Back to overview
Global Conference for Media Freedom: Joint communiqué
On 9 and 10 February, the Media Freedom Coalition (MFC) held its Third Global Conference for Media Freedom in Tallinn, Estonia, releasing a joint statement in support of media freedom. Media freedom is essential for a well-functioning democracy: it ensures factual and accurate public debate and discussion, and facilitates accountability by helping to support the public's role as a watchdog for governmental power. The statement highlights such challenges as restrictive laws, surveillance, censorship, interference with online information, physical violence, and violence and harassment which disproportionately affects women journalists. These issues are in turn worsened by financial threats and instability.
The statement reiterates the broader commitments made in 2019 with the Global Pledge on Media Freedom when the MFC was established: "by combining forces to share information, as appropriate, and to take action in cases where journalists and media organizations are at risk; by shining a light on violations and abuses of media freedom, bringing these to the attention of the global public and working toward accountability; by standing together to intervene at the highest level with the governments of countries where media freedom is at risk and to show solidarity with countries that work to build media freedom; and by considering all available measures to address violations and abuses of international human rights law related to media freedom."