The fourth World Telecommunications Development Conference (WTDC-06) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) was held on 7-15 March 2006 in Doha, Qatar, where two ITU Development Sector (ITU-D) strategy documents for the next four years were adopted - the Doha Declaration and the Doha Action Plan.
The Doha Declaration mainly focuses on strategy to follow to overcome the digital divide, given that the global indicators concerning access to telecommunications services and information and communication technologies (ICTs) still show vast disparities, and also on recognition of the importance of communications for generating jobs, assuring qualified human resources and reducing poverty.
Emergency telecommunications was one of the main issues considered at this WTDC: the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami showed the importance of telecommunications in preventing and mitigating natural disasters and their destructive effects, especially in the poorer and most vulnerable countries. The topic has thus been included in ITU-D programmes as a new issue, which considers the need to study, during the next four-year cycle, space-based sensor systems that prevent, detect and mitigate natural disasters, adopted by the Study Groups (SGs), while the term ?natural disaster resistant?, applied to telecommunications infrastructures, was included in the Development Sector lexicon.
The second strategy document approved at WTDC-06, the Doha Action Plan, consists of six programmes (regulatory reform, development of information and communication infrastructures and technologies, ITC applications and e-strategies, economy and finances, including costs and tariffs, human resources training and, lastly, less developed countries - LDCs - and developing island micro-States, a programme now and for the first time also extended to emergency telecommunications), five major overall initiatives (topics concerning women, youth and children, indigenous peoples and communities, the disabled and communities living in areas not served by communications services) and two activities (statistics and information on telecommunications/ICT and partnerships and promotion).
The ITU Development Conference incorporated and followed up on conclusions of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), whose last phase took place in November 2005: to assure that the information society reaches everyone. The ITU, and particularly ITU-D, should in any case play a leading role in implementing some of the WSIS action lines and decisions which are within its main scope of responsibilities.
Besides the 14 questions examined by the study groups (SGs) in the last study cycle and reviewed at WTDC-06, four new questions were approved: access by people with special needs to telecommunications services, safe networks and best practices in developing a culture of cyber-security, the impact of telecommunications on job creation, and the aforementioned emergency telecommunications.
The term ?children? was likewise included in the ITU mandate - which previously only had powers to handle issues concerning youth - and was also subject to a resolution proposed by the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) and approved at this conference. CEPT also put forward for discussion and negotiation at Doha nine European common proposals (ECPs), to which Portugal gave its official support.
Another vital goal of the ITU Development Conference was determination of the application of the resources available in this Sector of the organisation, adjusting them to developing countries? needs in terms of infrastructures, services and telecommunications and information society policies and services. Thus, and contrary to previous WTDCs (held in 1994, 1998 and 2002), and for the first time, each of the six ITU regions agreed to select the five projects deemed to be priorities for the respective region.
Nearly a thousand participants attended WTDC-06, including 820 delegates representing 132 States and 93 Sector members, representing 31 countries.
