Bernama given trust to design OIC media agency logo

Bernama has been given the trust to design the logo for the newly-rejuvenated Union of News Agencies (UNA), the media arm of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

A senior UNA official Akram Ameen, who is the executive assistant to the Director-General, had mentioned about the possibility during his meeting with Bernama senior editors at Wisma Bernama last week.

The move to rename the 45 year-old International Islamic News Agency (IINA) into UNA was approved at its fifth General Assembly and Executive Council meeting in Jeddah recently.

The transformation was regarded as a landmark achievement in the media activities of OIC, which groups 56 Muslim states.

The General Assembly also elected Bernama into the executive council along with news agencies from the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Djibouti, Gambia, Benin, Ivory Coast, Pakistan and Azerbaijan  as well as permanent members -- Saudi Arabia, Palestine and the OIC.

The council also endorsed the appointment of Issa Khaireh Robleh, a Djiboutian, as the UNA Director-General for a four-year term.

In an interview with Saudi Gazette, Robleh said the Jeddah-based UNA will better serve the interests of Muslims worldwide.

“The agency will strive to highlight the challenges faced by Muslims in the intellectual, media, social and economic spheres by pinpointing remedial measures,” he said.

He said UNA would play the dual role of a news agency and an umbrella body of all official news agencies of member states.

“We will focus on publishing special reports about various communities in Muslim countries as well as Muslim minorities in non-Muslim countries, with an emphasis on the unique features and characteristics of their cultures, heritage and traditions, in addition to the successful experiments by some countries like Saudi Arabia in combating terrorism and extremism,” he said.

During the interview, he highlighted the enhanced role of UNA in the digital world where Islam and Muslims were more vulnerable to challenges and threats.

“In the changed scenario, UNA’s focus will be on presenting the true image of Islam and countering the smear campaign against Islam in an effective and comprehensive manner,” he said while identifying terrorism and Islamophobia as the major challenges facing the Muslim Ummah.

“In this digital age, terrorism has always been wrongly linked to Islam. In fact, only a very few number of Muslims deviated into the path of terrorism and extremism, while Islam has nothing to do with them because it never allows inflicting harm on anyone,” Robleh said.

Referring to the poor state of Islamic media on the African continent, he said one of UNA’s major priorities was to activate the media work in Africa.

“The Conference of Islamic Information Ministers held in Jeddah in November 2016 decided to support a special media program for Africa. Most of the African people are French speaking and they sometimes receive news from sources hostile to Islam and hence it is vital for us to support the news agencies of OIC member states in Africa,” he added.

Robleh also hinted at the road map for enhanced and intensified cooperation and coordination with the news agencies of OIC member states.

“Several chiefs of news agencies from OIC states attended the General Assembly. Most of them expressed their willingness to extend cooperation,” he said.