WondrousWiredWorld of the United Nations: a cyber sampling - UN web sites

UN Chronicle, Spring, 1997

A Cyber Sampling

Your 96 by now dog-eared :-) pages of the latest issue of the UN Chronicles "dead-tree edition" can hold only so much information. Despite a close reading, you find you still don't know all the details behind the Secretary-General's most recent recommendations on the refugee crisis in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa. What's more, you need those answers fast - for tomorrow morning's project proposal or that term paper due yesterday. Or perhaps you are a concerned individual who wants to help. What do you do? Easy, as a Netizen of the world, you boot up your computer, initialize your modem, and go online for help from the United Nations' cyberspace safety Net.

The United Nations system's Web Site on the "I-way" - with its broad coverage of every UN issue, continuous updating, important databases, and thousands of documents, reports and publications - is a tremendous tool. And it's all free.

Herewith, an offering of just a few of the hundreds of pages you can visit. It starts at the newly redesigned Homepage of the United Nations system. The UN HomePage (http://www.un.org) serves as a one-stop clearing house for information, where you can find not only basic facts on the United Nations system, but also schedules for upcoming conferences and events, the latest UN news, speeches, documents, publications, photos and more. You can explore important general themes: peace and security; international law; humanitarian affairs; human rights; and economic and social development.

Developed and maintained by the Department of Public Information (DPI), with technical cooperation from the Information Technology Services Division of the Office of Conference and Support Services, the UN Homepage has quickly become a universally accessible source of news and information about every aspect of the work of the world Organization. The DPI database on the Net is the largest electronic database within the United Nations system. A popular Web Site, the Homepage was receiving some 1 million "hits" a week by the end of February 1997.

The UN Homepage also has a number of subpages in English or French, including some now available in Spanish. These link up to a host of other UN sites. Or, if you have neither the time nor the inclination to "browse", here's a useful Search engine to help find your way through the maze of information available to the public.

* UN News covers breaking events. Following links on this page, you can read the latest UN daily highlights, press releases, fact sheets and periodicals.

* Conferences and Events is where to go to download a calendar of UN meetings or to link up to other sites that cover such important global conferences as the recent Habitat II meeting.

* UN Documents is an electronic collection of official UN documents, updated daily with major reports and resolutions.

* Databases leads you to the latest statistics collected by the UN Statistical Division, information about international treaties or the UN in Action Video Catalogue.

* General Information - the name says it all. But in addition to offering a wealth of basic information on UN activities and mandates, this subpage also delivers great educational support. The United Nations CyberSchoolBus page offers informative games, activities and teaching aids designed to engage and educate, providing teachers and students with the materials they need to learn about global issues. Departing from http://www. un.org/Pubs/CyberSchoolBus, this site makes learning about the world entertainment for children of all ages.

* For more scholarly electronic research, there is the UN Dag Hammarskjold Library (http://www. un.org/Depts/dhl). Besides giving users online information about services, collections, databases, publications and reference guides, the Library's subpage has a database for identifying major UN documents. A simple search on UN Info Quest (UN-I-QUE) for reports of the Commission on Human Rights produces a complete listing of symbols for all its sessional reports from 1947 to he present! The subpage even contains a list of over 350 UN depository libraries. Other impressive on-line libraries are available through the Web Sites of the various United Nations specialized agencies and programmes.

* The UN/NGO Link should be considered indispensable for anyone wanting to find how the United Nations works with such humanitarian agencies as the International Committee for the Red Cross. The site allows a visitor to link up to any number of outside NGOs.

* ReliefWeb (http://www. reliefweb.int) is a United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs project to strengthen the response capacity of the humanitarian relief community through the timely dissemination of reliable information on prevention, preparedness and disaster response. Updated twice daily, it provides a wide array of sources, open architecture (upwards and downwards compatible with legacy and future software), easy navigation (well-organized), multi-language support, and multi-platform compatibility.