A two-day-long meeting on the Universal Acceptance of the Bengali language in the cyber world has
started to ensure the universal acceptance of the Bengali language in the cyber world. Bangladesh has
sought the opportunity to use the Bengali language and script in e-mail as well. At the same time, in the
Internet world, the applications, devices and systems are locally language bound and the sector
concerned has also highlighted that.
On the occasion of Universal Acceptance Day 2023, the speakers made such demands on the first day
of the two-day conference held at the BTRC conference center in Ramna in the capital on Monday.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) and Bangladesh Internet Governance
Forum (BIGF) jointly organized this stakeholder meeting for the first time in the country in collaborationwith Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Post and Telecommunication Minister Mustafa Jabbar formally inaugurated the conference at noon. In the speech of the chief guest, he said that the Prime Minister will not stop him from going to the moon to solve the problem of the Bengali language. So, BCC is eager to attend the next consortium meeting. The minister said, as a language-based country, there is no scope for division over language. We will work together on this.

Brigadier General Ehsanul Kabir in the welcome speech presided over by BTRC Chairman Shyam Sundar Sikder (Senior Secretary) expressed hope that in the future when launching any device, the
welcome will be in the Bengali language. He said that BTRC is working closely with ICANN.
In the speech of the guest of honor, BIGF Chairman and President of the Parliamentary Standing
Committee on the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Hasanul Haq Inu said, if not for digital
Bangladesh, the world would have been left behind. Smart Bangladesh must be implemented to adapt
the state, society and individual to the fourth industrial revolution of Bangladesh through internet
connectivity. Smart people will make this industrial revolution a success. In this regard, he brought up theissue of distance at the ministry level to remove the language barrier by proposing to increase the use of the internet in the mother tongue. At the same time, Hasanul Haq Inu demanded the formation of a Bengali language content bank, urging them to remove the color crisis of Dot Bangla. Post and Telecommunication Secretary Abu Hena Morshed Zaman, and Executive Director of Bangladesh Computer Council Ranjit Kumar was also present at the event. Ranjit Kumar said that BCC
could not join the Unicode Consortium this time due to the austerity policy of the government and along with the stakeholders’ meeting, Post and Telecommunication Secretary Abu Hena Morshed Zaman urged the farmers and marginalized people to connect with this initiative. In the president’s speech, the BTRC chairman said to increase the publicity campaign to increase the
use of the Bengali language in technology. Teresa Swinhart, SVP of ICANN Global Domain and Strategy, gave a video message on the occasion. Then BIGF General Secretary Mohammad Abdul Haque Anu presented the keynote speech.

Earlier, BNNRC CEO AHM Bazlur Rahman presented the keynote in the morning networking session.
ICANN IDN Program Senior Manager Pitinan Kooarmornpantana gave an awareness presentation
moderated by Professor Safayet Hossain, Head of Computer Science and Engineering Faculty of City
University. Member of Parliament Afroza Haq Rina, Director General of BTRC Nasim Parvez, Project
Director for Enrichment of Bengali Language in Technology Mahbub Karim and others were present at
the event.

By celebrating this day, participants at the local level will widen the scope to become more aware and
proactive about universal acceptance, as well as to work more intensively and collaboratively with
regional and global communities and organizations on related issues. The event is organized by the
Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG), ICANN, regional and international partners and various
sessions on Universal Acceptance training, awareness and strategies.
Universal acceptance and its technological implications will allow all domain names and email addresses
on the Internet, regardless of script, language or characters, to be increasingly used across applications,
devices and systems. Additionally, universal acceptance of the E-mail Address Internationalization (EAI)
standard will allow the use of local languages and scripts in an e-mail. In this case, in the long-term
struggle for business expansion and excellence, the organizations and businesses concerned have no
choice but to adapt themselves to the ever-evolving domain names.
The event was attended by representatives of government departments, civil society, non-governmental
organizations, academia, media and technologists and all stakeholders.
Creating awareness presentations, programming training, email administration, training and technical
overview for UA on the UN Global Digital Compact.
Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) enable people around the world to use domain names in their
local languages and scripts. IDNs are created using characters from different scripts such as Arabic,
Chinese, Cyrillic or Devanagari. They are encoded by the Unicode standard and used as permitted by
the relevant IDN protocol. ICANN launched the IDN Program to support the development and promotion of a multilingual Internet using IDNs. The program primarily plans for IDN Top-Level Domains (TLDs), including IDN Country Code
TLDs and Generic TLDs. On the second day of the Technical Overview discussed by Pitinan Kooarmornpatana, IDN Programs Senior Manager, Global Domains and Strategy, ICANN and she also discussed Email Administration Training for UA. The program was moderated by Mohammad Abdul Haque Anu, Secretary General, of the Bangladesh Internet Governance Forum (BIGF).
The panelists and participants put forward some recommendations which are to implement Smart
Bangladesh to adapt the state, society and individual to the fourth industrial revolution of Bangladesh
through internet connectivity. Smart people will make this industrial revolution a success. In this case, theuse of the internet in the mother tongue should be increased. The Ministry should work to remove thelanguage barrier. A Bangla language content bank should be formed soon to remove the color crisis of Dot Bangla. Our technology curricula must be modernized and standardized to keep pace with modern technology for our students.

Press Release