IPS - Inter Press Service News Agency

International Women's Day

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:24:13 +0000

On International Women’s Day, IPS news agency talks to Iranian Nobel Prize Winner Shirin Ebadi and new UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova about their efforts to champion women. Both are in New York, with thousands of others, to review what progress women have made since the landmark Beijing Conference on Women, fifteen years ago.

An international team of IPS reporters is in New York where the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women is meeting to review the Beijing Platform of Action, with the IPS global network contributing local voices and viewpoints.

Read or download the special 8th March newspaper and website at IPS TerraViva Beijing +15 and find out if women’s rights have become human rights yet.

Headlined with a story from Haiti on how women are rebuilding, IPS TerraViva relates the continuing challenges of holding governments accountable to the promises they made fifteen years ago in Beijing.

Activists reflect on the extent that the fourth World Conference on Women back in 1995 helped Chinese women to change their legal and social context, and whether Chinese investment is better or worse for African women than Western practices.

Ending violence against women, the unequal impacts of disasters on women and men and whether there is still a chance to use the economic crisis to develop a more sustainable and equal way of doing business are some of the other stories you can read at IPS TerraViva Beijing +15.

The TerraViva Beijing +15 is part of the IPS programme “Communicating for Change: Getting Voice, Visibility andImpact for Gender Equality“. The IPS cast of stories includes independent coverage financed through the Dutch Government’s MDG3 Fund: Investing in Equality, and through the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

Visit the IPS TerraViva Beijing+15 website.

IPS TerraViva Beijing +15

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:44:24 +0000

Fifteen years after the Beijing World Conference on Women, IPS remains committed to in-depth reporting on progress achieved and challenges facing women and girls.

IPS has a long-standing editorial commitment to mainstreaming gender, which it has realised through training, editorial guidelines and targeted projects.

On the occasion of the 54th session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York (1 - 12 March), an international team of journalists will provide special coverage from New York through the IPS TerraViva Beijing+15 website.

The IPS TerraViva Beijing +15 includes analyses of the latest developments from our team in New York, as well as gender stories from the global IPS Gender Wire.

Two printed editions of IPS TerraViva will be published and distributed in New York during the CSW (1 March and 8 March). These published editions will be available for download at the IPS TerraViva Beijing +15 webpage.

IPS Director General meets the President of Brazil

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:02:40 +0000

Mario Lubetkin, IPS Director General met the Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Carlos Roberto Tiburcio de Oliveira, special advisor to the Brazilian Presidency General Secretariat and his country’s representative to the IPS Core Group. This was the first meeting between IPS and the Brazilian Government after the recent election of Brazil as the Chair of the IPS Core Group of Donors.

The Brazilian Government convoked an informal meeting in Rome, held on 25 and 26 November inviting South and emerging countries of the G-20, plus Venezuela and Qatar for their initiatives in the field of communication (Al-Jazeera and Telesur). The meeting was supported by IPS, and aimed to strengthen the role of information and communication as Southern and emerging countries gain space and power in the new political scenario. Participants agreed on the need to identify common areas of work in the field of information and laid out a plan for 2010 to continue this process.

COMING SOON: 'TALKING GENDER IN THE MEKONG MEDIA'

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:44:15 +0000

BANGKOK - Do media organisations in the Mekong Region think that gender sensitivity, including giving voices to women, is part of doing better stories? How do they define it within the context of their societies and how do they report on different genders and sexuality? Do they include the use of gender-friendly language in their stylebooks and training programmes? How much is using a gender lens a news habit?

These are some of the questions asked by ‘Talking Gender in the Mekong Media’, a report that IPS Asia-Pacific (www.ipsnewsasia.net) carried out as part of the IPS network’s ‘Communicating for Change’ project, in order to help identify areas for future news work and capacity-building, as well some practical and professional approaches to doing these. The Communicating for Change project is funded through the Dutch Ministry’s MDG-3 Fund.

The 54-page report scans the media in the six Mekong countries - Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

The report finds that the perceptions of what makes for gender-friendly media vary, and that the mainstreaming of gender awareness and sensitivity is far from assumed as an accepted editorial or news standard in the Mekong region. Discussions of gender and media are also different across the region, whose countries have political and economic systems that range from socialist to military-dominated to free-market or a mix of these, and thus have different kinds and degrees of space for media.

It will be off the press in February 2010.

For inquiries, please contact: ipsasia@ipsnews.net or ipsapdirector@gmail.com

IPS launches year of reporting on the World Social Forum

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:26:43 +0000

Ten years ago the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre burst onto the world stage giving social movements and civil society the space to challenge the orthodoxies symbolised by the World Economic Forum. IPS global news agency was there, and now in 2010 is launching a year of coverage as World Social Forum 2010 promotes more than 35 global, regional and thematic events during the year, on every continent.

The “IPS TerraViva World Social Forum 2010” online site will provide independent, professional reporting in many languages from as many of the events as possible, along with comment and analysis on the challenges that drive social movements. Will the WSF stay relevant and innovative? Read IPS TerraViva to find out.

Prominent civil society activists like Walden Bello, Kumi Naidoo, Kerry Kennedy and Candido Grzybowski are already contributing op-eds you can read at the IPS TerraViva site.

Coverage of the events will gather momentum at the Greater Porto Alegre 10 Years Social Forum, 25 - 29 January, in Porto Alegre, that meets to debate on the theme: “10 years later: challenges and proposals for another possible world”. Continuing coverage will come from the Bahia Thematic Social Forum, 29 - 31 January, in Salvador, Bahia, which has as its main theme: “Dialogue, cultural diversity and civilizational crisis”.

Teaming up with multi-media partners AMARC, WSF TV and the Ciranda news pool will increase audio, video and independent reporting linked to the site.

IPS TerraViva has been involved and has reported on the WSF process from the 2001 outset in Porto Alegre. The complete online IPS TerraViva newspaper archive available at IPS TerraViva WSF 2010 provides a unique contribution to understanding the history and achievements of this hugely influential global social process.

Inter Press Service (IPS) is a communications institution with a global news agency at its core. IPS raises the voices of the South and civil society and brings a fresh perspective on globalisation and development.

For more information visit our website or write to media@ips.org