Media in Support of Sustainable Development and a Culture of Peace: Media Literacies for Empowering Females and Reducing Gender Inequalities

The conference called the "Global Media Forum: The role of media in realizing the future we want for all" was hosted by the Government of Indonesia in 2014.1 It was organized by UNESCO and the Ministry of Communication and Information in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Culture in Bali, Indonesia, from 25 August to 28 August 2014. The event brought together journalists, media experts and young communicators from South East Asia and around the world, as a contribution to the ongoing international debate about the importance of media and information and communication technologies for peace and sustainable development. The goal was to advance participants' understanding of how a free, pluralistic and independent media can contribute. This was in the context of efforts to have media issues being recognised in the UN debates about the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The output of the Global Media Forum was called the Bali Road Map, a key document that is included at the end of this book. Reproducing some of the presentations at the Global Media Forum in this publication is a way to take the Bali Road Map forward. As the world marks 3 May 2015 as World Press Freedom Day, this collection presents a range of thinking about what a free media does - and what it can do. This is an issue important to the UN's SDGs, but it has a much wider resonance - for national governments, media actors, civil society, Internet intermediaries, regional organisations, etc.