BY: PRATHAM GOLCHA

Formed on 15th March 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) was formed to protect and safeguard the human rights of all global citizens and address the issues related to them. On an aggregate, every five days a journalist is killed for dispensing information to the masses. The most common forms of attack include illegal arrests, arbitrary detentions, murder, harassment, intimidations, and abductions, to name a few. The objectives of this very arm of the United Nations, which includes sustainable development, peace, and security, are defeated by such extreme measures. Not just UNHRC, but various other arms of the UN such as UNDP, UNESCO, etc. work towards this common endeavor to ensure safety of the journalists. UN supports the freedom of free press on all media platforms and highly works towards safeguarding the journalists and combat impunity. These unfortunate and extremist incidents affect the freedom of the press, deprives the masses of the correct and credible information and also perpetuates cycles of violence and instigates fear within communities. The World Press Freedom Index ranks 180 countries every year on parameters such as transparency, media independence, violence against journalists, etc. The latest results of the survey proved that journalism is “seriously under threat” in almost three quarters of all countries around the world. Only twelve countries reported “respectable press-freedom environments”, the lowest number since 2013, according to the statistics of the report.
There are a number of reported killings of journalists from war-torn parts of the world, such as Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. because of obvious reasons of covering up and fabricating news according to their ideologies and will, filled with organized crimes and authoritarian regimes. It is not just limited in the general purview or context. Women reporters face a number of hurdles as well, specifically. There have been a number of reports of women journalists being harassed online or getting threats, and even being abused and intimidated for physical violence for their work, which simply is conveying the truth in the form of news reports and information to the people. Legally speaking, article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines the safety of journalists and the struggle against impunity for their killers, which are necessary to preserve the fundamental right to freedom of expression. Where there is freedom of expression of the media, a lot of objectives are already fulfilled in the process, such as justice to human rights, a transparent democratic government, gender equality, an egalitarian society, poverty reduction, education, sustainability, to name a few. With the curtailment of this freedom, a society cannot move ahead and its citizenry cannot become active and vigilant. It leads to a passive, uninformed, misguided and fake society that ultimately decays into stagnancy.
Rather than action after the issues crop up, preventive measures should be taken beforehand to make sure that such incidents do not occur. Legislations need to be made more stringent globally, perhaps being guided uniformly by the United Nations, to make sure every country is on the same page and there is no infringement and curtailment of rights of the journalists, especially women. The strength of a nation, as well as the UN actually depends upon building a free, transparent, and independent media. Nowadays, we are certainly seeing how the voices of the Uyghurs in China are being suppressed as well as how China runs a state-run Communist media, that just reports according to the free will of those in power. Whereas on the other hand, we see countries such as Afghanistan and Yemen face huge humanitarian losses, still the media hasn’t been given free will to operate and educate the citizens based on facts. Numerous other countries distort information according to the conformity with their ideologies and perspectives to feed people’s consciousness, which is ethically wrong in the name of media and journalism. The killings, intimidations and threats make the situation worse. The ‘UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity’ is in actuality, the first concerted effort by the UN to make it brings into account a concerted effort in order to safeguard the rights and freedoms of the journalists and media persons. It also is in tune with the UN’s Agenda 2030, which works towards sustainability and is thus, comprehensive and inclusive in nature. There have been various action plans undertaken by the United Nations in the recent past to tackle this menace and give the adequate rights and freedoms necessary in the twenty-first century.