The Diplomat
The United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, pledged yesterday in Valencia to strengthen the United Nations Information and Communications Technology Center of Quart de Poblet (UNICTF-V), without which, he said, it would not have been possible “to maintain UN activities around the world” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Guterres visited the base yesterday accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, and the President of the Generalitat Valenciana, Ximo Puig, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the inauguration of this center. The UN Secretary General, recently re-elected for a second term, is in Spain as part of a two-day official visit to Spain, during which he will be received today in Madrid by the King, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Fourth Vice-President and Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera.
According to Guterres, the Quart de Poblet center has an “extraordinary importance” in the daily life of the UN, to the point that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, “we have managed to maintain our activities around the world and the meetings of the Security Council Assembly thanks to the capacity of this communications and technology center”. The Secretary-General therefore pledged to expand the center to continue to attract “more and more agencies” and to make it the “technological and communications heart” of the UN’s humanitarian activities in favor of peace, human rights and the most vulnerable people.
UNICTF-V was inaugurated on July 6, 2011 by then UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and the then Prince of Asturias, Don Felipe. Initially created to provide support to Peacekeeping Operations in the area of information technology and communication, the Quart de Poblet base is currently a global benchmark in the field of information technology and communication, and aspires to gradually become a center for digital transformation of the entire United Nations.
In 2019, Spain ceded an additional 24,000 square meters of land, which will double the size of the base. In September 2020, construction began on a third office building, which will open in April 2022 and will house delegations from other agencies, such as UNICEF or the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The base currently has around 480 UN and outsourced staff, all of whom are of a high technical level. About 60% of them are Spanish. The number of workers is expected to double in ten years and, when the expansion is completed, will be around 1,300.
For her part, González Laya declared that technology, cybersecurity and digital media “must help to build peace, stability, development and respect for human rights”. “This is the mission of this little heart of the UN that beats in Valencia, in Spain”, she continued, referring to the Quart de Poblet base. In the same act, Ximo Puig affirmed that, “ten years ago, the Valencian Community entered, with this base, in the world map of peace builders, because these antennas do more than just connect peace missions: they are a symbol for this land so committed to understanding”.
