Late last week I got a short notice request from both BoM and ITU to join an impromptu e conference call to discuss UNDP’s contribution to the inter-agency paper we are drafting. As I was unavailable in such notice, we all agree to rescheduled the call for early this week. The day of the call BoM was unavailable due to corporate requirements so I took the call and had a chat with 4 ITU colleges.
Essentially, ITU was demanding that we removed all references to UNDP in the text and instead use language that refers to the UN system and its agencies in general. The argument here was two-fold: 1. We should avoid lead agencies that are leading each of the 5 areas of work to self-promote themselves as, afterall this is a UN report and we are indeed speaking as the UN as ONE. 2. The report should also be inclusive and address all agencies of the UN regardless of size and mandate.
While this sounded fine to me, ITU also raised the issue of the human rights based approach to cybersecurity and suggested we should drop it on the grounds that that was the job on UNOHCHR. Needless to say, I did not agree with this comment an explained to ITU colleges the reasons as to why this was of critical importance for the issue. I do not think they were convinced and in the end they sent me a revised text which I then had to edit the preserve the intention of the original draft.
The document is here.
Cheers, Raúl
