Safety handbook for women journalists launched

LAHORE: A book on Safety Handbook for Women Journalists was launched at FC College University on Wednesday. Written by International War Correspondent and Media Trainer, Ms Abeer Saady, the book has been translated in Urdu by Ms Sabahat Afsheen. The book launch event was organised by Faculty of Humanities at Forman Christian College (A Chartered University) in collaboration with Journalism & Media International Center (JMIC), Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway. Dr Douglas Trimble, Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs at FCCU was the guest of honour on the occasion. Dean of Humanities FCCU, Dr Altaf Ullah Khan and Chairperson Department of Journalism at Punjab University Lahore Dr Bushra Hameedur Rahman shared their views about the book. They said the Urdu version of the book would equip the women journalists of Pakistan to perform their duties efficiently and safely. On this occasion, Ms Sumaira Khan, who is Pakistan’s only woman journalist who covered the Fall of Kabul in Afghanistan, shared her experience of conflict reporting that has also been documented in the book. The book launch event was moderated by Syed Saqib, Assistant Professor at Department of Mass Communication, FCCU. Journalists, students and participants from Journalists Safety Workshop at FCCU attended the event.

Call to increase women’s role in politics, election: Without women’s participation, election process is incomplete. To increase women’s participation in politics and elections we need positive change in social attitudes.

This was stressed by Shahnaz Mughal who conducted a workshop on ‘Women and Elections’ here at a hotel organised by Sangat Development Foundation in collaboration with Trust for Democratic Education and Accountability (TDEA). This was a workshop particularly for media persons. Voting is every citizen’s democratic right but for women who constitute half of the population, there are many hurdles in the way of voting—at places inadequate facilities and security issues come in the way while at other places archaic traditions don’t let women voters come out and vote. Polling station is not supposed to be more than a kilometer away from the voter.

The court has ordered elections while census is going on. According to a report, in October 2022, one crore women voters were still to be registered.

TDEA succeeded in establishing gender desks in seven districts. Sangat, that works in collaboration with TDEA, has very good coordination with NADRA that sends its van to different areas on call to make only women’s CNIC. Sangat has been consistently working towards reducing voter registration gap.