THE TIME IS NOW: JOURNALISM FOR AND FOR THE WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY AGENDA
- Ana Mena Lobo
- Dec 20, 2022
- 3 min read
Good journalism will only be possible with a comprehensive gender approach. Fortunately, the Women, Peace and Security Agenda offers a step forward in this long but certain journey.
The media seem to strive every day to publish the best news and the fastest progress: 'Breaking-news' advertising appears on the newscast; however, the most unworthy paradox is fulfilled: certain journalists search for stories and ignore the issues that should be most important. A latent example is the Women, Peace and Security Agenda.
How much is reported in Colombia about women and their incidence in the territories, in real political participation, in decision-making, in the construction of peace? If so, how do you report on those issues? Is there follow up? Do journalists know the regulatory framework? The answers must not be ignored.
"...the maximum participation of women, on equal terms with men, in all fields, is essential for the full and complete development of a country, the well-being of the world and the cause of peace", with this sentence begins the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) which becomes one of the related documents of Resolution 1325 (2000) where the United Nations Security Council recognized for the first time the importance of women and its role in the construction and sustainability of peace.
Journalists should recognize the impact of these issues, work on a differential approach to gender and damage: the damage caused to women in war is different and incomparable to that of other subjects immersed in it. Fortunately, while a good number of journalists seem to search for the most viral video on the web to produce a false headline, there are others who recognize their role in positioning the issues of women, peace and security in the media agendas and in public opinion.
In Lebanon, that country with so many current problems for women and for press freedom (there is no association or foundation that can protect the press), journalists who maintain a permanent interest in acting, writing, filming and tell the stories about women. And Lebanon is not the only one, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo they are much more advanced: with more than two National Action Plans for the location and implementation of the MPS Agenda, the groups of women leaders and the media have been protagonists in massifying the message and insist on the obligation of the State towards the Agenda. In Nigeria, the outlook is encouraging: there are certain groups of journalists who, against all odds, make public the actions of women: their problems, their struggles and their achievements.
Interview clip with Anna María Zogbhi, journalist attending the Workshop
for Journalists organized by GNWP and Justice without Frontiers
And Colombia? Although the efforts of feminist collectives, rural women's collectives, the Final Report of the Truth Commission and its chapter on gender and the increase of women in political participation are recognized; Much remains to be done: it is necessary to think - from the media themselves - about women journalists, about issues that involve women, peace and security.
So, the time is now: in Colombia the first National Action Plan with the MPS Agenda will soon be ready (so many years without one and still women have achieved so much). Thus, it remains in the hands of the journalists (literally) to transform this issue beyond a resolution: into a way of life, to insist on specifying effective public policies and to recognize, with a human and differential narrative that only with women It is possible to live better in the territories.
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