Media Learns About Human Rights Issues

By William Yaw Owusu

Wednesday, 23 August 2006
A workshop aimed at building the capacities of journalists to report on human rights issues more appropriately began in Accra yesterday.

Some 40 media personnel are attending the two-day event organised by Amnesty International (AI), Ghana, with support from the European Union.

The workshop, under the theme "Preventing the practice of torture through education," forms part of AI’s quest to create awareness in the dangers of human rights abuses in the West African Sub-region.

In an address, Prize F.Y. McApreko, Country Director of Amnesty Inernational, said "it is very critical now more than ever before that the media begin to set the human rights agenda for national scrutiny, debate and discussion in the view to prevent the practice of torture, especially at a time when we enter the threshold of our 50th milestone of independence".

The continued existence of all forms of torture in the country should be a luxury "which we must ill afford, considering the level of human rights record which the international community accords us," he said.

"Our spectacular nomination to the United Nations Human Rights Council, must be justified through the rejection of torture" and added, "it is the media that is best positioned to help check such abuses."

Mr. McApreko noted that human rights abuses had assumed sophisticated and elusive dimension which needed "a collaborative effort of all stakeholders to help check it."

He commended the media for making efforts to highlight on human rights issues and said "you are in an enviable position to always lead in the fight."

Mr. Fred Kpor, Co-ordinator of Human Rights Education Project of AI, said the media should always discuss human rights issues devoid of politics, religion and morality.

He said with interventions such as creating awareness on the negative implications of human rights abuses, the media could help make the sub-region a safe place to live in.