Methodists Address Digital Divide in Communication
The World Summit brought the Church's attention to the use of technology and the worldwide communication tool of the Internet as an issue of human rights.
"Technology should be a tool, a medium put to use for health, wholeness and well-being of everyone," said Glory Dharmaraj, executive secretary of justice education for the United Methodist Women's Division and who participated in the summit, according to the United Methodist News Service. "All of the new discoveries, all the new information and communication technology should create access and participation for all."
Delegates from the United Methodist Church had participated in the summit sessions for nongovernmental organizations and the civil society group, addressing issues of information communication technologies.
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The Rev. Liberato C. Bautista, United Methodist Board of Church and Society staff executive, saw a need to address the "digital divide" that is inevitable among other poorer populations.
"While we are increasingly using information communication technologies, and are addressing ways how production and use of these technologies are governed and financed, a digital divide – which is ultimately an economic divide – has emerged," he said. "The greater population does not have access to these technologies, and the church is in a position to address the economic divide."
Computer literacy and availability pose as problems for such nations as Senegal where the majority of women are not familiar with "technical language," let alone literate, mentioned Marthe Dansokho, regional United Methodist missionary and a social worker in Senegal.
The computer text itself is limited in the number of languages it is made available in, noted Dansokho.
"The language is not for all."
As Bautista commented on the digital divide caused ultimately by economic circumstances, the issue was viewed as that of both a human rights and justice one.
"The digital divide in the end must address the economic divide," Bautista said. "The infrastructure that will make the efficient and sustainable flow of information and knowledge that is nondiscriminatory and therefore participatory is not possible without the necessary economic structure."
When comparing internet users in the United States to those in Africa, studies have shown that the number of U.S. users is more than eight times greater, according to International Telecommunication Union statistics.
With the right to communicate and to access information deemed as a basic human right, according to the United Methodist Book of Resolutions, Methodists have stressed the need to create global connections and address the question of the benefits and drawbacks of information communication technologies.
The United Methodist Communications plans to hold a digital summit in 2007.
