RSF appoints Khaled Drareni as its North Africa representative
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is pleased to announce that it has appointed Algerian journalist Khaled Drareni as its North Africa representative. A former Algiers-based correspondent for international media, Drareni is tasked with developing RSF’s activities and strengthening its impact throughout the region.
Drareni’s duties will include developing all forms of advocacy – public and written – and monitoring sensitive cases of press freedom violations in the region’s six countries – Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Soudan.
He will also follow and coordinate implementation of RSF’s priority campaigns in the region, especially in Morocco, where journalists are wrongfully imprisoned, in Algeria and Libya, where the press freedom situation is clearly worsening, in Sudan, where it is extremely worrying, and in Tunisia, where journalists and media no longer seem to be benefitting from the gains of the 2011 revolution.
A journalist since 2006, Drareni has worked for print media, radio and TV, and has campaigned for press freedom in Algeria and the wider Maghreb in his writing, as RSF’s Algeria correspondent, and in campaigns for the release of journalists detained in Algeria and elsewhere.
For covering the so-called “Hirak” protests in Algeria in 2019, Drareni was arrested several times and was interrogated by intelligence officers. In 2020, he was given a three-year jail sentence and ended up spending a year in prison.
He is now determined to place his experience and commitment in the service of defending press freedom in North Africa and the rest of the world.
