Ramallah - The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) conducted yesterday a workshop for journalists on freedom of opinion and expression and human rights law in Hebron.

MADA’s team started by presenting the center’s work and programs: monitoring of media freedoms violations, legal unit, promotion of freedom of expression, and media development.

The training was led by Jihad Harb who in the first session explained the concepts of human rights and focused on the right to access information and article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which guarantees everyone the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

In the second session, Mr. Harb talked specifically about freedom of opinion and expression according to the Palestinian law and international standards, and highlighted the importance of how the media should apply this law in order to execute their work in a proper way.

This was followed by an open discussion with the participants.

During the workshop, MADA provided the participants with its “Legal Guide for Journalists” to help them know better their rights and obligations. This legal guide was reprinted by MADA with the support of UNESCO. MADA’s media freedoms annual report and other studies were also distributed.

At the end of the workshop, the participants expressed their gratefulness to MADA for holding this workshop, which enhanced their knowledge of the legislation relative to freedom of expression, which is an important issue for their work as journalists. They also expressed their wish to join other trainings that MADA will implement in the future.

This workshop was implemented as part of the Legal Unit project funded by the UNESCO office in Ramallah. Other workshops were conducted in this framework in Ramallah, Nablus and Gaza.