The National Union of Somalia Journalists (NUSOJ) and the Finnish Foundation for Media and Development (VIKES) today launched a three-day labour rights training for 30 Somali journalists in Mogadishu, the first in the country, funded by the European Union.
The training is held at the Jazeera Palace Hotel in Mogadishu and attended by journalists from both private and public media including women journalists who as their male counterparts continue to face huge challenges including unequal labour rights.
The labour rights training is aimed at equipping Somali journalists with knowleddge on labour rights which is often overlooked by employers due to lack of strong labour right laws in the country. The journalists will also be learning how to organize themselves, negotiate with their employers and also how to lawfully agitate for their rights with a special briefing session on the labour rights status of Somalia women journalists.
The training was officially launched by the Director General of the Ministry of Information Abdirahman Yusuf Al-Adala and attended by Mohamed Ibrahim Moalimuu NUSOJ Secretary General and Juha Rekola, Union of Journalists in Finland who is also the lead labour rights trainer together with Peik Johansson from VIKES
“We welcome such training opportunities for our media and the Ministry of information continues to collaborate with all partners who offer such opportunities to our media. We really appreciate NUSOJ and VIKES for training the journalists and in particular the European Union for their kind support to the Somali media. The labour rights training the journalists will receive in the next 3 days is the first training on labour rights in Somalia and is very important and I urge the participants to take advantage of this opportunity,” Abdirahaman Yusuf Al-Adala, Director General of the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism said in his opening remarks.
Peik Johansson, VIKES Program Manager said the Finnish media organization and NUSOJ have been working together in Somalia since 2014 and have organized trainings on journalism skills and media ethics across the country reaching almost 700 Somali journalists. “But in order to introduce more ethical and unbiased reporting in Somalia, we believe that journalists should know their rights, be more united and in a better position to ask for fair payment from their employers as well as otherwise decent terms of employment.”
NUSOJ Secretary General Moalimuu said the union hopes to extend the labour rights training to other parts of Somalia to ensure all journalists understand their labour rights. “NUSOJ and VIKES will continue to provide such specialized trainings in order to capacitated journalists and prepare them well for the market. We have also invited media owners in order to have open and frank discussion with them about the labour rights for journalists in a bid to help improve journalist’s working conditions across the country,” Moalimuu added.
