UN Secretary General António Guterres has appointed a Nigerian social entrepreneur, Gbenga Sesan, to serve on his inaugural Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Leadership Panel.
The UN chief also appointed nine other high-level and eminent persons to serve on the IGF Panel for two-year term during the 2022 to 2023 IGF cycles.
The spokesman for the Secretary-General, Stéphane Dujarric, announced this at a news conference on Tuesday at UN headquarters in New York.
Mr Dujarric said Mr Guterres established the panel to support and strengthen the IGF, an annual meeting to discuss public policy issues pertaining to the Internet.
“Panel members will address strategic and urgent issues and highlight Forum discussions, as well as possible follow-up actions, to promote greater impact and dissemination of IGF discussions, according to its Terms of Reference.
“They were appointed by the Secretary-General following an open call for nominations, and in line with “an equitably distributed, multistakeholder configuration” of representatives from Government, the private sector, civil society and the technical community, as well as prominent persons in the field of digital policy.’’
The spokesman said the panel also consists of five ex-officio members: senior representatives of the current, immediately previous, and immediately upcoming IGF host countries; the Chair of the Forum’s Multistakeholder Advisory Group, as well as the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology, Amandeep Singh Gill.