Picture: CEO of Safe Child Ghana, Eunice at the launch.

Despite efforts towards gender equality, girls still suffer diverse levels of violation and discrimination such as Child, Early and Forced Marriage (CEFM), Defilement and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), just to mention a few.

Safe Child organized the “Affirmative Gender Reporting for Social Justice” campaign for some journalists from Tema and Ashaiman Municipalities in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana.

One reason for this is that media coverage of girls, tend to reinforce perceptions and stereotypes because many journalists do not understand the dynamics of gender-sensitive journalism.

This campaign aims to change existing negative stereotypes and perceptions through information sharing and capacity building on fair and balanced reporting. Focused group discussions and interviews with journalists were carried out on existing trends and challenges in reporting gender-sensitive issues.

The journalists appointed as Gender Ambassadors are to meet bi-monthly to evaluate and deliberate on gender–focused themes and children’s rights with stakeholders.