27 Sep 2019 WACC launches Many Voices One World initiative

WACC has launched Many Voices One World –  the new online home for the Centre for Communication Rights – as a multi-media website dedicated to supporting vibrant citizen media, democratic communication ecosystems and open access to information and knowledge.

The new website, mvow.org, was launched on the last day of WACC’s Board of Directors meeting in London, U.K., September 24-26.

The name of the website is inspired by UNESCO’s MacBride Report, Many Voices, One World: Towards a new, more just and more efficient world information and communication order, which highlighted the critical relationship between democratic media systems and civil society participation.

In launching the initiative, WACC President Embert Charles, noted that “The MacBride report was talking about some fundamental challenges to the establishment. It was talking about issues of justice in communications, fundamental philosophy about respecting indigenous communities to use their languages, it was talking about public service broadcasting.”

Photo: Greg Brekke 

Reflecting on global telecommunications development while he was student , Charles said he noticed at the time that “There was stark similarities between WACC and this new world information and communication order document, and it was natural that WACC embraced it and took that work a bit forward, because there was no major funding from government and private sector.”

Reflecting on the name WACC General Secretary Philip Lee said, “It’s symbolic of what we are about. The world is diverse, with many ways of looking at issues, it has many voices, many ideologies and cultural inflections. But as we are learning with the climate crisis we are living in one world and we have to address problems collectively and from a point of view of justice, fairness and balance.”

The Many Voices One World website shows projects that have been supported in recent years, filtered by the Sustainable Development Goals with which each initiative aligns. The resources previously available through the Centre for Communication Rights are now accessed in the knowledge sharing area along with videos which illustrate how civil society organizations advance the SDGs by tacking key communication-related development challenges in their countries. The Research and Advocacy section features information about the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) and Migration and Communication.

Photo: Greg Brekke

Charles stressed, “This goes beyond a website, but launches a foundation that we hope attracts resources to fund the work going forward.”

“This project is really about fostering the environment to continue the work that MacBride started in 1980,” stated Charles. “There is still a lot of work to be done. Communications informs justice and challenges injustice. Whichever side you are on, communications has a role.”

Image above: Logo of Many Voices One World, mvow.org, which aims to support vibrant citizen media, democratic communication ecosystems, and open access to information and knowledge.