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Welcome to the Safety Page: www.iawrt.org/safety

.Violet Gonda   President IAWRT,  Abeer Saady Vice President IAWRT

This web page is a continuation of IAWRT’s work to give women media workers concrete and practical resources to keep them safe.

We began with safety training workshops and in 2017, IAWRT produced the first edition of our safety handbook of advice and recommendations, This safety section is the next step.

As the targeting of journalists and free media continues to rise across the world, particularly in the online environment and local or regional media, attacks specifically directed at women journalists keep increasing. IAWRT wants to continue to share strategies and provide useful information which can bolster safety.

“We are proud that IAWRT is among a number of organisations prioritising the critical issue of safety for women journalists” says IAWRT President, Violet Gonda. “We hope our new online safety section will provides further insights into coping with danger, focusing on critical skills, including risk assessments, handling gender-based violence and dealing with trauma, among other safety related issues.”

The author of the handbook, Abeer Saady, is pleased at the interest the handbook has generated, “I look forward to our website offering translations into other languages; several are being planned by IAWRT chapters” she says.

In this page we will post relevant news and links to other resources, but more importantly, provide a forum for sharing personal experiences or advice which comes from your experience as women journalists in a range of situations and countries.

As Abeer said in the introduction to the safety handbook, “we cannot undo our lives, but can ensure others don’t repeat our bad practices or choices”.

Please feel free to contact [email protected] or [email protected] to make a suggestion.

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Rural women Media Pilot

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August 2018 -The Kenya Rural Women and Media Project 2018 is now rolling out, IAWRT Kenya, has begun inducting a women’s group in Western Kenya.

The pilot project is the first backed by the IAWRT Rural Women and Media committee as is being conducted with the Blue Light Star Women’s Group, based in Ndivisi village, in Bungoma County, Kenya.

Blue Light Star Women’s group is a highly respected grassroots organbisation because of its success with savings and credit cooperatives, dairy and poultry projects and more recently, branching into establishing a common market for their products to increase income for the participating women by cutting out the middle men. This was also an aspect of how mobile phones empowered rural women in India noted in IAWRT sponsored research by Dr. Mausumi Bhattacharyya. 

The Blue Light Star Women’s Group were found to be yearning for a platform to share their success stories, which could inspire others in Kenya to engage in similar activities to better the quality of their lives.

The IAWRT Kenya chapter lead by Chair, Josephine Karani, and members including Racheal Nakitare (pictured in Ndivisi) is facilitating the project to equip the group with smart phones, and provide coordination, training, internet access and the skills to engage on both traditional and social media.

The use of media and social communication platforms aims to strengthen the Blue Light Star Women’s Group’s ability  to engage in their socio-economic activities and amplify their voices, including if they wish to lobby on issues they consider to be important.

Embracing the use of technology for economic and social and political development also has a practical side as the women want to begin to be able to access and navigate Kenya’s E-government services which allow online applications for government identification, passports, driver’s license, and other services.

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#MeToo online

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Ending violence against women and enhancing women’s representation in and access to the media is a key concern in and around the Commission on the Status of Women in 2018.

With these two areas converging in the form of cyber violence against women and girls (Cyber-VAWG) or technology-related violence against women, IAWRT and Gender Links held a Parallel Event #MetooOnline – Workshopping Solutions to Counter Cyber Violence Against Women on 16 March 2018.

The panel discussed a number of issues affecting women using online media: The un-regulated harassment that, in most cases, goes unnoticed has affected many female journalists negatively. Many women loose interest in journalism as a career, others have been psychologically or physiologically affected, due to the ongoing vigorous and sometime planned humiliation and abuse.  Some journalists have lost their personal reputation and dignity  (which is crucial to survival in some cultures) and others have lost their privacy. Therefore this affects the media industry as a whole, and practical solutions are needed.

The panel highlighted key solutions which included:

 Start a movement of women to support women using online media

 Strengthen the positive movements acting about the violence against women

 Governments should establish online regulation for the safety of journalists on and offline. Both local and international regulation is paramount

 Media houses have a responsibility to support their female journalists or media workers against such abuse.

 Gender sensitive language should be encouraged

 Start a campaign on supporting women journalists working online

The extremely attentive and participative audience. came up with many solutions which fell basically into three categories – early education, legislation for punishment and responsibility of owners/publishers.
 

 

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GONE TOO SOON: Yasmine Ryan

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Sudden Death of Newly Elected IAWRT Board Member

1 May 1982 – 30 November 2017

By Violet Gonda, IAWRT President

It is with profound shock and sadness that IAWRT announces the sudden death of Yasmine Ryan, the newly elected IAWRT board member from New Zealand. We have been informed that our friend and colleague died in Turkey on Thursday morning.

Yasmine was doing her last stint as Senior Features Editor at TRT World in Istanbul and was planning to return to freelance journalism in the new year. TRT World reported that she “lost her life by falling from the 5th floor of her friend’s apartment.”

Yasmine was recently elected in absentia as a board member of IAWRT at the just ended Biennial Conference in the Philippines. Just three days ago, the newly elected board had its first meeting via Skype, which Yasmine attended.

She was so excited and shared her thoughts and vision about IAWRT. It is so sad. The fact remains that Yasmine Ryan was a fearless journalist and was working on some important assignments in conflict areas in the Middle East.

Please see the member feature on Yasmine which was published a few days ago, to introduce her to members. There she talks of her career and plans and her skill in mentoring. This is an unbelievable loss for IAWRT. We will leave the feature in place for the usual time, as a tribute to her.

Yasmine was an award-winning print, television and multimedia journalist, having worked in top international news organizations. In 2016 she became a Fellow at the World Press Institute, allowing her to closely follow the US Presidential campaign last year.  Earlier, Yasmine was a member of Al Jazeera English’s online team where she was at the forefront of the web team’s coverage of the Tunisian uprising and the political turmoil that followed. Her journey in journalism began nearly 10 years ago with the New Zealand’s Scoop Independent News.

As we wait for more news on the facts behind her death, we at IAWRT, express our deepest condolences to her family and friends in this hour of tragedy. Yasmine’s death is a great loss to journalism and the IAWRT community at large.

“Have confidence in yourself, and don’t let yourself be sidelined. Go out and do ambitious projects even if no one is supporting you” – Yasmine Ryan 

May Yasmine’s soul rest in eternal in peace!

A tribute from Ashfaaq Carim, TRT World’s Digital Editor in Chief is available here.

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Apply to be Part of a Global Documentary now!

There is still time for IAWRT members to apply to produce a segment of the IAWRT long form global documentary, Women Covering Conflict: the invisible stories. The documentary will be completed in 2018. You are invited to propose 10-minute documentary film stories based on the theme of making the invisible visible, set in your own cultural contexts. Proposals are being received until December 1. Contact the Executive Producer, Chandita Mukherjee, [email protected] if you are interested,  have any questions or require assistance with the application process.

application forms below 

More details.

 

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