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Second Forum of Legal Actors on Freedom of Expression and Safety of Journalists gathered judiciary and civil society
The Forum brought together judges, prosecutors, lawyers, academics and representatives of legal institutions to exchange views and share best practices on specific topics related to the protection of freedom of expression and the safety of journalists, drawing on global, regional and national experiences across Europe, Latin American and Africa.
Although global impunity rate for crimes against journalists is still abusively high, findings of UNESCO’s Global Trends Report show that in the last 10 years the rate has fallen from 95% to 86%. This proves that to obtain good results we need a multi-stakeholder approach involving judges, prosecutors and CSO actors.
As CSO, we need today more allies to increase accountability for crimes against journalists. We need more judicial actors to stand up for journalists.
The event featured presentations by high-level speakers, leading specialists and scholars, addressing the issues topical for Francophone Africa and Latin America, thus providing for a live platform that enabled the two regional groups to establish channels for the exchanges of experiences.
The sessions analysed current trends and emerging challenges of freedom of expression, safety and protection of journalists, the role and independence of the judiciary, ways to improve cooperation between CSO actors, judiciary and media, as well as the regional jurisprudence from Africa and Latin America on issues related to freedom of expression and safety of journalists.
In this context, landmark decisions given by the main regional courts of human rights such as , , and were also illustrated and discussed. These cases underlined the important role of the courts in preventing, promoting and protecting freedom of expression and the safety of journalists.
The forum provided an occasion to present UNESCO’s initiative, Training security forces and the judiciary on freedom of expression. Within this flagship project, since 2013, more than 24,000 judicial actors and 11,500 law enforcement agents in over 160 countries in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Arab region, have been trained on freedom of expression and the safety of journalists. These trainings have been done through a series of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), on-the-ground workshops, and the publication of a number of and .
The movie screening of the short documentary ‘Killing the truth” showing cases of killed journalists that are still unresolved, raised very strong and emotional reactions by all the participants on the issue of impunity.
According to , over 1,200 journalists have been killed between 2006 and 2021, with close to 9 out of 10 of these cases remaining judicially unresolved.
As general recommendation, the participants expressed the need to tackle the issue of impunity with a holistic approach through involving all key players and raising awareness and protecting the judiciary.
Judges and journalists have to join efforts to share information and experiences to efficiently tackle crimes against journalists. Not only the judges need to be aware of what freedom of expression means, but the whole society should feel concerned when there is an attack on a journalist.
Every time we have a killed journalist, this has a chilling effect not only on other journalists, but also judges and prosecutors are under threat. That is why it is important to ensure protection also to the judiciary, and to create specialized tribunals for the prosecution of these cases.
The conference built upon the first edition of the Forum of Legal Actors, created during the 2020 World Press Freedom Day and held online in December 2020. It is a joint initiative of UNESCO, Asser Institute and Free Press Unlimited supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and UNESCO Multi-Donor Programme on Freedom of Expression and Safety of Journalists (MDP).
