Shola Taylor, Secretary-General, Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) has pledged to ensure the CTO plays a greater role in co-ordinating the views of all Commonwealth member countries at international meetings, especially at treaty meetings convened by the ITU.
This followed his meeting in Geneva with Houlin Zhao, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), his first since assuming office on 17th September 2015.
“Co-ordinating the views of Commonwealth countries and agreeing on common objectives in advance of key international ICT decision-making meetings is an area where the CTO can do a lot more. Deliberations at conferences convened by the ITU, such as the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC), the World Telecommunications Standardisation Assembly (WTSA), the World Telecommunications Development Conference (WTDC), or the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) can be made more effective with prior consultations among Commonwealth countries.”
“Meeting with Secretary-General Zhao was an opportunity to share first-hand with the ITU my vision for the CTO. And we are starting immediately, with a Commonwealth pre-WRC-15 meeting to take place in London on 7 – 9 October 2015, and which will be honoured by the presence of Festus Daudu, Chair-designate of WRC-15,” Secretary-General Taylor explained.
In addition to holding preparatory meetings, the CTO plans to maintain its role in international fora, such as the 2015 WSIS Forum held in May during which the CTO formally called for a sustainable development goal for universally accessed and universally used ICTs.
