United Nations Puts Blockchain At Center of New ‘High-Level Panel On Digital Cooperation’
The United Nations’ (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres has made a ‘High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation,’ which expressly puts blockchain innovation on the agenda, UN News uncovered yesterday, July 12.
The board, said to be “the first of its kind,” will accumulate 20 famous figures from industry civil society and the academia to handle the effect of digital technologies on worldwide economies and societies – an effect progressing at “unprecedented scale” and “warp speed,” in Guterres’ words.
Speaking to the new body for the benefit of the UN Secretariat, Executive Director and co-chair, Ambassador Amandeep Gill, stated:
“You cannot look at ‘web 3.0’ without looking at blockchain or without looking at AI (Artificial Intelligence) […] our hope is that through discussion of these various digital domains […] in terms of human rights, in terms of privacy, in terms of subversion of democracy, we are able to come out with some common principles…of strengthening cooperation across borders.”
Gill underlined “the opportunities and the risks and the unintended consequences” of digital change, referring to mounting worry about both cyber attacks and suspected election tampering.
The ambassador considered that the board’s “cross-cutting” way to deal with new technologies, for example, blockchain and AI would empower it to boost its effect through the span of its nine-month mandate.
The Secretary-General has additionally uncovered the board’s co-chairs as being U.S. philanthropist Melinda Gates and Jack Ma, the founder, and owner of the big Chinese online business Alibaba.
As Cointelegraph reported, Ma presented blockchain innovation through Alibaba subsidiary Ant Financial as right on time as summer 2016. The firm has since raised $14 billion for blockchain advancement and effectively trialed its first blockchain remittances.
With Ma confirming “that the impact of blockchain on the future of humans may be far beyond our imagination,” his co-chairmanship of the new UN panel shows a positive feedback for worldwide dissemination of the technology
As far as it is concerned, the UN has for some time been investigating different and mostly humanitarian utilize cases for blockchain, starting with its utilization of the Ethereum blockchain to transfer coupons based on cryptocurrencies to refugees in Syria.
From that point forward, it has also steered a blockchain-based blockchain based digital identity intended to battle child trafficking worldwide. This April, the Belgian government contributed €2 mln to advance a blockchain project by the World Food Program (WFP), which would enable the UN to utilize the innovation to battle hunger less fortunate zones.
