DUSHANBE, March 1, 2014, Asia-Plus – The Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) has launched a series of training workshops on cooperation between human rights activist and media with support from the European Union.
According to the Delegation of the European Union to Tajikistan, the first of a series of such training workshops was held in Dushanbe on February 24-25.
Fourteen young Tajik journalists and human rights activists from across the country 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.
Nouriddin Qarshiboyev, Chairman of National Association of Independent Mass Media of Tajikistan (Nansmit), and Sergey Romanov, Head of the Independent Center for Human Rights, led the training workshop.
“I liked two things in this training,” said Aliakbar Abdulloyev, Director of Center for Promotion of Anti-Corruption Behavior. “First, the interactive method of training that allows you to learn the topics well; and second, the opportunity that the training provided to both journalists and human rights activists to establish contacts with each other to become mutually complementary.”
In the coming months, IWPR will train young journalists on the same topic in other regional centers of Tajikistan.
This training was conducted 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.
