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OneWorld Launches Digital Divide Campaign

PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release

22 July 2000

OneWorld Launches Digital Divide Campaign

OneWorld, the organisation behind the world's leading portal on the Web for human rights and sustainable development, has launched an online campaign on the global digital divide www.oneworld.net/campaigns/digitaldivide.

Communications technologies are playing an increasingly important role in economic development, education, health and governance. The exclusion of billions who are poor, illiterate, rural or non-English speaking from the evolving global information infrastructure has serious effects and the digital divide is fast becoming a critical issue for developing countries.

The Internet must be harnessed for sustainable development and access to the benefits of new technology should be for all. The rights to be informed and to the means to communicate enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be protected and extended with the Internet.

Anuradha Vittachi, Director of OneWorld International Foundation said: "We must ensure that the rhetoric of political leaders on digital divide is matched by responding to real needs and does not exacerbate global inequity. The challenge is to ensure both the growing worldwide digital divide and initiatives to address it do not compound the existing gap between rich and poor."

OneWorld's Digital Divide Campaign highlights the issues and challenges surrounding emerging technologies. It brings together material from OneWorld's online partnership of over 700 NGOs and international organisations such as UN agencies.

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For more information contact:

Glen Tarman,
Publicity Manager,
OneWorld International
www.OneWorld.net

T +44 (0)202 7735 2100
E media@oneworld.net

Note to editors:

OneWorld is a non-profit network that aims to harness the democratic potential of the Internet to promote sustainable development and human rights. Its supersite, www.OneWorld.net, is the world's leading portal on global justice and a gateway to over 700 NGOs worldwide.