Public information

Following is UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ message for World Press Freedom Day, observed on 3 May:

Against a backdrop of spiking extremism, proliferating “fake news” and an increasingly fragmented global media space, the Department of Public Information must continue to disseminate factual, impartial information, in accordance with the United Nations Charter principles of sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of States, speakers stressed today, as the Committee on Public Information continued its annual session.

The Department of Public Information was harnessing its multilingual news platforms, worldwide network of information centres and outreach efforts to communicate compelling United Nations stories to a global public increasingly accessing news through tablets and mobile platforms, its Acting Head told the Committee on Information today.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has appointed Maurizio Giuliano of Italy as Director of the United Nations Information Centre in Rio de Janeiro, which provides service to Brazil.  He assumed his duties today.

As part of the ongoing Stand up for someone’s rights today campaign, and in the lead-up to the 2018 seventieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations is launching a multilingual video campaign to raise awareness of basic human rights.

Following are UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, to the panel on empowering people through digital technologies for social and financial inclusion, in New York today:

NEW YORK, 12 April (Office of Information and Communications Technology) — The United Nations announced today that Abdulqadir Rashik has won the Unite Ideas #UNGAViz Textual Analysis and Visualization Challenge.  A software engineer and entrepreneur, Mr. Rashik was awarded the top prize for his submission “Global Policy”, an open-source tool that enables users to search and interactively view General Assembly resolutions to gain a deeper understanding of the voting patterns and decisions made by United Nations Member States.

The United Nations today released the sixty-sixth volume of the Yearbook of the United Nations, which covers the Organization’s global activities in 2012.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has reappointed Lynn St. Amour of the United States Chair of the Internet Governance Forum’s Multistakeholder Advisory Group.

The Secretary-General has renewed the membership of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group of the Internet Governance Forum.