DUSHANBE, March 12, 2010, Asia-Plus  -- Organized by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) Office in Dushanbe in cooperation with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a two-day workshop for Tajik journalists, entitled “Human Rights Journalism,” has opened in Dushanbe today.

According to the IWPR Dushanbe Office, the workshop is part of the project, Protection and Human Rights Education through Media in Central Asia, which is implemented by IWPR under the financial support of European Union.

The main objective of the workshop is in training journalists in features of coverage of the human rights issues in media, acquainting them with some mechanisms of protection human rights as well as promoting raising efficiency of the coverage of problems connected with violation of human rights and raising public awareness of human rights issues, the source said.

Vyacheslav Abramov, director of Kazakhstan’s international journalism center MediaNET also editor of the Voice of Freedom Central Asia website, is conducting the training.

IWPR builds democracy at the frontlines of conflict and change through the power of professional journalism.  IWPR programs provide intensive hands-on training, extensive reporting and publishing, and ambitious initiatives to build the capacity of local media. Supporting peace-building, development and the rule of law, IWPR gives responsible local media a voice.  The Institute has grown substantially since its inception in the early 1990s.  IWPR now exists as an international network for media development, with not-for-profit divisions in Europe, the US and Africa supporting training and capacity-building programs for local journalism, with field programs in more than two dozen countries.

The Friedrich Ebert Foundation (German: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung or FES) is the largest and oldest of the German party-associated foundations. It is headquartered in Bonn and has an office in Berlin.  It is Germany''s oldest organization to promote students of outstanding intellectual abilities and personality.  Today, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation''s main goals are to promote political and societal education of people from all walks of life in the spirit of democracy and pluralism, to enable able young people the opportunity to study and do research through grants, and to work toward international understanding and cooperation.