Public information

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).

As world leaders from 192 United Nations Member States converge on New York for the sixty-fourth session of the General Assembly, the Department of Public Information is launching a groundbreaking campaign entitled “Citizen Ambassadors to the United Nations”, which encourages people everywhere to directly engage with decision-makers by uploading video messages on the United Nations YouTube channel.

The United Nations issued today the sixtieth volume of the Yearbook of the United Nations, covering the activities of the Organization in 2006. During that year, outgoing Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that “the only answer to this divided world must be a truly United Nations” and his newly appointed successor, Ban Ki-moon, urged the world “to work together for a United Nations that can deliver more and better”.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is pleased to announce the appointment of Maria Dotsenko, a national of Ukraine, as Representative of the Department of Public Information in the United Nations Office in Yerevan, Armenia.

Petri Kristian Cozma, a student at the Helsinki School of Economics, was elected as the first General Assembly President of the Global Model United Nations Conference. Mr. Cozma and eight other university students will attend a workshop, organized by the Department of Public Information, at United Nations Headquarters from 17 to 19 June, to be trained in their roles as General Assembly officials for the Conference.

Concluding its annual two-week session this afternoon, the Committee on Information called on the United Nations Department of Public Information to continue to strengthen its role as the indispensable voice of the Organization by boosting awareness of a raft of current issues, increasing multilingualism, re‑evaluating all programmes and enhancing efficiency.

The Committee on Information concluded the general debate of its thirty-first annual session today, with Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Kiyo Akasaka pledging to “build on our achievements” and improve impact and performance.