Event Coverage Highlight
Boosting Trans-Atlantic Ties at IAPC Meeting in Geneva
Patricia Kranz and Jonathan Kapstein of Press Club Brussels Europe.
OPC Executive Director Patricia Kranz and longtime OPC member Jonathan Kapstein participated in the 2016 General Assembly of the International Association of Press Clubs (IAPC) in Geneva, Switzerland in late May. Kapstein is a founding member of the Brussels Press Club Europe, which is less than six years old, and the club’s current president.
OPC members are welcome to visit the Brussels Press Club or any of the more than 40 IAPC member clubs when traveling abroad. Most are in Europe and Asia, but the IAPC has a grant from the European Union to help develop and support press clubs in Africa. Next spring the association will hold a conference in Kigali, Rwanda to promote these efforts. At this year’s meeting, Press Club Belarus was approved as a new member. For a complete list of clubs were OPC members are welcome, click here.
The OPC is the only club based in North America that is a member of the IAPC. Delegates in Geneva expressed a strong desire to promote trans-Atlantic ties between press clubs, and approved a motion to hold a conference in New York or another American city in 2019 to network with US and Canadian press clubs.
From left: Guy Mettan of the Geneva Press Club, Martyn Bond of the London Press Club and Jonathan Kapstein.
Also in the works is the second International Freedom of the Press Conference to be held in May 2017, hosted by the Jerusalem Press Club under the auspices of the IAPC.
The association also sponsors a Freedom of Speech award every year, which in 2015 was presented to Al Jazeera journalists Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, who had been imprisoned in Egypt.
Guy Mettan of the Geneva Press Club hosted the gathering. The highlight was lunch at the United Nations Restaurant hosted by Michael Moeller, director general of the UN Office in Geneva, followed by a tour of the Palais des Nations.
