MIC granted consultative status by UNESCO

The Me­dia In­sti­tute of the Caribbean (MIC) has been grant­ed con­sul­ta­tive sta­tus as a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion in part­ner­ship with the Unit­ed Na­tions Ed­u­ca­tion­al, Sci­en­tif­ic and Cul­tur­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion (UN­ESCO), strength­en­ing its role in pro­mot­ing in­de­pen­dent and sus­tain­able me­dia across the re­gion.

The de­ci­sion was made dur­ing the 225th ses­sion of UN­ESCO’s Ex­ec­u­tive Board in Paris, mark­ing on­ly the sec­ond time an NGO from the Eng­lish- and Dutch-speak­ing Caribbean has re­ceived the dis­tinc­tion.

The sta­tus for­mal­ly recog­nis­es MIC’s con­tri­bu­tion to me­dia de­vel­op­ment, ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion, me­dia and in­for­ma­tion lit­er­a­cy, free­dom of ex­pres­sion and me­dia vi­a­bil­i­ty. It al­so cre­ates op­por­tu­ni­ties for deep­er col­lab­o­ra­tion with UN­ESCO on emerg­ing is­sues af­fect­ing the re­gion­al me­dia land­scape.

UN­ESCO Re­gion­al Di­rec­tor and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Er­ic Falt said MIC’s un­der­stand­ing of the Caribbean me­dia land­scape would help trans­late the recog­ni­tion in­to prac­ti­cal ac­tion.

“ This new sta­tus al­lows us to turn that knowl­edge in­to ac­tion, strength­en­ing me­dia re­silience, in­no­va­tion and ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion across the re­gion,” Falt said.

Es­tab­lished sev­en years ago, MIC has trained more than 800 jour­nal­ists across the Caribbean and pro­vid­ed over 4,000 hours of men­tor­ship.

Its work in­cludes re­search, pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions, pro­fes­sion­al train­ing, work­shops, fel­low­ships and men­tor­ing pro­grammes for jour­nal­ists, me­dia pro­fes­sion­als, ed­u­ca­tors and oth­er stake­hold­ers. The or­gan­i­sa­tion al­so fa­cil­i­tates re­gion­al di­a­logue and knowl­edge-shar­ing among me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers, civ­il so­ci­ety groups and de­vel­op­ment part­ners.

MIC has main­tained reg­u­lar co­op­er­a­tion with UN­ESCO since 2020, work­ing on ini­tia­tives to im­prove ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion and strength­en me­dia ecosys­tems through­out the Caribbean.

Among the joint ini­tia­tives was the re­gion­al project, “Strength­en­ing In­for­ma­tion In­tegri­ty and Me­dia Re­silience in the Caribbean”, along­side ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing pro­grammes, re­search and pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions.

In 2022, MIC con­duct­ed the Me­dia Vi­a­bil­i­ty In­di­ca­tors Study on Ja­maica as a glob­al pi­lot project. In 2025, it al­so re­leased “Dis­as­ters and Crises in the Caribbean Re­gion: A Re­view of Ex­pe­ri­ences in Sev­en Coun­tries”, with sup­port from UN­ESCO.

MIC pres­i­dent Ki­ran Ma­haraj said the recog­ni­tion pre­sent­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to am­pli­fy Caribbean per­spec­tives in in­ter­na­tion­al dis­cus­sions about the fu­ture of me­dia.

She said the or­gan­i­sa­tion could con­tribute re­gion­al ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ence to press­ing is­sues, in­clud­ing in­for­ma­tion in­tegri­ty, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, me­dia vi­a­bil­i­ty and dis­as­ter re­silience.

The new sta­tus is ex­pect­ed to deep­en co­op­er­a­tion be­tween MIC and UN­ESCO as both or­gan­i­sa­tions pur­sue stronger, more re­silient me­dia sys­tems and im­proved ac­cess to re­li­able in­for­ma­tion across the Caribbean.