SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY HAS GREAT DEMOCRATIZING POWER WAITING TO BE HARNESSED TO GLOBAL STRUGGLE FOR PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT
Press Release
SG/SM/6502
SAG/4
SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY HAS GREAT DEMOCRATIZING POWER WAITING TO BE HARNESSED TO GLOBAL STRUGGLE FOR PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT
19980324 Following is the text of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's message, delivered yesterday by the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, Vladimir Petrovsky, at the World Telecommunication Development Conference, in Valletta, Malta:I am pleased to extend my best wishes to the participants in this Conference, which will play a crucial role in mapping out the future of one of the most important sectors of the modern age. Allow me, at the outset, to pay tribute to the foresight of the International Telecommunication Union and the generosity of the Government of Malta for making it possible.
You have come here today as leaders who will determine the shape of the telecommunications industry the next century; who will explore ways to harness your knowledge to promote further development. But you also represent a wide range of regions and cultures. At this event, you will open channels of closer collaboration between those regions and cultures; in so doing, you will help promote greater understanding, cooperation and tolerance among your communities, and peace among nations.
Over the next few days you will engage in discussions about the role of telecommunications in the global information environment. You will begin a conversation that will discover new ways of making communications an agent for change; a medium for widening understanding; a tool for broadening horizons.
Today, we live in an interdependent, global village; we face new realities; we must accept change as an essential condition of life.
The challenges that face humankind today cut across all borders: they involve all aspects of human security. But human understanding has not yet grasped them.
Issues before the United Nations, such as the environment, drugs, pandemics and sustainable development, are issues that carry no passports. This is the message we are trying to send to the world. Yet, the public is still thinking in local terms; it is still constrained by boundaries.
- 2 - Press Release SG/SM/6502 SAG/4 24 March 1998
And this is where we need to rely on the possibilities of technology; this is where we need to work through the power of communications.
We in the United Nations are convinced that communications technology has a great democratizing power waiting to be harnessed to our global struggle for peace and development.
The quantity and quality of available information is changing dramatically every day, in every country, in every corner of the world. Citizens are gaining greater access to information, too. And the spread of information is making accountability and transparency facts of life for any government. New technology that is simpler to use at a fraction of the cost holds out the possibility of a new, truly global information order. Together, we can do more.
The challenge now is to make information available to all. For too long, economic inequality and fear of freedom has prevented the large majority of men and women on this planet from taking advantage of the bounty of knowledge that the information revolution has given us. With the help of information technology, we can help ensure that our young are the first to benefit from this knowledge, and to make it their partner in the pursuit of a better future. Help us to use your power to achieve a better world for them, and for their children's children.
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