UNreported: news on the United Nations system at work.

Of the approximately 1.1 billion workers active in agricultural production worldwide, nearly half are in wage labour. Many millions of these workers earn wages that place them on the bottom rung of the rural poverty. ladder and even below the minimum subsistence level, in spite of rising agricultural trade and labour productivity worldwide, says the International Labour Organization (ILO) in a report issued on 23 September.

Significantly, the share of women in agricultural employment is increasing, accounting for 20 to 30 per cent of total agricultural wage employment. Child labour is pervasive, amounting to as much as 30 per cent of the work-force in some developing countries.

Agricultural wage workers, the report indicates, spend as much as 70 per cent of their incomes for food. A subsistence wage - defined as an hourly wage sufficient to buy 1 kilo of the lowest-priced staple cereal - was found lacking in 40 per cent of sample countries. This means, in effect, that the working time required to obtain this kilo of cereal "ranges from less than 5 minutes (in Sweden) to over six hours (in Central African Republic), with the median working time being 37 minutes, which corresponds to the position of India". In five countries, mostly in Asia and Africa, "the working time is over 3 hours".

Another ILO report says that more than 45 per cent of all the world's women are now economically active. Although some progress has been made towards wage equality, women still earn 50 to 80 per cent of men's wages. In most developing countries, women's employment is still concentrated in a narrow range of"female" occupations with low-paid and low-skilled jobs predominating. The ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour is now active in more than 25 countries.

A call for the inclusion of a person under 25 years of age representing a youth organization in every national delegation to the United Nations was one of the recommendations set out in the final document of the World Youth Forum, which ended in Vienna on 29 November.

More than 600 participants from youth organizations in 150 countries took part in the Forum, which is the second such gathering organized by the United Nations, the first having taken place in Vienna in 1991.

When a disaster such as a cyclone or a war strikes, communications links are often one of the first things to be lost. Initially, this isolates the area, making it very hard for relief operations to ascertain what kind of assistance is needed, coordinate their activities and get important information to the victims.

The long-term lack of basic communications can be just as damaging to the lives of the people living in a disaster zone. Traditional wireline telecommunications infrastructure is painstakingly slow - and often prohibitively costly - to reconstruct. The loss of communications can severely damage a region's economy, making it very difficult for people to rebuild their lives.

Today, however, new kinds of telecommunications technologies have been developed that can function relatively independently of the terrestrial network. For example, new proposed Mobile Satellite Systems hold great promise for use in disaster areas. Because their signals are transmitted by satellite to small portable handsets or terminals, they can continue to send and receive voice and data even when normal telephone and power lines have been destroyed. When a catastrophe occurs, these new systems have the potential to make a real difference to both victims and aid workers. The Department of Humanitarian Affairs is currently working with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and other partners within a Working Group on Emergency Telecommunications to remove, through an international convention, regulatory barriers, which at present form an impediment to international disaster relief.

The International Telecommunication Union has approved an amendment to the V.34 modem standard that will allow modems to send and receive data at rates of up to 33,600 bits per second (bit/s).

Like the earlier version of V.34, the new modem will feature the ability to automatically adjust its speed based on the quality of the telephone line. Known as "line probing", this feature allows the modem to choose the highest possible transmission rate, while at the same time minimizing the likelihood of data errors. The modem also supports a half duplex mode of operation for fax, as well as automoding to existing V-series modems.

Other important features of the new technology, which will be retained in the new version of the standard, include an optional auxiliary channel, trellis coding and a "handshaking" capability. The auxiliary channel has a synchronous data signalling rate of 200 bit/s and is primarily intended to be used to convey modem control data independent of the primary channel, which operates at between 2,400 and 33,600 bit/s. Multidimensional trellis coding is used to improve throughput by providing higher immunity to noise and other phone line impairments. Included in the "handshake" is a capability which allows modems to identify themselves to other modems, leading to shorter times to connect.

A four-day interregional seminar on global mapping to help in the implementation of the multinational environmental agreements concluded on 16 November in Santa Barbara, California, United States. Eighty experts from 23 developed and developing countries took part in the event, which ended with the drafting of a statement. The need to bring developing countries into the emerging global mapping efforts, taking into account their specific national cartographic requirements and pressing development priorities, was stressed. Financial incentives, such as service fees and benefits for project partnership within the development of a global spatial data infrastructure, should be devised to facilitate the participation of national agencies of developing countries and economies in transition, according to the statement.

A new initiative to integrate the private sector in promotion of global industrialization was launched in Vienna when the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) convened the inaugural session of its International Industrial Business Council (10-11 October).

The Council is intended to act as an external think-tank and high-level advisory group that will guide UNIDO as an honest broker for international industrial cooperation, aimed at integrating developing countries and economies in transition into the globalization process.

Intrinsic to this integration is the need to find an answer to the imbalance in investment flows from North to South. The main stream of private investment is going to only a handful of developing nations, and multilateral and official development assistance does little to offset this situation. To bridge the gap, the Council will explore ways for UNIDO to strengthen relations with the private industrial sector in the form of a long-lasting partnership.

Participants at an Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Infrastructure, organized by the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) in October in New Delhi, learned that there were enormous savings to be made by privatizing public projects, increasing transparency and cutting red tape.

In the transport sector, the vital importance of land-transport linkages and facilitating the movement of vehicles, goods and passengers across the Asian mainland received substantial attention.

In telecommunications, discussions focused on the revolution in technology and the convergence of media, telecommunications, computers and the information highway, with delegates calling for a "Green Paper for Telecommunications in the Asia Pacific Region".

The Asia Infrastructure Development Alliance, launched on 28 October, is funded by the private sector. It will design and implement products and services aimed at accelerating investment in infrastructure development, and will assist Governments in attracting and mobilizing private-sector investment.

The transmission of Chagas disease has been virtually eliminated in Brazil, according to information received by the World Health Organization from the Brazilian national control programme. This important success is a result of control activities undertaken in the framework of the "Initiative of the Southern Cone countries", and it is expected that certification of the interruption of vectorial and transfusional transmission will be carried out by an independent commission in 1998.

Chagas disease is a chronic and incurable parasitic disease which can cause disability and even death. The risk of infection is directly related to socio-economic factors. The parasite, called Trypanosoma cruzi, is transmitted by a blood-sucking tristomine bug, which finds a favourable habitat in crevices in the walls of poor-quality houses in rural areas in unplanned urban developments.

Brazil is the biggest endemic country for Chagas disease, which exists only in the American continent. It accounted for over 40 per cent of prevalence of the disease. In 1970, the originally endemic area in Brazil covered over 36 per cent of the country, with a total population of 49 million. It is estimated that 16 million to 18 million Latin Americans have been infected.

Some 87 Governments ended a week-long meeting in Nairobi on 20 September, setting the stage for a global convention in 1997 that would regulate the import and export of dangerous chemicals and pesticides through a voluntary "Prior Informed Consent" procedure.

Because some banned or severely restricted pesticides and other chemicals in certain developed countries are still widely used elsewhere, particularly in developing countries, the United Nations Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations introduced the voluntary, Prior Informed Consent procedure in 1989. Many small farmers face a considerable risk of acute pesticide poisoning, and chemicals and pesticides are harmful not only to humans, but also to animals and ecosystems. Cancer and birth defects are just two of the direct results of their use.