On 22 and 23 April 2024, the UNESCO headquarters hosted a seminar for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) on “Digitalization of education and languages in the Small Island Developing States: Sharing Latvia’s knowledge”.
The seminar was opened by the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Latvia to UNESCO, Ambassador Indulis Ābelis, and the Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information at UNESCO, Dr Tawfic Jelassi.
In his welcoming speech, Ambassador Ābelis described Latvia as a digitally developed country, where the use of high-level technological solutions has become an everyday occurrence. Latvia has the honour to present the most prominent of them in the field of education and language digitization to its colleagues from UNESCO Member States.
“UNESCO is the excellent platform which makes it possible for different countries like Latvia and Small Island States to connect together in joint projects to the benefit of the entire UNESCO family,” Indulis Ābelis said.
During the seminar, opinions were exchanged on the challenges of access to education for the various SIDS regions, and digital solutions were sought. Two leading Latvian technology companies, SIA Tilde and SIA Lielvārds, shared their experience, demonstrating practically a digital learning platform, Soma.lv, the most widely used digital learning platform in Latvia, and its diverse possibilities.
SIA “Tilde”, on its part, presented the language technology tools developed by the company, which are also to be used for educational purposes. The meeting also featured a practical demonstration of Tilde’s language technology solution, which at the same time allowed attendees to follow up the discussion in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese through speech recognition technology.
The event was implemented as part of the public diplomacy programme in support of the lobby campaign of Latvia's candidacy for the United Nations Security Council.
The campaign under the motto of “Together for peace and resilience” aims at ensuring successful election of Latvia to the United Nations Security Council for the 2026–2027 term in the 2025 election, at which Latvia is running for an elected member’s seat for the first time.
Membership of the UNSC will be a key instrument in pursuit and protection of Latvia’s foreign policy interests, as well as making it possible for Latvia to expand the scale of its international cooperation, thereby contributing to world peace and resilience.
