very far away to go talk to someone, or because the application was in English. So, that’s an example of a government that is already thinking ahead and taking advantage of that. Others need to realize that. I know, honestly, if a government doesn’t want that for their own citizens, it will never happen. Civil society. Civil society needs to advocate for that as well. I don’t think that anyone disagrees that we all feel very strongly about our own language, our own culture, and we feel strongly about that being preserved down the line, where everything becomes digital. Technical side, and I mean business side here. I mentioned before, the numbers are not encouraging. 10 percent is not okay. We need updated software to support local language domains and emails. There’s a lot to be done there. And finally, universities, of course. So, a lot of work is being done in that respect. If I may pivot a little bit further, I can, again, in partnership with others, such as Smart Africa, the ITU, and we have put together a coalition. We call it Coalition for Digital Africa. Apparently, this is a targeted thing for Africa, but part of this coalition is also to expand the awareness of the linguistic issue, among others. And we’re working for ISOC, for example. ISOC, together with us, they put an IXP in the region. This is a cross-factor, right? It’s again about inclusiveness in a different level. It’s not the language part of it. And there’s also work being done with the local CCTLDs. Everyone is talking about and that needs to be done. Going in government services, right? Again, I will say that needs to be done in the language that your citizens understand, but your CCTLD needs to be strong. So, there’s a lot of work being done there, not only to evolve the language part of it, but also make sure that technically, there is a robust country code, top-level domain, country code, don’t do it with commercial ones, and that can support this further. Thank you for that. Obviously, a lot of roles for different stakeholders.

Mr. Chris Buckridge:
What you were describing about this, the four-yearly reporting that goes on, which obviously, I’m assuming there are many lessons that can be drawn from that and collated. Are there specific policy, and I’m saying in brackets, public policy recommendations that UNESCO sort of sees emerging or would be promoting at this point in support of these efforts?

Mr. Bhanu Neupane:
Oh, yes. This is a very interesting point you raised, Chris. What happens is when the members state in a report back, it gets debated first by executive board of UNESCO comprising of three countries, and then it gets transferred to the General Conference of 194 countries, come together and debate this stuff. And they take the lesson out of this one. This year’s lessons were at two different levels. One that universal acceptance became part of this 2003 recommendation on multilingualism in the cyberspace. This is the first time. And now, because of that, we have, in fact, during the universal acceptance day, a few from ICANN, Sarmad, he may be listening to this conversation, he and I, we actually sat together in Serbia. And we actually came with a strategy, and I would like to call it an ABCDEF strategy. And quite interesting, ABCDEF is easy to remember and so forth. So we thought that perhaps the biggest challenge for us to somehow hit on the advocacy of the government. So what we have done was, on the 6th of May, we organized what universal acceptance is all about, what is the significance of multilingualism in the cyberspace, to the member states. So the member state came, and we actually told them this is why it is so important. Sally, CEO of ICANN, was there, and then our Assistant Director General, Dr. Gelasi, they were there. So they actually provided, and it was kind of a one-on-one discussion with the member state. So that was the first thing that happened. But out of this, now there will be some monitoring, or a few indicators, or a mechanism will be established to monitor how universal acceptance are getting internalized in government policies. So this is something that we’re in the process of developing that mechanism, and we will do it now. That’s the first one. The second thing that we also thought was, there was a major policy vacuum at the top level. People were not understanding what universal acceptance is all about, or even understood what multilingualism is in the cyberspace. So we actually are in the process of developing a policy brief, primarily focused at the governments. So this will come up. The second thing that we will do is, we’ll start in abridging knowledge, because some countries are advanced. And we will also identify a linguistic group, and I was mentioning that to you just before we started this, like Maya community. It transcends the international boundary. And we, in fact, try to come up with a domain name for Maya language, that it will be .mayab or something like that, because that will somehow not only valorize the context of Maya language in the national development, but at the same time, it will be a very good tool for cultural integrity, and then talking in unison to drive this mechanism forward. The third thing that we will do is, we’re in the process of developing a couple of MOOCs and self-directed learning tools on universal acceptance. And then, of course, we will, in fact, be organizing a few training workshops now, which will be directed training workshops. And when we go to D, disseminate, whatever we have done, we will start to disseminate. And then we will, in fact, develop a new way to make things efficient. And of course, the last point, which is F, is try to come up with a little funding so that the countries can utilize or access this funding so that they can advance universal acceptance or multilingual internet for them. So this is like A, B, C, D, E, F, is the mechanism that we have just done. And it will sit right below the memorandum of understanding, which is in the process of being renewed between ICANN. That will be the major policy part, but this has already been adopted. Thank you very much for that.

Mr. Chris Buckridge:
I do want to try and get some others into this conversation, whether you have questions for either of our speakers or your own experiences that you can comment on in universal acceptance or in terms of challenges, multilingualism on the internet. There’s an online question. There’s an online question. Okay. Okay. Well, okay. I can read it out here. The question is coming from Mark Cavell, EuroDIG and ISC3, the IGF Dynamic Coalition. He says, does ICANN, I guess this is for Elena, does ICANN have a target number for non-Latin scripts in the GTLDs and CCTLDs by 2030? Is visual similarity of non-Latin script TLDs with Latin script TLDs still a problem?

Ms. Elena Plexida:
Great question. So the answer is, as far as I’m aware, we don’t have a specific target in terms of numbers. The problem of similarity is not such high as a concern as it used to be. There has been concerns before and there has been a way to address it. If it comes up again, just to say for the sake of the argument, the question of similarity that the online participant is raising is one that have an existing domain name in Latin character. And then another one, which is in non-Latin characters are pretty similar. And that has come up in the past, including one in my language. It was a .eu or the European Union script. And then Grace requested another one that if you looked at them, they were very similar. So the concern there was that people might be getting confused and there might be scam even. So you have to take this into consideration as well. And there were ways around them. So, for example, the solution that was given even in this particular case was that the registry that was given the domain name had to put in place very strict measures that would make sure that such confusion does not happen at the end user level. If that happens again, I’m sure that there are ways to mitigate it. And that’s what I would say. But I would definitely say that this is not the reason to just say, OK, we’re good with the English characters. So not to confuse anyone. Let’s keep it that way. Thank you.

Mr. Chris Buckridge:
And thanks, Mark, for kicking off the discussion. Looking around the table, please. So, like, going back to the topic itself, it’s still includes and I’m going to be next billion.

Audience 1:
We did it. It jumped into like a language and like there’s more than two billion people that are still not. So and like when connecting more than five billion people, it might happen easier, but like navigating those two billion people is more difficult than like connecting this five billion people, because the left ones are the most like the remote areas and like most difficult one. So challenge here is developing countries have all kind of things that are working on to get the connectivity. But like if you go to Africa and then like to the Southeast Asian part, how do we get them to the access is because the landing port is the access of getting the access. And another problem is language. Definitely. When we access, we are talking about like internationalization of domain names and just the domain name. But like you got the domain name, but there’s no content. Every content on the Internet is, I think, more than 90 percent of the content is English. So we got the domain name in our native language. That is good. But like people have not still created the content we need. Like you said, I have some people we know all speak native and they want native. So another part is like within five years. What I believe is the way we navigate the Internet will change because the way we are using our assistance over the city, do this, do that. So in five years, I see that like I can call it native. I see that within five years, I’ll be saying in native language, do this, do that. And like this can do that. We have to make sure, though, that it will be able to do that. I think it would because just think five years before today. Was this Google good enough to do the things? I don’t think so. You might have used Google Translate five years back. Just like in 2017 or 18, Google Translate would do. I’m a Nepali, so like it would be terrible Nepali. But like if I translate today, it is pretty good. Like just and there are language models that are being developed. And when you give the prompt in English also, they give a good Nepali output. So like what I see is the development in five years. I’m saying five years, not tomorrow. Like within five years, how we navigate will change. But like how do we generate those content is more important because without the content having access is one thing. But like, what do you do? Get people online, but like what do they navigate is very important. So how do we create that environment? Doing the technical kind of thing is very important. That makes that we are able to navigate the things. But like, what do we navigate? How do we generate that content? And then like another thing is like developing countries have the funds to do all kind of this technical things. But if you go to Nepal, we don’t have any funds. So like government doesn’t see technical thing as a priority till the date. So how do we help those kind of like low-income and middle-income countries to develop their technical capacity and then like develop their other user awareness kind of thing? How do you do that? Thank you.

Mr. Chris Buckridge:
Yes. In fact, I’m up in Nepal. I’m bringing some Nepali elements in the overall discussion.

Mr. Bhanu Neupane:
Just to answer your question, what we have done is we have already started doing it. We say that, okay, why does anybody, you’re a Nepali, why does a Nepali person, if he has to learn programming, has to learn English first or any Latin character first, why can’t he start programming in Nepali itself? So that is the first part. So what we have done is we are developing a multilingual programming language called Peloton. This will be soon launched. So this is like ontology-based. So you can, in fact, put any language in on that one. And then it will, in fact, like it’ll work as good as, and we already have developed some product using this in any language. We are, in fact, also taking it to say Nougat, which is an Australian, say, indigenous language. So Australian government is kind of, they have provided us a little fund. So we have developed this programming language in Nougat language. So Nougat population, they do not have to learn English before they start in a program. That’s the first thing. Second question is, till today, there are only 3,000 keyboard are available in languages. And the world has 6,000 languages. So what we are doing, we are trying to increase this number. Can all languages that are spoken around the world will have their own keyboard? Why not? The problem, as I was saying before, these people will have to pay a premium. Nobody is saying that, if I say that, okay, develop a keyboard in Kisa, really, somebody will say that, okay, I will do it, but this will cost $5 more than an English keyboard that you can find in a junk market, because this is a niche product. A niche product requires the companies to make some money out of it. So, in fact, here what we are doing, we are impressing on the government that when you are asking, setting up a keyboard plan, or come up with something that can be posted right on top of it. So now we have a keyboard in Maya language, for example, including in Maya language. And we are also, very soon, something that Meta had developed, it’s called No Language Left Behind, which has now come under UNESCO’s umbrella. So Hugging Face, Meta, and UNESCO have joined together. So you will see that No Language Left Behind, or this new translation, that does a fantastic job in translating back and forth from this one. So we are also doing those. But there are several other things, interface, and this, that, and so forth. So I think when we talk about Internet, we shouldn’t talk, and I think you are very right for this young man to point out, it’s primarily not only international domain name, but it’s right from the programming, all the way to how the contents are created, how it’s processed, and put online. So I think this should be some kind of premium that if someone will take .np, for example, perhaps these people should pay less than someone who is trying to go for .com or .org. Well, perhaps there should be a lot more channelized support on this one. But I think we are doing it. And with the partnership that we are developing with ICANN, you will soon see there will be a monumental change.

Mr. Chris Buckridge:
Good morning, everyone, and thanks for giving me the floor.

Audience 2:
I represent Nigeria and ICANN. So basically, to lend my voice to what you are saying, I think creation of awareness is very key. Because when people have access and they are not aware of what to do, then there is this issue of trust. Trust is still very key. And security online. Just like my mom. There is nothing you can tell my mom for her to do Internet banking because she feels it’s not safe. So we are trying as much as possible to bring a lot of people on board by creating awareness. And in my own country tomorrow, we are going to commemorate the Universal Acceptance Day tomorrow. So we are going to create enlightenment. So I think cybersecurity issue has to be more tackled to be able to gain trust and confidence. And rigorous. I’m going to emphasize rigorous awareness creation is very key. Thank you very much.

Audience 3:
Okay. My name is Albert from the United Republic of Tanzania. In fact, I’m coming from Universal Communication Access Fund. So we are responsible with extending communication service in Lulu, and you have done a good job in that domain. However, when it comes to content, then I can say even today we are struggling to connect some part of the country, even with the 2G services, let alone 3G or 4G services. So when we talk about multilingual issues, linguistic issues, then I think there’s a need for maybe UNESCO and other partners to continue supporting the developing countries so that they are not left behind. Otherwise, maybe there will be a huge gap because most of the countries we are still struggling to make people online, try to connect, try to find some infrastructures so that people are online. But again, it comes the issue of the barrier. We have said that 90, almost 90% or 94% of the contents are only 10 languages, 10% of the languages out of the 7,000 languages being spoken. So I think there’s a need for UNESCO and whoever in support to keep on engaging the government so that we are maybe on that part of the world, we are not left behind. Thank you very much, sir.

Mr. Bhanu Neupane:
If I may, I’m just going to take a minute to… Can I just say, sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt. We have a few minutes left, so please respond. But maybe we can also make this sort of closing comments from yourself and Elena. This is excellent. Just like as you have raised this issue, when your delegate comes to UNESCO General Conference to talk where these issues are spoken, these points are not channeled across. When we say, how is the internet working in your country? They say, oh, everything is fine, we are providing this. So only positivity are spoken in international events and no one is giving us the real challenge, such as the issue of cyber security. I never had this. This trust issue and multilingualism is extremely important. Madam, thank you so much for bringing it forward because I will actually put in my missing report that this is what the people think extremely useful, such as you were saying. You said that, okay, we should do more. But I think if we receive a letter from the government of Tanzania, we will in fact create a project and run to you and provide you with some assistance. But I think we should know. So perhaps this backward and forward dialogue, and this is the reason why every four years member states are requested to provide that. I’m not too sure if your government provided that report to us. So without us knowing, how can we respond back? So I would say that please let’s speak up and bring more problems to the table so that solutions can be found.

Mr. Chris Buckridge:
Thank you so much. Thank you. Elena, any final comments?

Ms. Elena Plexida:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more with the comments that were raised by you about cyber security. It’s a combination of everything, of course. Anything needs to come together so as to get to something that is more inclusive. IDN is just one of it. It’s elementary. It’s important. It’s basic. It’s one of it. It has to happen. It is a combination of things. I think that human ingenuity is fantastic. You were saying five years ago that was not working that well. So yeah, of course, human ingenuity can address everything. It’s just a matter of keeping in mind what kind of internet do we want down the line. So we have to remind ourselves not just sit there and say, we have it now in Latin, in English. That is going to create unintentionally a westernized world. Just to use a buzzword here. We haven’t used that in the book. And we all need to work for that, and we all need to keep in mind what we want for the future. There will be no paper in the future. Everything will be digitized. So we better make sure that our languages are preserved and ask for it. Keep asking. Thank you.

Mr. Chris Buckridge:
I said that was closing statements. We actually have one question in the chat here, which I’m just going to read out, Mark. I’m sorry, probably not going to get answers, but maybe it’s also a good question just to throw out and have people thinking about, which is should the Global Digital Compact say more about actions in support of multilingualism objectives and the principle of inclusivity? So I think there’s going to be a lot of discussions about the Global Digital Compact this week and in the coming weeks. So it’s good to have that top of mind. And I think a good sort of note to leave this session on thinking about how this can be carried forward. I will throw in a pitch for March 28th next year, UA Day. There will be many events around that, I’m sure. But yeah, keep your eyes out for that. In the meantime, thank you very much for joining us and I’ll bring the session to a close.