June 29, 2000
Delegates to a United Nations summit meeting on poverty and development expressed concern this week that the growing power of the Internet risks widening the divide between the world's haves and have-nots.
"Eighty-eight percent of the world's Internet users live in the industrial countries, only 0.3 percent in the poorest countries of the world," Germany's Economic Development and Cooperation Minister, Heide Wieczorek-Zeul, told the government representatives who are gathered here for five days of talks on how to further social development and reduce poverty by 2015. The meeting is part of an effort to follow up on 10 commitments toward the same goals that were made at a United Nations conference in Copenhagen in 1995.
The difference in Internet use is showing up not only between rich and poor countries but also between rich and poor individuals within countries, the German representative said.
The United Nations Development Program estimates that by 2001 the world will have about 700 million Internet users, compared with 50 million users in 1997. The overwhelming majority of those users come from wealthy countries, while three billion people live on less than $2 a day, by United Nations estimates.
"Currently, Internet traffic doubles every three months with e-commerce growing by 100 percent a year," said Mark Malloch Brown, the administrator of the United Nations Development Program.
While the Internet could be considered a tool for limiting differences between rich and poor countries and between rich and poor individuals within the same country, the widening gap in use could also be seen by many in the developing world as a threat, he said.
This gap in usage reflects a "digital divide" between those with access to and knowledge of computers. More than that, Russia's delegate, Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matvryenko, said it means that not all countries have the same opportunity to access technological and scientific information that could be valuable for progress in other areas.
Part of the problem in narrowing the gap in usage is that poor countries cannot easily establish the telecommunications infrastructure needed for accessing the Internet, last year's United Nations Development Program report acknowledged.
Wireless technology, satellite reception and mobile phones, among other technologies, remain the privilege of the few in many countries. Where it is available in poor countries, the cost of using the Internet is often prohibitive for all but a wealthy few. For example, using the Internet for an hour in Chad in 1999 cost $10.50, United Nations figures show, while the average yearly salary of its inhabitants is $187.
Meanwhile, the rapid expansion in the use of e-commerce holds little gain for four-fifths of the world's population, which does not have credit cards, the United Nations report said.
But the digital divide is also found within rich countries between men and women, young and old, the literate and the illiterate, urban and rural dwellers and between those who can speak English -- 80 percent of all Web sites being in English, the agency said.
The United Nations Development Program has set up financing and technical aid programs and strategies to broaden Internet access in poor countries, largely through so-called cybercafes. But neither the United Nations Development Program nor the delegates here could put a figure on plan costs.
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