UN receives International Documentary Association award for its archives

The United Nations has received the prestigious International Documentary Association Preservation and Scholarship Award for its extensive media archives, which span decades in the life of the world body.

“This award comes to us at a critical and challenging time in the Organization's history,” said Ahmad Fawzi, the Director of the Department of Public Information's News and Media Division, accepting the award at a ceremony on Friday in Los Angeles, California.

“As we approach our 60th birthday, we are grappling with questions about the relevance and effectiveness of the international system we all created, questions of when to go to war and how to build peace, questions of collective security while we continue our humanitarian mission of fighting hunger, poverty, disease and environmental degradation.”

Mr. Fawzi paid tribute to all those who had catalogued and secured footage and sound elements covering the UN's work at Headquarters and overseas. “They have carefully preserved this material and maintained its accessibility under somewhat constrained physical and financial circumstances,” he said.

The News and Media Division chief also pledged that the UN “will persevere in preserving and documenting the past, present and future of this global organization that is truly relevant to our time.”

Hundreds of hours of footage shot by UN producers have been transferred to a digital format for preservation, and to off-site storage as a security measure.