In­ter­na­tion­al Press In­sti­tute (IPI) ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Al­i­son McKen­zie is set to lead a six-par­ty del­e­ga­tion to six Caribbean coun­tries from April 15-May 6 as part of the in­sti­tute's re­gion­al cam­paign for the re­peal of crim­i­nal-defama­tion laws.

John Year­wood, Mi­a­mi Her­ald's na­tion­al and world ed­i­tor and pres­i­dent of IPI's North Amer­i­can Na­tion­al Com­mit­tee; Wes­ley Gib­bings, pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Me­dia Work­ers (ACM); and Ki­ran Ma­haraj, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, are among those sched­uled to be a part of the del­e­ga­tion.The in­sti­tute will vis­it T&T, Guyana, Suri­name, Cu­ra­cao, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da.

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the in­sti­tute said it would seek to win sup­port from jour­nal­ists, ed­i­tors, civ­il-so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions and gov­ern­men­tal and non-gov­ern­men­tal of­fi­cials for the re­peal of crim­i­nal defama­tion and in­sult laws, as well as dis­cuss pro­tec­tion for jour­nal­ists in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Guyana and Suri­name.In the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, the in­sti­tute plans to fol­low up on its vis­it last year and "con­grat­u­late gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials on re­mov­ing prison penal­ties for defama­tion from the draft pe­nal code."

It al­so plans to ad­vise on spe­cif­ic leg­is­la­tion which reg­u­lates press ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try and "which main­tains crim­i­nal pun­ish­ments for defama­tion and in­sult."In T&T, "the del­e­ga­tion will en­cour­age fur­ther progress on ef­forts to mod­ernise the coun­try's defama­tion law, as well as con­sol­i­date part­ner­ships, in­clud­ing train­ing ini­tia­tives, with both the Trinida­di­an gov­ern­ment and na­tion­al me­dia hous­es that be­gan with IPI's 2012 World Con­gress in Port-of-Spain," the re­lease said.

The in­sti­tute, dur­ing its vis­it, will al­so seek sup­port for the De­c­la­ra­tion of Port-of-Spain, which calls for the abo­li­tion of "in­sult laws" and crim­i­nal defama­tion leg­is­la­tion.Train­ing work­shops will be held in Guyana and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic on jour­nal­is­tic ethics as well as in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism. On May 3, McKen­zie, at the in­vi­ta­tion of the Cu­ra­cao Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for UN­ESCO, will de­liv­er re­marks on crim­i­nal defama­tion and jour­nal­ists' safe­ty in ob­ser­vance of World Press Free­dom Day in Willem­stad, Cu­ra­cao.

In the re­lease, McKen­zie was quot­ed as say­ing: "IPI and ACM look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing their im­por­tant ad­vo­ca­cy work on the is­sue of crim­i­nal defama­tion in the Caribbean. While press free­dom is al­ready rel­a­tive­ly strong in many Caribbean states, we be­lieve that the re­peal of crim­i­nal defama­tion is crit­i­cal to en­sur­ing that no jour­nal­ist is pres­sured to self-cen­sor, or faces the threat of prison for do­ing his or her job."