Presentation
Nowadays, freedom of expression exists, at least in the formal democracies, but we cannot say the same about freedom of information with the same certainty. Organised civil society has always sought different ways of ensuring that its messages reach us but, for different reasons, fails to find the right communication channels that can become a channel that the broad public can use as an alternative source of information.A project to establish an audiovisual platform for civil society would pursue the following objectives:
- To establish and consolidate a communication medium promoting freedom of information with regard to content that world civil society considers important.
- To enable other media to cover information generated by world organised civil society, which would use this new tool to produce free information not subject to copyright.
- To strengthen the coordination of organised international civil society, providing both new ways of learning and of networking.
- To develop new tools for communication and information.
- To help transform the digital divide into digital opportunity.
- To experiment in the use of Internet as a tool to contribute to multilingualism and cultural diversity.
Leading organizations
Initially, this project's leading organizations could be made up of the following organisations:
The World Forum of Civil Society Networks - UBUNTU, established with the clearly-defined objective of giving a greater voice to civil society and permanently informing about the great issues on the world agenda.
The United Nations Millennium Campaign is very interested, with a view to continuing the work achieved over the 2000-05 period, in helping to give greater voice to civil society in order to work towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals.
The Inter Press Service (IPS), a worldwide information service on global issues supported by a network of reporters in more than one hundred countries. This news agency's clients include three thousand media and tens of thousands of civil society groups, academics and other users.
The Foundation Mundo XXI promotes Humania: the first thematic TV channel with a format and contents reflecting a deep commitment to work for the real spreading of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all from the wide perspective of citizens and organizations' participation.