Speaking in Geneva yesterday, former European Union Ambassador, Paul Trân Van Thinh, called for Viêt Nam to unite behind the war on poverty, in the same way it had done before winning its war for independence and freedom.

Trân was addressing the 50th anniversary commemorations of the 1954 Geneva Accords, on Viêt Nam's options for economic and social development at the dawn of the third millennium. The event was organized by the Swiss lakeside city and attended by witnesses to Viêt Nam's past and future, among them, Minister of Culture and Information, Pham Quang Nghi.

Trân warned the audience of a growing social time bomb, which he said had its origins in an information and technology rift that was rapidly exacerbating Viêt Nam's existing divisions. These included mounting disparities between the rich and poor, between the urban, rural and mountainous regions, and between different ethnic groups.

He said that this had driven him to collaborate with the Vietnamese authorities at every level, and in particular with the Ministry of Trade, on a rural information network called eLangViêt.net. He said it would provide essential content on production, health, education, training and local markets that would be easy to understand and use. The project had been agreed by the Government and the United Nations in March and would be ready for formal signature in July. He added that he and his friends were currently raising funds to finance its development and implementation stages.

Trân expressed full confidence in the ability of the poor to absorb eLangViêt's new know-how, saying that in contrast to other schemes, it would "implement information and communications technologies from the bottom-up instead of from the top-down."

He reminded the audience that: "The hunger of the grassroots for information needs to be satisfied. They are capable of becoming full members of the domestic trading system. For them access to information and communications technologies is a necessity not a luxury."

"We are not pursuing a utopia of zero-poverty, but the goal of ensuring that the economic and social disparities that liberalization and new opportunities bring, remain tolerable without growing out of hand. After all, without the rich, the poor have nothing to dream for."

For more information please contact ian.richards@unctad.org

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