The mass media has a very important role in influencing public opinion and stakeholders, especially in promoting public health rights at large to improve the quality of public policies, including policies to fulfill Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). But in reality, the mass media is not always interested and trained to cover these issues.
IPAS Indonesia Foundation in collaboration with Rutgers Indonesia held a media training to increase understanding and sensitivity to SRHR issues. The three-day event on August 20-22 was also a pre-event for the International Conference in Family Planning of Indonesia and Reproductive Health (ICIFPRH) 2022. A total of 15 participants from national, local and community media participated in the event held at Sahid Raya Hotel and Convention Yogyakarta.
The issues of SRHR and Gender-Based and Sexual Violence (GBV) are still taboo in society and tend to be associated with negative views, so they are often overlooked. Even though education related to this issue is important for public consumption. This is exacerbated by news coverage in the mass media that is often reported inaccurately and interprets norms and values incorrectly. In some news reports, mass media are still often found using discriminatory diction, cornering victims, and not having a gender justice perspective, which in turn further strengthens ignorance in society. These problems prompted IPAS Foundation and Rutgers Indonesia to organize media training on SRHR and KGBS issues.
The training activities began with a dinner event on August 19, 2022 at Kejawa Resto Yogyakarta. This activity aims to get to know each other between participants and organizers, participants and participants, and the ICIFPRH 2022 committee. On that occasion, the ICIFPRH committee, represented by Prof. Siswanto Agus Wilopo, gave a glimpse of the conference, the concept of family planning, contraception, and reproductive health.
This media training provided an opportunity for participants to get to know SRHR issues thoroughly. Various resource persons from academia, researchers, empowerment practitioners, and advocates for violence cases were present to convey information about SRHR and KGBS in accordance with their respective fields. Not only that, participants also received capacity building for coverage and a code of ethics for victim-friendly coverage from media practitioners.
After attending the 3-day training, participants had the opportunity to attend the ICIFPRH 2022 conference. On this occasion, participants can gain as much information as possible and meet trusted resource persons in the field of SRHR. The organizers facilitated participants with press conferences every day.
In addition, participants were also free to delve deeper into the issue focus of SRHR by visiting the plenary forum or satellite sessions at the conference. The result of the training and conference was the publication of more than 50 articles written by participants in their respective media. Some of the issues that became the focus of the news included family planning, access to contraception, the dangers of disseminating information on cases of violence for victims, adolescent sexual health education, sexual violence, child marriage, fulfilling comprehensive services for rape victims, preventing unwanted pregnancies due to rape, and criminalizing victims.
Participants hoped that this kind of collaboration between media and civil society organizations would continue. In fact, participants also requested to conduct in-depth coverage collaboratively. IPAS Foundation will always support collaborative steps to realize the fulfillment of SRHR for women and girls in Indonesia. (*)
