The right to life is the most fundamental human right. 

Journalists and other media workers around the world are often threatened because of their work – and some pay with their lives.

Safety for media workers has been a priority for the UN for a long time – resolutions and an action plan have been made. 

Teachers at OsloMet have worked with safety for many years, for example in the research group “Media, War and conflict”.

JMIC has been conducting safety training since 2017 – with the first course for journalism students at Makerere University in Uganda. 

Our head coach is Abeer Saady from Egypt, who first trained photojournalism students from Bangladesh, Egypt and Norway in Cairo in 2013. 

She has led physical training at partner universities in Uganda, Tunisia, Pakistan, Indonesia and Ethiopia – often also with local or international teachers. 

In the autumn of 2019, she developed the idea of webinars – safety training on Internet – a few months before the pandemic. 

While the world was more or less shut down in 2020, she held digital safety courses in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Philippines, Palestine and Uganda. 

The target groups were students of journalism and photojournalism, teachers and researchers and some practicing journalists. 

2021 starts with a pandemic – and JMIC continues the digital training in safety for students and journalists in countries in the south.