President of the High Authority for Audiovisual Communication Ms. Latifa Akharbach received, Wednesday December 20^th, 2018, in the headquarters of the institution, a delegation representing Ms. Tindayee Achium Special UN Rapporteur on Contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

The Director General of the institution Mr. Benaissa Asloune and a number of directors were all present in this meeting that falls under the schedule of the UN official visit to Morocco, from December 13^th to 21^st, 2018 to evaluate the legal, political, and institutional framework set to fight all forms of discrimination and stigmatization.

During this meeting, the two parts exchanged information about the activities and programs set by the Moroccan regulator to determine media practices and discourse that might include racial, ethnic, religious or sexual discrimination. Furthermore, the Moroccan audiovisual representation of linguistic diversity was also included in these discussions.

During this event, the

President of the HACA brought to the attention of the UN delegation all the legal framework  progression regarding audiovisual communication in Morocco, especially in terms of the cumulative experience and added value of the different reforms: The latest bill of the 2016 audiovisual communication law, the amendment of the HACA status, the changes introduced to the operators specifications, etc. Ms. Akharbach also shed light on the necessity of respecting diversity in media being an notion that goes beyond pluralism of opinions to englobe plurality of actors, gender equity, rights of disabled people, regional equilibrium, linguistic diversity, etc.

On this regard, President of the HACA also pointed out the HACA’s internal and institutional appropriation of the notion of diversity throughout the continuous deployed efforts to reinforce the effectivity of the legal corpus and empower the methodological reflections on this issue. The establishment of the diversity observatory and the conception of a diversity barometer with the necessary operational tools (IT system, etc.) illustrate the improvements made by the regulator who also created numerous work groups dedicated to the different aspects of the issue of pluralism, and the fight against stereotypes and discriminations.

This meeting was an opportunity to highlight the international commitment of the HACA, as an active member in different regulation networks: ACRAN (Africa), RIRM (Mediterranean countries), REFRAM (French speaking countries), etc. Moreover, President of the HACA recalled the organization, on December 10^th , of an international workshop gathering African and Mediterranean regulators for the promotion of the best media practices in migration coverage, in parallel with the UN Conference on migration in Marrakech.