Public information

A new iPhone app developed by the United Nations Department of Public Information with a team of United Nations online volunteers is now downloadable for free. Illustrating the breadth of activities of the United Nations system around the world, the UN Calendar of Observances app uses the international days as a basis to show users, through photos, videos and weblinks, what the United Nations does.

The United Nations issued today the sixty-second volume of the Yearbook of the United Nations, covering the activities of the Organization in 2008 worldwide, from Headquarters to the field.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will start his three-day visit to China on 17 July. His first activity in Beijing will be to communicate with followers of the United Nations channel on Sina Weibo, the most popular Chinese-language microblogging platform.

The United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) and the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., are launching a global contest for university students, inviting them to imagine a speech that would be made by the Secretary-General at the opening of the next session of the General Assembly, reflecting particularly on the questions of global interdependence and individual human rights.

Concluding its annual two-week session, the Committee on Information today reaffirmed the 1946 resolution establishing the Department of Public Information to promote an informed understanding of the work and purposes of the United Nations among the peoples of the world and, towards that goal, called on the Department to expand multilingualism, partnerships, efficiency, communications infrastructure and the use of new technology, especially in developing countries.

During a “jam session” of ideas at Headquarters this afternoon, musicians and musical scholars shed light on the role of jazz music in bridging communities and cultures and encouraging tolerance and social change.

The Committee on Information of the United Nations General Assembly, in association with the United Nations Academic Impact and the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations, will organize a special event to celebrate the first International Jazz Day on 30 April 2012.

Noting the transformation of the past five years of the Department of Public Information into a modern communications outfit, the Department’s top official this afternoon pledged to address Member States’ requests to bolster specific programmes and offices while calling on Governments to help with that process.

The membership of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group of the Internet Governance Forum has been renewed.

The need to fully institute multilingualism in the Organization’s information services, shore up the network of the United Nations Information Centres and increase the cost-effectiveness of the Department of Public Information were among the priority issues put forth today by delegates, as the Committee on Information continued its general debate this afternoon.