Revisiting the UNESCO debate on a New World Information and Communication Order: Has the NWICO been achieved by other means?

•In the 1980s, the New World Information and Communication Order stirred a heated debate at UNESCO.•The NWICO movement died in the 1990s after the U.S. and Britain withdrew from UNESCO in protest.•Developments since that time have brought about many of the changes called for in the NWICO debate.•The movement for a Right to Communicate has moved from intergovernmental to civil society.•Poverty, censorship, and lack of access still prevent many from participating in the new order.

At the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in the 1970s and 1980s, the central debate concerned the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO). While the NWICO movement died stillborn in the mid-1980s, this paper examines whether the world has achieved, by alternative means, at least part of what was envisioned. The widespread availability of cellular telephones, the rise of the internet, and the new phenomenon of citizen journalism have changed the communication landscape significantly since the 1980s. So have the many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have taken on the cause, moving the campaign from the intergovernmental realm to civil society. Further, the “one-way flow” of news and media that existed in those days has been balanced somewhat by the introduction of new media, cultural products, and news sources arising from the South. The battle for the Right to Communicate—an offshoot of the NWICO that may prove of greater fundamental importance—is ongoing in civil society, with the aim of achieving recognition and enforcement of this fundamental right throughout the world. Thus, this paper argues, it is time to herald the arrival of a new world order in communication—one that is far from perfect, but does incorporate many of the demands of the original NWICO movement.