"Independent media have expanded and diversified in Afghanistan, though the country remains a precarious and hazardous place for journalists and media organisations. Nine journalists have been killed between January 1, 2007 and the writing of these lines (though one case remains a little unclear), w
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hile abductions, physical violence, threats and intimidation against journalists continue with worrying frequency. While the establishment of a number of print, broadcast and online media outlets creates an atmosphere of hope for the growth of free media in the country, attacks on journalists, death threats and intimidation from armed insurgency owing allegiance to the Taliban continue. Worryingly, there has also been an increasing trend of official and governmental sources, not to mention the various armed groups that continue to have immense influence in the national houses of parliament, to threaten and harass media and media workers. The threats are clearly intended to silence debate about the new Afghanistan, and to stifle the development of an independent and critical media through which such debate would be conducted.
Religious hardliners continue to apply pressure on the Government of President Hamid Karzai to impose or support harsh measures against individuals and institutions who do not bow to fundamentalist ideas about the direction of Afghan society. This is despite the clear guarantee in Afghanistan’s Constitution of the right of citizens to freedom of expression. The most prominent example is that of Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh, a young journalist with the Jahan-e-Naw weekly and a student at Balkh University, Mazar-e-Sharif, who was sentenced to death after a four-minute closed-door hearing in January 2008, on charges of blasphemy." (Page 3)
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"If the ambitious goal of building a global Information Society is to be realised, it is important to track progress against the indicative targets set out in the WSIS final outcome documents. One of the key elements is the bridging of the digital divide. This is a measure of the gap in access to IC
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Ts between different countries, or between different regions within a country. A further element is to examine the progress of the different multi-stakeholder partnerships that have been established during the WSIS process. There is a sense in which the WSIS has created a learning community, in which policy-makers and regulators can learn from best practice experiences of their neighbours and peers in other parts of the world. This Report is intended to provide guidelines for policymakers, in particular in developing countries, in the context of mobilizing resources and developing their own strategies for building the Information Society. In this regard, the Report covers the main elements of the Information Society and provides a new tool for measuring progress towards building it, through the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI)." (Page 11)
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