ISLAMABAD - World Radio day 2014 is to mark celebration of ‘Radio’ as a medium and to improve international cooperation between broadcasters today across the globe including Pakistan.
This day is to encourage major networks and community radio alike to promote access to information, freedom of expression and gender equality over the airwaves.
As radio continues to evolve in the digital age, it remains the medium that reaches the widest audience worldwide.
Radio is unique in its ability to reach the widest audience of any form of mass media; however, around one billion people still do not have access to this powerful tool.
To address this disparity and help promote radio across cultures and communities, UNESCO created World Radio Day, now in its third year.
The day chosen to mark the occasion, 13 February, is significant in that it was on this day in 1946 that United Nations Radio was created.
Radio is particularly well suited to reaching remote areas, as well as vulnerable populations including youth, women, the poor, the disabled and the illiterate.
In addition to reaching these populations, radio also plays an important role in emergency communication and disaster relief.  By celebrating World Radio Day, UNESCO hopes to educate the public about this important medium and improve international cooperation between broadcasters.
Gender equality is a subtheme for this year’s World Radio Day, with goals of sensitizing radio station owners, executives, journalists and governments to develop gender related policies and strategies for radio; eliminating stereotypes and promoting multidimensional portrayal in radio; building radio skills for youth radio production, with a focus on girls as producers, hosts, reporters; and promoting the safety of women radio journalists.
Encouraging and promoting the participation of women in radio not only helps bridge the gender divide and work toward gender equal media, but it also empowers women to take on major roles in their communities and express themselves freely. In this way, radio becomes more than just a conduit for delivering news and entertainment © it plays a powerful role in the development of individuals within communities.
Despite being over 100 years old, the radio is one of the most popular ways to exchange information, provide social interchange, and educate people all over the world.
It has been used to help people, including youth, to engage in discussions on topics that affect them. It can save lives during natural or human made disasters and it gives journalists a platform to report facts and tell their stories.