Journalists within the Archdiocese of Bamenda are trained on Reporting Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Cases
On the 21st of January 2016, the Justice and Peace Service organized a training for journalists/reporters from some selected media organs (both Print and Audio Visual) on Reporting Human Rights abuses in general, and Cases of Trafficking in Persons (TIP) in particular.
This was at the Auto Data Resource Center, Cathedral Mankon, facilitated by Laura Anyola Tufon, Coordinator of the Service, and Comfort Mussa, a seasoned journalist/reporter who has a great interest in Civil Society initiatives, particularly TIP.
Given that this heinous crime has untold consequences on victims, and continues to grow, particularly in our rural communities where the quest to ameliorate the poor standards of living is ever increasing, with limited economic resources, coupled with a high degree of ignorance about this phenomenon of TIP, and at times practiced under the guise of Tradition, this training was crucial.
We have over the years engaged in the areas of Prevention, Protection, Prosecution and Partnership to combat TIP. Since prevention begins with Community Sensitization, we deemed it essential to partner with/build the capacities of media practitioners, particularly journalists/reporters of community radios on organizing public sensitization campaigns and good techniques in reporting identified Human Rights abuses/TIP cases. Present during this training were media organs like Radio Evangelium, L’Effort Camerounais, CRTV NWR, Abakwa FM, Radio Hot Cocoa, Foundation Radio, Afrique Nouvelle Radio, Rainbow Radio, Dignity Television, The Median Newspaper, Eden Newspaper, and The Times Journal.
A total of 20 journalists/reporters from 6 Divisions (Boyo, Mezam, Menchum, Ngoketunjia, and Momo) of the North West Region of Cameroon were trained. At the end of the training, they were each furnished with educative materials on TIP produced by the Service to be used in their public media campaigns.
