Full coverage: South Asia

31.01.2005 UNESCO Director General Koïchiro Matsuura recently announced the process of developing an interim tsunami alert system in the Indian Ocean. The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO. This is announced by the IOC chief in the ongoing Ministerial Meeting on Regional Cooperation on Tsunami Early Warning Arrangements in Phuket, Thailand.

24.01.2005 The Indian state of Gujarat has banned the use of cellphones in schools and colleges for both - students and teachers - to curb its misuse.

24.01.2005 OneWorld South Asia will hold its fourth Annual Regional Meeting on March 3-4, 2005 in New Delhi, India. About 400 delegates from south
Asia are expected to deliberate on the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), the role of ICTs in development and building CoPs for achieving the MDGs.
OWSA announces calls for proposals for papers/presentations from interested candidates.

24.01.2005 Open eNRICH, the free and open source version of eNRICH, a software to enble communities create and exchange locally relevant knowledge through internet, is being developed by a partnership of National Informatics Centre (NIC), Delhi, Open Knowledge Network (OKN) and UNESCO.

20.01.2005 The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the public sector telecom company, BSNL, have launched an ambitious project using communication satellites to provide Internet access for Indian villages. The Internet bandwidth would be beamed through ISRO's communication satellites and transmitted within a village through wireless network.

19.01.2005 OneWorld South Asia is holding its Fourth Annual Regional Meeting towards building Communities of Practice (CoPs) for achieving the MDGs on March 03-04, 2005 in New Delhi.

19.01.2005 India plans to outline a new FM radio policy, perhaps by February, in a bid to lay the ground for hundreds of stations across the country and to end the three-year old uncertainty and delay on policy reforms.

19.01.2005 The National Informatics Centre (NIC) in Delhi, the Open Knowledge Network (OKN) and UNESCO have announced a partnership to develop a new software tool - Open eNRICH - for the creation and exchange of locally relevant knowledge within and between communities in developing countries.

18.01.2005

18.01.2005 Youths in Bangladesh are learning skills to express themselves using multimedia technologies. Debobroto Chakraborty of the Young Power in Social Action and Ian Pringle of the UNESCO write about the oppourtunity provided by Sitakund ICT centre.

18.01.2005 The National Informatics Centre (NIC) in Delhi, the Open Knowledge Network (OKN) and UNESCO announce a partnership to develop a new software tool – to be called Open eNRICH - for the creation and exchange of locally relevant knowledge within and between communities in developing countries.

17.01.2005 The Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) in India has launched an e-learning website for videobased lecture and e-learning courseware. Students can also find lecture notes, course outlines, reading lists and assignments/quizzes on the site.

13.01.2005 India’s efforts in targeting a wide range of social protection measures towards different categories of poor people might be a model for other countries as they prepare their own Poverty Reduction Strategies.

13.01.2005 AS part of its IT@School project, the State Government has introduced a mobile computer laboratory to provide support to schools that do not have full-fledged computer laboratories of their own.

13.01.2005 The participation of women in the information technology (IT) industry is low in most countries, and in India in 2003 they constituted only 21 per cent of the country’s 650,000 IT workers. Is gender discrimination within the workplace is a major cause of this low participation rate?

13.01.2005 OneWorld South Asia co-organised a three-day Regional ICT Policy and WSIS consultation in Dhaka, Bangladesh from January 5-7, 2005, in collaboration with BFES and APC. Outcome recommendations of this consultation will be sent to the upcoming regional meeting of the heads of South Asian Nations at the SAARC Summit. Read more for these and the action points on South Asia ICT Policy issues.

13.01.2005 Tsunami in Sri Lanka not only brought disaster but also an opportunity that allowed leaders and communities to come together to address the need to rebuild lives and shattered dreams. Various communication technologies could facilitate the process, writes Sanjana Hattotuwa, a rotary world peace scholar at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.

13.01.2005 South Indian state of Kerala as part of its IT@School project has introduced a mobile computer laboratory to provide support to schools that do not have full-fledged computer laboratories of their own.

12.01.2005 Recommendations from the Dhaka ICT consultation organised by OneWorld South Asia (OWSA), Bangladesh Friendship Education Society (BFES) and Association for Progressive Communication (APC) on Jan 5-7, 2005 in Bangladesh on the national ICT policy issues.

12.01.2005 The seven SAARC countries will create a digital library of the region's traditional knowledge and develop laws to prevent such knowledge being misappropriated through commercial patents. The library will contain information on traditional medicine, foodstuffs, architecture and culture and will be accessible over the Internet.