Public information

The Department of Public Information would continue to work with the Government of Angola to soon make the planned United Nations Information Centre in Luanda for Portuguese-speaking African countries a reality, Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, said this afternoon as the Committee on Information concluded the general debate of its thirty-second session.

Equality of languages on the United Nations website and the implications of freedom of information were dominant themes in the Committee on Information this afternoon, as it continued the general debate of its thirty-second session.

It was crucial for the United Nations to get its message out through both the latest technologies, such as Twitter, and more traditional ones, such as radio, the head of the Department of Public Information told the Committee on Information as it opened its annual session this morning.

The wide-ranging efforts of the United Nations to better communicate with the world public will be reviewed in the thirty-second annual session of the Committee on Information, taking place at Headquarters from 26 April to 7 May. During the two-week session, delegations will review the activities of the Department of Public Information and its three subprogrammes -- Strategic Communications, News Services and Outreach Services -– in the period July 2009 to February 2010.

Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan will visit United Nations Headquarters on 27 April to launch a new children’s book on cross-cultural understanding. The book, entitled "The Sandwich Swap", is a warm-hearted fable about friendship and tolerance across cultural lines. The story is based on an anecdote Her Majesty tells and which encapsulates, in today’s troubled times, the need for global understanding.

The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme, in partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, will hold its first video conference with students in seven countries in Latin America to help promote Holocaust education, today, 21 April.

Following the success of the 2009 inaugural Global Model United Nations Conference held in Geneva, Switzerland, the United Nations Department of Public Information will be organizing the second annual event in Kuala Lumpur on 28‑30 July, in partnership with the Government of Malaysia, the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and the Commonwealth Secretariat.

United Nations Television, the official television channel of the United Nations, is now featured as a channel on the online television news service aggregator Livestation.

Tomorrow, 13 November, the Dag Hammarskjöld Library will officially launch “UN Member States on the Record”, a new research tool which will dramatically facilitate research on the work and actions of each Member State, and make information more accessible and easy to find.

The Department of Public Information is pleased to announce the launch of new websites for United Nations meetings coverage summaries and press releases, in English (www.un.org/en/unpress) and French (www.un.org/fr/unpress).