News & Impact

The theme of World Press Freedom Day 2012 is “New Voices: Media Freedom Helping to Transform Societies.” The United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Government of Tunisia are organizing this year’s commemoration in Tunis, Tunisia May 3-5, 2012.

IREX is pleased to continue supporting this important event this year by sponsoring a panel on novel ways to gather and share news that give voice to citizens and reach new audiences.

When 88 master educators from every region of the world came together last week at a four-day workshop in Washington, D.C., they shared more than the teaching methodologies they had cultivated over the course of the six-week program: they shared a new sense of mutual understanding gained from the partnerships they had forged with schools across America.

In August 2011, the Kurdistan region’s parliament passed the Law Against Domestic Violence in a bid to address the growing issue of violence against women. The law, the first of its kind in Iraq, defines domestic violence as any act, word or threat against members of a family that might lead to “physical, psychological or sexual damage and violating their rights and freedoms.”  In addition to banning domestic violence and female circumcision, the new legislation considers the following acts as a crime: forceful marriage, preventing female education, hitting a child, nonconsensual divorce, offering of women to settle family feuds and female suicide, if the family is the cause. This law will be a vital tool for protecting women and raising awareness of domestic violence.