Public information

Following is UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ message for World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, observed on 17 May:

The United Nations country team in Myanmar calls for the immediate release of dozens of journalists who are detained more than three months after the military seized control of the Government.  To date, military authorities have revoked the operating licenses of six Myanmar media outlets; 82 journalists have been arrested, more than half of them are still detained.

The Elsie Initiative, a United Nations Trust Fund that supports deployment of uniformed women to peace operations, announced this morning its first five recipients — Liberia, Mexico, Niger, Senegal and Sierra Leone — during a high-level virtual event.  The Fund also launched its second programming round.

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message for World Press Freedom Day 2021 — “Journalism as a Public Good:  30 Years of the Windhoek Declaration” — observed on 3 May:

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message on “COVID-19 — How Do We Prevent the Pandemic from Becoming a Media Extinction Event?”, in New York today:

Following are UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed’s remarks at the General Assembly high-level thematic debate on digital cooperation and connectivity, today:

The Committee on Information continued its annual session today, as delegates decried the epidemic of disinformation spreading around the world faster than the COVID-19 virus and tasked the United Nations with strengthening multilingual strategic communications to inoculate populations against this harmful trend.

The massive spread of misinformation and disinformation and surge of hate speech that has coalesced to undermine global public health during the COVID-19 crisis presents an “immediate test case” for the United Nations Department of Global Communications and its vision of a world thriving in peace, dignity and equality, its chief told the Committee on Information today, as delegates began their annual session.

Progress in protecting the world’s forests — and the people who rely on them — is at risk due to the devastating impacts of the coronavirus and the escalating climate and biodiversity crises, according to a new report released today by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said it will launch an operation to reach up to 2 million vulnerable people in Myanmar’s main cities and other areas where people have recently been uprooted.  WFP estimates that 3.4 million more people will be hungry within the next six months, amid the ongoing effects of poverty, COVID-19 and political crisis.