sudan_women_5.jpg
On the 5th of May 2016 the Khartoum office of UNESCO and the Italian Embassy at Khartoum in collaboration with the Ministry of Information, the National Commission for Education, Science and Culture and the Sudanese Journalist Union organized a workshop ”Empowering women in Sudanese Media”, which took place in Rotana Hotel, Khartoum. The aim of the workshop was to overview the experiences of top- and middle-level female media-managers in Sudan and to identify the main constraints, challenges and opportunities for women careers in Sudanese media industry.
While the workshop planned to target about 80 participants, including 10 journalists from the eastern states of Sudan (Gadaref, Kassala and Red Sea), finally over 200 female media specialists and activists from different media, NGOs and universities participated in the workshop.
During the opening session the participants of the workshop were welcomed by Mr. Alsadig Alrizagi, the Undersecretary of the Sudanese Journalist Union (SJU), Dr. Abdulgadir Nureddin, the Secretary General of the Sudanese National Commission for Education, Science and Culture, Dr. Pavel Kroupkine, the Head of the Khartoum Office and UNESCO Representative to Sudan, Mr. Fabrizio Lobasso, the Ambassador of the Italian Embassy in Khartoum.
The first session of the workshop was dedicated to the discussions around the following papers:
(1) Women Issues & Challenges in Sudanese Media.
(2) Sudanese women experience in the media.
(3) The Sudanese women media performance under the technical challenges.
Each paper presentation was discussed by the participants enriching the list of items relevant to female careers in the Sudanese media:
The second session of the workshop overviewed the status of media in the eastern states of Sudan via the presentations
(1) “Women &media in East Sudan”
(2) “Community Radio in East Region”
The closing session of the workshop was honored by Mr. Yasser Yousef, the State Minister of Information, who stated in his speech that the members of the government of Sudan keep the challenges and issues of “the sisters” very close to their heart and they are willing to fight against all kinds of discrimination faced by the Sudanese women. In particular, the Ministry of Information acts in full agreement with the Beijing Declaration and Platform Action grounding the principles of Gender Equality and Empowering Women to the Sudanese media industry. The State Minister mentioned several examples justifying the progress in this direction.
Resulting the discussions the workshop adopted the following recommendations:
1. Improving the social perception of women-in-media through the awareness raising campaign about the achievements of senior generation of female journalists and media-managers.
2. Setting an integrated action plan for the Sudanese media targeting to empower women in industry.
3. Developing and making available training programs and special capacity building programs for women in media industry.
4. Promoting the role of media in the country development with special attention to conflict and post conflict areas, and also areas which suffer from different problems and difficult access.
5. Creating friendly environment for women with disabilities working in media industry.