The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization “UNESCO” signed an agreement to finance a large-scale project for the safety of journalists and freedom of expression.
The project will be implemented globally with a focus on four regions; Africa, Arab countries, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe with no less than ten target countries in these regions.
Through this initiative, UNESCO will work to enhance the safety of journalists and freedom of expression, and thus strengthen democratic institutions in the target countries, noting that protecting and promoting peaceful societies requires that journalists be able to carry out their vital work independently and freely, without fear or favor.
This project confirms UNESCO’s strong alignment with the protection of journalists in crisis situations and during electoral processes around the world.
‘Media freedom and the promotion of democracy are closely linked,’ said Taoufik Jelassi, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Com
munication and Information. ‘By working to increase the safety of journalists, strengthen newsroom policies, and engage stakeholders in support of freedom of expression, the ‘Protecting Journalists, Protecting Democracy’ programme aims to promote media freedom and, in turn, strengthen democratic processes.’ In turn, Courtney O’Donnell, Permanent Representative of the United States of America to UNESCO, stressed that special attention will be given to countries affected by crises to strengthen normative frameworks and programmatic initiatives based on preventing, protecting and prosecuting crimes against journalists, in accordance with the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and Accountability of Impunity. This will be done by engaging key stakeholders “journalists, law enforcement, judges and other judicial actors” to promote freedom of expression in line with international standards.
Another focus area in this new project is elections, where UNESCO will expand its work on freedom of expression wi
th stakeholders concerned with elections in these ten targeted countries, including “election management bodies, national authorities, election observers, civil society organizations, media outlets and journalists” to develop and implement policies to promote freedom of expression, access to information and the safety of journalists, thus contributing to the integrity of elections and peaceful democratic processes.
The project aims to address digital threats and legal attacks against journalists and media workers in 10 countries, including Iraq, within the agreements prepared with the Government of Iraq through capacity building, strengthening networks and knowledge exchange among stakeholders such as journalists, lawyers, judges and civil society organizations.
The fourth focus area of the project will be to promote inclusive and responsive policies with an enhanced perspective on the rights of women journalists in newsrooms, as well as providing psychosocial support to them, to enhance the safety and resi
lience of women journalists in the face of specific threats and attacks offline and online.
The project agreement is based on the premise that journalists and media workers have a fundamental role in society, supporting democratic debate by providing populations with access to reliable information, verification, analysis and commentary, through their efforts to investigate and highlight violations, UNESCO attaches great importance to critical actors to support justice and accountability.
At the same time, journalists face deteriorating conditions worldwide: attacks by violent actors and increased use of legal harassment, declining public trust in professional journalism, online violence, especially targeting women journalists, in the context of the overall disruption of media business models in the digital age. This is coupled with the increasing numbers of journalists in exile and the ever-increasing number of journalists being killed, which the project aims to address.
The project will have a global scop
e, with a particular focus on countries in the Global South, particularly in Africa, which operate in electoral and crisis-affected areas, with proposed activities at global, regional and national levels.
UNESCO is the international coordinating and overseeing organization of the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, and the project aims to follow up on several priorities identified during the 10th anniversary thematic and regional consultations, as well as follow up on the Chilling project on the safety of women journalists and strengthen UNESCO’s Judges Initiative, which has trained over 36,000 judicial actors and 12,000 law enforcement personnel worldwide over the past decade.
Source: National Iraqi News Agency