UNESCO is committed to harnessing digital innovation and transformation to attain the Sustainable Development Goals. Technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence provide important opportunities to ensure inclusive development, based on human rights. We must, as the theme of this congress underlines, hack the gap, and ensure that marginalized communities, as well as youth and women, are empowered with the necessary tools to actively create a future that is sustainable, diverse, and inclusive. Today, women and girls are 25 percent less likely than men to know how to leverage digital technology for basic purposes, four times less likely to know how to programme computers and 13 times less likely to file for technology patent. At a moment when every sector is becoming driven by the rapid technological evolution, these gaps should alarm policy-makers, educators and everyday citizens. I salute the WSA Global Congress 2020, which begins on International Women's Day, for putting women and girls at the heart of the discussion and ensuring that these technologies do not widen the digital and knowledge divides but are rather harnessed to reduce it.