Mr Chair,
My Delegation wishes to thank you and the Bureau for the work carried out and to convey its full willingness to constructively contribute to the discussion on this matter.

We congratulate Mr Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal on his appointment as Under Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, wishing him the best of successes in his duties, committing the full cooperation of the Argentine Delegation to support his work as head of the Department.

My Delegation fully associates itself with what has been expressed by Chile on behalf of CELAC and Algeria on behalf of the G 77 and China, and wishes to make the following comments in its national capacity.

The Argentine Republic is grateful for the report submitted by the Secretary-General on the “Questions relating to Information” contained in document A/67/307 and considers that the information contained therein undoubtedly contributes to a follow-up of the work developed by the Department of Public Information (DPI) in the promotion and better understanding of the goals and mission of the United Nations. We commend the efforts made by the Department in that direction by developing new contents, employing new technologies and continue prioritizing traditional means of communication.

Mr. Chair,

We reiterate Argentina’s permanent support for the work of the United Nations Information Centres (UNICs) which are elements of key importance in disseminating the Organization’s message. We thus encourage the Department to continue supporting their work.

We once again express our satisfaction for the work done by the UNIC in Buenos Aires, which is the “voice” in Spanish of the Department in Argentina and Uruguay, in accordance with the mandate to promote the principles, purposes and work of the United Nations in an accurate, objective and balanced way. In 2011 it has carried out many activities including panels, workshops and UN Models, among others. It also assists newspapers, radio and television journalists in providing news, writing articles and special reports on the work of United Nations and its specialized agencies.

Mr Chair,

My Delegation joins the Department of Public Information in understanding the significance of speaking to the people in their own language. That is why we do support and promote its commitment to multilingualism, an issue inherent to the very existence of the United Nations in view of its nature, scope and goals.

We are once again concerned that the Secretary-General’s report A/67/307 does not refer to the issue of multilingualism on this new occasion (the second time since 2010), all the more since it was admitted that parity among the six official languages was still a pending goal. It is essential to have information on this as well as more disaggregated statistics such as those contained in previous reports and that confirmed the trends of language use by the public. No information is either provided on the use of local languages in the UNICs or percentages of visits by language to the United Nations website and derived sites.

The Argentine Delegation commends the efforts made by the Department, in coordination with the other Departments, so that the United Nations webpage can be truly attractive, complete and multilingual. That is why it would be highly appreciated to have again complete statistics and information on multilingualism as the DPI is the focal point in this matter.

Mr Chair,

We are pleased that the DIP has expanded its outreach through the use of social media, in all official languages. We do support the use of the valuable resource and its contribution to multilingualism. However, it should always be taken into account that these resources are in nature complementary to the UN website, which is not replaced by them nor do these additional resources constitute a solution to the increasing linguistic disparity of the website.

We renew our full support for the search of cooperative agreements with academic institutions to expand the scope and improve the quality of a wide range of multilingual informative material which is published on line. We are very proud that the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, in Argentina, is the first university in Latin America to have joined these series of cooperative arrangements in January 2012. We conceive this cooperation as a concrete means to support the efforts of the DPI to reach the linguistic parity in all official languages in disseminating the contents of the webpage.

Mr Chair,

Argentina is happy once again to see that the United Nations web site in Spanish has expanded over the last years, an evidence of which is the growing number of visits to it. In fact, after English, Spanish has once again been the second language of visits in 2011 and 2012. Visits to the UN website in Spanish amounted to 15% of the total, after English (65%) and before French (8%), as shown in the Secretary General’s report (A/AC.198/2012/3). As informed by the Secretary General, the trend since 2005 is the sustained increase of visits to the Spanish pages from 5% in 2005 to 15% in 2011. In his new report (A/67/307) it is confirmed that the Spanish language use continue to grow in visits to the website of the Organization.

Nevertheless, despite the force of these statistics, we are concerned that the contents available in the Spanish website still continue to be much lower than that in the English website. That is why we urge once again the Department of Public Information to guide itself by its own statistics and adjust the linguistic contents of the website to the true demand of the public, while bearing in mind that it is also the responsibility of all UN offices to provide the DPI with information in the six official languages.

This should also reach UN Webcast as the contents of the videos of the meetings of the main Committees of the General Assembly are only available in English. This should not entail any budgetary implication as the meetings were served by conference services and hence interpretation to all six official languages.

Mr Chair,

In this context, it continues to be a true concern that there has been no progress at all in the dissemination of daily press releases which continue to be published in only two of the six official languages, without a mandate in that regard. Allow me to be clear on this: we are not referring here to the working languages of the Secretariat because the mandate on public dissemination through the UN website indicates that the necessary parity among six official languages of the Organization must be fully respected.

My Delegation is encouraged to know that it is not alone in this effort. The same concern has been expressed by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and by the Group of 77 and China, as well as most of the delegations that have taken the floor.

That is why we are pleased that the draft resolution contained in the report A/67/307 and will be adopted by this Commission contemplates the concern in this regard and advance to request the DPI, in operative paragraph 18, to “design a strategy to deliver daily press releases in all six official languages through creative schemes, within existing resources and in accordance with the relevant General Assembly resolutions, and to report thereon to the Committee on Information at its thirty-fifth session”.

Thus, for example, in a first and immediate stage, such a strategy should provide for the elaboration of press releases in the rest of the official languages, at regular intervals and during predetermined time-frames, within the existing resources. Languages could even rotate during a provisional initial stage. Editorial criteria, length and frequency of existing press releases could be modified so as to make room for new teams to start elaborating press releases in one of the other official languages, according to schemes to be creatively determined. There are geographical representation criteria that may help in the process as well as the statistics already available to the Department, which constitute an objective source of information to elaborate and guide decisions in this regards, at the same time that they confirm the trends and needs of the public.

Mr Chair,

As regards traditional media, Argentina commends the work done by the team of the United Nations Radio in Spanish and their important contribution to the success evidenced by the increase of the United Nations Radio and Television services as a whole. We also commend the significant progress made in the process of digitization and call upon the Department to continue with this task, while specially recognising the work of the Library staff for their efforts for the benefit of mankind in preserving the heritage of us all, in particular the several training courses and close contact with depository libraries.

To conclude, in a year of intensive communication activities as evidenced by the several campaigns and technical innovations, besides the aspects already described, we would like to extend our best wishes of success to all those working in the Department of Public Information. Our special recognition goes to all of them for their permanent disposition, willingness and openness to enquiries and requests from Member States in a framework of transparency, efficiency and high professionalism.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair.