The Regional Forum on Sustainable Development for UNECE Region is organized every year by UN Economic Commission for Europe, in close cooperation with the regional UN agencies, including ITU. The forum takes place on 17 and 18 March 2020 in a hybrid format and will be preceded by virtual peer learning round tables from 10 to 16 March 2021. This yearly forum is meant to following up on and reviewing the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals – SDGs – in the UNECE Region. As the UN Agency for ICTs, ITU continues to advocate for the enabling role of ICTs in achieving SDGs.
This year, ITU will co-lead and contributes to a series of side event and roundtables as follows:
The session will cover three focus topics: ensuring universal digital inclusion, accelerating the digitalization of services, creating an enabling environment for digital trade. The Cross-Cutting session, resulting from the joint efforts of the
UN Digital Transformation Group for Europe and Central Asia, constitutes an enhancing opportunity for stakeholders who directly contributed and benefited from the implementation of UN projects to share their experiences and effective best practices in the field of digital transformation for the SDGs.
Side event on gendered digital divide:
Digitally Empowered Generation Equality in the wake of COVID-19
9th March 2021, 10:00-12:00 CET, virtual.
This event, organized by ITU and UN Women, will focus on sharing recommendations and best practices that will address the root causes of the gendered digital divide. These recommendations and best practices are draw from ITU and UN Women Digitally Empowered Generation Equality Report, that will be launched during this session. The event will also provide an overview of the current ecosystem when it comes to Women, Girls, and ICT in the context of COVID-19 in selected countries of the ITU Europe region.
Roundtable on Cluster 1 “People”: Strengthening health, food and social protection systems towards COVID-19 recovery and resilience 10th March 2021, 14:00-16.00 CET, virtual.
• Session 1-1: Health and social protection
This session will present and discuss innovative ways on how governments have taken action to reduce the COVID burden, while aiming at sustainable development. Specifically, it will focus on strengthening health governance capacities for emergency preparedness and bettering health securities and resilience building during and after COVID 19 to achieve the SDGs; strengthening social protection to avoid further impacts of emergencies; as well as strengthening intersectoral collaboration for emergency preparedness to build back better after COVID- 19.
Roundtable on Cluster 2 “Prosperity”: Building back innovative, inclusive and sustainable economies and providing decent and productive jobs for all 11th March 2021, 10:00-12:00 CET, virtual.
• Session 2-2: The socio-economic impact of COVID-19 on youth
COVID-19 impacted all segments of society, especially young people, who are disproportionately affected by the crisis. The roundtable will showcase innovative governmental, youth and youth-led responses to address the challenges faced by the young people due to COVID-19. The central objective is to harness the rapid move towards digitalization to build resilient economies and communities, close the digital divide, enhance social cohesion and ensure that all young people benefit from a meaningful and inclusive digital world. In this context, a member of the
Generation Connect-Europe Youth Group (GC-EUR) will share its experience of its country and on other GC-EUR Members’ countries initiatives to tackle Covid-19 related issues directly affecting the youth.
