In commemoration of the\u00a0World Press Freedom Day,\u00a0\u00a0The United Nations Department of Public Information \u201cDPI\u201d in cooperation with the United Nations\u00a0Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization \u201cUNESCO\u201d has extended an invitation to\u00a0The World Lebanese Cultural Union and to all relevant NGO’s to attend a briefing at the\u00a0UN Headquarters in New York on Thursday, 1 May 2014. The briefing is titled:\u00a0\u201cMedia Freedom for a Better Future: Shaping the Post-2015 Development Agenda\u201d.<\/p>\n
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The WLCU was represented by\u00a0Mrs. Antoinette Atie, a prominent representative of the organization at the DPI. The WLCU, headed by the newly elected World President, Alejandro Kuri Pheres, has been associated with the DPI-UN since 2009.<\/p>\n
At the conference, the opening remarks were addressed by Mr\u00a0Ban Ki-moon,\u00a0the United Nations Secretary General, he stressed out that\u00a0“Journalists are singled out for speaking or writing uncomfortable truths \u2014 kidnapped, detained, beaten and sometimes murdered. Such treatment is completely unacceptable in a world ever more reliant on global news outlets and the journalists who serve them.\u201d He illustrated that “…Last year, 70 journalists were killed, many caught in the cross-fire of armed hostilities. \u00a0Fourteen more have suffered the same fate this year.\u00a0 Last year, 211 journalists were being held in prison. \u00a0Some 456 journalist have been forced into exile since 2008.\u00a0 And since 1992, well over 1,000 journalists have been killed \u2014 nearly one per week.”<\/p>\n
Other speakers included H. E. Mr. John W. Ashe,\u00a0President\u00a0of the\u00a0United Nations General Assembly,\u00a0H. E. Ms. Lyutha Al-Mughairy,\u00a0Ambassador of the Sultanate of Oman to the UN and Chairperson of the General Assembly Committee on Information,\u00a0Vibeke Jensen, the\u00a0Director UNESCO Liaison Office in New York and\u00a0Pamela Falk,\u00a0the\u00a0President\u00a0of the\u00a0United Nations Correspondents Association.<\/p>\n
The Panel discussions were moderated by Mr. Maher Nasser, the\u00a0Director\u00a0of the\u00a0Outreach Division at the DPI. The panelists included Mr\u00a0Yehia Ghanem,\u00a0International Journalist in Residence at CUNY, Graduate School of Journalism,\u00a0Delfine Halgand,\u00a0US Representative\u00a0of\u00a0Reporters without Borders,\u00a0Agnes Callamard, Director\u00a0of Freedom of Expression and Information Project and\u00a0Wade Williams, the\u00a0Editor\u00a0of\u00a0\u00a0FrontPage Africa\u00a0Newspaper.<\/p>\n
In 1993, the UN General Assembly proclaimed 3 May as World Press Freedom Day following a\u00a0Recommendation adopted at the twenty-sixth session of UNESCO’s General Conference in 1991. It serves as\u00a0an occasion to inform citizens of violations of press freedom – a reminder that in dozens of countries around\u00a0the world, publications are censored, fined, suspended and closed down, while journalists, editors and\u00a0publishers are harassed, attacked, detained and even murdered. \u00a0World Press Freedom Day is a date to encourage and develop initiatives in favor of press freedom, and to\u00a0assess the state of press freedom worldwide. It serves as a reminder to governments of the need to respect\u00a0their commitment to press freedom and is also a day of reflection among media professionals about issues of\u00a0press freedom and professional ethics. Just as importantly, it is a day of support for media which are targets\u00a0for the\u00a0restraint, or abolition, of press freedom. It is also a day of remembrance for those journalists who lost\u00a0their lives in the exercise of their profession.<\/p>\n
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In commemoration of the\u00a0World Press Freedom Day,\u00a0\u00a0The United Nations Department of Public Information \u201cDPI\u201d in cooperation with the United Nations\u00a0Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization \u201cUNESCO\u201d has extended an invitation to\u00a0The World Lebanese Cultural Union and to all relevant NGO’s to attend a briefing at the\u00a0UN Headquarters in New York on Thursday, 1 May 2014. The …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5329,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-united-nations"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wlcu.world\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wlcu.world\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wlcu.world\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wlcu.world\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wlcu.world\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wlcu.world\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24428,"href":"https:\/\/wlcu.world\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5324\/revisions\/24428"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wlcu.world\/ng\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wlcu.world\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wlcu.world\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wlcu.world\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}