Mogadishu, Somalia. Somali Women Journalists Organisation (SWJO) in partnership with International Media Support (IMS) and Fojo (Media Institute) concluded two days roundtable meeting from 13 to 14 July 2022. More than 30 participants of MPs, senior journalists, media directors, and other government officials attended the meeting. The debate was the start of a series of meetings across the regional states aimed to bolster future changes and validate the New Media Law that was signed into law by former president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo.
This law has been then reviewed by media workers and raised a number of articles and paragraphs in the law that were believed to be violating the work of journalists and the freedom of expression at large. Despite the changes made, there is still a lot to be done in the law in terms of women’s rights and other major issues on gender.
This discussion of validation is a flow up of pieces of training on the gender perspective of the law which SWJO has conducted in all federal member states and the Benadir region in 2020 and 2021.
In her opening remarks, Leyla Osman, SWJO’s executive member “Since a new government and parliament are in place we see an opportunity that we can amend or add more articles to the law where gender and women are respected, that is why we invited these senior people to revise recommendation from regional states that were recorded during the review process in 2021 and 2022”.
Participants had two days of discussion on the recommendations from previous workshops on previsions of the law including articles concerned censorship, culture, and religion, the role of the ministry of information in different states, the status of the national media council, and licensing journalistic work and among others. The inadequacy of gender and women’s rights in the law was also pointed out so that, legislators can consider ways that the situation and rights of a female journalist can be better improved. Participants recommended some of these key issues that should be mentioned in the law: In accordance with the professional constitution and labour law women can hold top positions and can perform as male journalists do and more importantly no one can be discriminated against according to their gender. Therefore, attendees emphasized the need of including articles that protect and assure gender equality in media.
Nasriin Mohamed, SWJO’s deputy chairperson, showed appreciation for the great input that has been made in her closing remarks and thanked the participants. She also talked about the importance that all professional journalists are on the same train.
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