Libera Mondo is a young organization. At this stage, our work is the creation and preparation of Meridian 21 - an independent international newspaper, and the first thing we are building.
We begin with a newspaper because the peoples and the issues we exist to serve are not, for the most part, short of advocates. They are short of attention. The reporting that would make their situation known is not being done, or not being read. A serious, independent publication that covers them properly - and covers them as news, not as a cause - is the most useful thing we can build first.
What Meridian 21 is
Meridian 21 rests on a few commitments that do not bend.
- Independent. It accepts no funding tied to editorial or programmatic control, from any source, at any size. Its judgments answer to the evidence and to its own editorial standards - not to a donor, a government, or a faction.
- Non-partisan. It aligns with no party, country, or ideology beyond a commitment to freedom and democracy. It applies one standard to everyone, and reports the conduct of friends and adversaries by the same rule.
- Built around human rights and the neglected. It gives sustained, properly reported coverage to the peoples and abuses that larger outlets pass over: the stateless, the persecuted minorities, the victims whom it is inconvenient to name.
- Free and reader-first. It is free to read, carries no advertising, and is funded privately, so that the reader - not an advertiser - is the person it serves.
It is a newspaper, not a campaign. It sets out to lead rather than follow: to inform with the discipline and craft of a serious paper of record, and to let the facts make the case.
Where we speak
Libera Mondo maintains its own presence on social platforms, separate from that of Meridian 21. The newspaper's accounts distribute its journalism. The organization's accounts speak for the mission - and, in large part, for other people's work.
Much of what we post is amplification. The stories we exist to surface are sometimes already being told - by a small outlet, a researcher, an organization working on the ground - and reaching almost no one. Finding that work and sharing it carefully is part of our job, not a sideline. We share it on its merits, by the same standards we hold our own reporting to, and we keep the balance honest: across regions, across causes, across the question of who the perpetrator is.
The same disciplines apply on social media as everywhere else. We state; we do not quarrel. And we never publish anything - a post, a repost, even a public association - that could endanger the people we cover or work with. That rule outranks any reach a post might gain.
How this connects to our programs
Our four programs - The Forgotten Minorities, Reform UN!, No Excuse for Oppression, and Selective Compassion - describe the mission Libera Mondo exists to carry out. They set the direction. Meridian 21 is the first instrument through which that direction becomes real work: the place where forgotten peoples are covered, where the conduct of international institutions is documented, and where suffering is recorded regardless of who caused it.
The rest of the organization - work on campuses, briefings for decision-makers, partnerships with the representatives of neglected peoples - will follow as we are ready to do each part properly. We would rather build one thing well than announce everything at once.
A voice for the forgotten.