The Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project

The Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project was a two-year initiative to increase human rights reporting in Philippine media through journalists’ training, support in pursuing investigative stories, information dissemination, and outreach activities with human rights organisations, government and other groups.

Afghan Radio: Helmand Voices

Helmand Voices was part of IWPR’s Journalism Training and Reporting Project in Helmand Province. Trainees completed an intensive workshop covering recording, script writing, and editing. In addition to learning to use professional digital recording and editing equipment, they produced radio features on stories as diverse as village wrestling competitions, the plight of refugee families and helicopter noise pollution.

Iraq Radio: The Other Half

The Other Half radio programme aimed to explore the changing lives of women in Iraq through interviews, features and commentaries. The programmes were produced in Arabic by IWPR trainees and broadcast on Iraqi radio stations. The contributors came from all over Iraq and produced by an all-women team at IWPR's radio studio in Sulaimaniyah.

Turkmen Radio: Inside View

IWPR radio training and broadcast project for Turkmenistan was aimed at reducing the regime’s information blockade. The material produced by Turkmen journalists is available as sound files (in the Turkmen language) with accompanying texts in Turkmen, Russian and English. Inside View stories were widely used by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Turkmen Service.

Balkans: Regional Reporting & Sustainable Training

The project was designed to support long-term democracy and conflict resolution in the Balkans through regional research, reporting and dialogue projects, extensive local syndication, on-the-job training and institution-building with local media, media institutes and journalism faculties.

IWPR's work in the Balkans was supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency (SIDA), USAID and Press Now.

The Women’s Reporting & Dialogue Programme

The project sought to strengthen the capacity of local media and individual journalists to cover gender issues through training and information provision, while creating a regional network of female journalists whose high-quality output provided a much-needed source of comprehensive information on gender issues.

The project was supported by the US State Department.

Belarus: Media Professionalism, Training & Information

This project’s purpose was to encourage objective, balanced and non-politicized reporting in Belarus and produce a reliable source of information about the country's current affairs for both international and domestic readers by training and working with local journalists.

The project was supported by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office through its Human Rights Project Fund.

Macedonian & Albanian Journalists’ Dialogue Project

In response to the Albanian rebellion in Macedonia in 2001, IWPR opened an office in Skopje as a base for an extended project whose goal was to curb the use of biased reporting and emotive language in both the Macedonian and Albanian language media. Building on IWPR's ten years of experience of working alongside the Balkan media community, the project encouraged ethical journalistic standards and inter-communal dialogue on professional issues. The project also commissioned moderate and inclusive reporting aimed at contributing to a reduction of the violence and a willingness among the wider public as well as the elite to support conflict resolution.

Activities included dialogue and training workshops, weekly media monitoring and investigative reporting.

The project was supported by the Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and the United States Institute for Peace (USIP).

Media Monitoring - Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

This project ran from 1998-99, contributing to the professional development of the media through incisive assessment of TV, radio and print coverage of political issues in the country. Operated in association with the Belgrade analysis group Argument, the project also assisted international bodies working in the region through detailed analysis of the development of the media.

The core of the project was Media Focus, the bi-weekly report on the media in FR Yugoslavia, including Serbia proper, Vojvodina, Kosovo, and Montenegro. It was produced by a team of expert monitors - in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Podgorica, Pristina, and other cities - and assembled and disseminated by IWPR in London. The reports, available in English and Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian-language versions, were distributed in Yugoslavia and internationally.

The project was supported by the European Commission and the UK's Department for International Development.

Field Projects

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania

The Bosnia project operated from 1996 until 1998. It provided support for local reporting, with a special focus on cross-community exchanges, as well as seminars and analysis of the Bosnian press. Following the Dayton agreement, the project produced an intensive bi-lingual assessment of the media – the Monitoring Report – in collaboration with our Bosnian partners, Media Plan.

Following the 1997 social upheavals in Albania, IWPR launched its Albania media monitoring and development project. Running through the summer of 1998, with the support of the Open Society Institute, the project produced a detailed bi-weekly assessment, in English and Albanian, of the media coverage of political events in the country. The project also organised conferences and other meetings to debate media issues and provide information to international agencies, foundations and others supporting the independent press in Albania.

Back issues of IWPR's Bosnian Monitoring Report, a summary report and other IWPR Bosnia publications are available. An archive of these reports, as well as a list of local reporting projects we've supported, will be posted in an online archive. Back issues of IWPR's Albania media monitoring reports, as well as a summary assessment of the Albanian press, are also available and will appear online.

The Bosnia project was supported by the European Commission and the Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency (SIDA), with additional contributions from the Winston Foundation and the Open Society Institute.

The Albania monitoring project was supported by the latter.

Training & Exchange Programmes

IWPR for many years operated a journalist exchange programme, bringing reporters from the Balkans - and the Caucasus - for 4-8 week periods to the United Kingdom. While in London, the journalists worked on IWPR publications, writing and comissioning articles. They also met the UK media – spending time at the BBC World Service and The Guardian – and the NGO and diplomatic community in London.

The project was supported by the Open Society Institute.