It’s the end of the day here at the Plenipotentiary Conference and I thought I’d check in and give you a quick update of the key events of the day. The main excitement today was with regards to the first and second round of elections for ITU leadership. As expected, Mr. Houlin Zhao, China, was elected unanimously as Secretary General of the ITU. The election for Deputy Secretary has gone two rounds with no candidate receiving a majority of votes. Another round of elections will take place tomorrow for Deputy Secretary General. In addition, elections for the Directors of the three ITU Bureaus should also begin.
In addition to the elections, the substantive work of the conference got underway today with debate over cybersecurity (Resolution 130), illicit uses of ICTs (Resolution 174), and child online protection (Resolution 179) and the ITU Strategic Plan.
With regards to Resolution 170, divisions exist between countries that are looking for significant modifications to the resolution to address surveillance, privacy and other topics and those who believe that the existing Resolution is sufficient for the ITU’s activities in the area of cybersecurity.
As far as we know, the Working Group of the Plenary will take up the Internet Resolutions tomorrow so there should be a debate on Resolutions 101 and 102, at least. The WG-Plen is scheduled to begin meeting at 1030 local time (GMT+9) and will be webcast.
We’re at the point in a Conference when the larger committees and working groups break into smaller Ad Hoc groups to enable countries to consolidate proposals and sort out areas of agreement or disagreement. These are considered ad hoc sessions and we expect those to begin meeting on Saturday. Formal sessions will begin again on Monday.
Much more work to be done!
For more information please see our matrix of issues or our 2014 Plenipot page