Today, as part of the company’s UN affairs team, she is working to expand on Microsoft’s existing relationship with the UN and advocating for a multilateral, human-centred approach to digital access. ‘There’s such a noted political will now in looking towards addressing the digital divide,’ she says. ‘Our main focus is going to be trying to use our voice and help advance solutions, sustainable financing ideas and really trying to advance work on what we’re calling human-centred connectivity.’
‘There’s a lot that needs to happen when a person gets access to the Internet in terms of being part of the economy, being able to change jobs and to reskill,’ she explains. ‘We’re hoping to capture all of this attention and interest in moving forward and really being able to make a difference.’
Although Microsoft has been engaging with the UN on many of these issues for well over a decade, Cossette says the decision to set up a dedicated presence at the UN in 2020 was driven by the recognition that member states can’t address global problems in a silo. ‘Global problems – like the digital divide and other issues – are our problems too and as a business increasingly so,’ she says.
Global problems – like the digital divide and other issues – are our problems too and as a business increasingly so
Lani Cossette
Senior Director and Chief of Staff, Microsoft’s UN Office
Rebecca Marmot is Chief Sustainability Officer at Unilever. She says the multilateral collaboration between business, government and civil society has been key to the success of TRANSFORM, a joint initiative between Unilever, Microsoft, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) and EY, which enables innovative social enterprises to reach low-income households in developing countries.
‘Digital technology can deliver transformative solutions, but this depends on forming partnerships to bring together the necessary skills, expertise and support,’ says Marmot. ‘TRANSFORM exemplifies this collaborative approach. Through TRANSFORM, Unilever and Microsoft have partnered to bring together Microsoft’s world-class technical expertise and Unilever’s understanding of consumers and behaviour change. Together we can ensure that digital solutions are made available to underserved communities and that the presence of technology translates into usage and economic gain for all.’
Cossette says it’s also incumbent on the legal community – both in-house and private practice – to play its part in closing the digital divide worldwide. ‘We can do better by speaking up to recalibrate the dialogue on the digital divide to be more technology-agnostic; to advocate for affordable and scalable solutions; to champion a rights-protecting policy and regulatory framework; and to find ways to reduce regulatory hurdles to deployment.’
Botero Marino agrees that lawyers, regardless of their position or practice area, have an important role in advancing digital rights for all. ‘Lawyers can assist in the design of public policies that take Internet access seriously in all its dimensions,’ she says. ‘We can build persuasive and robust arguments about the need to close the digital divide to satisfy other rights to which we are entitled; we can conduct strategic litigation that leads courts to protect equality and non-discrimination in Internet access as an essential safeguard for the access to other fundamental rights; and, when we act as judges, we can make decisions that give real effectiveness to declarations of rights by protecting fundamental conditions for the exercise of those rights.’
Image: Marynchenko Oleksandr C / Shutterstock.com
