Delegates from the International Association of Press Clubs welcomed press clubs from African, Caribbean and Pacific countries for the first time during the IAPC General Assembly on June 2.
During the annual meeting in Brussels, the group released a statement expressing solidarity with press clubs in “countries of those regions who face serious safety challenges, including killings, arbitrary arrests and other various forms of attacks and offer support for their pursuit of press freedom.”The IAPC expresssed support for the creation of an independent African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Press Clubs Federation to bolster professional standards and ethics in journalism “for the benefit of media organisations and the public they inform.”
The group offered the ACP group temporary observer status with the IAPC while the parties work out a more permanent arrangement.
“In the interim we invite those individual press clubs which are members of the ACP Press Club Federation and wish to join the IAPC to apply for membership directly to the Secretary General of IAPC so that their individual applications can be considered by the current member Press Clubs at forthcoming meeting.” the IAPC wrote in a statement.
The ACP Press Clubs Federation was founded in October 2016 at a congress in in Kigali, Rwanda. The IAPC and the ACP-PCF convened in November 2017 to discuss membership arrangements.
You can read the full statement on the IAPC website here.