SINCE WE ARE APPROACHING THE END OF THE SCHOOL year, with many students doing the paper chase with term papers and dissertations, I began, last Friday, to write about the Internet as a source of important references. These are mainly publications from the United Nations, and because they are produced each year, they always have a theme, often related to a burning issue.

Preparing for this second part of my article, I reviewed the yearbooks and realized I shouldn?t just be promoting them to students. Newspapers, TV and radio stations should all carry these yearbooks in their libraries. Teachers should be using them as well, and for the next school year, some of these publications can go into reading lists.

I also realized that with elections around the corner, advocacy groups should be able to look up facts and figures on the Philippines? progress (or lack thereof) and to bring up issues with the candidates.

These yearbooks used to be available only in limited copies, or, if you bought them, they were quite expensive. Now electronic copies are available for free on the Internet, easily downloadable in Acrobat format, which also makes it easier to search for particular information. If you still want hard copies for your library, you can order them, but they go from $10 upwards.

Accessing reports

Let me reiterate some of the general guidelines for accessing these reports. To download, simply look for the link on the website and right-click on your mouse, which gives you a menu. Choose ?Save Target as. . .? to download the file. You can retain the name of the file given by the agency, or give your own. Make sure you download the yearbook in a language you can read?they are usually available in English, Chinese, French, Spanish and Arabic.

The yearbooks are all on Adobe Acrobat format; if you still don?t have the software you can download it for free from get.adobe.com/reader.

Whenever I get a new report, I go through the executive summary first, which is at the beginning of the report, then go to the end of the report with its appendices and statistical tables to get an idea of their research methodologies, and to look up figures for the Philippines. Then I tackle the detailed body of the report.

Last Friday I wrote about materials available from the National Statistics Office, and the international and local Human Development Reports. Let me continue today with other reports:

Unicef has an annual State of the World?s Children report, with figures on maternal and child health. Go to www.unicef.org/rightsite/sowc for the latest report, which is a special edition to mark the 20th anniversary of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. I like Unicef?s yearbooks because they often give statistics from various years for comparison purposes. For example, you can feel proud that the Philippines reduced our under-5 mortality rate from 62 per 1000 live births in 1990 (which means for every 1000 children born each year, 62 would die before the age of 5) down to 28 in 2007. Or, you could look at the statistics to get challenged. Peru?s under-5 mortality rate was 78 in 1990, higher than ours, but they were able to beat us, bringing down their rate to 20.

Another UN agency, UNFPA, also has a yearbook, State of the World?s Population, and its latest one looks at climate change. The blurb on its website (www.unfpa.org/swp) should intrigue you enough to want to download the report: ?How do population dynamics affect greenhouse gases and climate change? Will urbanization and an ageing population help or hinder efforts to adapt to a warming world? And could better reproductive health care and improved relations between women and men make a difference in the fight against climate change??

Concerned about illicit drug use? Look up the World Drug Report on unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2009.html. The language is more technical and dry than those of other UN agencies but there?s still a lot of information you can draw out on the production, trafficking and consumption of these drugs.

Also a bit on the technical side is the UN Environment Program (UNEP) yearbook, available from unep.org/yearbook/2010. This one is different from the other UN yearbooks because it doesn?t have statistics broken down by countries. Instead it has extensive discussions on various topics: environmental governance, ecosystem management, disasters and conflicts, harmful substances and hazardous wastes, climate change, and resource efficiency.

(If you want statistics related to the environment, and to compare the Philippines with other countries, you can look at Yale University?s Environmental Sustainability Index [yale.edu/esi], a kind of report card on different countries. Unfortunately, their latest report is for 2005. The Philippines ranked 125th out of 146 countries.)

Cell phones and computers

Interested in how we?re doing with cell phones and computers? There?s the International Telecommunications Union?s yearbook, ?Measuring the Information Society,? available from www.itu.int. They give figures from 2002 and 2007, allowing you to look at the often rapid advances around digital information technologies. For cell phones per 100 people, the Philippines had 19.6 in 2002, which jumped to 58.9 in 2007. Households with computers rose during that period from 5.3 percent to 18.3 percent and those with Internet went from 4.9 percent to 12.3 percent. Curiously, fixed phone lines per 100 people barely rose: from 4.2 in 2002 to 4.5 in 2007.

The yearbook also compares prices for access to these technologies in different countries, and has good discussions about the digital divide. They also talk about the importance of having skills to use these information technologies, a point that is relevant for us in the Philippines: are we going to be content simply as users or consumers of these technologies (as in Internet café gaming) or as service intermediaries (as call center agents)?

Since it?s Women?s Month, I saved the Unifem yearbook for last. Unifem is also part of the UN system, focusing on women?s issues. Their yearbook, available at www.unifem.org/progress/2008, is called Progress of the World?s Women and the latest one has a title that almost shouts out: ?Who Answers to Women? Gender and Accountability.? Accountability is defined in an introduction by Unifem?s executive director as the ability ?to get explanations from those in power for actions that affect them (women) and can set in motion corrective actions when those responsible fail to promote their rights.?

The Unifem yearbook takes off from the Millennium Development Goals and has statistics scattered throughout the report showing the continuing gaps between goals and achievements in these areas: politics, services, markets, justice, aid and security. For example, in the chapter on justice, there?s a graph showing the percentage of Supreme Court justices who are women. We fare better than most countries with 33 percent. In India, Pakistan and Rwanda, it?s 0. Of the different UN yearbooks, this one actually has the most issues that could be used for forums with our candidates.

Email to mtan@inquirer.com.ph