Statement by Mr. Shashi Tharoor at the opening of the 25th session of the Committee on Information (English and French)

As delivered
English/French

Statement by Mr. Shashi Tharoor
Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information
at the opening of the twenty-fifth session
of the Committee on Information

It is a special pleasure and a privilege for me to address this twenty-fifth session of the Committee on Information. In India, where I come from, and I know also in Bangladesh, your own country, Ambassador Chowdhury, the 25th year is called a silver jubilee and is considered an occasion for great celebration. For the past 25 years, this Committee has provided support and guidance to the Department of Public Information, helping it to define its task in a constantly changing global information environment and to meet difficult challenges. On behalf of my Department and my staff, I wish, on this silver jubilee, to acknowledge the positive contribution of this Committee and to express my appreciation for its continued support.

I should like to take this opportunity to warmly welcome the newly elected Chairman, His Excellency Mr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, and the members of the Bureau. I have every confidence that under Ambassador Chowdhury's able guidance, this Committee will make even more progress towards helping the Department accomplish the new goals it has set for itself. I am especially indebted to you, Mr. Chairman, for your kind words addressed to me. The interest you have already shown in the work of the Department is greatly encouraging. And your inspiration opening statement has started this meeting with just the right tone and in the right direction.

I should also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the outgoing chairman, His Excellency Ambassador Milos Alcalay, and the other members of his Bureau. Ambassador Alcalay has presided over the Committee with rare commitment and vigour at a time when the Department of Public Information has been undergoing a comprehensive reorientation of its work programme. His diplomatic skills, his dynamic leadership, and dedication to the success of this Department have been an inspiration to us all. And once again, I thank you, Ambassador Alcalay, for your many kind words addressed to me personally, of which I hope to prove worthy.

We are meeting at a time when the recent and ongoing events in Iraq and the humanitarian situation facing its people have posed serious challenges for the United Nations. Many were deeply worried about the broader, long-term implications of this war - both for the region and the world. Serious questions have also been raised about the future of the Organization. People in certain quarters were declaring that the United Nations was now "irrelevant" and even comparing its fate to that of the League of Nations. Others were genuinely concerned about what they saw as the United Nations' failure to prevent the war and the consequent weakening of the Organization.

The world is slowly coming to realize that neither of these negative analyses is true. The breadth and depth of the disappointment in so many countries at the failure of the Security Council to find a collective solution showed how much was expected of the United Nations. We should be encouraged by the conviction of people all over the world that the United Nations is the institution where decisions on matters of collective peace and security should be taken. In this respect, the Secretary-General has said it is his belief that "the United Nations family may come out of this difficult experience more relevant than ever before".

For us in the Department of Public Information, the greatest challenge has been finding ways and means to increase global awareness and understanding of the multiple roles of the United Nations in the Iraq crisis. The need to ensure that the immediacy and intensity of the situation in Iraq did not overwhelm communication of what the United Nations was doing in many other critical areas around the world was no less challenging. We did succeed in conveying the message that success or failure in any one area, however important, does not make or break the United Nations. At the same time, we learned once again that the general public, and even the mass media, rarely distinguish between the role of the United Nations as a "stage" on which Member States play their parts and may agree or disagree, and that of the United Nations as an "actor", intervening with its agencies and staff in various situations. Let me abandon the theatrical metaphor and simply state: when DPI speaks for the UN, it therefore represents the Organization as a whole - you, the Member States, included.

Since the beginning of the crisis at the end of 2002, the Department of Public Information has played a central coordinating role in conveying a consistent message on the United Nations role in the Iraq crisis. I chaired a system-wide Inter-Agency communications task force to ensure coordinated information-gathering and a rapid-response communications strategy, and issued regular media guidance and talking points to UN officials around the world. Initially, our efforts focused on the need to seek a peaceful solution, and therefore concentrated on the role of the UN inspectors and the Security Council process. Once the conflict had begun, we concentrated on the need to ensure the protection of Iraqi civilians and meeting their humanitarian requirements, as well as the centrality of the issues of Iraqi sovereignty and territorial integrity. Today the focus is on post-war Iraq and the nature of a possible UN role. This guidance, which is constantly revised to ensure its relevance to unfolding developments and to highlight what are considered the "messages of the day", is circulated to all senior UN officials and Directors of UN Information Centres so they may pro-actively communicate such messages to the global public. As a result, hundreds of print-media and broadcast interviews have been given by senior officials in major media across the world. In addition, as part of the communications strategy, opinion pieces by the Secretary-General and senior officials, including myself, on different aspects of the crisis have been published in newspapers around the world.

In close cooperation with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and UN agencies and programmes, we established in March a press centre in Amman, to provide daily briefings on humanitarian developments. Our communications efforts have been directed not only at the media, but also at the public at large. The success of this effort was clearly conveyed by the headline of an article about our Department's Public Inquiries Unit published by the Wall Street Journal on 26 March 2003: "Cubicle front Lines: UN staffers listen to an agitated public". In March 2003 alone the Unit, an often unheralded part of DPI, handled almost 25,000 inquiries that included walk-in visitors, telephone calls, letters and e-mails.

In our continuing efforts to focus on the situation in Iraq, we have organized a special event on 2 May in observance of World Press Freedom Day, with the theme "The Media and Armed Conflict". As we have learned, the conflict in Iraq has claimed the lives of a number of journalists, injured several others, and damaged several media locations. In the words of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, my colleague, Mr. Sergio Vieira de Mello, "the right to freedom of information is dealt a fatal blow whenever a journalist is killed or injured in the performance of his or her vital role". I am very pleased to confirm the information that you have already been given that Secretary-General Kofi Annan will address this event, which I think is a clear indication of the importance he attaches to the role of the media and that of this Committee in dealing with the questions of armed conflict and press freedom. Ambassador Chowdhury, in his capacity as Chairman of this Committee, has also agreed to speak. I invite all of you to attend this important observance. As part of our invigorated programme of educational outreach and collaboration with academic institutions, we are also commemorating this special day at Columbia University on the 1st of May. More information on this event can be found at the back of the Conference Room.

While the debate on the United Nations role in Iraq continues, it is already clear that the relevance of the United Nations will not be determined by its conduct on one issue alone. As the world reaffirmed in the Millennium Declaration, "the United Nations and its Charter are the indispensable foundations of a more peaceful, prosperous and just world". The world still faces, to use the Secretary-General's phrase, innumerable "problems without passports": problems of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, of the degradation of our common environment, of contagious disease and starvation, of human rights and human wrongs, of mass illiteracy and massive displacement. More than 30,000 children continue to die each day from preventable communicable diseases. The HIV/AIDS epidemic is claiming at least 8,000 lives every single day. These are problems that no one country can solve on its own, and they are, therefore, our shared responsibility. They will remain relevant when Iraq has faded from the headlines, and DPI will continue to draw them to the world's attention.

I would now like to report to you, as requested in paragraph 66 of resolution A/57/130 B, on the activities of the Department and on the implementation of your recommendations. As you know, there has been a great deal of change over the last year and Ambassador Alcalay referred to that. I shall not be presumptuous enough to speak of a "new DPI", but I can certainly tell you of a "renewed" DPI. Last year, the Department presented to the Committee the results of the first phase of the comprehensive review of the management and operations of DPI. As part of the Secretary-General's new vision for the Department, we have further refined the Department's mission, which is "to help fulfil the substantive purposes of the United Nations by strategically communicating the activities and concerns of the Organization to achieve the greatest public impact". With this mission statement as our guide, our aim is to achieve more focused messages, better identification of target audiences, prioritization of the allocation of limited resources among the many mandated activities and identification of programmes that could be improved upon or eliminated.

The Secretary-General took the process further in September 2002 with his reform report "Strengthening of the United Nations: An agenda for further change" (A/57/387), which launched the second phase of the Department's comprehensive review. The report contained five specific actions aimed at improving the Department's ability to deliver effective and targeted information programmes. We were greatly encouraged when the General Assembly, in its resolution A/57/300, welcomed these proposals.

With your endorsement of the initial proposals last year in May, and with the Secretary-General's action plan as our guide, we have taken concrete steps towards moulding a more effective DPI. The reorientation report, contained in A/AC/198/2003/2, reflects the implementation of the Secretary-General's vision and our comprehensive review of this Department's work. It details the new operating model for the Department, based on a Division-by-Division reform programme.

This model is inspired by the fact that the Department's work is not an end in itself. While the substantive departments of the Secretariat and organizations of the UN system are responsible for generating the content, the Department of Public Information will coordinate and refine, as well as present and distribute, the relevant information. This work will be based on the priorities laid down by the General Assembly, with the Millennium Declaration as its guide, and those established by the Secretary-General, including: the eradication of poverty, conflict prevention, sustainable development (you all know the CSD is meeting in parallel with us), human rights, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the battle against international terrorism and the needs of the African continent.

The new organizational structure includes a Strategic Communications Division, a News and Media Division and an Outreach Division. The Office of the Spokesman for the Secretary-General, though reporting directly to the Executive Office of the Secretary-General, remains administratively part of the Department and works in close synergy with us.

La Division de la communication stratégique est responsable de la formulation et de la diffusion des messages des Nations Unies. Composée de professionnels de la communication spécialisés dans les domaines d'activité de l'ONU et travaillant en étroite collaboration avec les départements concernés, la Division est chargée d'élaborer des stratégies de communication destinées à promouvoir les activités de l'ONU dans les domaines prioritaires.

Un nouvel élément du modèle opérationnel, qui résulte de la réforme du Département, est l'introduction d'un concept consistant à considérer les Départements du Secrétariat comme des " clients ", qui identifient leurs propres priorités, et le Département comme " un fournisseur de services ", qui travaille selon les directives claires des Départements. Les campagnes de publicité thématiques que la Division sera appelée à formuler seront mises en œuvre par tous les moyens dont dispose le Département, y compris la presse, la radio, la télévision et l'Internet, en coopération avec les médias, la société civile et les partenaires du secteur privé, et au niveau local, par le biais des centres d'information des Nations Unies.

Un aspect essentiel de cette nouvelle approche est son extension sur le terrain. Dans la nouvelle structure du Département, le réseau des centres d'information, des services et des antennes d'information des Bureaux des Nations Unies sont désormais partie intégrante de la Division.

J'aimerais aussi mentionner le rapport du Bureau des services de contrôle interne sur la structure et le fonctionnement des centres d'information des Nations Unies qui vous est soumis sous la cote A/57/747. Le rapport comprend 15 recommandations qui serviront à rationaliser et à revitaliser les activités des centres. Je suis heureux de vous annoncer que le Département s'est déjà attelé à la tâche de répondre aux questions soulevées dans le rapport, en demandant par exemple aux centres d'information de présenter un plan annuel d'activités prévues pour diffuser les messages stratégiquement sélectionnés.

Un autre élément qui contribue à la formation de partenariats stratégiques au sein du système des Nations Unies est le Groupe de la communication des Nations Unies désormais revitalisé. Au cours des réunions hebdomadaires qui se tiennent au Siège et que j'ai l'honneur de présider, il est apparu que cette structure commune pouvait constituer une source de consultations et de coordination des politiques, des questions et des programmes de communication du système des Nations Unies.

Un bon exemple du nouveau partenariat entre le Département et les organisations du système des Nations Unies est la stratégie de communication qui est en train d'être formulée pour le Sommet mondial sur la Société de l'information (en 2003 et en 2005), en coopération avec l'Union internationale des télécommunications. En prévision du Sommet, le Département participe activement au Groupe de travail sur les technologies de l'information et des communications. Nous nous efforçons en particulier, d'encourager la participation active des médias à la société de l'information et de souligner l'importance de la liberté d'expression et de la presse. A cet égard, en association avec les milieux de la télévision et du Gouvernement de la Suisse, le Département est en train d'organiser une manifestation parallèle, le Forum mondial des médias électroniques, qui se tiendra à Genève en décembre 2003. Ce Forum portera sur le rôle des médias électroniques dans la société de l'information. La campagne actuelle consacrée à l'Année internationale de l'eau douce (2003) est une autre initiative du Département qui implique la formation de nombreux partenariats dans le cadre du système des Nations Unies.

Nous avons également tenu compte de l'appel de l'Assemblée générale pour une intensification des activités d'information de l'ONU en faveur du développement de l'Afrique. La Section Afrique, qui fait désormais partie de la Division de la communication stratégique, travaille étroitement avec ses Départements-clients, dont le nouveau Bureau du Conseiller spécial pour l'Afrique mon collègue, Monsieur Ibrahim Gambari, pour formuler des campagnes globales de communication qui mettent l'accent sur les questions prioritaires du processus de développement de l'Afrique. Les magazines, Afrique Recovery et Afrique Relance continuent d'être des moyens précieux de promotion des questions et préoccupations africaines auprès d'un segment influent de l'audience cible, en Afrique et ailleurs, apportant ainsi leur soutien au Nouveau Partenariat pour le développement de l'Afrique.

Un élément clef d'une mise en œuvre réussie de la nouvelle approche opérationnelle est le travail de la Division de l'information et des médias. Comme vous savez, notre mission de diffusion de l'information dépend en grande partie du travail des correspondants des principaux médias accrédités au Siège des Nations Unies. Leur connaissance de la complexité des activités de l'ONU les rend indispensables à l'efficacité du Département.

Nous avons également tiré parti de la révolution des technologies de la communication pour toucher directement les médias de toutes les régions du monde, et je suis heureux de pouvoir annoncer des progrès plutôt spectaculaires dans ce domaine. En radio, par exemple, la voix des Nations Unies, qu'elle vienne du Siège ou du terrain, est écoutée tous les jours dans le monde par quelque 17 millions d'auditeurs dans sept langues différentes, grâce à l'accord des grandes stations de diffuser nos programmes quotidiennement. J'espère sincèrement que ce Comité appuiera, dans la durée, la poursuite de ce qui, il y a deux ans, a commencé comme un projet-pilote.

Par ailleurs, la Radio des Nations Unies a permis à nos stations partenaires de couvrir certaines activités importantes liées aux Nations Unies auxquelles elles n'auraient pas eu accès autrement, comme recevoir les informations données aux points de presse quotidiens sur l'évolution de la situation relative à l'Iraq.

La création d'un Service de l'Internet au sein de la Division de l'information et des médias, qui permet d'offrir d'une manière plus intégrée un grand nombre des produits multimédias qu'il propose, illustre la manière dont la réforme du Département contribue à améliorer nos services aux médias. Le nouvel effort intégré, qui inclut le Service de l'Internet et la Radio des Nations Unies, mènera, d'ici la fin de l'année, à la création de sites " Centres de nouvelles des Nations Unies " dans toutes les langues officielles.

Je devrais aussi mentionner que depuis la création du Service de l'information des Nations Unies en avril dernier, plus de 15 000 personnes de 130 pays différents, dont un nombre croissant de personnes de pays en développement, s'y sont abonnés. En plus de son rôle de diffuseur d'informations, le Centre de nouvelles a le mérite de proposer aux utilisateurs un accès instantané à des informations bien particulières qui intéressent l'ONU, qu'il s'agisse du terrorisme ou des PMA. Dans ces conditions, il n'est pas surprenant de constater que de nombreux sites externes, dont ceux des principaux médias, se rattachent au Centre de nouvelles qui est perçu comme une source d'informations inédites sur les activités de l'ONU.

A new Outreach Division has also been created to firm up our partnerships with civil society, the academic community, the media and an expanding network of depository libraries. The newly created Civil Society Service, which brings together under one umbrella several sections whose work is closely related, is now far better equipped to meet the demands placed on it.

The benefits of this consolidation are already amply visible. The NGO Section, which serves over 1,400 NGOs associated with DPI as well as the 2,200 in consultative status with ECOSOC, continues to build new bridges with civil society, including the networks of non-governmental organizations. Its efforts have been strengthened by the Educational Outreach Section, which includes the UN Chronicle, which will focus primarily on expanding and strengthening our relationship with academic institutions. The number of visitors to Headquarters is on the rise, with attendance for the guided tour, which marked its fiftieth anniversary at the end of last year, reflecting a growing public interest in the United Nations. I would like to believe that this result is at least partly due to our outreach efforts.

Many of you had feared that as a result of heightened interest in the Internet, the Department was abandoning the print media. Let me assure you that we are conscious that printed materials remain indispensable in many parts of the world. The Yearbook of the United Nations, now a part of the Dag Hammarskjöld Library, is on target to release its 2001 edition this summer. I am pleased to announce that the Yearbook is now available on CD-ROM for electronically-minded scholars and I don't want to underestimate these efforts to eliminate the backlog which had built up in previous years.

In another development with regard to UN publications, the new Publications Board, which was set up under the Secretary-General's reform programme as a standard-setting body with representatives from across the Secretariat, has begun functioning. A new mechanism has also been established in the area of library services reform: the Steering Committee on the Modernization and Integration of United Nations Libraries, which held its inaugural meeting in March and adopted an action plan hoping to maximize cooperation amongst the various libraries of the UN System.

The UN Works Programme, now part of the Outreach Division, is a multi-media platform that puts a human face on critical global issues and shows how effective projects can change the lives of ordinary people. UN Works has successfully tapped into the resources of media companies and leveraged the ability of UN Goodwill Ambassadors to reach global audiences through original television programming, including the latest "What's Going On?", a $2 million TV Series funded by the private sector, and Public Service Announcements on major TV stations. I would commend its website to you: www.un.org/works/.

The changes that I have described are already working well, and will be further strengthened by your support for this new operating model. I invite you to join me and my colleagues in an informal briefing for the members of the Committee this afternoon in Conference Room 5, from 3:00 - 5:00p.m., to hear more about how the reorientation process has progressed and to give you the opportunity to obtain more information about our work.

Mr. Chairman,

To plan and implement further changes while remaining within our budgetary ceiling, we have had to re-prioritize some of our activities and are proposing to transfer resources accordingly in the biennium 2004-2005. In doing this, we have had to identify areas where savings could be made without diminishing the impact of our mandated programmes.

As you will recall, the Secretary-General, in his reform report, proposed to rationalize and consolidate the information centres located in Western Europe into one regional hub. This would release resources for a strong, efficient information hub and for redeployment to activities of higher priority, including information centres in developing countries.

This proposal was driven by the realization that now, perhaps more than ever before, it is essential to create a better understanding among people around the world of the Organization and to garner public support for its work. At the same time, it is clear that the resources available at the field level to accomplish this, using the existing structural arrangements, are simply insufficient.

The plan to close the nine existing national centres in Athens, Bonn, Brussels, Copenhagen, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome and replace them with one regional hub, is reflected in the Department's submission for the proposed programme budget for the next biennium. The intention is to benefit from the synergies within the European Union and take advantage of the high level of computer connectivity in the region. I should like to point out here that the United Nations information services in Geneva and Vienna will not be affected, as they perform functions essential to the work of major United Nations offices in those cities.

As envisaged, the hub would be staffed and resourced to work in all languages of the European Union, and its programmes in the European Union countries would be based on a common list of UN priorities. We would seek to concentrate our operations in fewer strategic locations around the world and to equip these regional hubs with a critical mass of staff, supported by sufficient operating resources, to project a more coordinated message in the regions concerned. The new operating concept would also allow us to redirect resources to other priorities, including to information centres in developing countries, in accordance with General Assembly resolution 57/130 B. In particular, the centres in Africa and the Middle East would see an increase in resources, enabling them to deliver more effective and targeted programmes at this crucial time. Consideration is also being given to the possibility of expanding the UN information centre at the UN Office at Nairobi into an Information Service, which could possibly become a regional hub. We are also considering a hub in a developing country to cater to the needs of the Lusophone community.

In addition, resources would be redirected to two areas that Member States have asked us to devote more attention to: multilingualism, which our outgoing Chairman already mentioned, the United Nations Web site, and the systematic evaluation of the impact of our activities.

None of us enjoys closing an office which is operating well. In implementing the regionalization process, the interests of our loyal and hardworking UNIC colleagues who will be affected by the closure of offices, will not be overlooked. DPI and the Office of Human Resources Management have formed a working group devoted to this question, and are providing guidance to the affected staff.

I look forward to hearing the Committee's views on the Secretary-General's proposal on regionalization and to receiving your guidance on our plans to adopt a more strategic and impact-oriented approach to our communications efforts in the field. In this connection, the Committee requested in paragraph 44 of resolution 57/130B more detailed guidelines and criteria for the regionalization of the information centres. These have been prepared by the Department and are attached in Annex I to the reorientation report. I look forward to the Committee's discussion on these nine proposed criteria and to their endorsement.

I apologize Mr. Chairman, for the length of my intervention this morning, which exceeds the length in previous years, but as you can see we have a great deal on our agenda this year.

Le Département a fait des progrès importants dans l'utilisation des six langues officielles, grâce, dans une large mesure, à l'accent que vous et le Comité avez placé sur la question. Permettez-moi de citer quelques exemples.

Dans le paragraphe 8 de son rapport paru sous la cote A/57/355, le Secrétaire général fait des propositions pour accroître la capacité du Département à appuyer et à renforcer le Site Web des Nations Unies dans les six langues officielles des Nations Unies. Reconnaissant que le niveau actuel des ressources du Département n'était pas suffisant pour soutenir une expansion rapide du Site Web ou pour assurer l'addition quotidienne de nouveaux produits dans toutes les langues officielles, le Secrétaire général a recommandé la mobilisation de 1 297 500 de dollars supplémentaires. Dans sa décision 57/579 du 20 décembre 2002, l'Assemblée générale a prié le Secrétaire général de mettre en œuvre sa proposition par le redéploiement des ressources au sein du Département, en donnant la priorité aux postes linguistiques requis.

Pour réaliser l'objectif du multilinguisme dans les limites des ressources existantes, le Département a eu recours à des approches novatrices. Dans un premier temps, comme je l'ai dit plus tôt, une partie des économies réalisées par la fermeture des centres d'information en Europe de l'Ouest sera affectée aux activités du Site Web, au Siège comme sur le terrain.

Nous prenons, en outre, un certain nombre de mesures pour faire avancer la parité des langues officielles sur le Site Web des Nations Unies. Depuis son lancement, il y a trois mois, le Centre de nouvelles en langue arabe a déjà confirmé son utilité et nous sommes, en ce moment, en train de redéployer des ressources pour créer, d'ici la fin de l'année, des Centres de nouvelles dans les trois autres langues officielles. Des mesures sont également prises pour rendre disponibles, dans les six langues officielles, toutes les données de base du Département. Parmi ces nombreuses données et les sites Web déjà pleinement multilingues, il faut citer le guide de recherche pour la documentation des Nations Unies de la Bibliothèque Dag Hammarskjöld. Ce Guide peut être consulté soit par le biais du nouveau portail du Conseil de sécurité, soit par celui de la page d'accueil de la Bibliothèque Dag Hammarskjöld. La quatrième édition du système d'information bibliographique de l'ONU, UNBIS Thésaurus, est également disponible dans toutes les langues officielles de l'ONU.

En ce qui concerne particulièrement la langue française et grâce à l'offre généreuse de TV5, nous aurons bientôt accès à ses programmes en français. Il s'agit là d'une étape tangible vers la promotion d'un environnement de travail multilingue.

Certains d'entre vous savent que le Secrétaire général m'a confié la nouvelle fonction de Coordonnateur des questions liées au multilinguisme au sein du Secrétariat. En assumant ce rôle important, je suis décidé à faire en sorte que le Département, qui est déjà le plus multilingue de tous les Départements avec un personnel originaire de 70 pays différents et des sites Web en 30 langues, prenne la tête des efforts qui visent à combler le fossé entre les réalités actuelles et les attentes des Etats Membres.

Another vital aspect of our work, and one which I know is of interest to Committee members, concerns performance management. In line with the Secretary-General's reform programme, the Department has taken steps to make performance management an integral part of everything we do. This includes training of all our programme managers in evaluation and audience research techniques, as we started doing in January 2002, the first Secretariat department to do so. We are introducing an annual programme impact review to ensure the alignment of the Department's activities with its priorities. An important part of the Department's broader reform effort to institutionalize a new culture of performance management and evaluation, this annual review aims to make evaluation a part of the daily work of programme managers. To accomplish this, the Department has requested the assistance of the Office of Internal Oversight Services, through both its Management Consulting Services and the Evaluation Section. The former is helping DPI to complete a series of change management projects and the Evaluation Section is assisting the Department in the three-year review of DPI products and activities requested by the General Assembly.

The Department's ability to deliver effective and targeted information programmes will depend not only on how it organizes itself, but also on resource allocations aligned to its programmatic needs. New priorities have been set, a new operating model has been put in place and both short and long-term goals have been defined. None of the above can be achieved unless a revised programme budget is adopted that better reflects the agreed priorities of the Department. Mindful of this need, the Secretary-General in paragraph 43 of his reform report has suggested that, since the budget for the biennium 2004-2005 will be adopted in 2003, we should take advantage of this opportunity and "review and update the programme of work thoroughly" and "adopt a programme budget that is aligned with our agreed priorities".

To translate the new operating model of DPI into programmatic terms, we have changed the sub-programme structures as contained in the Medium Term Plan for 2002-2005. We now have a new sub-programme structure, which will enable us to meet ACABQ's request that we align our organizational structure with our sub-programmes: Strategic communication services, News services, Library services and Outreach services. The endorsement of this Committee is being sought with regard to this new structure and the related programme of work, which is outlined in the report before you, A/AC.198/2003/3.

The proposed programme budget for 2004-2005 has been prepared on the assumption that the regionalization of United Nations information centres in Western Europe will be implemented. The proposed programme budget for 2004-2005 also takes into account the transfer of the Cartographic Section to the Department of Peacekeeping Operations.

The Secretary-General has stated that one of his priorities in revitalizing the United Nations is to restore public confidence in the Organization by reaching out to new partners and by "bringing the UN closer to the people". His distinguished predecessor Dag Hammarskjöld understood the value of effective public information five decades ago, when he noted that, "to translate diplomacy into the language of the daily press and the headlines of the daily press, is not only a very difficult job, it is also a highly responsible job because, as we know, public opinion is one of the decisive factors in the modern world -- perhaps the most decisive factor in the creation of policies, international policies in particular" - and that is Dag Hammarskjöld fifty years ago .

At this critical juncture, I would like to appeal to this Committee to send a strong message to the General Assembly and to the world: that the United Nations matters and that its voice must be heard. In a world that sees a growing number of walls emerging, dividing peoples and cultures, effective public information can greatly contribute towards bringing those walls down - so that we can see all that we share in common, and strive all the more effectively to fulfil our common aspirations.