IPDC to reinforce reporting mechanism on journalists’ safety

This week UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova condemned the killing of Brazilian journalist João Valdecir de Borba, who was shot dead on 10 March while presenting a live radio music programme. De Borba is the 24th journalist to have been killed this year according to UNESCO records, while 114 killings were recorded in 2015.

Following its 60th Bureau meeting last week, the IPDC is set to reinforce its monitoring and reporting system on journalists’ safety. This is a unique mechanism which enables UNESCO to follow up on cases such as the killing of de Borba with the ultimate objective of ending impunity for his killers and those involved in other murders of journalists.

Since 2008, the Director-General of UNESCO is requested to report to the IPDC Council on the status of safety and impunity. For this, each Member State concerned with the killing of a journalist is requested voluntarily to inform UNESCO on the status of the investigations carried out, with UNESCO keeping track until such time as the case is resolved. To strengthen this process, the IPDC Bureau made three special allocations of funds: 

• A sum of US$ 20,000 for the publication and dissemination of a booklet explaining IPDC’s monitoring and reporting mechanism on the safety of journalists to Member States, UN bodies, civil society, NGOs, human rights bodies, and media professionals.
• An additional allocation of US$ 30,000 made for compiling and sharing of best practices in monitoring, reporting and promoting the safety of journalists, as a follow-up to the IPDC-supported International Conference ‘News Organizations standing up for the safety of media professionals’ (Paris, 5 February 2016).
• An amount of US$ 30,000 for the application of UNESCO’s Journalists’ Safety Indicators (JSIs), which enable an assessment of journalists’ safety at national level and of the follow-up given to crimes committed against them.
• For providing capacity-building in Member States to improve their national monitoring systems, $20 000 for a pilot project in a selected country.

The Bureau also requested the IPDC Secretariat to prepare an action plan to further bolster IPDC’s role in tackling impunity, and to present this at the next IPDC Council session in November.

In reaching its decisions, the Bureau meeting was informed by a report from independent media expert, Silvia Chocarro Marcesse, who presented an analytical paper on the IPDC’s role in promoting the safety of journalists.

“Never has the UN advanced so much on the issue of journalistic safety in so little time as in recent years,” said Chocarro Marcesse. “There is momentum. High expectations are placed on the UN … and on UNESCO as the lead agency on the promotion of the safety of journalists”. The analytical paper includes concrete recommendations on how IPDC can contribute to meeting those expectations.

A significant increase has already been observed in the response rate of Member States to the Director-General’s requests for information - from 16 out of 57 countries (28%) in 2014 to 27 out of 57 (47%) countries last year, indicating increased attention being given by Member States to IPDC’s monitoring mechanism.