IDUSHANBE, April 7, 2014, Asia-Plus — The Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) conducted a training workshop on human rights activists – media cooperation in Khujand, the capital of Sughd province in late March.
According to IWRP Tajikistan, the workshop was held on March 27-29 under support of the European Union (EU).
Fifteen young Tajik journalists and human rights activists from Khujand, Istaravshan, Panjakent and other areas of Sughd province reportedly participated in the workshop. Participants learned how to jointly develop analytical reports on human rights violations and acquired skills in interviewing victims, as well as knowledge of the legal aspects of human rights violations.
Rukhshona Olimova, Access to Information and Services Program Coordinator at OSI Tajikistan, and Sergey Romanov, Head of the Independent Center for Protection of Human Rights, led the training workshop.
Khursheda Rahimova, a lawyer from the NGO Office of Civic Freedoms said: “The topic of the training is very helpful and important for NGOs. I am cooperating with media for almost six years, but only now I realized that the style I worked with journalists was wrong including the way I prepared press releases and my style of conducting press conferences. The experience of my NGO shows that only in cooperation with mass media you can get a better effect of your human rights defending activity”.
In the coming months, IWPR will train young journalists on the same topic in other regional centers of Tajikistan: Khorog; Kulob, and Qurghon Teppa.
The training workshop was implemented within the framework of a new three-year project “Empowering Media and Civil Society Activists to Support Democratic Reforms in Tajikistan” supported by the European Union under the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) as well as Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The project aims at promoting democratic reforms in Tajikistan by encouraging closer cooperation between leading human rights activists and independent media; improving the capacity of independent media to conduct investigative journalism projects and analytical reporting; and stimulating constructive dialogue within and between human rights CSOs, media, and local and national government officials concerning a variety of issues affecting the socio-economic life of the country.
