9th United Nations Roundtable on Communication for Development, 6 - 9 September 2004, FAO, Rome, Italy

FAO will host the Ninth United Nations Roundtable on Communication for Development, in Rome, Italy, from 6 to 9 September 2004.

The Communication for Development Roundtable is conceived as an interagency forum for the UN system. Over the years this has broadened to include participation from donors, non governmental organizations, universities and independent specialists working in communication.

The forum enables emerging approaches to be harmonized, progress from field programmes shared and guidelines for good practice to be developed.
Communication for Development lies at the heart of the challenge to actively involve poor people in decision making procedures which affect their lives and to enable them to manage communication processes and media. When successful, Communication for Development is a powerful tool to mitigate poverty and hunger and to promote democratic processes and social change in many countries, especially in the agriculture and rural development sectors.

The objective of the Roundtable is to examine, discuss and assess current trends in Communication for Development activities, to set priorities for future directions in this field and identify areas for potential collaboration. Taking our lead from the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg 2003, the theme for this years Roundtable is Communication for Sustainable Development.