Committee : Social Cultural and Humanitarian Committee (SOCHUM)

Topic : Maximizing The Global Internet and Data For Sustainable and Inclusive Growth

Country : Republic of Bulgaria

Delegate : Yunori Sarah T.B

Interaction between man and the internet has immensely increased since the first prototype of the
Internet came in the late 1960s.(1) Competence in accessing the internet is essential to achieve
progressive socio-economic growth. Decades of research has lead us to advance technology innovations
which culminated the increase of importance of the internet to completely immerse oneself in the
economic, political, and social aspects of not just one country, but the world. Unfortunately, its access is
restrained to nations with higher level income.(2)
Technology adoption of Third World Economies and Least Developing countries are lagging
behind, for instance, in 2016, in Southeast Asia, internet penetration rate of Myanmar (2.5%) and Laos
(15.7%), far behind other neighboring countries such as Thailand (42.7%) Malaysia (68.6%) and
Singapore (82.5%). The Republic of Bulgaria recognizes this ‘digital divide’ can’t be ignored and has
also taken actions towards its own citizen regarding digital literacy with programs such as i-Centres
which provide communities, school and public places with computers and fast internet.(3)
The Republic of Bulgaria, being aware of the issue, constructed ideas with points of actions we
can take to maximize the global internet so it may benefit all layers of society, regardless of race, age, or
gender :
 Get private institution to be involved in the issue. In order to create a more reliable network,
providers would have to invest in new and better infrastructure.
 Replacing the costly satellite technology with more creative solutions including drones, balloons,
low/medium earth orbit satellites and high-throughput geostationary satellites.
 Affordability is an issue for many, and by allowing those with near-poverty levels of income an
alternative to traditional business models, more people are gaining access at a price they can
afford.
 Language barrier is a distributing factor to this digital divide. The most successful approach to
this problem is to drive content creation through the support of local language devices and
software. This facilitation of content creation can lead to new linguistic ecosystems on the
internet. Thus, creating more users(4)

1 http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/who-invented-the-internet

2 https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/third-world/mozambique-overview.html

3 http://www.europeanbusinessreview.eu/page.asp?pid=81

4 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/02/4-reasons-4-billion-people-are-still-offline/