H. E. Eng. Mohamed ben Amor, Director General of the Arab ICT Organization chaired the 1st meeting of the Committee on Digital Dominance of International Technology Companies in the Arab Region, which was held in parallel with the 2nd Edition of Arab Media Conference organized by the Arab States Broadcasting Union on January 13 and 14, 2023 in Tunis, the Republic of Tunisia.
This committee is concerned with developing appropriate measures that the Arab countries can take to deal with the most prominent international technology companies GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft). The Arab ICT Organization is among the committee’s members with the Arab States Broadcasting Union, the General Secretariat of Arab Interior Ministers Council, Naif Arab University for Security Sciences, the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, and the Association of Arab Universities.
This committee aims to coordinate the efforts of Arab countries and relevant Arab organizations and institutions to implement the necessary measures to face and limit the dominance of these giant technological companies.
During his chairmanship of this committee’s work, commissioned by His Excellency the Secretary General of the League of Arab States, H.E. Eng. Mohamed ben Amor, Director General of the Arab ICT Organization, underlined the necessity to concert efforts to preserve “Arab digital sovereignty” in light of the tremendous development of the ICT sector and digital services, referring to the imperative of outlining digital borders in order to protect national/regional security from the non-traditional dangers caused and imposed by cyber reality.
The Director General of AICTO inaugurated the meeting by thanking His Excellency Eng. Abdul Rahim Suleiman, Director General of the Union of Arab States Broadcasting, for providing the opportunity to meet and for hosting the work of the committee, as well as for preparing a study on identifying appropriate mechanisms to fight the spread of fake news, in addition to establishing a team of Arab and international experts to support the committee.
On the other hand, H. E. Eng. Ben Amor stressed the keenness and commitment of the Arab ICT Organization to set up safer and reliable cyberspace, which falls within the framework of AICTO’s vision “Towards a secure unified Arab society – integrated into the global digital economy and self-sufficient in the field of solutions and expertise that support digital trust and protection of Arab cyberspace,” referring to AICTO’s initiative “the launch of the Arab strategy for cybersecurity” during December 2022, which includes some recommendations related to dealing with the misuse and exploitation of Arab data by these technological companies, especially sensitive and personal data, in addition to the way of establishing a strong, stable and effective regulatory framework for cooperation between countries to implement cybersecurity measures based on risks for multi-stakeholder to protect regional cyberspace.