NationStates Jolt Archive

The NationStates United Nations;
KNOWING that in the event of man-made or natural disasters information is a valuable commodity;
SEEKING to reduce casualties and public panic at the scene of a disaster;
CONCERNED that there is no existing UN protocol in place to help deal with any number of disasters which could affect the citizens of all member nations;

Offers the following:

1) In the event of a major emergency, television and radio companies, whether privately or publically owned, are hereby legally obliged to interupt programming to give public safety advice to the public in the area affected, and give information about the incident;

2) Such public safety information should be provided by those with the relivant qualifications, who are authorised to provide said information to television and radio companies on behalf of the national government.

3) The media is encouraged to keep their coverage of the incident as unbiased and unsensationalist as possible, so to prevent panic and drawing premature conclusions as to the nature of said incident.

This is very much in the draft phase, so I welcome all comments and suggestions on how to improve the proposal.

OOC: Good idea for dealing with important issue, but...

IC: Official Response to Intrusive/Domestic Issue Proposals

My God, have you lost your mind? We have this thing called national sovereignty. It's like that "tolerance" crap on a national level.

This is a domestic issue. Do with your country as you will, but don't start trying to tell my citizens what they can and cannot do. That's what they elected me for.

OOC: Good idea for dealing with important issue, but...

IC: Official Response to Intrusive/Domestic Issue Proposals
If you can't come up with an internationalist justification, we're with HotRodia. There is no need to make law just to make law.

Yah, this was really something I cam up with off the top of my head and you're right, it really is a domestic issue. Oh well, can't win 'em all.

However!

Two ideas sprung to mind upon reading this, that would be international in scope.

1) An Emergency Communications Network: Dedicated channels of communication among UN governments for use in emergency situations only, for requests for assistance, coordination of disaster assistance efforts on an international level, etc. Like the RL US-USSR "Red Phone," but global in scope and for more than military crises.

2) Vital Information Backup: The UN could propose to host, on a strictly voluntary basis, a secure remote backup service for vital public records. Naturally governments won't want their sensitive documents in a central repository, but if the servers are secure against hacking, data mining etc., a backup-hosting system for public data could keep an economy or goverment from risk of collapse in the event of a range of disaster from floods to EMPs.

I can already hear the security based objections to #2, which is why I emphasize public records. Still, it could be subject to encryption and security protocols developed by the combined effort of the best IT experts participating countries can provide.