First Consultation Meeting of IFAP National Committees to take place next week in Moscow

The First Consultation Meeting of National Committees for UNESCO’s Information for All Program (IFAP) will take place on 7 and 8 December 2009 in Moscow, Russia. This meeting is jointly organized by the IFAP Intergovernmental Council, the UNESCO Secretariat, the Russian IFAP Committee and its working body - the Interregional Library Cooperation Centre. It is officially sponsored by the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO and the Russian Ministry of Culture.

The main purpose of this meeting is to share information about the current activities of existing National IFAP Committees, discuss the prospects for future cooperation, as well as the possibilities for strengthening inter-regional and multilateral collaborations, increasing the Program’s visibility and funding. The participants will also discuss ways of implementing the National Information Society Policy, a template document which was recently developed by IFAP.
The Program seeks to:

• promote international reflection and debate on the ethical, legal and societal challenges of the information society;
• promote and widen access to information in the public domain through the organization, digitization and preservation of information;
• support training, continuing education and lifelong learning in the fields of communication, information and informatics;
• support the production of local content and foster the availability of indigenous knowledge through basic literacy and ICT literacy training;
• promote the use of international standards and best practices in communication, information and informatics in UNESCO's fields of competence; and
• promote information and knowledge networking at local, national, regional and international levels.

IFAP was created in 2000. Through IFAP, Governments of the world have pledged to harness the new opportunities of the information age to create equitable societies through better access to information.

The United States is not a donor to the IFAP program and it is not represented on the Intergovernmental Council for the program. There is no U.S. National Committee for IFAP.