Reporters Without Borders (RSF) welcomes a new UN General Assembly resolution on the safety of journalists and the issue of impunity for crimes of violence against them. RSF submitted recommendations for the resolution and urged states to approve it.
The resolution on the safety of journalists and the issue of impunitywas adopted on 20 November by the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which is responsible for social, cultural, and humanitarian issues.
The resolution’s central focus is on the “specific risks faced by womenjournalists in the exercise of their work,” including in the online sphere, and on the need to “effectively tackle gender-based discrimination, including violence, inequality and gender-based stereotypes.”
The arbitrary detention and mistreatment of journalists, and the challenges they face in the “digital age,” are also mentioned in the resolution, in accordance with RSF’s requests.
It urges member states “to do their utmost to prevent violence, threats and attacks against journalists and media” and “to bringperpetrators, including those who command, conspire to commit, aidand abet or cover up such crimes, to justice.”The resolution also calls on states to assume their responsibilities and to develop concrete mechanisms for protecting journalists.
“We hail this new UN General Assembly resolution, the fourth on thesafety of journalists since 2012,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “It reflects a growing recognition of the need for action toreduce abuses against journalists and to combat impunity, begun inthe UN Plan of Action in 2012, and it consolidates international law. We now hope for swift and concrete implementation of theseprinciples.”
The resolution is due to be definitively adopted in mid-December and many states have already expressed their support.
International awareness
The resolution also welcomes the recent decision to “mobilize anetwork of focal points throughout the United Nations system topropose specific steps to intensify efforts to enhance the safety ofjournalists and media workers” and urges the UN’s various branches to actively cooperate in this initiative.
The mobilization of this network of focal points was announced by UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres on 2 November.
RSF had called for the creation of such focal points within the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the Department of Political Affairs (DPA), within UN agencies such as UNDP and UN Women, and within peacekeeping operations in the field, so that the response to violence against journalists could be quicker and more systematic.
In August, Guterres put Ana-Maria Menéndez, his senior adviser on policy, in charge of following cases involving the safety of journalists. The creation of this direct and permanent communication channel makes it possible to refer urgent cases to the secretary-general’s office and seek his intervention. It already facilitated promotion of the decision to appoint focal points within UN agencies and departments.
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