Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja met United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres on the sidelines of the Global Dialogue on AI Governance and the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, with the discussion centring on how artificial intelligence is reshaping global peace, stability, and economic development. The meeting formed part of a series of ministerial level engagements the minister held during Geneva Digital Week, aimed at strengthening international cooperation on digital transformation.
During the meeting, the Secretary General commended Pakistan’s role in international peace mediation efforts through the Islamabad Accord and conveyed his regards to the Prime Minister. The two officials discussed how artificial intelligence has increasingly come to influence nearly every aspect of global affairs, from peace and stability to economic and social development, as emerging technologies continue to reshape traditional frameworks for governance and cooperation between nations.
The minister raised concerns on behalf of developing countries regarding the nature of the global digital divide, arguing that the gap is not simply a matter of unequal access to artificial intelligence tools. She said the more significant asymmetry lies in the ability of developing nations to help shape the rules, standards, and foundational infrastructure underlying the technology, describing this as a question of whether the sovereignty of individual nation states can be meaningfully preserved as AI systems become more deeply embedded in global governance structures.
The minister further argued that today’s multipolar world is increasingly becoming what she described as technopolar, where power concentrates around the countries and companies that control frontier compute, models, and data. She said this concentration of technological power represents more than a development concern for countries like Pakistan, framing it instead as a matter of global stability given how central these capabilities have become to economic competitiveness and national security in the current era.
The meeting with the UN Secretary General formed part of a broader set of engagements the minister held during her visit to Geneva, which also included separate meetings with Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Sri Lanka’s Chief Advisor to the President on the Digital Economy, and Egypt’s Deputy Minister for Digital Transformation, among other officials. Pakistan’s participation in the Global Dialogue on AI Governance and the AI for Good Global Summit reflects its continued push to position itself as an active voice in international discussions on how artificial intelligence should be regulated in a manner that accounts for the interests and sovereignty of developing economies alongside those of more technologically advanced nations.
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