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DPI to improve performance under new outreach push, official says

DPI to improve performance under new outreach push, official says

Shashi Tharoor, (DPI)
Translating information on the work of the United Nations into more languages and disseminating materials more efficiently through new structures are among the new initiatives to enhance the Organization’s outreach announced today by Shashi Tharoor, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information.

Translating information on the work of the United Nations into more languages and disseminating materials more efficiently through new structures are among the new initiatives to enhance the Organization’s outreach announced today by Shashi Tharoor, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information.

Aiming to make UN information resources available in more languages, Mr. Tharoor announced that the UN News Centre, currently operating in French and English, would soon also be available in Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Russian. “Given its substantial readership, the News Centre will, therefore, contribute in a major way to providing current information about the Organization in all our official languages,” he said.

Similarly, the UN Chronicle publication “has successfully resumed print publication in all six languages of the Organization, contributing towards our goal of multilingualism,” he told delegates to the General Assembly’s Special, Political and Decolonization (Fourth) Committee.

Concerning the re-orientation of the work of the Department of Public Information (DPI), Mr. Tharoor said wide-ranging reviews were being conducted both on its management and on other related aspects of the UN’s work. “What is essential here is that the Department demonstrates its ability to adapt to a changing world, demonstrates its willingness to learn and to change, and makes an honest effort to use its resources to obtain the maximum impact possible,” he said.

A central component of this effort involves the proposed establishment of information centre regional hubs. “One of the principal advantages of the creation of the regional [hubs] will be to strengthen the capacity of our information offices that are far from New York,” Mr. Tharoor explained. “It is also of vital importance that the creation of regional [hubs] should be accompanied by innovative measures that will extend information to the larger public in both official and non-official languages of the UN.”

The Under-Secretary-General emphasized the critical importance of effective information strategies in today’s world. ”At the dawn of the new millennium, it is clear that the United Nations cannot succeed in fulfilling its goals without being able to communicate its work effectively to the world’s peoples, in whose name this Organization was established,” he said. “That will be the principal responsibility of the new DPI.”