Metro Center for Defending Journalists’ Rights, in coordination with the Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) sets up a legal observatory team of journalistic work and the law of the right to access information. It will also publish its annual report in three languages at the beginning of next year. 

On Thursday (September 26, 2013), 21 journalists and the representative of NPA attended a workshop in the office of Hawlati Newspaper to set up a team to record violations against freedom of expression and journalists in Kurdistan region. 

The head of Metro projects, Awat Ali, gave a speech at the beginning of the workshop, saying that the project began in May and it will continue until the end of the year.  

He also said, "the project consists of two workshops in Kurdistan Region and Baghdad, aiming to set up a violation registration team. 

As part of the project, Metro Center organizes two seminars, one in Kurdistan Region to discuss the law of the right to access information and one in Baghdad to discuss the draft law of the right to access information in Iraq. It will issue a monthly publication called Metro Media as well.  

Awat Ali Said: "your participation in this workshop aims to set up the team which is planned to register all violations against journalists of Kurdistan Region by the end of this year. A team will also be set up for the same purpose in other parts of Iraq.” 

He went saying: the annual report of 2013 will be published in a book in Kurdish, Arabic, and English. 

Metro Center announced in the workshop that today the website of Metro Center will launch in the three languages of Kurdish, Arabic and English. 

Rana Hamid, the project manager of NPA said, ”this project is carried out across Iraq with the support of our organization NPA, aiming to broaden the scope of freedom of expression in Kurdistan Region and Iraq.” 

Metro Center also carried out a project in cooperation with NPA in 2012. The project succeeded and the center decided to continue the project and broaden it to include all Iraq. 

Roman Zagros was the trainer of the workshop.