Insan Foundation Trust (IFT), an organization working for peace, democracy and women’s empowerment, in collaboration with the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) trained around 100 students to identify subtle and gross media biases in a discussion session “Media for Peace Tolerance and Diversity in Pakistan” on Wednesday. The forum enabled them to develop alternative media products for promotion of peace, tolerance, diversity and gender equality.
IFT with the financial assistance of USIP had launched a yearlong project “Ethnic and Religious Diversity, Peace and Tolerance and Alternative Media Development” in the media departments of five universities including Government College for Women University Lahore, Government College University Faisalabad, University of Gujrat, University of Sargodha and The Islamia University Bahawalpur. Students including 55 female students and 13 faculty members including eight male and five females were selected for the forum on the basis of their opinions regarding national and international commitment and general behaviour towards women’s issues.
During the forum, five training workshops were organized to enable the students to develop advertisements, commercials, documentaries, reports and articles that reflected equality for men and women, keeping in view the Constitution of Pakistan, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and SAARC Social Charter. Training manuals, documentaries and lectures were also a part of the training. The students developed a number of media products to demonstrate their learning. IFT has compiled a booklet of those products and has sent them to advertisement companies and all other organizations concerned.
IFT Director Kishwar Sultana said Pakistan’s safety and progress depended on how society behaved in the larger perspective. “Media, as a driver to shape opinions and behaviours, obviously shares a greater responsibility,” she said adding that media studies departments and media organizations needed to align with the spirit of the constitution, the humane local traditions and the international commitments that Pakistan made with regards to women, children, ethnic and religious minorities in Pakistan.
Educationist and scholar Dr Rubina Saigol, Neelam Hussain, Provincial Assembly Member Humaira Shahid and South Asia Partnership Pakistan Director Mohammed Tahseen were the key speakers of the forum. They stressed urged the government to root out jingoism, theocracy, gender bias and intolerance towards religious and ethnic minorities in Pakistan from the educational system, media and the pulpit. The speakers also rejected violence in any form and pretext and offered some recommendations for the media and the government in this regard. Dr Rubina Saigol presented her study on how extremism impacted women negatively and yielded social, political and economic distortion.
Media studies department heads of the participating universities including Dr Wajid Ali, Dr Anjum Zia, Dr Nawaz Mehsud, Ashraf Iqbal and Abbas Rashid Butt, media studies students, faculty members, civil society organizations’ representatives and human rights’, child rights’ and women’s rights’ activists were also present.
