When countries around the world began to recognize the threat to their social and economic development posed by the rapid population growth rates occurring following the end of the Second World War, the need for reliable population data and information became acute.

Several regional population conferences, expert groups and working groups, organized during the 1960s by ESCAP (then called the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, or ECAFE), reiterated the need for an organized system for the exchange of population data and information among the countries and territories of the Asian and Pacific region.

The first step in fulfilling this need was the establishment, with financial support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), of the Clearing-house and Information Section within the Population Division of the secretariat in 1969.

Meanwhile, a number of international information networks were being formed elsewhere in the world in response to the growing perception of the global nature of information needs and resources, and to exploit the increasing sophistication of information-processing and communications technologies then becoming available.

It was in this setting that the United Nations Economic and Social Council adopted resolution 1979133 in 1979, requesting the Secretary General "to facilitate, in collaboration with the regional commissions and the specialized agencies, the establishment of a Population Information Network (POPIN) as a decentralized network for the coordination of regional, national and non-governmental population information activities, and to endeavour to obtain extrabudgetary resources for the functioning of an advisory group and a coordinating unit".

To carry out this mandate, the POPIN Coordinating Unit was established in January 1981 within the Population Division of the United Nations Secretariat, with UNFPA providing financial support for its activities. The establishment of Asia-Pacific POPIN followed not long thereafter in the mid-1980s, building on the work that had already been undertaken by the ESCAP Clearing-house.

The secretariat's work in this field has had a significant impact on regional population information activities and has served as a stimulus for the strengthening of existing population information activities within the United Nations, and developed and developing countries alike.

This profile shows the scope of that work and the secretariat's activities in support of countries in the Asian and Pacific region. It also shows that ESCAP has taken the lead in establishing a presence on the Internet through which it provides documents, journals, newsletters, bibliographic and demographic databanks, statistical tables and other valuable population resources such as profiles of individual network members. The Web site may be accessed at: http://www.unescap.org/pop/popin/index.htm