JIFORM lauds IOM, recommends migration charter for media – ITREALMS

ITREALMS: 

The Journalists International Forum for Migration (JIFORM), has commended the initiative of International Organization for Migration (IOM) for rallying round journalists across the globe to produce a charter for the effective coverage of migration matters, reports ITREALMS.

The document, he also said, serves as guide for reportage of migrants and policy formulations by other people cum organisation working on principles on same interest.

A press statement issued in Tunis on Thursday by President of JIFORM, Ajibola Abayomi, at the end of a two-day summit in Tunisia where the Arabic version of the charter was launched, praised IOM for continued interest in empowering journalists to tell the unadulterated story of migrants.

“JIFORM members across the world have endorsed the charterer and we shall further do a review on it to improving the content,” he said.

Ajibola also urged media across the continents to use the charter for better and improved coverage of migration activities by standing for the truth and professional presentation of facts with the right usage of terminologies.

“We join IOM to say that never again must migrants be referred to as ‘illegal migrant’ but instead irregular migrant, journalists should be conscious not to blame migrants for their situations with unacceptable vocabularies emanating from the news rooms.

“We must be ready to see migrants as economic developers because of their potentials. A lot of statistics had proved their economic relevance. Henceforth our headlines must be friendly and not alarming such that we must reflect the root cause of displacement of people instead of the actions in response to that.

“All the law enforcing agents particularly the immigration officers must be engaged to safe guard the interest of migrants because migration is not a crime.

“The Nigeria example is there for all to copy where the government had instead of deporting all irregular migrants had given opportunity for them to regularise the their status through e-migrant registration,” he said.



“On this note, JIFORM, hereby recommend the content of charter as produced by Journalists and other relevant agencies including our organisation to all parties to improve migration reportage across the globe,” he concluded.

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