The central role of information and communication in conducting the work of the United Nations was one of the highlights of the address of Mr. Adrianus Mooy, ESCAP Executive Secretary, at the opening session of the Global Population Information Network (POPIN) Advisory Committee Meeting, which was held at Bangkok from 14 to 17 June 1995.
Speaking as head of a regional commission that serves Governments representing well over half of the world's population, he emphasized that population issues are of paramount importance to ESCAP and are at the core of its development efforts.
Mr. Mooy credited the secretariat's information dissemination and advocacy work, conducted for more than a quarter of a century, with changing attitudes about population issues that has led to decisive action to slow down population growth while accelerating the process of national development in many countries of the region. The use of a variety of information technologies to disseminate population and development messages would characterize its future work in this field, he predicted.
Drawing attention to the Bali Declaration on Population and Sustainable Development, which was adopted at the Fourth Asian and Pacific Population Conference in 1992, and the Programme of Action adopted by the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994, the Executive Secretary said that these instruments recognize the important role that information would play in helping countries to achieve their population goals and objectives. Before concluding his talk, Mr. Mooy thanked the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for its strong support of ESCAP's Asia-Pacific Population Programme.
His remarks about the primacy of information were echoed by Mr. Joseph Chamie, Director of the Population Division, Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis (DESIPA) at United Nations Headquarters, in his address to the opening session of the Meeting. He underlined the importance of the on-going "information revolution" to the economic strategies of both developed and developing countries, with particular attention to the critical role of POPIN and information technology in achieving the information, education and communication (IEC) goals of the ICPD Programme of Action.
Mr. Chamie served as Chairman of the Meeting; Ms. Susan Pasquariella served as Vice-Chairperson. They were assisted by two Rapporteurs, namely: Ms. Nancy J. Hafkin, Officer-in-Charge, Pan African Development Information System (PADIS), Economic Commission for Africa, and Mr. Arthur Conning, Chief, Information Technology Centro Latino Americano de Demografia (CELADE), Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.
The global network known as POPIN consists of interrelated regional information networks of institutions involved in the field of population in Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean and North America. Plans for the revitalization of population information activities in Africa have been initiated and the creation of a European population information network is underway with the European Association for Population Studies and the Economic Commission for Europe. Consideration has also been given to the establishment of a similar network for Western Asia.
These were among the matters brought to the attention of participants by the Global POPIN Coordinator, Ms. Pasquariella, in her description of recent POPIN activities. She informed the Meeting that the Global POPIN Coordinating Unit and the Economic Commission for Africa had submitted a proposal to UNFPA in late 1994 that would enable the revitalization of POPIN-Africa.
The Global POPIN Coordinating Unit, which is located in the Population Division of the United Nations DESIPA at New York, serves as the principal node for technical leadership, cooperation and coordination among regional population information centres and networks, and provides a forum for the exchange of experience among developed and developing countries on population information issues.
During the past year and a half, she continued, the POPIN Internet Gopher has been created, Northern American POPIN has been established, European population information networking has been initiated, and POPIN Africa is being re-established. Further, a meeting of the POPIN Coordinating Committee was held at Cairo in 1994. Currently, the Global POPIN Coordinating Unit is collaborating with the regional commissions and regional population information networks, said Ms. Pasquariella, to draft proposals for regional and interregional population information activities during the period 1996-1999. Outlines of these proposed activities were reviewed by the Advisory Committee and made part of the report of the Meeting.
POPIN's primary objective is to increase awareness, knowledge and understanding of population-related issues at all levels of society. Use of new electronic information technologies will enable a dramatic increase in the availability of population information worldwide.
Representatives of each of the regional commissions summarized their activities during the recent past. Also, the Working Group on the Management of the POPIN Thesaurus: Population Multilingual Thesaurus (PMT), which is managed by the Committee for International Cooperation in National Research in Demography (CICRED), provided participants with an update on the current status of its work. Discussion centred on the question of merging the POPLINE and POPIN thesauri. Another issue discussed was the need for automation and translation of the PMT into several languages.
The POPIN Working Group on Information Technologies also met at Bangkok during the time of the Advisory Committee Meeting, i.e. from 12 to 13 and from 19 to 21 June. After meeting separately, it presented its recommendations for the Advisory Committee to examine and review. The recommendations of the POPIN Information Technology Working Group were incorporated into the Advisory Committee's recommendations (below).
At its concluding session, the Advisory Committee adopted a set of recommendations related to various aspects of POPIN's future operations. They are as follows:
POPIN Structure, Organization and Coordination
(1) POPIN should continue to grow as a cohesive decentralized network at the global, regional and national levels and should focus population information development activities on capacity-building in the regions and countries so as to increase self-reliance in the production, processing and utilization of population data and information.
(2) Network activities should be developed to achieve a pragmatic division of labour between the national and regional population information networks and the Global POPIN Coordinating Unit, and to encourage and promote international cohesiveness and collaboration.
(3) The Global POPIN Coordinating Unit should continue to function as the central node for the coordination of regional and international population information activities, and should continue to pursue a decentralized approach to network-building. The Unit should also continue to encourage the development and functioning of regional population information networks, with particular reference to those regions where such networks are currently being organized.
(4) The Global POPIN Coordinating Unit should seek to promote the establishment of population information networks in Europe and Western Asia.
(5) Upon request, the Global POPIN Coordinating Unit should participate in strategic planning meetings of the regional POPIN networks.
(6) The POPIN Coordinating Committee, consisting of a representative information specialist from the each regional commissions and invited experts or observers, should replace the POPIN Advisory Committee as a chief mechanism for the development of policy guidelines to ensure parallel development and evolution of the Network in all regions. The POPIN Coordinating Committee should be convened on an annual basis for the purpose of examining and clarifying the relationships among POPIN members at the global, regional and national levels and assessing the latest development in the population information field.
(7) Recalling resolution 1979/33, the specialized agencies of the United Nations should be encouraged to participate actively in POPIN activities. This should also extend to UNFPA TSS/Country Support Teams.
(8) POPIN networks in each region should share information about activities in developing countries with dual membership in order to facilitate inter-regional co-operation.
Production and Dissemination of Population Information
(9) In the production, publication, collection and dissemination of population information, POPIN should take into account the widened scope of the population field as reflected in the Programme of Action adopted by the International Conference on Population and Development.
(10) POPIN members should continue to use various media, including print, CD-ROM and the Internet, for the exchange and transfer of population information. The network should actively promote awareness of current and emerging information technologies and should encourage the appropriate use of these methodologies for the transfer and exchange of population information.
(11) POPIN members should encourage, facilitate and promote the creation of documents in electronic format and the use of electronic publishing for the dissemination of population-related information.
(12) The Global POPIN Coordinating Unit in conjunction with POPIN members should develop and disseminate guidelines for the preparation of materials in electronic formats. In the preparation of these guidelines POPIN should, whenever possible, adhere to existing standards and should continue to monitor the development of standards governing treatment of language character sets and statistical and graphic materials.
(13) The long-term objective of POPIN information dissemination activities should be cost recovery, when appropriate and when there are no legal obstacles.
(14) The POPIN network at all levels should facilitate the development and use of efficient communication facilities such as e-mail, electronic bulletin boards, CD-ROM, Internet and other such technologies which help speed up the processes of information-sharing and communication of data and information.
(15) As necessary and feasible, POPIN should convene meetings of technical experts to advise on technical topics in the area of information technology. If possible, these meetings should be convened in conjunction with meetings of the POPIN Coordination Committee to: (a) update and review the technologies in the field of information dissemination, (b) provide training opportunities and (c) exchange experience.
(16) The Global POPIN Coordinating Unit in collaboration with the appropriate regional POPIN networks, should encourage participants at major population conferences, congresses and symposia to make their presentations available in electronic format. These presentations (either in abstract or full-text format) should be made available through the Internet via the POPIN Gopher/Web Server.
(17) POPIN should continue to utilize the newsletters of each of the regional commissions and of the Population Division (DESIPA) to publicize and communicate Network progress and activities to the worldwide population community.
Follow-up Activities
(18) Efforts should be made to place POPIN on the agenda of the Administrative Coordinating Committee (ACC) in order to further strengthen its activities.
(19) Attempts should be made to diversify financing for POPIN by going beyond traditional sources.
(20) After a detailed analysis of the regional and the global POPIN proposals, the Advisory Committee noted approvingly that: (a) each was based on the conditions and needs of the countries in the regions; (b) each sought to achieve basic commonalities and standards across the regions, such as the use of the Internet, CD-ROM and other joint initiatives; and (c) each proposal expressed a strong willingness to work together through the global POPIN to avoid duplication of efforts and achieve common products where appropriate and cost-effective. The Advisory Committee thus invited donors to provide support to carry out the POPIN proposals and for ensuring coordination and collaboration.
Also at its conclusion, the Meeting considered suggestions about where and when the next session of the Advisory/Coordinating Committee would be held. Thanks were expressed to ESCAP for what the participants called "excellent organization of the Meeting" and to UNFPA which provided financial support for the meeting.