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`UN should bridge digital divide'

Prakash M. Swamy

UNITED NATIONS, May 7

INDIA has said that lack of accessibility to information and communications technology due to economic or other barriers can only further widen the gap between developing and developed societies and hence the United Nations has an important role to play in bridging the ``digital divide.''

Addressing the United Nations Committee of Information, India's Permanent Representative to the UN, Mr Kamalesh Sharma said rapid advances in technology have compressed the world.

The technological advancements can be harnessed towards achieving the global objectives of poverty reduction and betterment of the quality of life. As the UN is committed to promoting democracy it should actively support and facilitate free flow of objec tive and impartial information, Mr Sharma said.

He, however, added that along with the potential benefits come the possible risks. The media often dictates the agenda. It chooses what to beam to living rooms and how to present it. It can distort through selectivity or a partisan intent.

As an example, Mr Sharma alluded to the excessive preoccupation with armed conflicts in the past few years; unfortunate as these are, there is a vaster reality of under-development which may not be ``breaking news'' but has been soul-breaking news for co untless generations, he said.

He called attention to the Secretary General's Millennium Report that said that about half the world's population earns less than two dollars a day and 1.2 billion people earn less than a dollar a day.

In comparison, a significantly lower number are affected by armed conflict, which is often the product of lack of development. Both the persistence of poverty and efforts to conquer it is news to warn or inspire the world, Mr Sharma said.

The UN system can play a very useful and positive role in exercising the awareness promotion function and in informing the peoples of the world of the vast array of subjects and issues being dealt with in the UN, results achieved and the reasons for the organisation falling short of expectations.

It is for this reason that time and again, the General Assembly has emphasised the need to stress the development agenda. Otherwise, to the three billion poor of the world, representing half of the world's population, the UN would be an irrelevance, he a dded.