Over the last decade, there has been, among the media, the ministries of information and in the United Nations conferences, especially those of UNESCO, an increasingly heated and often acrimonious debate on what is now called the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO). The debate is of interest to all of us because what is at stake critically affects and shapes our daily lives and our futures. Participation in the debate should, therefore, be much wider than it is today, indeed open to all concerned, that is to all citizens. This issue of Development Dialogue has been conceived as a contribution to this task.
The Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, alone or with a number of sister institutions, has been active in the field of communications for almost ten years. The time has now come to take stock, to map out what needs to be done and to state or restate a number of principles and values which are necessary to give content to the right ‘to seek, receive and impart information’ as it is laid down in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Maldevelopment pervades societies, North and South, East and West alike. Another Development is required everywhere and by all. It is people-centred, geared to the satisfaction of human needs-both material and, in the broadest sense, political; it is self-reliant, endogenous, ecologically sound, and based on democratic, political, social and economic structural transformations which alone will make possible the attainment of the other goals.