Each year, UNESCO celebrates World Press Freedom Day globally. The main/signature event is held in a different region or country each year. This year’s signature event was held in Brussels, Belgium, on the 7th of May. LIRNEasia CEO Helani Galpaya was one of the speakers on the panel titled Freedom of Expression and AI: Press Freedom, Information Integrity, and the Rule of Law. The other panellists were Michael O’Flaherty (Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe), Pedro Conceição (Director of the Human Development Report Office, UNDP), and Irene Jay Liu (Regional Director, Asia & the Pacific, International Fund for Public Interest Media). 
Each year, UNESCO celebrates World Press Freedom Day globally. The main/signature event is held in a different region or country each year. This year’s signature event was held in Brussels, Belgium, on the 7th of May. LIRNEasia CEO Helani Galpaya was one of the speakers on the panel titled Freedom of Expression and AI: Press Freedom, Information Integrity, and the Rule of Law. The other panellists were Michael O’Flaherty (Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe), Pedro Conceição (Director of the Human Development Report Office, UNDP), and Irene Jay Liu (Regional Director, Asia & the Pacific, International Fund for Public Interest Media).
It’s always a pleasure to hear LIRNEasia research cited by others. Its even more pleasing when the person mentioning it is a senior government official (in this case the Chairman of Mongolia’s National Statistics Office) and that too at a briefing for senior government officials at Mongolia’s Parliament. Without knowing that LIRNEasia too was in the room, Chairman Mendsaikhan showcased some of LIRNEasia’s ongoing big data research as examples that were relevant for Mongolia and which should be ideally replicated. The briefing was part of a series of events on Data for Development held in Ulaanbaatar on 24th and 25th Feb 2016. The events were jointly organized by the World Bank and the Cabinet Secretariat of Mongolia, who had invited me to share our experience in leveraging big data for development in Sri Lanka.
We are organizing two sessions and are featured in two others. On the first day, 15th May (Friday), the completed and ongoing work on systematic reviews will be showcased at 1100 hrs. The team leaders on the education, mobile money and SME systematic reviews will present their ongoing work. On the same day, at 1530 hrs, LIRNEasia will join its sister organizations RIA and DIRSI in a panel that discusses data for development. On the fourth day at 0900, we are organizing a session on taking evidence from big data research to policy.