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Building peace in the minds of men and women

Information for All Programme (IFAP)

The Information for All Programme (IFAP) was established in 2001 to provide a platform for all the stakeholders in the knowledge societies to participate in international discussions on policy and guidelines for action in the area of access to information and knowledge.

The Programme is guided in its planning and implementation by an Intergovernmental Council, currently comprising 22 UNESCO Member States that are elected by UNESCO’s General Conference.  The Council guides the planning and implementation of the programme by considering relevant proposals, recommending broad lines of action, assessing achievements, encouraging the participation of Member States, and supporting fundraising efforts.
 
The Intergovernmental Council elects a Bureau composed of six members: a Chair, four Vice-Chairs and a Rapporteur.  Members of the Bureau fulfil their roles and responsibilities in accordance with the “Guidelines on Responsibilities of Representatives of Electoral Groups in Bureaus”.  The Members of the Bureau also assume the role as chair of 6 working groups.

The 6 working groups, corresponding to the 6 priority areas of IFAP, play an important role in the implementation of IFAP's activities and are responsible for developing detailed contributions to IFAP’s work.  The 6 priorities are Information for Development, Information Literacy, Information Ethics, Information Preservation, Information Accessibility and Multilingualism.

In addition, several National IFAP Committees pursue the goals of IFAP at the national level by serving as a meeting point for various stake-holders and as an avenue for the transfer of knowledge from the international to the national level.

 

 

  • Provide a platform for international policy discussions, cooperation and the development of guidelines for action in the area of access to information and knowledge;
  • Support Member States to develop and implement national information policy and strategy frameworks in the 6 priority areas;
  • Serve as an advisory body to the Director-General;
  • Work in close cooperation and provides inputs to UNESCO’s WSIS actions;
  • Collaborate with other Intergovernmental Bodies of UNESCO.

The overall goal of IFAP is to help UNESCO Member States develop and implement national information policies and knowledge strategies in a world increasingly using information and communication technologies (ICT). In order to achieve this goal, the Programme concentrates its efforts on the six priority areas listed below.

 

Information for Development focuses on the value of information for addressing development issues.

One of the challenges facing IFAP is to explain to governments and communities the value of information in addressing development issues. The objectives in the UN Millennium Declaration link the development and eradication of poverty to good governance and transparency.

The costs of neglect and disorder of records in organizations are seriously underestimated and the benefits to be derived from good records management in respect of efficiency and accountability need to be recognised. 

A UNESCO study has found that a free press is strongly associated with a good level of development and reduced poverty. Access to primary goods and better nutrition also coexist with strong freedom of the press. A free press is well associated with decent medical environment. It helps to show the government where its true responsibilities lie. As a development tool, the press is as effective as investment or education. The same is already true of digital media available through ICT and their importance will grow. 

Information for development is a tool for empowerment, e.g. through making the planning figures of government budgets available to all, through transparent and competitive bidding processes, through increased accountability of government offices, etc. It is also a tool for increasing opportunities and livelihood security. The central underlying issue is the need to stress not only the importance of access to information, but also the relevance and usefulness of information. 

The value of developing human capacity and in providing access to information and knowledge for development is well recognized, but more effort is required to explain and demonstrate the benefits of investing in these resources.

Information Literacy empowers people in all walks of life to seek, evaluate, use and create information effectively to achieve their personal, social, occupational and educational goal.

Information literacy and lifelong learning have been described as the beacons of the information society, illuminating the courses to development, prosperity and freedom.

Information literacy empowers people in all walks of life to seek, evaluate, use and create information effectively to achieve their personal, social, occupational and educational goals. Information-literate people are able to access information about their health, their environment, their education and work, and to make critical decisions about their lives. 

In a digital world, information literacy requires users to have the skills to use information and communication technologies and their applications to access and create information. Closely linked are two other related literacies: computer literacy (ICT skills) and media literacy (understanding of various kinds of mediums and formats by which information is transmitted). For example, the ability to navigate in cyberspace and negotiate hypertext multimedia documents requires both the technical skills to use the Internet and the literacy skills to interpret the information. 

IFAP is promoting actions aimed at raising awareness of the importance of information literacy and supporting projects that build the literacy skills of users.

Information Preservation will be predominantly executed by strengthening the underlying principles of the Memory of the World Programme, beyond its registers, which serve as catalysts to alert decision makers and the public at large.

Universal access to information is a prerequisite for building knowledge societies. Throughout history, libraries and archives have been the guardians of the documentary heritage of humankind.

But in a world increasingly being shaped by digital technologies, the traditional guardian institutions (libraries, archives and museums) are challenged to keep pace with the rapid growth in information. 

They also face a new challenge: as technology advances the stability and lifespan of documents is considerably decreasing. If nothing is done, many important documents in electronic format will not survive or will become completely inaccessible within a very short time. The result will be a permanent loss to the collective memory of humankind. This challenge needs to be tackled urgently and the costs of preserving digital information should not be underestimated - these far exceed the preservation costs experienced to date with five millennia of traditional documents. 

Digital preservation also contributes to at least two other IFAP priorities - information for development and information accessibility. Digital technologies open up access to information and knowledge in democratic dimensions that have never been experienced before. 

This priority area will be predominantly executed by strengthening the underlying principles and concepts of the Memory of the World Programme, beyond its registers, which serve as catalysts to alert decision makers, and the public at large.

Information ethics cover the ethical, legal and societal aspects of the applications of ICT and are derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

One of the most challenging ethical issues is the inequity of access to ICT between countries, and between urban and rural communities within countries. Along with the benefits of a digitally connected world come the threats of misuse and abuse. Countries are already building mechanisms to protect their people against these risks, for example to ensure the safety of children on the internet, but clearly a lot more needs to be done to address the ethical implications of the information society. In collaboration with its partner institutions, IFAP seeks to do so.

In 2015, within the framework of IFAP, UNESCO led the first-ever international conference on ‘Youth and the Internet: Fighting Radicalization and Extremism’, which brought together experts and decision-makers to share policy intervention experiences, projects and processes for reducing the use of the internet as a tool for attracting young people to extremist ideologies and radicalism. The conference sensitized Member States and partners about the risks of this threat, and indicated the urgent need for sustained international attention and global action in support of Member States. At this conference, UNESCO also launched its cross-sectoral initiative ‘A New Integrated Framework of Action - Empowering Youth to Build Peace: Youth 2.0 – Building Skills, Bolstering Peace’.

This was followed in 2016 by the international conference ‘Internet and the Radicalization of Youth: Preventing, Acting and Living Together’, co-organized by UNESCO, IFAP and the Government of Quebec, with the support of the Canadian Government. The resulting ‘Quebec’s Call for Action’ (Appel de Québec) called upon the international community to take multidimensional action to combat violent extremism. In this respect, Canada has provided support for the UNESCO intersectoral project ‘Preventing Violent Extremism through Youth Empowerment in Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia’.

As a part of continuous efforts to confront this problem, the international conference on ‘Youth and Information and Communication Technologies: Preventing Violent Extremism in Cyberspace’, was organized by UNESCO, IFAP and the authorities of Lebanon in May 2017 in Beirut. The Final Statement of the Conference calls for effective measures to prevent and combat the online propagation of violence, as well as for using the internet to promote a culture of peace.

New societal, technological and ethical challenges of the DarkNet were discussed at an expert meeting in Paris on 14 September 2017. Organized by IFAP, the meeting provided an opportunity for representatives of Permanent Delegations to UNESCO, as well as external participants, to discuss the challenges of cyber threats and ways to improve national strategies through innovative and global solutions.

Information Accessibility encompasses the many issues surrounding availability, accessibility and affordability of information, as well as the special needs of people with disabilities.

Information accessibility encompasses the many issues surrounding availability, accessibility and affordability of information, such as multilingualism, metadata, interoperability, open source software, open content, Creative Commons licences as well as addressing the special needs of people with disabilities.

The new economic and technological environment raises concerns about the erosion of access to certain information and knowledge that has been freely shared in the past, for example to facilitate scientific research and education. 
At the same time, developments such as the Internet create an unprecedented opportunity for sharing information as well as promoting linguistic diversity and preserving languages that would otherwise become extinct. While many thousands of the world’s languages are still absent from Internet content, the provision of digital connectivity to all people will allow communities to create their own content in their own languages. 

In 2003, UNESCO adopted a Recommendation concerning the Promotion and Use of Multilingualism and Universal Access to Cyberspace, promoting multilingualism and an equitable balance between the interests of information rights holders and the public interest. 

Subsequently, UNESCO has endorsed global efforts related to Free and Open source Software (FOSS), Open Educational Resources (OER), and has responded with several projects to promote multilingualism in cyberspace, as well as the use of ICT for more equitable access to information, including for people with disabilities.

Language is a primary means for communicating information and knowledge, thus the ability to access content on the Internet in a language which one can use is a key determinant for the extent to which one can participate in the knowledge societies.

Languages are unique tools that enable people to comprehend and describe the world, communicate and transmit knowledge; they are repositories of historical and social experience of nations, and act as socialization factors and means of human self-identification. However, almost half of the world’s languages are facing the risk of extinction, while still more languages are facing the risk of losing their role in many fields, i.e. education, science, culture, mass media, politics, record keeping, business and tourism.

Multilingualism in cyberspace is one of the pillars of pluralistic equitable inclusive knowledge societies and sustainable development. But most of languages are not present in cyberspace and it widens linguistic and digital divide. Citizens without access to cyberspace and its resources are being increasingly marginalized as they have limited access to information and knowledge.

IFAP encourages UNESCO Member States to take language into account when formulating and implementing digital innovation policies and solutions to build fair knowledge societies and use appropriate tools to develop linguistic diversity and multilingualism in cyberspace. IFAP also advocates through policy recommendations preservation of all world languages and the entry of new languages into the digital world, the creation and dissemination of multilingual content in cyberspace including in local languages.

The Recommendation concerning the Promotion and Use of Multilingualism and Universal Access to Cyberspace is an important normative instrument that recognizes that linguistic diversity in technology and universal access to information in cyberspace are at the core of contemporary debates and can be a determining factor in the development of a knowledge-based society.

IFAP as an Intergovernmental Programme is mainly working with Governments of Member States. It largely benefited from their expertise and contributions to many IFAP projects and activities. Notable among them are those of China, the Russian Federation, Canada, Bulgaria, Lebanon and Egypt. It also developed bilateral intergovernmental partnerships that have been valuable in addressing development issues. These are referred to as public-public partnerships, North-South partnerships or, as even South-South partnerships. Partnerships between developing countries can sometimes deliver more positive results than the more traditional northsouth development aid model. In a digitally connected world, the opportunities for stimulating and enhancing partnerships between governments is greatly increased.

IFAP also recognizes that the path towards information and knowledge societies can only be shaped in a multi-stakeholder collaborative environment. IFAP has therefore a long history of working closely with civil society and more recently with the private sector.

Key Partners that supported IFAP since the creation of the Programme

   Brazil    Bulgaria    Canada    China
   Egypt    France    Greece    Grenada
   India    Iran    Japan    Latvia
   Lithuania    Oman    Philippines    Russian
   Federation
   Saudi Arabia    Spain    Tanzania    Turkey