Foreword
Welcome to the Help Package, designed to assist the National Commissions for UNESCO and the Permanent Delegation to UNESCO in the creation of their websites.
UNESCO strongly encourages the initiatives of the National Commissions and the Permanent Delegations to play an active information role, in order to widely diffuse the Organization’s goals and activities and to contribute to the increase of its visibility among the public at large. To assist them in this essential function, the Secretariat has developed various tools and services, including the elaboration of a Master Website and the possibility of temporarily hosting their websites within UNESCO by using its own Internet domain name.
At its 34th session in October 2007, the General Conference adopted the Directives concerning the use of the name, acronym, logo and Internet domain names of UNESCO (34 C/Resolution 86). That binding text, which both the Secretariat and Member States have to implement, set the reinforced requirements for all of us, resulting in the introduction of changes to the existing practices. In particular, the text stipulated that the National Commissions should, when possible, register their Internet domain names under national extensions.
In the spirit of the General Conference 34/Resolution 86, which was further discussed in the UNESCO Headquarters Committee in November 2008, the National Commissions and the Permanent Delegations are now invited to register their national domain name and explore optimal solutions for hosting their websites within national extensions. This will certainly require taking proactive measures by all parties concerned. The present Help Package offers practical advice and recommendations how to achieve these objectives.
As a resource tool, this on-line Help Package will be updated regularly in the light of the evolution of information technologies and services. Therefore, you are invited to consult it on a regular basis to be well aware of latest developments and take appropriate actions.
In a world of information society, the importance of websites of National Commissions and Permanent Delegations is more than vital. UNESCO will therefore take every possible measure to encourage and assist them in that regard.