Communication must be recognized not merely as a tool for development, but as a human right that is central to human dignity, agency, and justice, WACC General Secretary Philip Lee told participants at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)+20 High-Level Event on Wednesday. Despite...
By Philip Lee, WACC general secretaryWinding up the WSIS+20 Forum High-Level Event (Geneva, May 27–31), International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin said, “This week has shown, with the AI for Good Global Summit happening in parallel, that we are well on our way towards...
An entrenched digital colonialism is shrinking public space and violating communication rights. The global ecumenical movement is called to respond with digital justice, WACC General Secretary Philip Lee told communicators from the Council for World Mission (CWM) gathered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 16–18 January. Our...
Against the backdrop of the horrific Israel-Hamas conflict, WACC partner the CDAC Network invited reflection on the theme “Communication in conflict: can we safeguard information in the age of AI?” with an inspiring public forum on 15 November in London.The gathering spotlighted the need for...
WACC emphasized the vital link between communication rights and pressing issues such as climate justice, migrants’ rights, gender equality, freedom of expression, and media viability at the annual conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) in Lyon, France, last week. The event...
Power is at play when it comes to the question of whose stories, both individual and collective, are preserved as public memory, says Editor Philip Lee in “Archival Justice: Unfinished Business,” the latest issue of Media Development. In his editorial Lee notes that “what is archived...
The WACC ship has set a course for the future and that is to focus on building a transformative movement that helps shape government policies and actions “founded on human dignity, human rights, and democratic principles,” General Secretary Philip Lee told the organization’s Board of...
If communication rights advocates want to use statements to drive social change, they need to be clear about their motivations and build coalitions that include grassroots voices, panelists concluded at the WACC event “From Words to Action: Statements on Communication for a Better Future” on...
The WACC Board of Directors has appointed Juha Rajamäki, a TV journalist and producer from Finland, as treasurer of the global association for communication rights for the time period 2023–2027. He succeeds Stephen Brown, whose term comes to an end on May 30.A former president...
The Digital Democracy Initiative (DDI) was launched on 28 March with a virtual event that explored how to amplify the voice of civil society in the digital age. The DDI takes up the pledge of the Danish-led Tech for Democracy initiative “to make digital technologies work...