[Editor's Note: The founding executive director of the International Women's Tribune Centre (IWTC), Anne Walker was femLINKPACIFIC's guest speaker in a dialogue with media practioners in Suva, Fiji last 18 September 2008. This article was written by Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls, femLINKPACIFIC coordinator and Isis International board member.]

"I want the women in the Pacific to know their voices are being heard"

That was the affirmation from the former Executive Director of the International Women's Tribune Centre in New York, Dr. Anne S. Walker, as she spoke to rural and regional women's media correspondents at femLINKPACIFIC's 2nd Annual Programme Partners Review and Planning Meeting, held at the femLINK Community Media Centre in Suva.

She was referring to the links between local and national women's media networks, working in collaboration at regional and international levels to advance women's human rights. Highlighting the role and contribution of global women's media networks, Walker noted that women's information and media networks have been responsible for sharing information from global and regional conferences to women at the community level, since 1975, when the first UN Conference on Women was held in Mexico: "For the past 33 years, international, regional and national women's media networks have worked to build a truly global women's movement. With a solid basis of leadership and linkages built from the work of more traditional international membership organisations such the World YWCA, women have set up and expanded networks of communications and information that stretch into the farthest reaches of the world."

Women's media networks, she noted, also negotiated for the broadening of Section J of the Beijing Platform for Action, to reflect the opportunity for women to be recognized as producers of their own media forms. This brought about the inclusion of the Strategic Objective in Section J which recognises the need to increase the participation and access of women to expression and decision-making in and through the media and new technologies of communication.

As Executive Director of the International Women's Tribune Centre (IWTC) in New York for 26 years (1976-2002), Anne worked with women worldwide on behalf of women's human rights and gender equity at all levels of society. During that time, she participated as an activist and organiser in the four UN world conferences on women and NGO Forums in Mexico City (1975), Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985) and Beijing (1995). One of the founders of IWTC, she has expertise and experience in global information networking, educational and training materials design and development, community organising, and women and development issues at both policy and practical levels.

Anne was part of an NGO Working Group that advocated and lobbied for Security Council resolution 1325: Women, Peace and Security, and has actively worked for the implementation of this resolution in the years since it's adoption by the SC in October 2000.

As part of her work at IWTC, Anne undertook low-cost media and appropriate technology workshops in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean. A feminist activist, artist, photographer and writer, she has focused much of her time in recent years on the development of local content/language ICT programmes for rural women who live in close proximity to rural telecentres in Africa.

In a pilot project that introduces computer technology to illiterate rural women in Uganda, Anne worked with the women themselves at Nakaseke Telecentre in the development of a CD-ROM programme titled "Ideas for Making Money". The programme uses a "point and click" highly visual, local language audio interface, and has been loaded onto servers at rural telecentres in Uganda. It represents the first user-friendly, local language ICT programme for rural illiterate women ever produced.

Walker will also be keynote speaker at femLINKPACIFIC's Peace Talks reception on Friday 19 September: "This event is also our commemoration of the International Day of Peace, which will be commemorated globally on Sunday 21 September and we are putting the focus on the role of women's media advocacy, in particular, to promote women's participation in all aspects of peacebuilding and the implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1325," says femLINKPACIFIC's Coordinator, Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls.

Meanwhile, community radio broadcast volunteers, rural correspondents and focal points of femLINKPACIFIC's partner organisations from Labasa, Nausori, Nadi, and Ba and Regional Partners from Bougainville, Solomon Islands and Tonga. Partners have also called for the strengthening of femLINKPACIFIC's rural and regional women's media network as a critical information and communication link between rural women and policy makers and the mainstream media. It was also unanimously agreed that more young women need to be involved and have their stories told, while the network will also work to maintain and strengthen partnerships with other stakeholders such as town councils, the National Council of Women, Soqosoqo Vakamarama, Tikina, Provincial and District Advisory Councils, as well as other NGOs, such as the Pacific Centre for Peacebuilding.

Tomorrow, the women's media network members will continue to undertake media skills training and participate in the launch of the extended broadcast hours of femLINKPACIFIC's Women's Weekend Community Radio Broadcasts on femTALK 89.2FM, femLINKPACIFIC's mobile women's community radio station.