Iran: Climate Change and Peace Journalism

Leader of JMIC, Elisabeth Eide, and the Afghan delegation.

In end February/early March, Dagny Stuedahl and Elisabeth Eide visited partner institution Faculty of Communication Sciences and Media Studies at Islamic Azad University (IAU) in Teheran. A workshop was held on Media and Climate Change – and on Peace Journalism, with colleagues from Afghanistan. The attendance was good and the discussion lively and creative, demonstrating that media pay too little attention to climate change perils – and to peaceful solutions to conflict.

JMIC’s representatives also visited the newspaper belonging to the IAU, and ISNA (Iranian Students News Agency), and were received by Prof. Hamid Mirzadeh, President of the whole university, which has more than 1.5 million students, at home and abroad.

From the left: Dean Seyed Vahid Aqili, Dagny Stuedahl, Director Haid Mirzadeh, Elisabeth Eide og Terje Skaufjord (accompanying partner).

New book about what cell phones means to refugees

An increasingly important traveling companion for people fleeing is the cell phone. It is a friend who provides many kinds of services during long and dangerous journeys from war and persecution. In these stories, the cell phone forms the core, woven into the larger stories of the lives of the eighteen interviewed. The book shows how important modern technology can be in precarious situations in which people are at the mercy of traffickers, police, border guards and changing weather conditions. Through this, stories about the journey and life in “no man’s land” between absolute insecurity and relative safety, are told. Two of the authors look back on their flight ten years ago when technology played a somewhat smaller role, yet the situations that arose were equally harsh.

Read about the event in Khrono (in Norwegian only)