Statement by representative of Russian Federation Mr. Fedor Strzhizhovskiy in the 4th Committee of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly on the agenda item “Questions related to information”
Mr. Chairman,
We thank the Secretary General for his detailed report on the work of the Department of Public Information (DPI) and note its substantial and informative character. On the whole, we positively assess the recent achievements of the DPI in the use of new media with preserving a due attention to its work with traditional media.
The Russian delegation welcomes the efforts aimed at making the DPI’s work more efficient, relevant and consistent with the modern realities. We support the practice of informal briefings for the members of the Committee. Despite the fact that we always want to know more than you inform us about we believe that it is undoubtedly the essential element of our joint work between the meeting of the Committees.
As a result of all the reform processes the DPI must really increase the efficiency of all media resources of the Organization. This work must be done with clear compliance with the goals and principles of the UN. All innovations must be based on the budget capacities. Before overhauling anything we need to have a clear understanding where we go next. It is our understanding, that the expert assessment and planning of the future reforms must be done primarily by the department itself and upon agreement with the member states. Other formats, as for example, the outsourcing of external experts whose names are not communicated to us for some reasons do not only require additional financial imputes, but do not contribute either to transparency of decisions taken by the DPI. We believe that the employment of outside experts on such sensitive issues as the reform of the department must be agreed upon with the member states.
Mr. Chairman,
We note with satisfaction the special events presented in the report of the Secretary General dedicated to 70th Anniversary of the UN peacekeeping missions. We welcome the information and outreach initiatives on human rights dimension including the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the centennial anniversary of the date of birth of Nelson Mandela. We support the desire to ensure more active involvement of youth in the international efforts to strengthen peace and implement the agenda of sustainable development until 2030.
As it is known, the United Nations International Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East was successfully held in Moscow in September this year. We would like to highlight the work of the UN information center in Moscow whose stuff did it outmost to organize this high-level event in cooperation with the Russian side.
Mr. Chairman,
Due to the role of sport as an ideal instrument for advancing the sustainable development goals we are quite surprised that the report does not contain a word on the joint work of the DPI and the delegations of the several countries to popularize the main sport event of 2018 – the World Football Cup. This is despite the fact that the officials of the department assisted to and took part practically in all events – the presentation of the World Cup, Opening Ceremony, joint photo session of the Members of the Security Council and the Secretary General in the T-shirts of their national teams and collective watching of the football matches, etc. All these events were widely covered by the UN information resources in all languages. I would like to emphasize that we are not just talking about the events, held by the Russian delegation. Let us recall the match with the world football stars and orchestra performance organized by the German delegation, or special SDGs Youth World Cup organized with the participation of Monaco, France, Germany, Morocco, Senegal and Russia and supported by UNICEF, “UN-Women”, UN Sustainable Development Fund, the New York Mayor’s Office and the New York City’s Football Club. 8 school football teams from all over the city represented one of the national teams participating in the World Cup and played wearing their uniform. What if not such joint initiatives of the Member States aimed at strengthening the mutual understanding, the advancement of sport and education of youth in the spirit of peace should be popularized and made available to the public? We hope very much that the authors of the report will not disregard the main sport and youth events of the global scale. Let me recall that last year the world festival of youth and students faced the same unpleasant treatment.
Mr. Chairman,
The statistical data on the audience engagement in the UN media resources presented in the report demonstrate the overall positive dynamics. However if we look at each language resource separately we will see that the high indicators are due mainly to the visits to the English language media resources. At the same time the number of the Russian and French users of the web-site remained at the same level while the engagement of Chinese-speaking audience even went down.
We strongly believe that the UN cannot only “make a stake” on only the English speakers. The potential audience, for example, on the Russian language media resources is over 300 million people around the world. If from year to year the indicators of certain news services constantly increase and in other services they remain on the same level or even reduce isn’t it the time now to change the strategy? Maybe we should establish partnership ties with major regional media players or temporarily increase the number of staff.
Therefore, we call again on the officials of the DPI to ensure an equitable distribution of financial and human recourses between all official languages in light of their requirements and specifics. We are ready to continue this work together with other Member States and the Secretariat in order to eliminate the language disparity.
Mr. Chairman,
Once again, we take note of the fact that the Ukrainian delegation is using all the UN fora to spread disinformation on the actions and policy of Russia. I will not dwell on the substance of these absurd and unjustified allegations. I will say only that the specialized international organizations have repeatedly given the principled assessment of the mayhem regarding the journalists and the media, which has taken place in the Ukraine for the last years. This is happening with total connivance of the authorities. The killings and assaults of the journalists, the pressure on the inconvenient media, deportations and denial of entry to the representatives of the foreign media became a norm of life in that country that is so attached to the democratic values as we just heard here.
The hypocritical concern of Kiev about the rights of journalists is the best demonstrated by the situation with Kirill Vishynsky who is staying for several months under arrest in the Ukraine because he dared to express the alternative assessment of what is happening in Ukraine different from the official position.
The best illustration of the actions of our Ukrainian colleagues was an event organized in May this year in the UN allegedly on the sidelines of the 40th session of the Committee of Information attended by persons presented as the veterans of the so-called Anti-terrorist operation, snipers who fought against their own compatriots in the South-Eastern Ukraine. Everyone knows that after this “side-event” these people threatened reprisals to some delegates directly within the UN premises. In addition the chairman of the Committee on information repeated several times during the open session that nothing was agreed upon with the Bureau and he never heard about any events on the “side-lines”. Relevant information was communicated to Under-Secretary-General Mr. Pater Drennan and the measures will be taken regarding this event.
Mr. Chairman,
The Russian delegation supports the UNGA draft resolutions on “Information in the service of humanity” and “United Nations public information policies and activities”.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
