“When funding disappears, voices disappear. And when voices disappear, the truth disappears with them. This is why today’s conference matters. It is not only a space for dialogue — it is a call to action.”

Hamid Obaidi, the founder and executive director of AMSO, explained that the cuts to funding for Afghan media have resulted in many outlets either downsizing or shutting down their operations completely.

Richard Bennet, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, said that donors should give Afghan media stable support. “Because if Afghan journalists lose the ability to report freely, the world will lose the ability to understand Afghanistan at all,” he said.

They discussed discuss strategies for press freedom, journalist safety, international media collaboration and actionable solutions to protect Afghan journalists and ensure continued international coverage for Afghanistan.

This conference brought together around 80 participants, including Afghan and international journalists, media experts, policymakers and human rights advocates.

• Strengthen safety measures and content support for journalists
• Increase support for women in media and women-focused content
• Professional capacity-building and training
• Strong advocacy for human rights
• Efforts toward lifting restrictions limiting free expression

Wahida explained that to keep Afghan journalism alive at the local level, international donors and media partners have to step up and support the sector, especially women journalists. She added that Afghan media inside and outside Afghanistan needs international support for the following purposes:

Lastly, and not the least, a huge thanks to the
@danishmfa.bsky.social and the Digital Democracy Initiative (DDI) and DDI co-funders the @ec.europa.eu
and the government of Norway.

Meanwhile, we’re excited to announce that Good Commons – a collective run by IMS, JamiiAfrica and Splice – has pledged to raise EUR 1.5 million to support communities who are working with technology to serve the public interest. Read all about it here: mediasupport.org/news/new-ple...

In the near future, we will be publishing an initial catalogue of scalable solutions reflecting the crux of the Copenhagen Conference’s many vivid panel discussions and contributions from participants. Watch this space!

The challenges range from mis- and disinformation and weak or absent regulation to the eroding financial foundations of independent public interest media.