The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is a regional security-oriented intergovernmental organization comprising member states in Europe, North America, and Asia. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, the promotion of human rights, freedom of the press, and free and fair elections. It employs around 3,460 people, mostly in its field operations but also in its secretariat in Vienna, Austria, and its institutions. It has observer status at the United Nations.
Reporters Without Borders is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization headquartered in Paris, which focuses on safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as founded on the belief that everyone requires access to the news and information, in line with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that recognises the right to receive and share information regardless of frontiers, along with other international rights charters. RSF has consultative status at the United Nations, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, and the International Organisation of the Francophonie.
Harlem Jean-Philippe Désir is a French politician. First widely known as a community activist and as the first president of SOS Racisme in the 1980s, he subsequently entered politics in the 1990s, first in Génération Écologie then in the Socialist Party where he rose to the rank of First Secretary. He served as MEP from 1999 to 2014 and then served in the government of France as Secretary of State for European Affairs from 2014 to 2017. Since 2017, he has served as the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media.
The office of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression of the Organization of American States (OAS) was established by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in 1997 to monitor OAS member states' compliance with the American Convention on Human Rights in the area of freedom of expression.
Source protection, sometimes also referred to as source confidentiality or in the U.S. as the reporter's privilege, is a right accorded to journalists under the laws of many countries, as well as under international law. It prohibits authorities, including the courts, from compelling a journalist to reveal the identity of an anonymous source for a story. The right is based on a recognition that without a strong guarantee of anonymity, many would be deterred from coming forward and sharing information of public interests with journalists.
The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) was passed in 2002 by the Zimbabwean Parliament under the majority of the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF) and Former President Robert Mugabe.
The mass media in Armenia refers to mass media outlets based in Armenia. Television, magazines, and newspapers are all operated by both state-owned and for-profit corporations which depend on advertising, subscription, and other sales-related revenues. Armenia's press freedoms improved considerably following the 2018 Velvet Revolution.
The right to Internet access, also known as the right to broadband or freedom to connect, is the view that all people must be able to access the Internet in order to exercise and enjoy their rights to freedom of expression and opinion and other fundamental human rights, that states have a responsibility to ensure that Internet access is broadly available, and that states may not unreasonably restrict an individual's access to the Internet.
Remembrance Day of Journalists Killed in the Line of Duty is a remembrance day, observed on December 15 in Russia in memory of journalists who died while performing their professional duties. The day was established by the Union of Journalists of Russia (RUJ) in 1991, following the deaths of journalist Viktor Nogin and cameraman Gennadi Kurennoy in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in September that year after their car came under fire from Serbian fighters. In Moscow the day is observed at Nikitsky Boulevard.
Dunja Mijatović is a Bosnian human rights expert and activist.
Akhmednabi Omardibirovich Akhmednabiyev was a Russian journalist. He was the deputy editor of the independent news outlet Novoye Delo. On 9 July 2013 at 7 a.m. Akhmednabiyev was shot outside his house in the Semender suburb of Makhachkala, Dagestan, Russia after his name was added to a hit list for being critical of local law enforcement, speaking out on human rights and abuse, and defending Muslims.
Maria Grazia Giammarinaro is an Italian judge and policy-maker.
Agnès Callamard is a French human rights activist who is the Secretary General of Amnesty International. She was previously the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, and the former Director of the Columbia University Global Freedom of Expression project.
David Kaye is an American politician who served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression between August 2014 and July 2020. He was succeeded by Irene Khan. Kaye is clinical professor of law at the University of California, Irvine on public international law, international humanitarian law human rights and international criminal justice. He is co-director of the UCI Fair Elections and Free Speech Center working at the intersection of technology, freedom of speech and democratic deliberation. He is also the independent board chair of the Global Network Initiative.
Rasim Aliyev was a journalist and human rights activist in Azerbaijan. He was a member of the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS). After a football match between a Cypriot and an Azerbaijani football club, Aliyev criticized national player Javid Huseynov for being "ill-bred". Aliyev was later lured to a meeting with someone claiming to be a relative of Huseynov seeking reconciliation, where he was brutally beaten by several assailants. Aliyev died in hospital the following day, a week shy of his 31st birthday.
Turkey's media purge after the failed coup d'état on July 15, 2016 resulted in the shutdown of at least 131 media outlets and the arrest of 117 journalists – at least 35 of whom have been indicted for "membership in a terror group".
Safety of journalists is the ability of journalists and media professionals to receive, produce and share information without facing physical or moral threats.
Aksana Panova is a Russian journalist, most known for leading the news sites Ura.ru and Znak.com. She also served as campaign manager for Yevgeny Roizman's successful opposition campaign for Mayor of Yekaterinburg in 2013.
The Vienna Mechanism and the Moscow Mechanism are a linked pair of agreements on confidence and security-building measures on human rights established in 1989, 1990 and 1991 by the members states of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), which later became the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The Vienna Mechanism establishes procedures for raising and responding to participating states' requests on human rights issues, while the Moscow Mechanism adds procedures for independent "missions of experts" and "missions of rapporteurs" to visit and report on human rights issues.
The Twentieth Anniversary Joint Declaration: Challenges to Freedom of Expression in the next decade was published in 2019 by representatives of intergovernmental bodies to protect free media and expression. Jointly and annually, the United Nations (UN), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Organization of American States (OAS) and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) publish the results of their discussions about a topic. During these discussions, each organization is a representative of a specific human right.
