The Diplomat
More than 300 Arab journalists, both men and women, participated between 2019 and 2022 in the project Media as catalysts for change in gender policies, funded by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID).
AECID presented last Monday, at the headquarters of Casa Árabe in Madrid, the balance of this project, launched by the Agency together with RTVE and the Jordanian NGO Arab Women Media Center (AWMC) with the aim of promoting the training of Arab journalists “in favor of gender equity and respect for the rights of women and girls.”
The Media as a catalyst for change in gender policies project started in 2019 within the framework of AECID’s Masar Program for the modernization and strengthening of public institutions in the Arab world, in aspects such as governance, human right to water and gender equity.
Thanks to this initiative, more than 300 journalists, men and women, from online, print, radio and television media exchanged information and experience and received training from AWMC and RTVE. To achieve these objectives, several training sessions were held for professionals from the ten countries with which the Masar Program works: Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Syria.
The project included a training course on journalistic discourse and the use of all media tools for professionals and activists against gender-based violence. During the training process, project participants developed a Gender-Sensitive Code of Conduct for the journalistic profession, as well as a collaborative documentary in which reporters analyzed the difficulties they face in their daily work in Arab countries and expressed how their work can influence the promotion of greater gender equality in the region.
The meeting was attended by journalists Reem Al-Dahoudi, reporter for the Voice program on Palestine Radio; Hanan El-Shibiny, presenter on various Egyptian television programs and professor at the Egyptian Institute of Radio and Television; Atfrah Al-Mahdi, director general of Mauritanian state television; and Carolina Pecharromán, editor of Equality at TVE, who shared their experiences in the project. Also participating were representatives of the institutions that have collaborated in the project: Concepción Cascajosa, president of RTVE’s Equality Observatory; and Mahasen Al-Emam, president of the NGO Arab Women Media Center (AWMC); as well as Carmen Magariños, AECID’s director of cooperation with Africa and Asia, and Irene Lozano, director of Casa Árabe.
