Committee on Information (43rd Session) - General Debate
Statement by Permanent Representative of Latvia H.E. Andrejs Pildegovičs
26 April 2021, New York
Mr. Chair, Madam Under-Secretary-General, distinguished colleagues,
I would like to join the statement delivered by the EU on behalf of its member states, and provide some additional comments in my national capacity.
Let me start by saying that we are glad and honoured to become the latest member state of the Committee on Information. Latvia is a committed and reliable partner in our efforts to publicly communicate about the UN and our priorities. And we stand ready to actively engage in the work of the Committee on Information.
We would like to praise the work of the Department of Global Communications, especially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, for your proactive, targeted, practical, meaningful, multilingual and advanced communication efforts, including through the many stages of the Verified campaign and in partnering with the social media platforms, as well as in other ways. We attach great importance to strengthening communication also in low density languages.
We have been glad to support you along the way. And we are particularly glad to note that your work is assessed positively by the UN Member States and other stake-holders.
Latvia is keenly aware of the challenges the rapidly changing information environment presents for our ways of life, to the functioning of our societies and governments, as well as for international cooperation. We have been actively contributing to efforts to address these challenges nationally, regionally, and now globally, through the UN.
We see an increasing need to fight misinformation and disinformation - both online and off-line, while safeguarding and promoting the fundamental rights, including the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for, to quote the recently adopted GA resolution on Global Media and Information Literacy week, “the dissemination of factual, timely, targeted, clear, accessible, multilingual and science-based information” has only grown.
We have also become more aware of the need to address the COVID-19 related misinformation and disinformation or the so called “infodemic”, also at the level of the UN in New York.
Latvia together with 12 cross-regional group of UN Member States - Australia, Chile, France, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Mauritius, Mexico, Norway, Senegal and South Africa – introduced a cross-regional statement on “Infodemic in the context of COVID-19” in June last year, which was supported by 130 UN Member States, as well as the EU and the State of Palestine.
In December last year, together with France, Australia, Indonesia and India, we organized a side-event on the subject of “sharing best practices to combatting disinformation”, and we were glad to have the President of the General Assembly as a key-note speaker.
And this year, we were honoured to be part of the core group chaired by Jamaica to introduce the resolution on Global Media and Information Literacy week, unanimously adopted by the GA on March 29 and cosponsored by 96 UN Member States. Now we should seek robust implementation of this timely resolution.
We believe that these joint efforts to strengthen our ability to communicate effectively at the UN, are welcome contribution to the work of the Committee on Information and can serve as an additional basis for our way forward.
Thank you!