United Nations: India has said it will fund a portal for the UN for global ICT security, which will bridge the capacity gap that continues to separate developed and developing States.
India also said digital technology benefits can only be fully realised when accompanied by robust security and the capability to defend against emerging threats.
Scaled, demand-driven capacity-building for Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) for the Global South is both achievable and effective when pursued with sustained political will, India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Parvathaneni Harish said.
He was addressing the Plenary Session of the Global Mechanism on ICTs in the Context of International Security on Thursday when he also welcomed the establishment of a Dedicated Thematic Group on cyber capacity building.
The first substantive plenary meeting from July 20-24 of the UN’s permanent cyber mechanism advanced plan for the global cyber capacity-building system with member states discussing topics, including funding, implementation and fellowships for women.
“It is with particular happiness that my delegation recalls that the proposal for a dedicated Global ICT Security Cooperation and Capacity-Building Portal was originally an Indian initiative, first tabled in 2022,” Parvathaneni said.
“We are pleased to announce today that, having seen this idea through years of deliberation to consensus and eventual adoption, India will be providing the entire funding towards the operationalisation of this Portal as a Portal of the United Nations so that concrete, tangible action can finally follow years of discussion,” he said.
India’s support will help enable the technical establishment of the Portal and its maintenance, ensuring that the platform envisaged, comprising a repository of resources, a capacity-building calendar, a needs-based catalogue of opportunities and an interactive discussion board, can move from design to reality, he said.
CERT India will undertake the technical consultancy work required for the Portal’s testing and infrastructure development, he announced. CERT-In is India’s national nodal agency for responding to computer security incidents as and when they happen.
“We believe this platform can play a meaningful role in bridging the capacity gap that continues to separate developed and developing States in the domain of ICT security, provided it is treated by all of us as a living tool rather than a static repository,” Parvathaneni said.
For Global South, digital technology has been transformative – a genuine enabler of economic prosperity and accelerated progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), he said.
India’s own experience with open, inclusive digital public infrastructure has shown that technology’s benefits can only be fully realised when accompanied by robust security and the capability to defend against emerging threats, Parvathaneni said.
“This is precisely why India has consistently emphasized that capacity-building cannot be treated as a residual or secondary pillar; it must be targeted, needs-driven, context-specific, politically neutral and transparent,” he added.
The Ambassador gave the example of the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) Programme, through which in the last five years alone, India has offered close to 50,000 fully funded training opportunities to professionals from Global South countries.
These training programmes spanned nearly 400 courses at over 100 premier Indian institutions, with a substantial and growing share dedicated specifically to ICT, cyber security, e-governance and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data analytics, he said.
“We share this experience to underline that scaled, demand-driven capacity-building for the Global South is both achievable and effective when pursued with sustained political will,” the Ambassador added.
India, therefore, warmly welcomes the establishment of a Dedicated Thematic Group focused specifically on Cyber Capacity Building, a structural recognition of the priority this issue deserves within the Global Mechanism, he said.
