The Réseau des Femmes Leaders pour le Développement (Women Leaders for Development Network) organized a dialogue on Thursday June 09, 2022, bringing together media professionals and bloggers from Benin, in recognition of the fact that journalism is one of the most promising professions, and a guarantee of a better future. Organized as part of the celebration of International Press Freedom Day, the event at the Chant d’Oiseau in Cotonou was held under the banner of a new dynamism towards the future.
A series of intellectual, methodological and systemic activities aimed at finding more or less accurate recommendations for a problematic fact, or an object of concern, which is the issue of press freedom these days. These are some of the highlights of the dialogue between media professionals organized last Thursday by the Réseau des Femmes Leaders pour le Développement. Now in its 29th year, the celebration of this day by RFLD is a response to the concern to work towards better management of press freedoms in Benin.
For Gloria Dossi Agueh, President of the RFLD at the opening ceremony, this initiative puts a “special emphasis on raising awareness of respect for press freedom and greater protection for journalists”.
Aware that “freedom is life, and not having it is death”, she “invited participants not to take this high-level dialogue lightly, because it will lead to appropriate proposals for a freer and more aware press”.
Before the activities were launched, Zakiath Latoundji, from the Union des Professionnelles des Médias du Bénin, Joel Noumonvi from the Association des Blogueurs du Bénin and Heulèche Tognonmegni, RFLD’s legal affairs advisor, all expressed the hope that this dialogue would not be just another one, but a genuine meeting whose recommendations would promote a new dynamism. The President of the RFLD officially launched the proceedings. Three presentations, focusing respectively on raising awareness of press freedom, greater protection and respect for journalists and the vital contribution they make to democratic societies, guidelines from the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) and how to protect data online, were the main themes of the event. According to Zakiath Latoundji of the UPMB, one of the major steps towards achieving the status of democratic model country in terms of press freedom is to raise awareness of the need to respect press freedom.
Heulèche Tognonmegni, legal expert and Head of the Youth, Leisure and Sports Department at Porto Novo Town Hall, took the opportunity to present the innovative theme of his paper, “ACHPR guidelines on freedom of association and assembly in Africa”. This theme can be summed up as the imbibition of young people and others in the ACHPR manuals, which confer indelible rights on professionals. In his presentation, he stressed the importance of popularizing these rights in order to improve the conditions under which journalism is practiced, and to foster genuine development. With a view to participating in development through an active and collective contribution to improving press freedom in Benin, group work has been instituted.
In this second highlight of the day, participants identified problems and brainstormed on proposals designed to paint a positive picture of press freedom in Benin. The results of the work were then presented to the plenary session by the group leaders. According to the group rapporteurs, the values for measuring progress in a country in the field of the press are the quality of the freedom enjoyed by professionals, and fairness. Even though the authorities are still in a state of indeterminacy, with important issues often only partially resolved, they felt that it was important to take an interest in Benin’s efforts to realize its development visions, and to be able to count itself among the democratic nations, technically up to date in terms of respect for the rights of media players.
