Reaching everyone everywhere

Over the past year, there has been a lot of talk about the new information society. A world summit on the topic was held under the auspices of the United Nations to reflect on its challenges and opportunities and in particular to discuss how governments, international organisations, the private industry and the civil society can work together to bridge the worldwide digital divide.

During this summit, held in Geneva in December 2003, the UPU and several of its member countries presented their views on how the postal service can play a determining role in reducing the information gap between industrialised and developing countries.

Seldom has it been more evident how the omnipresence of postal services can be utilised to bring not only products and services to the worlds citizens but also make valuable information - through physical or electronic means - accessible to them. Posts simply reach everyone everywhere. In every corner of almost every country, there is usually a post office or an outlet that offers basic postal services, if not an entire range of them.

Of course, when we talk about reaching everyone everywhere, what we are really talking about is universal postal service - the ability of a vast majority of a country's citizens to obtain postal services no matter where they live, thanks to their government's commitment to provide that service.

The 190 postal services that form the UPU continue to constitute a single post territory and the largest physical distribution network in the world. It is a notion that people often forget. That is why the UPU has decided to focus the umbrella theme of the next three years' World Post Day on postal service accessibility and the benefits that people garner from this reach. This theme is brilliantly captured in our new World Post Day poster, which was designed by Nasir Tahir, a 14-year-old boy from Nigeria. Nasir's striking design shows the various modes of transport used to move and deliver the mail in various corners of the world, including a truck, a plane, a ski-doo, a bicycle, a boat, even a camel.

Fostering universal postal service remains the UPU key mission today. We consider that access to affordable and reliable postal services is an important human right that contributes to the socio-economic development of nations and their people.

Indeed, postal services are part of every nation's economic motor, employing sonic five million people worldwide and creating millions of other jobs in ancillary sectors. People and businesses use the postal service to sell and distribute their goods and merchandise. In many developing countries, the postal service serves to reduce the poverty gap as people use it to gain access to worldwide markets they would not be able to reach otherwise.

The UPU encourages governments to define the concept in their national postal legislation. This is particularly important as market liberalisation, electronic substitution and other factors change the dynamics of the industry, where an absence of regulation could run the risk of alienating postal services from a large portion of the world's population.

According to UPU data, some 113 countries have defined criteria for the provision of the universal postal service within their territory. Of these, 49 per cent have defined the concept in their national legislation. Many public postal operators have responded positively to the universal postal service obligation by extending their service network, either by using new communication technologies or sub-contracting certain activities.

While there has been movement in improving universal postal access, especially in industrialised countries and in countries with emerging economies, much remains to be done in other regions. Five per cent of the population in developing countries, for example, are still without postal coverage, with the situation in Africa being the most worrisome. Eighteen per cent of the continents population has no access to postal services. With too many people still without access to the internet and other information technologies, the UPU will continue to work with postal services to extend their reach, in ways that are economical, to every corner of the globe. "Reaching everyone everywhere" has become, and must remain, the motto of governments and postal operators.

The author is director general, Universal Postal Union.