FoN educates journalists on UN Principles

Some Journalists from the Western and Western North Regions have been exposed to the dictates in the UN guiding principles in mining and agriculture sectors for better communication with the public.
The principles are the United Nations Women Empowerment Programme, (UNWEP), United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGP) and Free, Prior and Informed Consent, (FPIC.).
Other areas of the training included Gender Mainstreaming and Equality and Human Rights particularly in the agriculture and mining sector.
Mr. Solomon Kusi Ampofo, a Natural Resources Coordinator at Friends of the Nation said the initiative was to enhance participants knowledge and understanding of the Three- principles and demand adherence to the principles by companies in the agriculture and extractive industries.
This, he noted, would create space for identifying ways of addressing the harmful impact of the non-adherence for the three- guiding principles by companies in the agriculture and extractive industries value chains.
Globally, trade rules and primary commodity value chains fuel inequality within and between countries and undermine economic opportunities for millions of women and men and not held accountable for their practices.
Mr. Ampofo said coupled with alarming new and expanding restrictions on civil society space, the power of people to redesign their local, national, and global economies rests on a knife’s edge.
The more reason to strengthen civil society is to create inclusive and sustainable trade and value chains cocoa and an extractives sector-gold, salt, oil, and gas that respected human rights, protects the environment, and promoted women’s economic empowerment.
Women in these areas would be equipped to assert their rights bearing in mind their responsibility.
Ms. Efua Yankson, Deputy Investigator at the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice who took participants through the human rights perceptive enjoined journalists to be abreast with the constitutional provisions and thoroughly understand it content to help communicate same to the public.
She said the laws did not make room for assumptions but evidence on infringement on one’s rights, hence the need to properly interrogate all situations carefully before concluding.
The Deputy Commissioner said all must enjoy human rights as a matter of promoting equality in the civic space and asked companies to uphold such rights.
Ms. Maribel Okine, the Western Regional Director of Gender said mainstreaming gender into all programmes and activities of every enterprise was critical in bridging the inequality gap between male and female and achieving parity which would ensure to the holistic benefit of society.
She tasked the media to take up the challenge to educate the public to support issues of women.
Dr. Francis Doku took the Journalists through the Principles and called on them to make it a daily routine to shore awareness in the media space so that companies and Labour become increasingly opened to the principles and apply them for congenial atmosphere in the field of work.
GNA