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The United Nations aims to take a leadership role in international geodata co-operation and infrastructure.

Last month the United Nations published a report calling Internet access essential to the exercise of human rights like freedom of expression. This week the global organization has said that geospatial data is "as important for countries as the building of roads and telecommunications networks."

"Geospatial information has application in many fields," the organization said in a release issued last night, "including humanitarian, peace and security, environmental and development challenges facing the world, such as climate change, natural disasters, pandemics, famines, population displacement and food and economic crises."

The United Nations does a lot of good in this world, as far as I'm concerned. If nothing else, it gets representatives of enemy nations in the same building, sometimes in the same room. However, the organization is sometimes troubled by a desire to be so "fair" that it elects Libya and Thailand to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Its latest move, however, goes far beyond the pale of common sense. It has passed a resolution outlawing "defamation" of religion. That means that wherever U.N. writ runs, neither a person nor an organization nor a representative of the press may say anything negative about a religion, part of a religion, an offshoot of a religion or a representative or member of a religion.

"There are 2.2 billion mobile phones in the developing world, 305 million computers but only 11 million hospital beds," said Terry Kramer, strategy director at British operator Vodafone at the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona this week. That's why Vodafone, along with the United Nations and the Rockerfeller Foundation's mHealth Alliance have banded together to advance the use of mobile phones to better aid those in need of healthcare in the developing world.

Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use, a report released today by the United Nations Foundation and the Vodafone Group Foundation, uses 11 case studies to detail how relief, advocacy, and development organizations are utilizing mobile technology to accomplish goals in areas where "wired" infrastructure is sparse. The case studies examine mobile technology use by organizations working toward UN Millennium Development Goals, and reveal that mobile tech is changing the way non-governmental organization (NGOs) approach their work.