Number 248, November 2002
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The meeting: "Refugees and their Right to Communicate – South Asian Perspectives" produced the following resolution:
Despite the difficulties posed by Hurricane Isidore which battered the island of Cuba this September, members of WACC-Caribe gathered in Havana, between 23 and 25th September to celebrate its Third Regional Assembly and elect a new Regional Executive Committee.
The Rev. John Butler took Theology students on a tour of Palestine. Below are some extracts from his report on their stay.
The Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) campaign linked to maximising/leveraging civil society involvement in the World Summit on the Information Society, WSIS, (Geneva, December 2003) is gathering steam. A CRIS initiative in Bangkok in mid-November 2002 brings together 25 representatives of IT/communication development NGOs in Asia. Their response will feed into the regional WSIS meetings scheduled for Tokyo in January 2003. The response from that event will feed into the regional WSIS meetings that are scheduled to be held in Santo Domingo in early 2003. There is just about a year to go to Geneva 2003 and a lot of planning and organisation needs to go into the CRIS campaign post-2002. Two preparatory committee meetings related to the WSIS are scheduled for Geneva in 2003 – in February and October and there will presumably be other hastily convened, ad hoc events like the Informal Meeting on Content and Themes that was held a few weeks ago in Geneva.
Anna Turley, Women and Media Programme Officer, WACC
Today there are any number of media education activities aimed at a variety of constituencies – school children, university students, religious communities, women’s groups, teachers, government officials and policy makers. These efforts have led to a greater awareness at both the individual and community level of the promise and perils of modern media. The development and success of efforts at media monitoring, the establishment of ‘mediawatch’ groups and media councils can be attributed to the success of the worldwide media education movement. But the question remains; has the media education movement realised its goals? Are people able to influence media content? Can they deal with the power of the local and global media institutions? In short, has the media-tion process been democratised?
Rolando Pérez.
The Leper
Luke 5: 12-15
The man Jesus cured of leprosy was an outcast, marginalised by society. When everyone else had shunned him, Jesus reaches out to him and touches him. He shows us to extend a hand and give people back their dignity and humanity. He shows us that it’s not enough to listen and be moved. We need to make solidarity, we need to extend our hands permanently to the excluded.
Bruce Girard and Jo van der Spek
Is community radio a viable option for Afghanistan? What would it sound like? How would it fit into a national public-service radio system? What type of governance structures will ensure stations are both responsive to their communities and independent? Is it necessary to wait until the legal and regulatory framework is in place?