Policy Statement
by
Mr. Abdul Waheed Khan
Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information 
UNESCO

Tuesday,19 March 2002

Excellencies,
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

UNESCO is the UN Specialized Agency mandated to promote cooperation in education, science and culture, but is also very much concerned with communication and information which is the sector I am responsible for leading. In fact the Constitution of our Organization stipulates that it should

•  "promote the free flow of ideas by word and image", and

• "maintain, increase and diffuse knowledge".

In order to help to carry out this mandate in the information age, UNESCO has recently established the intergovernmental Information for All Programme (IFAP), dealing exclusively with information society issues. Perhaps foremost among these is the Digital Divide which is tending to exclude developing countries, and the disadvantaged populations of all societies, from the benefits of the information age - 82% of Internet users are in the high income countries having 15% of the world's population, according to the ITU World Database.

Closely linked to the information revolution is the development of a Knowledge Society in which ICTs, and particularly telecommunications, are providing new learning opportunities. This trend, of particular concern to UNESCO, is manifested by the accelerating development of "virtual" schools, courses, universities and laboratories in all parts of the world.

But what about basic education which is critical for the developing countries trying to reduce the number of adult illiterates, estimated at 875 million people world wide, and to provide for the estimated 110 million children unable to attend primary school? This immense challenge was well understood by Heads of State and Government who agreed in the UN Millennium Declaration that "Investment in education, including basic and digital literacy, remains the fundamental way of developing human capacity and should be at the heart of any national, regional and international information technology strategy." It is in this context that UNESCO has, for example, been working with the ITU-R and ITU-D sectors on national pilot projects to provide in-service training to primary teachers through interactive television.

In order to ensure a Knowledge Society for all, we must consider not only education, but also wider questions of public service as a common good of society. Here, the sectors of public concern - such as education, research, health and rural development - should be seen as a test bed and driving force for progress towards a knowledge society in developing countries, just as they have historically been in the industrialized countries. In this context, new public policies ensuring complementarity and partnership among the public sector, the private sector and civil society will be especially important.

Innovative solutions are especially needed to ensure access to ICTs by the rural, poor and otherwise disadvantaged communities which make up the bulk of the population in many developing countries. One approach promoted by UNESCO and the ITU in cooperation with other international partners is the community owned and managed multipurpose community telecentre (MCT) to provide a range of ICT facilities and associated training support for both development activities and individual users. MCTs can also link to "traditional" rural media such as community radio for outreach activities, and thus become community multimedia centres (CMCs).

In all of these considerations, the access to the Internet is increasingly a prerequisite to ensure that all citizens and all nations can benefit from the Knowledge Society. Among the major obstacles to this access in developing countries are economic constraints including high rates for both Internet service connection and for the underlying telecommunications services.

In working to ensure universal access, it is clearly important for governments and international organizations to consider that, as stated in the final report of Question 13/1 in the last ITU-D study session:

• Internet access should be accommodated as part of national telecommunications policy and regulatory frameworks.

• As opposed to the telecommunications industry, which is almost entirely a commercial sector, the Internet service sector is composed of both commercial and not-for-profit institutions.

• Because of these important public service mediation and empowerment functions, the availability of the Internet to development-oriented institutions, such as schools, libraries, communities and civil society organizations, is particularly important in national universal access strategies.

In addition, to physical access, the promise of ICTs in education and development can only be fulfilled, if we also consider access to relevant content which means, enabling developing countries to benefit from:

• both national and international content

• culturally adapted content, including content in local languages

• opportunities to produce as well as to exploit content.

It is particularly on this basis that UNESCO has been strongly engaged with the ITU in preparations for the World Summit on the Information Society, several of whose proposed themes cover areas which I have touched on above.

UNESCO is thus very pleased to have been invited to the present important conference, and will be deeply involved with you in its deliberations and follow-up.