Major Campaigns
Journalists for Democracy and Human Rights (JDHR) has been undertaking the following major campaigns in collaboration with other partner organizations and donors.
Campaign ‘Child Not Labourer’- Eradication of the worst forms of child labour
Under this campaign, JDHR has been focusing on elimination of the worst forms of child labour. It creates awareness through various means primarily media to impress upon people that child is a child and not a labour who can bear the brunt of hectic and hazardous work environment. JDHR has conducted training programmes and ran other programmes against child labour with support of various organisations including ILO. JDHR had established Media Coalitions in various media hubs in the country in collaboration with ILO. The Media Coalitions’ members share story ideas and stories online. The Media Coalition and the campaign ‘Child Not Labourer’ is still continuing beyond ILO or any other support support. JDHR in collaboration with its media partner ‘Infochange News and Features Network’ (INFN-www.infochangepakistan.net) has contributed over 50 stories on working children. For the first time, JDHR-INFN profiled stories on the plight of the children working in circus, a new area explored as one of the worst forms of child labour.
Campaign ‘No more empty plates’- Ensuring Right to Food
Journalists for Democracy and Human Rights (JDHR) under this campaign pushes for a legal-framework to ensure ‘Right to Food’for all citizens of Pakistan, especially those who face hunger and poverty. The Campaign ‘No More Empty Plates’ emerged as an outcome of the National Right to Food Conference held in October 2011. Over 120 delegates including women farmers actively participated in the conference. The campaign pushes federal and provincial governments for an improved legislation in the spirit of Article 38 of the Constitution of Pakistan to ensure ‘Right to Food’ and other basic necessities of life for the poor and the marginalized people.
Campaign ‘Nine is mine’- Ensuring 9% budgetary allocations for Education, health and resilience building in line with SDGs
This campaign focuses on mounting public pressure on governments (federal and provincial) to get increase budgetary allocations to 9% of GDP for Education, Health and Resilience Building to achieve the targets committed in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and SAARC Development Goals.
Campaign ‘Flower not Bullet’- De-radicalizing narrative in the interest of peace in line with the objectives of the National Action Plan 2015 and ‘Paigham-e-Pakistan’ national narrative 2018
This campaign focuses on building a counter narrative among the masses for Peace Building and Interfaith Harmony rejecting the extremism in the name of religion. The campaign facilitates dialogue among various stakeholders through media, social media and public policy seminarsand other awareness tools to help people resolve conflicts at local level and counter violent extremism. JDHRsensitizes and trains journalists and editors on the objectives of National Action Plan 2015, Paigham-e-Pakistan 2018 launched by the President of Pakistan on 16th of January 2018 as a national narrative to achieve the broader objectives of promoting Interfaith Harmony, peace building by rejecting violence extremism so that play their role in creating space in media for citizens from across the faiths.
Capacity Building
Capacity building is a core strength of ‘Journalists for Democracy and Human Right’ (JDHR), which has conducted series of training workshops for media professionalson various subjects and has trained and networked with thousands of journalists. JDHR has also conducted capacity building workshops for representatives of civil society organizationson Policy Outreach, Advocacy, Media Work, Campaigning, Research Uptake, Lobbying, Communications, Gender Sensitive Reporting and Social Media. JDHR also conducted media training workshops on Reportingand Editing Skills, Media Ethics, Child Rights and Child Labour issues, Women’s rights and Gender issue, Economic and Trade Issues and Conflict, Disaster Reporting. The training workshops were and are being conducted on safety and protection of journalists and how to make media inclusive and objective by creating space for those who are missing from the media space.
JDHR has been conducting training workshops for journalists/editors to impart conceptual knowledge around ethical and professional standards of reporting, editorial responsibilities and on media’s role in promoting interfaith harmony in the country in line with the objectives of the National Action Plan 2015. In addition to the above short term programmes, JDHR is also implementing a long-term training programme to promote responsible and objective journalism/inclusive media. In this project, JDHR aims to promote media pluralism, especially greater diversity of opinions and beliefs, which in the long run, will increase tolerance, respect and mutual understanding among all faiths in Pakistan in line with the objectives of National Action Plan 2015 and ‘Paigham-e-Pakistan’ national narrative 2018.
The support for these workshops have been provided by the then National Commission for Child Welfare and Development (NCCWD), Ministry of Women’s Development, Ministries of Human Rights, Commerce and Information, Government of Pakistan, UNDP, UNICEF, International Labour Organization (ILO) and other development partner organizations/INGOs.