10 women journalists coming from Algeria, Egypt, Spain, France, Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Turkey will discuss on “women visibility and representation in the medias”.

How active are the women in the media? How are women depicted in the Media today? Why their role is so little enhanced? 10 Mediterranean journalists will address these issues. Lastly, they will reflect on the following theme: “How can we fight back prejudices that are publicised by mainstream medias?”

The day before, the women network will join for an Editorial meeting in order to launch a series of features on young women that will be jointly published by the 4 media partners, babelmed, Afkar/ideas from Barcelona, Bianet from Istanbul and L’Orient le Jour from Beirut.

Babelmed.net is the leading independent website on Mediterranean issues. It is free, totally independent and put together by a multicultural network of 16 professional journalists from 14 Mediterranean countries. The website is published in 3 langages : French, English and Arabic.

Akfar/ ideas is the monthly newspaper provided by IEMED, deeply involved in Euro-Mediterranean cultural exchanges, especially on feminine issues.
The magazine deals with the main Mediterranean subjects and always pays attention on  Mediterranean women issues.

The Bianet website provides news about social, political and cultural issues in Turkey focused especially on human rights and women. It becames, in few years, a mediatic reference, an independent information source for the main Turkish debates such as the Turkey adhesion to the European Union.

L’Orient Le jour is a lebanese daily newspaper born in the 1st September 1970 from the fusion of two papers : “L’Orient” (founded in Beyrouth in 1923, by Gabriel Khabbaz and Georges Naccache) and “Le Jour” (founded in 1935, by Michel Chiha). This paper publishes the greastests intellectuals and journalists of the modern Lebanon.

After Barcelona?
Babelmed readers will be able to read the cycle of features entitled “Women, to be 20 years old in the Mediterranean” and produced by the women network.
After the completion of the features, a public meeting will be organised in Rome in April to present the results of the project. It will deal with the theme: “Mediterranean women in situation of conflicts”.

The journalists network, from left to right :

Sahar Al-Attar (Lebanon) Journalist for the Turkish newspaper “L’orient Le jour”.
Naela Husni Ali Khalil (Palestine) Journalist for the Palestinian newspaper “Al-Ayyam”.
Stefanella Campana (Italy) Media responsible for the Turin Institute «Paralleli, Euro-Mediterranean of the Northern west Institute ».
Catherine Cornet (Italy) Journalist and Babelmed Network Co-ordinator.
Nathalie Galesne (Italy-France) Chief editor of Babelmed.
Ghania Khelifi (Algeria) Journalist for the daily newspaper “Le midi”.
Nadia Khoury-Dagher (France) Free Lance journalist for several magazine such as “Le Monde 2”, “Elle” or “Babelmed.net”.
Nadire Mater (Turkey) Journalist, currently Advisor of the “Journalism for rights & Rights for journalists” project.
Eman Shaban Mohammad Morsi (Egypt) Free-lance journalist and Teaching Assistant at Cairo University.
Kenza Sefrioui (Morroco) Journalist for the Moroccan paper «Journal Hebdomadaire».
Lurdes Vidal (Spain) Chief editor of Afkar Ideas.

The event and the cycle of features have received the support of the Anna Lindh Foundation, the European Institute of the Mediterranean and the Friederich Ebert Stiftung. It is part of the 1001 actions campaign for the dialogue: www.1001actions.org/