The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) is the regional development arm of the United Nations for the Asia-Pacific region and it is the first UN commission with a substantive space applications program.

Mr. WU Guoxiang, Chief of the Space Technology Applications Section at the Information, Communication and Space Technology Division of UNESCAP, talked about their space application program in 2008.

"The space program of UNESCAP has recently paid more attention to reducing disasters. In this field in 2008, we will closely cooperate with APRSAF to jointly promote the Sentinel Asia project. Sentinel Asia has already developed national technical nodes, and for this year we need to expand a technical network with various national disaster reduction authorities.
Also we organize long-term, medium-term and short-term training relating to space technology, and these are conducted in China, India, Indonesia and some developing countries. We expect more countries will provide us with such opportunities to provide training so that we can support their space related activities."

UNESCAP Website: http://www.unescap.org/