The Bernama-run workshop for journalists from Arabic-speaking countries enters its second day today as World Press Freedom Day 2006 is celebrated across the globe. Some 300 participants attending an international conference on Media, Development and Poverty Eradication in Sri Lanka adopted the Colombo Declaration calling for freedom of the press to be recognized as a core element in development strategies. The Declaration recognizes the important role of press freedom in the fight against all forms of poverty and exclusion. "This year, World Press Freedom Day is dedicated to the consideration of how protecting and furthering the fundamental human rights of freedom of expression and press freedom can assist in assuring another human right – the right to be free from poverty,” says UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura. Following the two-day conference which ended on the eve of World Press Freedom Day, Matsuura presented the 2006 UNESCO Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize to Lebanese journalist May Chidiac. The award which carries US$25,000 prize money was created in memory of the Colombian journalist Guillermo Cano, assassinated in 1987 for exposing the work of drug barons. Chidiac, a popular television news journalist, lost her left hand and foot in a car bomb attack on 25 September 2005. While praising Chidiac’s “courage and professionalism”, Matsuura recalled that 2005 was a very bad year as far as violence against the media was concerned. Quoting statistics from the International Federation of Journalists, he said 150 media professionals were killed in the line of duty last year and more than 500 media professionals had been detained or imprisoned. Next year’s main World Press Freedom Day celebration will be held in Colombia. The celebration was first proposed by participants at the Seminar on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press, which UNESCO organized in Windhoek, Namibia, in 1991.
