​On Thursday, the Palace of Parliament will elect a new secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union, the UN agency that sets global rules in the field of communications and IT, the main candidates are an American and a Russian. Thursday’s Government Agenda Memorandum presents Romania’s position and what IT resolutions it will support.

Elections for the International Telecommunications Union’s top post, secretary-general, will take place on Thursday morning at Parliament House, where a major event for the IT&C industry has already begun.

This is the Plenipotentiary Conference (PP), the highest body of the International Telecommunication Union, which meets once every 4 years to elect new leadership, as well as to set new directions for regulation in IT and telecommunications.

Russia and the USA are competing for leadership in the ITU

The main candidates for the position of Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union for a term of 4 years are the American Doreen Bohdan Martin and the Russian Rashid Ismailov.

• Doreen Bohdan Martin he has over 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry, with the last 3 years as Director of Development at ITU. Check out his resume and priorities here.
• Rashid Ismailov Currently, he is the president of PJSC VimpelCom, and in the past he was the general director of Nokia Russia, held management positions at Huawei technology and Ericsson, responsible for the area of ​​Eastern Europe and Central Asia. He was also the Deputy Minister of Communications of the Russian Federation. Check out his resume and priorities here.

Romania will not vote for Russia and Belarus

Memorandum which will be discussed On Thursday at the Government meeting represents both Romania’s position in this election and what IT resolutions our country will support over the next 4 years.

• “The elections that will be held on the occasion of PP-22 have great symbolic and political stakes in the current international context, especially the elections for the post of ITU Secretary General, where two candidates are supported by the United States of America. America and the Federation, respectively. (…)
• Regarding the position regarding the Russian Federation and the Republic of BelarusThe Romanian delegation will adhere to the principles adopted by the foreign ministers of the European Union member states on March 21, 2022, and will not vote for the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus in any of the ongoing voting rounds. place during the election process”. it is stated in the Memorandum.

The document states that at the event in Bucharest, which lasts for 3 weeks, elections will be held for the positions of: general secretary, deputy general secretary; positions of directors of 3 departments (radio communication, standardization and development); members of the Radio Regulatory Committee (RRK); members of the ITU Council.

The distribution of the positions mentioned above, as well as the membership of the Council, is based on the principle of equitable geographical distribution according to the current administrative regions of the ITU, within each region the members will be elected by a vote of all Members. of the state We clarify that the members of the RRB are specialists proposed by the member states, and the members of the ITU Council are the member states.

Romania will apply for a new mandate in the administrative forum of the Union

The Memorandum also states that Romania will apply for a seat on the ITU Council from Region C (Eastern Europe and Northern Asia) for the new

four-year mandate.

The ITU Council is the administrative forum of the Union that makes decisions between Plenipotentiary Conferences, and 5 seats are allocated to Region C.

• “Romania has a direct interest in the European Union, through its member states, becoming a much more relevant actor in the ITU, with the power to negotiate and influence decisions corresponding to the scale of the community space. Region C, of ​​which Romania is a part, is one of the most relevant and important regions from a political point of view, uniting EU member states, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine and other states of the former Soviet Union.
• In this sense, it is extremely important for Romania to confirm its acquired status in the ITU through a candidacy that would allow it to obtain an eighth consecutive mandate in the ITU Council, so that both Region C and the weight in the Council of States associated with Euro-Atlantic values ​​to ensure a positive direction decisions and a guarantee that they will not contradict the national interests of our country,” the document also states.

Which IT resolutions will Romania support at the Plenipotentiary Conference

The document also presents the mandate that the Romanian delegation has at this international conference, respectively, the IT resolutions that it will support.

Some examples of resolutions that Romania will support:

• improving the lives of people and communities and strengthening basic skills
• gender mainstreaming in ITU, promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment through telecommunications/information and communication technologies
• promoting the deployment and adoption of IPv6 to facilitate the transition from IPv4 to IPv6.
• the importance of cyber skills, including qualifying and encouraging women to pursue careers in cyber security, the impact of the pandemic and telecommuting, the ITU Resilience Platform created in response to the pandemic, ITU’s role in raising awareness of the challenges developing countries face, promoting civil society and inclusion, as well as responsible vulnerability reporting.
• the use of telecommunications/information and communication technologies to overcome the digital divide and build an inclusive information society. The proposed changes aim to clarify the various causes of the digital divide, especially on the issue of accessibility, and to encourage the ITU to do more to help Member States on this issue, in particular by sharing best practices.
• fight against counterfeit telecommunications/information and communication devices.
• promoting the Internet of Things and smart and sustainable cities and communities
• a new resolution on artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to support IT&C and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Read more about the ITU conference:

• PHOTO Virtual meeting standards, adopted 4 years ago by the ITU, helped the world overcome the pandemic. New rules in IT&C set in Bucharest
• MFA: 17 members of the Russian delegation at the ITU conference in Bucharest were given visas / 14 Russia Today journalists were not given
• Unprecedented situation in autumn in Bucharest: Russia and the US are at loggerheads over the leadership of the ITU, the UN agency that sets rules in telecommunications