From October 9, 2022, 130 representatives of the main state and media institutions in Guinea-Bissau will benefit from a series of training sessions on Media, Freedom of Expression and Digital Rights. The training workshops are organized by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) with funding from the European Union.
80 selected representatives from the police, military, regular bodies, judiciary and human rights commission will take part in the training workshops. They will gain greater knowledge and capacity on human rights issues, press freedom, freedom of expression, digital rights and ways to improve them in Guinea-Bissau. Areas such as UN charters, relevant SDGs, UNESCO journalist safety indicators, media safety relations and best practices in other jurisdictions will be highlighted to enhance their efforts in protecting and defending the media and other victims of human rights violations. State actors will also take the opportunity to validate and adopt an Adapted Training Manual on Media and Freedom of Expression (including Digital Rights).
At the end of the month, 50 leaders (including at least 40% women) from the main media players – the Union of Journalists and Media Technicians (SINJOTECS), the National Network of Community Radios (RENARC), the Association of Professional Women in the Media (AMPROCS) and the Order of Journalists of Guinea-Bissau (OJGB) – will take part in training workshops to improve their understanding and ability to monitor and document violations of media rights/freedom of expression (including digital rights).
Media actors will also be equipped with the knowledge, campaigning and advocacy skills for effective campaigning that promotes freedom of expression, rights and media professionalism in Guinea-Bissau.
The training workshops for state and media actors are part of the activities of the MFWA’s three-year media freedom project entitled: Promoting media freedom and access to quality information in Guinea-Bissau. The overall objective of the project is to ensure that journalists and other media actors in Guinea-Bissau are safe and secure and produce ethically appropriate, timely and fact-based journalistic content that promotes peaceful coexistence and enables public access to quality information in an environmentally sustainable manner to be implemented in Guinea-Bissau.
The trainings are also a follow-up to successful initial meetings held in June 2022 with key state actors – the police, military, regulatory bodies, judiciary and human rights commission, and media actors – the Union of Journalists and Media Technicians (SINJOTECS), the National Network of Community Radios (RENARC), the Association of Professional Women in Media (AMPROCS) and the Guinea-Bissau Journalists’ Order (OJGB).
The Media Freedom Project
The MFWA’s Media Freedom project in Guinea-Bissau is funded by the European Union. It was implemented with initial meetings with key stakeholders and an official launch of the project in June 2022.
As part of the project’s activities, a common website is being developed for the main media actors to be used to publicize issues of media rights violations, media policy development and initiatives to improve the media landscape in Guinea-Bissau. It is also hoped that the site will increase the visibility of the work of media actors.
Once again, journalists and managers from 10 large and influential media organizations were selected to benefit from on-site training to increase their capacity to produce quality, fact-based and ethical content that discourages trends of extremist radicalization and allows citizen access to quality information while 35 social media influencers were selected for training workshops to use their social media platforms to counter messages of radicalization and violent extremism, especially among young people.
