DSF to take part in the Nouakchott Conference on financing digital solidarity.

 

n 8 and 9 June 2008, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania will host an International Conference on financing digital solidarity, which will be attended by all the members of the “5 + 5” group of countries, namely the European countries of the western Mediterranean (Malta, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal) and the countries of the Maghreb (Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia). It is expected that the participant countries will be represented at the ministerial level. The Conference will be opened by President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi and will aim to define concrete actions to reduce the digital divide within the framework for the “5 + 5” group and Mediterranean cooperation.

It will also propose innovative means of financing to promote digital solidarity. The Nouakchott Conference comes a few weeks after the plenary session of the Leading Group on Solidarity Levies to Fund Development (Dakar, April 2008), which will examine a draft international convention on financing digital solidarity. This agreement provides for the worldwide implementation of the 1% digital solidarity contribution. “Five years after the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), it is essential for the countries of North and South to finally follow up their promises with real action to reduce the digital divide” announced the Foreign Affairs Minister of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, Mohamed Saleck Ould Mohamed Lemine.

In fact, the Nouakchott Conference will be the first international meeting with the aim of transforming into actions the declarations adopted by a whole series of international institutions in recent years, in relation to the challenges of the digital divide.

The “5 + 5” countries will form a small group of like-minded leading states, whose achievements are expected to inspire North-South cooperation in an area that is vital if the Millennium Goals are to be attained by 2015. Therefore, the Nouakchott Conference represents an essential stage in the lead-up to the Lyon (late 2008) and Doha (December 2008) Conferences, which are both expected to contribute to strengthening development cooperation.