How the UN Public Information Office Works

This article is re-published * as part of Fridays With MUNPlanet and its series dedicated to world politics and the United Nations. This time PassBluebrings you an article by Helmut Volger who writes about the importance of the Department of Public Information and its position within the UN system. As Vogler explains, the public information department’s aim is “to make the world public understand the value of the UN as a global forum for defining, debating and solving global problems,” and throughout history of the world organization UN SG’s have given different priorities to this service that has the ability to speak to hearts and minds of the people around the world.

BERLIN — From the beginning, the member states of the United Nations understood the great significance of efficient communication: in resolution 13(I) of Feb. 13, 1946, the General Assembly established the Department of Public Information in the Secretariat and emphasized: “The United Nations cannot achieve the purposes for which it has been created unless the peoples of the world are fully informed of its aims and activities.”

Yet in practice the UN has failed time and again to act according to this evident truth: the Department of Public Information remained underfinanced relative to its large area of responsibility: to provide information on the work of the Secretariat, the Security Council and the General Assembly as well as the increasing number of UN programs, funds and specialized agencies.

To do this large amount of work, the department received and still receives few funds: for the years 2014–2015, for instance, the budget section for Public Information provided $188 million, or a 2.6 percent share of the overall UN budget.

The lack of funds is accompanied by political restrictions from member states. As Axel Wustenhagen, a now-deceased UN official who worked in public information, emphasized in a book contribution on the Department of Public Information, most UN member states grant the office factual information only on the activities of the UN, and the Secretariat accepts — for the most part — this restriction.

In this cautious sense, Secretary-General U Thant underlined in 1970 in a media seminar at UN headquarters that the UN neither could nor would “conduct an intensive campaign such as sovereign governments sometimes employ. . . . The United Nations, in public information activities, can only attempt to give an objective and factual record of what is happening.”

You can read the full article on MUNPlanet.

Cover image: United Nations Telecommunications Satellite Dish [The United Nations telecommunications satellite dish located at the Headquarters in New York, part of a worldwide global communications network operating 24-four hours a day, is a major link with overseas United Nations offices and with peacekeeping operations. The Secretariat Building is seen in the background. 10/Jan/1996. UN Photo/Evan Schneider, via Flickr]-