[huridocs-tech] Information technology must be used to improve life in poor countries, Kofi Annan says

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MUST BE USED TO IMPROVE LIFE IN POOR COUNTRIES - ANNAN
New York, Sep 12 2003  1:00PM

Information technology should be used to improve the quality of life in 
developing countries, thus helping to achieve the ambitious goals set by 
the United Nations Millennium Summit of 2000, Secretary-General Kofi Annan 
said today.

"A powerful coalition has now formed to support this cause, and to guide us 
in our quest," Mr. Annan said in a video message to the fifth meeting of 
the UN Information and Communications Technology Task Force in Geneva. 
"Exciting opportunities are opening up. Education and employment, trade and 
health, governance and tolerance - all these areas of life, and others too, 
can be transformed."

Noting that the World Summit on the Information Society is just three 
months away, he added: "I hope you will all do your utmost to make it a 
success, by using it to spread the word about initiatives that make 
creative use of technology to improve the quality of life in developing 
countries. By so doing, you will enable others to benefit from your ideas, 
and to replicate them easily.

"New technologies and applications continue to emerge. Current technologies 
are maturing, and old ones are finding new uses. We must ensure that the 
poor are not left further behind by all these dramatic changes, but can 
join in, and benefit from them."

The Millennium Development Goals aim at a series of ambitious targets 
ranging from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS to 
providing universal primary education, all by 2015.

Some 1,500 delegates from UN Member States, intergovernmental 
organizations, civil society, the private sector and the media are set to 
begin a two-week preparatory committee meeting on Monday in readiness for 
the information summit.

The summit, to be held in two phases - in Geneva from 10 to 12 December, 
and in Tunis from 16 to 18 November, 2005 - will bring together Heads of 
State, UN agency chiefs, civil society leaders, industry and the media.


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