The road to international cooperation in Iraq

Since 2003 media support organisations across the world have been pooling their efforts to improve cooperation and coordination between international, national and local media support organisations. This is not always an easy process. Read about the Iraqi experience here

By Brigitte Sins, IMS programme manager, Iraq

Sulaymanya – The road to setting up cooperation amongst international media development organisations and donors can sometimes be a long one and not without obstacles. This is no different in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. International actors have realised that they have to pave that road together and slowly, but surely, this road is becoming a benefit to the organisations and their national partners.

This is the story of the International Media Development Partnership in Iraq.

International cooperation, also known as the International Partnerships Process, is a key IMS approach to media development and a priority in its programme for media development in Iraq. As IMS discovered, this is also a priority for other international actors. The first international partnerships in media development took place in in 2003 and since 2011 international actors working on media in Iraq and Kurdistan have come together on a regular basis to discuss and share news of their media development projects in the country.

Following the first partnership meeting in Iraq in April, the latest meeting took place on 26 and 27 September 2012 in the Kurdish city of Erbil in Northern Iraq, where international actors came together to update one another and share ideas for cooperation.

The International Partnership on media development in Iraq began by defining what a partnership is: a process of collaboration and cooperation amongst national, regional and/or international organisations engaged in media support and press freedom advocacy activities, seeking to increase the impact of their activities and avoid duplication in a specific country or given theme.

Here are some of the steps taken, considerations and questions asked, key findings and lessons learnt from international partnerships in Iraq and Kurdistan:

Attending the meeting were representatives from international partner organisations such as the Newspaper Publishers Association (UK), Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Free Press Unlimited, UNESCO, Internews, Media in Cooperation and Transition, as well as national Iraqi partners such as Democracy and Human Rights Development Centre, Kurdish Institute for Elections, the Iraqi Network for Social Media, the Independent Media Centre Kurdistan, and the newspaper Awene.com.

For more information about the Iraqi partnership meeting, please contact oha@mediasupport.org