PRESS BRIEFING BY UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING BY UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

Three simultaneous star-studded concerts will be held on Saturday, 9 October, in New Jersey, London and Geneva to launch an unprecedented United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) public-private partnership project to help eradicate extreme poverty by working through the Internet and the entertainment community, correspondents were told this afternoon at a Headquarters press briefing.

Zephirin Diabre, an Associate Director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said the concerts, known as the NetAid concerts, had been organized to promote and publicize the new NetAid website (www.netaid.org). The concerts will be carried live on television, radio and through the NetAid website on the Internet. Robert Piper, Manager of the website, also attended the briefing. The website was created by Cisco Systems, a leading company in networking for the Internet, and is maintained by the UNDP.

The partnership between the UNDP, Cisco Systems and artists represented a radical change in the way the United Nations does business, Mr. Diabre said. NetAid and its cutting-edge technology served as a fresh weapon in the ten-year battle plan to eradicate extreme poverty.

Through NetAid, the United Nations would seek to harness new constituencies of people, many of whom had no prior connection to global development, Mr.Diabre said. Millions could log on directly and find ways to help eradicate poverty and contribute to other humanitarian causes. “Those who log on will be able to go on their own cyber journey of discovery, examine countries and situations and issues such as refugees or human rights, and examine for themselves the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the United Nations agencies and local communities that are seeking to help”, he said.

NetAid’s website, currently the world’s largest, was designed to take 60 million hits an hour during the concert period. Those who logged on could watch video clips about development and access NGO and other development websites. The NetAid project would focus on hunger, refugees, developing country debt, the environment and human rights.

Mr. Diabre expressed the hope that the NetAid project would accelerate current efforts by industry and international organizations to wire the developing world, saying that there could be no true global partnership without the South. “Through NetAid, we will demonstrate that the Internet can act as an engine for development”, he said.

Describing NetAid as a starting point for the bigger dream of a public-private partnership to connect the world, he said, “This is

UNDP Briefing - 2 - 7 October 1999

truly an exciting and historic moment, and there is no more fitting a time for it than now, on the eve of the millennium”.

Mr. Piper told a correspondent that the project was a “marriage of three forces”. The UNDP had been looking for a way to engage the public more effectively in the Programme’s efforts to eradicate poverty. Cisco Systems and its partner had been keen to showcase the power of the Internet and the possibility of using its strength in areas that had hardly been touched by the Internet. Cisco Systems was also eager to lend its cutting-edge technology and business acumen to the work that the UNDP was doing. Finally, many artists were interested in lending their talents to worthy events, in particular those that had longer-term goals.

He added that he hoped and expected that other technology companies would join in the project. The larger agenda issue of wiring the world could only be achieved with some very strong public-private partnerships. As part of the NetAid project, the UNDP was talking to a number of infrastructure telecommunications companies and computer manufacturers to try to create a strong alliance to extend Internet connectivity in the developing world.

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