World Telecommunication Day 1997

Telecommunications and Humanitarian Assistance

Each year on the 17th of May the International Telecommunication Union celebrates World Telecommunication Day to commemorate its founding in Paris in 1865.

This year, the theme aims to highlight the important and growing role of telecommunications in international aid and relief operations.

"It is heartening to me, as Secretary-General of the ITU, to know that our work in the development of new communications technologies has gone – and will continue to go – a long way toward lessening the impact of such events on the lives of ordinary people.

Communications is about bringing people together, and helping one another. Humanitarian assistance embodies this communications ideal, and I can think of no better application of the ITU’s work over the last 132 years."

Pekka Tarjanne ITU Secretary-General