Public information

Stressing the important role of the global network of United Nations information centres in carrying out regional strategic communications campaigns, the Organization’s top communications official this afternoon called for the requisite resources to strengthen those centres and the Department of Public Information as a whole.

To best support United Nations initiatives in peace, development and human rights at a time of financial austerity, information services were developing a “new agility” through broad collaborations and the use of a variety of media, the Organization’s top communications official told the Committee on Information as it opened its annual session this morning.

The thirty-third annual session of the Committee on Information, the intergovernmental body charged with reviewing progress in the field of United Nations public information, will be held at Headquarters from 27 April to 6 May. During the two-week session, delegations are expected to undertake a wide-ranging review of the Department of Public Information and its three subprogrammes — the News and Media, Outreach and Strategic Communications Divisions.

The United Nations today issued the sixty-first volume of the Yearbook of the United Nations, the most comprehensive and authoritative reference work on the activities and concerns of the Organization, covering developments in 2007.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will launch officially on 18 and 19 November, the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI), an initiative of the Department of Public Information aimed at creating new partnerships for the Organization by engaging the academic world.

Representatives of Governments, international organizations, the Internet community, the private sector, civil society, and the media will convene from 14 to 17 September 2010 in Vilnius, Lithuania, for the fifth meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). More than 1,200 people from 115 countries have already registered for attending the meeting. Many more will be actively taking part in the Forum’s discussions and workshops via remote participation.

More than 140 leaders in development applications of information and communications technologies (ICT) met today at the United Nations to fine tune an online tool that will be launched during the upcoming High-Level Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York on 21 September 2010.

Youth from all regions of the world came together on 14 to 18 August in the Putra World Trade Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to participate in the second edition of the Global Model United Nations Conference 2010 organized by the United Nations Department of Public Information on the theme “Towards an Alliance of Civilizations — Bridging Cultures to Achieve Peace and Development”.

Submissions to the “Citizen Ambassadors” video contest on the UN Channel on YouTube will end in three weeks, on 23 August.

The United Nations announced today the release of United Nations e-book applications for the iPhone and the iPad, as well as e-books for Amazon’s Kindle, that will give users easy access to offline reading and reference on global issues.