New Opportunities in Monitoring Safety of Journalists through the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda

Guy Berger

doi:10.17645/mac.v8i1.2660

Abstract

This article highlights the potential for increased and more standardised monitoring of a range of aspects of the safety of journalists. This is in the light of a specific indicator that has been agreed by the UN as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The indicator concerned treats the safety of journalists as a benchmark for tracking progress on SDG target 16.10, which specifies “public access to information and fundamental freedoms” (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, n.d.) as a development aspiration. Inclusion of this indicator in the SDGs provides a universally legitimated framework with strong catalytic potential. All this holds a promise of improved, more comparative, and increased research output, as compared to the previous situation. The results of new research stimulated by this development, particularly at country level, could have real impact on the safety of journalists.

Highlights

To move beyond fragmentary understandings of safety of journalists, we need comprehensive information that covers the breadth of the issue, and which allows for the in-depth analysis of causes, consequences, and correctives over time
What information is relevant to the ‘safety of journalists’? The 2012 UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity (UNESCO, 2012a) treats ‘safety’ as a wide-ranging concept, covering both offline and online dimensions (UNESCO, 2019a)
As a result of extensive advocacy, including by UNESCO and the Global Forum for Media Development, the 193 UN Member States that agreed to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) accepted a more holistic approach

Summary

Introduction

To move beyond fragmentary understandings of safety of journalists, we need comprehensive information that covers the breadth of the issue, and which allows for the in-depth analysis of causes, consequences, and correctives over time. If ‘safety’ covers a range of issues, this raises the question of how these may be assessed at a more granular level, perhaps in the form of a generic typology Relevant to this endeavour is how the advent of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) opens the way to new opportunities for defining and researching the safety of journalists in current times. This research can make a practical difference to journalists and society by strengthening norms about safety, and by enabling evidence-led and effective measures to prevent attacks and to punish perpetrators Expressed colloquially, it is a ‘big deal’ to have the safety of journalists, and the monitoring thereof, recognised within the UN’s current development agenda which will run until 2030. A mechanism for monitoring is not the same as a methodology, and vice versa, but both are essential if systematic, credible, and regular data is to be produced over time

Operationalisation of the Indicator

Status of the Indicator and Scope for Elaboration

Putting Focus on Elaborated Monitoring at the National Level

Findings

Way Forward