As part of session eight on day 2 of the 9th Al Jazeera Forum, Al Jazeera's Public Liberties and Human Rights Department is hosting a seminar entitled "The Absence of Justice in the Plight of Journalists." This seminar seeks to answer the following questions:
- What are the major challenges to the security and safety of journalists?
- What maintains the impunity of their killers?
- Why aren’t those who commit crimes against journalists punished?
- Does the problem lie in the absence of national and international legislation or in the lack of their application?
- How can we pressure national authorities to apply and respect the rights of journalists and freedom of the press?
- Why don’t international protection mechanisms, media institutions and other related organisations develop a universal declaration to protect professional journalists and citizen journalists alike?
- What prevents the consolidation of all the principles and norms stipulated in various international instruments in one international document that forms a basis for accountability that is respected, protected and implemented by states at the national level?
Speakers:
- Jim Boumelha, President of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)
- John Yearwood, World Editor at the Miami Herald and Chairman of the International Press Institute’s (IPI) North American Committee
- Sherif Mansour, MENA Programme Coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
- Elobaid Ahmed Elobaid, Head of the United Nations Human Rights Training and Documentation Centre
- Martin Schbiyye, Swedish Freelance Journalist, who was arrested and imprisoned while reporting in Ethiopia
