Has the anguish of Lady Diana's death done more against landmines in a week than what was accomplished in numerous and important meetings and during the many years of the United Nations work? Many people think so, as unfair as it may seem.

The international organizations in general and the United Nations in particular not only face indifference and the individual's boredom sometimes, but frequently their message arrives unclear, incomplete and altered.

The way we think about information has changed during the past 10 years (perhaps I should say months, even weeks). The world of information is changing so fast that we can apply here what was told to Alice in Wonderland: "It takes all the running you can do to keep the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

Faster or slower, first of all, the United Nations should have a general strategy to go somewhere regarding information. From my personal point of view, Modern National States and International Organizations, as the United Nations, share the challenge of making the information circulate so that the democratic principle compelling the public powers to promote the conditions for freedom and the individual's equality become real and truly effective. That is a good goal to pursue.

At the same time, we have to take into account that the action of the United Nations does not address to an "abstract man", to a "citizen of the world", but to a concrete man and the daily problems he faces each day in his country.

On the other hand, the immediate addressees of the informative actions of public institutions, National States and International Organizations are no longer only the individuals considered independently, but the organizations in which these are integrated—companies, labour unions, consumers' associations, professional schools, managerial organizations, media, etc.

As the Spanish professor, Manuel Garcia Pelayo, has pointed out, we are facing an authentic organizational revolution, characterized by the growth, diversification, interdependence and complexity of the organizations and the historical necessity of the organizational process for satisfying and promoting social demands, a revolution whose content is:

• the emergence of a society of organizations in which each social task of importance belongs to an institution; and
• the emergence of a new and different pluralism, that is to say, a society of diversity of institutions and diffusion of power.

The relationship citizen-State and, even more, the relationship worldcitizen with the International Organizations usually have mediators in large organizations. Often, these mediators—economic organizations, labour unions, organizations of professionals and of consumers, etc.—are those that outline demands and provide considerable support to State or international actions or to the stability of a system.

Therefore, if we want "to enhance the Organization's substantive capacities through strengthening its global leadership position and through building support among its crucial constituencies", that has to be accomplished by building a good relationship with a variety of different national and international, private and public, organizations.

A bureaucracy is essentially an information-producing, distributing and consuming organism. Reflecting this point of view, Harland Cleveland has written: "Government is information. Its employees are nearly all information workers, its raw material is information inputs transformed into policies, which are simply an authoritative form of information. So, in a narrow sense, to consider government information policy is not far from considering the essence of government itself."

This idea fully supports the point of view holding that the information system reform affects the whole UN organization. Therefore, "the communications function should be placed at the heart of the strategic management of the Organization". In fact, the systems of external information of an organization are closely related to the systems of information for management. It is not possible to act on one of them without having the measures adopted affecting the other one.

As a consequence of the above, the external information provided by the system of the United Nations, as well as the information that flows inside the organizations, has to be focused in developing an agile answer to concrete requests and demands of singular citizens of the world.

People's concerns revolve around issues which are on the core UN agenda: fighting crime, drugs and disease; securing employment, education and social services; promoting development; and protecting the environment and human rights.

So, let's find the five "press-W-questions" ( What, Who, Whom, When, and Where) related with these issues: What are really the tasks carried out by the Organization; who are currently developing these tasks and for whom; and, finally, last but not the least, what are the terms and the places for delivering the services provided by the United Nations.

According to a well-known American law—the Sunshine Act—the public has a right to know not only what its Government decides, but why and by what process. So I should add up a question to the former five, "How?": the procedure and requirements to receive the benefit of UN performances.

According to the report of the Task Force on the Reorientation of United Nations Public Information Activities, Global Vision, Local Voice: A Strategic Communications Programme for the United Nations, "the support to the United Nations is generally 'soft', and the respect only occasionally gets translated into strong public backing. A lasting damage is being inflicted worldwide by the perception of the Organization as a distant, global bureaucracy, with little direct relevance to the lives of ordinary people."

We have to find a solution to this lack of confidence, trying to engage the people in UN activity. From its founding, the basic principle of democracy has been informed citizen participation in the running of popular government. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are only parts of the larger concept. Public access to government information is essential to the operation of a democracy. Informed public debate is the basis of democratic form of government and is the bedrock of any democratic constitution. These values are reflected in numerous laws guaranteeing citizens right of access to government information all over the democratic countries, and we have to keep them in mind to improve the system of the United Nations.

The task is serious. We are experiencing in our own flesh how the perception of the United Nations held by relevant social groups of the host country provokes a direct impact on the main work of the Organization. This perception must be corrected, but the danger of contamination exists and it must be stopped. The dissemination of information is one of the remedies.

About the Author:

Ambassador Inocencio F. Arias served as Spain's State Secretary for International Cooperation and for Iberoamerican Affairs in Madrid between 1991 and 1993. He was Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he also served as Director of the Diplomatic Information Office and as spokesman. He has actively participated in numerous international conferences and has been a member of the Spanish delegation to several sessions of the United Nations General Assembly. Ambassador Arias has been a professor of International Relations at the University Complutense and at the University Carlos III (both in Madrid). He is the author of several publications, papers and contributions on, among others, political issues and international relations. He has also worked in the private sector, as General Director of the "Real Madrid" soccer club.