The World Summit on the Information Society+20 High Level Event (WSIS+20) [1] will be taking place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 27 to 31 May 2024. Participation is free and open to all to attend, in person or virtually. The registration and accreditation processes are actually due to close tomorrow, Tuesday, April 23rd. The ITU registration portal can be found here [2].
WHO’s participation is in line with facilitation of the action line C7 on eHealth [3], which is co-facilitated by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). As per WSIS+20 agenda, the WHO action line report will be presented on Friday, 31 May 2024, 10:00-10:45 CEST/UTC+2 in Innovate Space, at the ITU HQ.
Prior to the regular WSIS report on the C7 eHealth action line on Friday 31 May 2024, and as a WSIS related event, the Global Initiative on Digital Health [4] and partners will be hosting a two-day Multistakeholder Dialogue on National Digital Health Transformation at the ITU Towers on 28 and 29 May 2024. The theme of the dialogue will be Enabling Country-Led Digital Health Architecture. Additional information on the two-day event will follow soon and will also be available at Global Initiative on Digital Health (who.int) [4].
Additional Information on the WSIS Forum
As announced by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) [5], the annual high-level event of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) [1] is taking place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 27 to 31 May 2024. This year’s event will mark a significant milestone of twenty years of progress made in the implementation of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society, which took place in two phases — Geneva in 2003 and Tunis in 2005. As such, the event is appropriately named the WSIS+20 High-Level Forum. Thus, twenty years ago, WSIS set the framework for global digital cooperation with a vision to build people-centric, inclusive, and development-oriented information and knowledge societies.
The WSIS+20 Forum High-Level Event will serve as a platform for multistakeholder discussions with the objective to take stock of the achievements and key trends, challenges and opportunities since the Geneva Plan of Action in 2003. The forum is being co-organized by ITU, UNESCO, UNDP and UNCTAD and co-hosted by ITU and the Swiss Confederation. There will be both in person and remote participation.
This year’s WSIS session coincides with the World Health Assembly (WHA). WHO’s participation is in line with facilitation of the action line C7 on eHealth, which is cofacilitated by the International Telecommunications Union.
WHO Special Bulletin on Digital Health Transformation
To further support with highlighting experiences and lessons learned from country-led national digital health transformation to the global digital health ecosystem, we would also like to take this opportunity to encourage you to submit an abstract to the upcoming WHO Special Bulletin on Digital Health Transformation. The deadline for submissions is 16 June 2024. Please access this link for more information: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
Accreditation Processes to the WSIS forum
Accreditation requests to attend the WSIS+20 main event, inclusive of the GIDH Multistakeholder Dialogue, should be submitted no later than 23 April 2024 so as to ensure timely administrative processing of the requests by the ITU.
Further information on the WSIS process
For more information on the WSIS process, please see the following:
- General Information on the WSIS process – see [6].
- Video recordings on the WSIS Process – see [7].
- WHO 10 year action line report at WSIS+10 – see [8].
[1] https://www.itu.int/net4/wsis/forum/2024/en
[2] https://www.itu.int/net4/wsis/forum/2024/Home/Registration
[3] https://www.itu.int/net/wsis/c7/e-health/index.html
[4] https://www.who.int/initiatives/gidh
[5] https://www.itu.int/net/wsis/review/2024.html
[6] https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?page=view&type=30022&nr=102&menu=3170
[7] https://www.youtube.com/user/WSISProcess
[8] https://www.itu.int/net/wsis/review/inc/docs/ralfreports/WSIS10_ALF_Reporting-C7_E-Health.Summary.pdf