ICTs in promoting democracy

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Friday, 14 January 2011

Author / Source : IT Reporter

Media plays an important role in safeguarding human rights in democratic countries, and consequently media professionals have the potential to act as vocal advocates of human rights. With the wide scale deployment of Information Technology in the developing world, the civil society organisations are in an influential position to use the new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in order to promote human rights and democratic principles in all spheres of society. With this view in mind, RELIEF International (RI), a US based INGO,  has been implementing  a two year long project on Human Rights titled ‘Transparency for Human Rights in Bangladesh’ in 20 districts of Bangladesh, said Nazrul Islam, Country Director of RELIEF International-Bangladesh in an inaugural session of Capacity Building Workshop of National Network of Concerned Journalists With the support of the European Commission, RELIEF International in collaboration with partner Democracywatch (DW) organised a two day Capacity Building Workshop of National Network of Concerned Journalists on 9 January to 10 January 2011 at BIAM Foundation in Dhaka. The workshop organised for those media professionals accepted to membership in the National Network of Concerned Journalists (NNCJ) with the intent to introduce journalists to the start up kit of NNCJ and to basic principles of organisation management. The workshop also served as a Training of Trainers (ToT) opportunity so that the participating journalists learn techniques for peer training on the training module on Media and Human Rights. Participants in the workshop also discussed the NNCJ constitution and explored practical ways to organise a sustainable association and promote human rights through a free media. 
The workshop was moderated by Mir Masrur Zaman, Director of Society for Media and Suitable Human-communication Techniques (SoMaSHTe), Md. Rahmatullah Faruque, Programme Officer of RELIEF International and Mostofa Sohel, Director of Democracywatch.