Costa Rica President advocates Child Online Protection

The President of Costa Rica Laura Chinchilla Miranda today reaffirmed her role as patron of ITU's Child Online Protection initiative while visiting ITU headquarters in Geneva.

President Chinchilla said she would call upon Heads of State and Government around the world to strengthen the COP Framework and create national commissions focused on child online safety.

ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré thanked President Chinchilla for her sustained efforts in taking up the COP agenda with world leaders.

He also commended Costa Rica for the pro-active policies that have been put in place to encourage women and girls to consider careers in the growing field of information and communication technologies (ICT).

Dr Touré encouraged Costa Rica to mark International Girls in ICT Day on the fourth Thursday of every April and to organize events next year.

He said that ITU would welcome the opportunity to jointly organize a global conference on Youth and ICTs in Costa Rica next year which would particularly focus on ICT solutions addressing the youth unemployment crisis and strengthening our global efforts to ensure child online protection.

President Chinchilla, a leading digital advocate, has also actively supported ITU's Green ICT agenda that promotes environmental sustainability through smart technologies while focusing on greening the ICT sector.

ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré and President Chinchilla agreed on further promoting and developing the key role that the Green ICT agenda can contribute to a successful outcome of the forthcoming Rio+20 Conference.

In this regard, they discussed the necessity to include clear references to ICTs and broadband as enablers of sustainable development and full digital inclusion in the fast-changing information society.