Marking the first anniversary of the Samarkand Declaration on Tech Diplomacy
Tashkent, Republic of Uzbekistan · Wednesday 14 October 2026 · Half-day, 09:00 to 14:00
1. Background
On 1 November 2025, alongside the 43rd General Conference of UNESCO, the Republic of Uzbekistan hosted the adoption of the Samarkand Declaration on Tech Diplomacy, the world’s first declaration in the field. The Declaration established founding principles for the institutionalisation of tech diplomacy and for diplomatic capacity-building, inviting all states to nominate Tech Ambassadors or equivalent senior tech diplomats, including digital, cyber and AI ambassadors and special envoys for technology, as the bridge between foreign policy and the technologies reshaping it. It has since been endorsed by UNESCO, governments, private organisations and academic institutions across regions, and directly gave rise to the membership framework of the Tech Diplomacy Global Institute (TDGI).
In the year since Samarkand, the field has moved from principle to practice. Cabo Verde became the first member state of the Tech Diplomacy Global Institute in March 2026, and the first cohort of the Tech Diplomacy Global Executive Programme (TDGEP), with 20 leaders from 16 countries, began in Paris in June 2026. The principal convenings of that year, and those still ahead, are set out in the sequence at Section 2.
The Symposium also convenes at a decisive moment in the multilateral system. In August 2025, by resolution A/RES/79/325, the General Assembly established the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence and the Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Governance, whose first session was held in Geneva in July 2026 and whose second will be held in New York in 2027. Universal participation in these mechanisms now exists in principle. The capacity of foreign ministries to exercise it is precisely what tech diplomacy, and the Samarkand Declaration, were conceived to build.
Uzbekistan stands at the origin of this movement. On the eve of the Declaration’s first anniversary, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan and TDGI propose to convene the region that started it.
2. The event
The Tech Diplomacy Asia Symposium will be a half-day, high-level convening in Tashkent on Wednesday 14 October 2026, co-organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan and the Tech Diplomacy Global Institute. It will gather ministers, ambassadors, senior officials, technology leaders and scholars from Central Asia and the wider Asia-Pacific to take stock of the Declaration’s first year and to set the region’s course for the second.
The Symposium mirrors the format proven in Cape Town in April 2026 and extends the Institute’s regional programme to Asia. It will be the principal regional milestone of the second half of 2026, preceded by a preparatory closed-door consultation in New York during the high-level week of the General Assembly, and feeding directly into the Global Assembly in Paris in December.
3. Objectives
- Take stock of Samarkand, one year on. Review implementation of the Declaration across the region and beyond: appointments made, institutions built, and lessons learned.
- Advance the institutionalisation of tech diplomacy in Asia. Encourage further appointments of Tech Ambassadors or equivalent senior tech diplomats, and the designation of national focal points across Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific.
- Connect Central Asia with the Asia-Pacific. Create a standing bridge between the two regions’ digital diplomacy communities, with Uzbekistan as convening host.
- Carry forward the findings of the New York consultation. Put to governments in the region the constraints identified in September by Permanent Missions, United Nations entities and industry.
- Prepare the region’s contribution to the Global Assembly. Agree regional priorities and candidate nominations for the four Expert Councils to be seated in Paris on 11 December 2026.
- Showcase Uzbekistan’s leadership. Consolidate Tashkent and Samarkand as the recognised home of tech diplomacy in Asia.