Geneva - The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) concluded a joint project to integrate human rights standards into press discourse in the Jordanian capital of Amman, with young women journalists taking part.

The project lasted for three training sessions during April with a total of 48 hours. The participants received extensive training on international human rights law and international humanitarian law, in addition to international human rights law, human rights concepts and how to use them in press coverage and discourse. 

The meetings focused on legislation that provides protection to journalists during the coverage of armed conflicts, international criminal cases, crimes against humanity and the use of proper legal terminology in delivering news.

The project aims at empowering the human rights discourse within the Jordanian society, said Enas Zayed, Euro-Med Monitor’s Chairwoman, as a group of law and journalism experts trained a group of women on promoting a culture of responsible journalism and spreading awareness of human rights concepts and the rights and obligations of journalists.

The project is the first step in a strategy being implemented by Euro-Med Monitor in cooperation with partner institutions to establish a specialized human rights journalism, added Zayed.

This strategy, says Zayed, aims to highlight the violations against civilians in different regions, and to carry out a thorough documentation of the committed violations, with the goal of focusing on these issues as part of a broad news story coverage.

The female journalists who benefited from the project have already started initiatives in the field of human rights journalism to form a nucleus of specialized human rights journalism that sheds the light on various violations, voicing out victims’ narratives using the right legal terminology.

Participants said the training provided them with the skills needed to integrate different human rights standards into press coverage and discourse. They stressed the need to replicate their experience to produce comprehensive press materials highlighting civilians’ suffering from a legal and ethical viewpoint.

The importance of the partnership between the German Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and Euro-Med Monitor is reflected in the joint objectives and strategies of the two organizations, with their common goal being to better the human rights situation in the Middle East and North Africa.