he UN was on the air around the world in 1997. In Vukovar, viewers watched UNTAES TV, and in Port-au-Prince they watched "Espace Bleu". In Monrovia, UNOMIL Magazine kept radio listeners informed on the elections. Angolans heard about the peace process from MONUA's "Os Caminhos da Paz". And in Sarajevo, listeners tuned to UNMIBH Radio.

Beginning in 1989 in Namibia, a growing number of United Nations field missions have produced their own radio and TV programmes to get the UN message out to the public. In addition to the missions in the former Yugoslavia, Haiti, Liberia and Angola, peace operations in El Salvador, Mozambique and Somalia all produced programmes for broadcast on local radio or TV. In the Cambodia and Rwanda missions, the UN, against all odds, even set up its own radio station.

In 1997, there were no new Radio UNTACs or Radio UNAMIRs, but UN mission broadcasters were hard at work in five different peace operations. Emphasis in 1997 has been on production and cooperation, with an eye to the future.