“Bridging the digital divide between developed and developing countries is essential for the global transition to modern and efficient national economies and effective international cooperation as well as to enhance the objective of cyber security: said Am-bassador Munir Akram, the Permanent Representa-tive of Pakistan at the United Nations, at the First Substantive Session of the Open-ended Working Group (OEWG) on the security of and in the use of information and communication technologies here in the United Nations, says a press release received here today from New York.
Ambassador Munir Akram, insisted on the interna-tional cooperation for capacity building and sharing of requisite technologies to enhance cyber security in bridging the gaps in capacities and resources among states that “have a significant bearing on the exercise of rights and fulfillment of responsibilities of states in their conduct and use of ICTs for peace-ful purposes”.
Speaking about the impact of the exponential prolif-eration of disinformation, he mentioned “social discord, competing nationalisms, discrimination, hate speech, stigmatization, racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and related intolerances” which has been further exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the extreme reliance on ICTs, yielding phenom-ena from fake cures to anti-vaccine conspiracies.
