There is an obvious transboundary need for free flowing, current foreign / international government information. This transboundary need reflects the nature of our most critical 21st Century challenges — climate change, crime, trade, labour rights, poverty, hunger, etc. — they know few hard geo-political boundaries.
So how can we know what’s going on in our extended community of nations, better known as the Western Hemisphere?
Supra national sources of information like the United Nations and it’s subsidiary regional commission ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) do what some of our finest U.S. government agency publications do — they track the statistical universe of nations.
One of my favorite sources of free flowing, current foreign / international government information is UNPULSE, “Connecting to UN Information” (A Service of the UN Library).
UNPULSE links to the 2008 edition of the ECLAC’s Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean, “… one of the main sources of statistical information of the region.”
The full text of the report, published in English and Spanish, is divided into four chapters: “(1) Demographic and social areas, with special attention to gender; (2) Economical statistics such as prices, international trade, balance of payments and national accounts; (3) Information on natural resources and the environment; and, (4) Methodological aspects and other data on sources, definitions and coverage of the statistics cited.”
About ECLAC: “ECLAC is one of the five regional commissions of the United Nations. It was founded with the purpose of contributing to the economic development of Latin America, coordinating actions directed towards this end, and reinforcing economic ties among countries and with other nations of the world. The promotion of the region’s social development was later included among its primary objectives…”
~ Free government information flowing south to north.
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