Protection of safety and integrity of journalists in the OSCE region

Violence against journalists continues to remain the most dangerous form of interference with the journalists’ profession.
Following the tragic events in early January 2015 - an appalling attack on the editorial office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which ignited strong and clear public affirmations to preserve freedom of expression, debates and proposals about restrictions on rights and freedoms are under way in the entire OSCE region.
The purpose of this conference is to examine and review the current situation relating to the safety of journalists, to provide a forum to exchange information, share problems as well as good practices, to discuss necessary reforms of related legislation and judicial instruments and to develop recommendations for the governments on how to improve protection and integrity of journalists.
The event will also address established forms of impeding on media freedom, such as defamation and libel, taboo topics on declaring certain events or personalities off limits for reporting, and outright framing of journalists with fabricated charges, as well as the importance of a legislative environment conducive to pluralistic and free speech.
Participants will include representatives of governments, the media, legislators, academia and NGOs from the OSCE participating States.

DAY 1, 26 MARCH 2015
9.00 – 9.30 Registration of participants
9.30-13.00 - Opening plenary session. Implementation of OSCE commitments on safety of journalists.
Safe working conditions for journalists have been at the forefront of OSCE commitments since 1975. The Helsinki Final Act set out to “improve the conditions under which journalists from one participating State exercise their profession in another participating State”, while the Vienna
Follow-Up meeting in 1986 stated that participating States “will make further efforts to facilitate the freer and wider dissemination of information of all kinds, to encourage co-operation in the field of information and to improve the working conditions of journalists.” Six years later, in 1994, the Budapest CSCE Summit stated that participating States “condemn all attacks on and harassment of journalists and will endeavour to hold those directly responsible for such attacks and harassment accountable.”
Finally, in 1997, when the office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media was established, participating States gave the RFOM a mandate to “address serious problems caused by, inter alia, obstruction of media activities and unfavourable working conditions for journalists”.
The session will examine the current level of implementation of the related OSCE commitments, recall the main international standards, and discuss existing good practices in and around the OSCE region.

Opening
- OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia H.E. Mr. Ivica Dačić
- Minister of Culture and Information of Serbia, Mr. Ivan Tasovac
- OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Ms. Dunja Mijatović

The Delegations of the OSCE participating States are invited to contribute to the debate on safety of journalists by addressing:
- Status of implementation of related OSCE commitments;
- International standards;
- Best practices on protection of safety and integrity of journalists
- Statements by the Delegations

11.00-11.30: Coffee break
- Continued statements by the Delegations

13.00-14.00 – Lunch break

14.00-17.00 – Parallel session 1. Safety of journalists after Charlie Hebdo: challenges of violent attacks on the media

Criminal attack against journalists and other media workers at Charlie Hebdo represented the worst single attack against journalists in the OSCE region since the establishment of the institution of the Representative on Freedom of the Media. Only few weeks later, another similar attack has taken place in Copenhagen. No matter how terrible and unprecedented these attacks were, they are only the most recent examples of a problem which we have been fighting for decades. Pressure, harassment and violence and murder aimed at preventing opinions and ideas from being expressed take place at a global level and within all the OSCE area. Sometimes they come from the public authorities, but others originate with terrorists and other criminals.
This sort of criminal action is not only aimed at silencing or punishing those directly attacked, but journalists in general by creating an overall climate of intimidation and insecurity.

The session will explore the impact that criminal actions aimed at journalists may have on their freedom and the performance of their activities.

Moderator:
William Horsley, UK Chairman of the Association of European Journalists, UK

Speakers:
- Mikhail Fedotov, Presidential Adviser, Chairman of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights
- Alberto Spampinato, Director of Ossigeno per l’lnformazione, Italy
- Snjezana Milivojevic, Professor, Faculty of Political Sciences, Belgrade (tbc)

15.30 – 16.00 Coffee break (Table Served)

14.00-17.00 – Parallel session 2. Safety of female journalists online.
There are a growing number of reports from across the OSCE region and beyond about how female journalists and bloggers are singled out and fiercely attacked on social media, via tweets, Facebook posts and in comments to online articles and blogs. The panel will explore how threats and harassment online impact female journalists work and journalism in general. What immediate and long-term effects on media diversity are likely to be seen? The session will explore ways for immediate involvement of state authorities to improve the situation. It will be asked whether current legislation provides adequate protection against online abuse, and what practical, structural and legal obstacles exist for efficient law enforcement.

Moderator:
Alison Bethel McKenzie, Journalist and independent consultant, based in Vienna, Austria

Speaker:
Sejal Parmar, Assistant Professor of Law at the Department of Legal Studies and a core faculty member of the Center for Media, Data and Society at the School of Public Policy of the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
15.30 – 16.00 Coffee break (Table Served)

DAY 2, 27 MARCH 2015

9.00-12.00 – Parallel session 3. Digital security and internet literacy for media and journalists

This session will focus on best practices in defending media outlets and journalists against hacker attacks, developing skills to use the best of technological means for protection of pluralistic and free speech in the digital environment.

Speakers:
Saša Mirković, State Secretary of the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia, Serbia
Olof Ehrenkrona, Ambassador and formerly Senior Advisor to the Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs H.E Mr. Carl Bildt, Sweden
Djordje Krivokapić, SHARE Foundation Belgrade, Serbia

10.15-10.45 Coffee break

9.00-12.00 – Parallel session 4. Legal protection and integrity of journalists
The session will focus on legislative requirements including constitutional guarantees for media freedom and the creation of media laws respectful of this parameter, with special attention to public service broadcasting statutes, provisions on protection of sources and on decriminalizing libel and defamation.
It will also address such patterns of corrupt, clientelistic relations that are interconnected and often welded into state policy and practice. - How media policy and media laws are developed; how their implementation is obstructed by undermining independence of media regulators; how media ownership and media finances are hidden from public and abused for particular private and political interests; how public service broadcasters are destabilized and captured by particular interests through governing and financing patterns; how journalists become professionally and economically corrupted and disabled from acting in the public interest; etcetera.
Even the practice of self-regulation remains obscured under the mound of corrupt relations between media and politics. And although self-regulation is currently the only free-speech friendly form of regulation, there is still no fully effective guaranteed mechanism for the protection of citizens' right to receive quality and credible information.
This absence of efficient regulation to serve the public interest clearly demonstrates why the state must strengthen its active role in the protection of fundamental rights. Freedom of expression and freedom of the media are fundamental rights, so any attempt to leave the protection of these rights solely to media self-regulatory bodies is a privatisation of public interest (a shift from res publica to res privata).

Speakers:
- Brankica Petković, Peace Institute, Slovenia
- Andrew Finkel, Platform24, Turkey
- Borka Rudić, General Secretary BiH Journalists Association, Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Andriy Shevchenko, Former Member of Ukrainian Parliament (2006-14), President of Center for Public Media, journalist, Ukraine

10.15-10.45 Coffee break

12.00-13.00 – Lunch break

13.00-15.00 – Plenary session. Impunity of violence against journalists
This session will focus on impunity as one of biggest challenges to ensuring the protection of media workers. If not timely addressed, impunity further perpetuates the cycle of violence against journalists and creates a climate of intimidation. As a result, it may lead to self-censorship, thus curtailing free expression and free media and depriving society as a whole of information.
While in some cases impunity may be genuinely caused by a lack of evidence, very often there are indications that impunity is intentional due to lack of political will to prosecute.
Promoting the safety of journalists and fighting impunity must not be constrained to after-the-fact action only. Instead, it requires prevention mechanisms and actions to address some of the root causes of violence against journalists and of impunity. This implies the need to deal with issues such as corruption, organized crime and an effective framework for the rule of law in order to respond to negative elements.

Speakers:
- Gulnara Akhundova, Representative of International Media Support in Azerbaijan
- Miroslava Gongadze, Founder of Georgiy Gongadze’s Foundation, USA
- Veran Matić, Editor-in-Chief of Serbian broadcaster B92, Head of Commission for the Investigation of Murders of Journalists, Serbia
- Elizabeth Witchel, Founder of CPJ’s Global Campaign Against Impunity, UK

15.00-15.30 – Closing remarks

Speakers:
- Minister of Culture and Information of Serbia, Mr. Ivan Tasovac
- OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Ms. Dunja Mijatović

15.30-16.00- Press Conference

- Minister of Culture and Information of Serbia, Mr. Ivan Tasovac
- OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Ms. Dunja Mijatović

All Sessions of the Conference will be conducted in English