A WORLD OF HUMAN RIGHTS
  • Home
  • Migration & Trafficking
    • Refugees, Asylum seekers & Migrants
    • Human Trafficking & Slavery
  • Security, Peace & Justice
    • Death Penalty, Arbitrary Detention and Torture
    • International Criminal Justice
    • Rule of Law
    • Humanitarian crises
    • Human Rights Defenders
  • Children's rights
  • Civil Rights & Liberties
  • Economic, social & cultural rights
    • Food & Water
    • Sanitation
    • Adequate housing
    • Health
  • Sexual and reproductive health
  • Discrimination
    • Women, Girls & Gender equality
    • Race and national origin
    • Religion
    • Indigenous People
    • LGBTQ
    • Health & Disability
  • Environment
  • Business & Tax
    • Tax Justice & illicit financial flows
    • Business & Human Rights
  • Take action!
  • Free courses
  • About us
    • About our press review
    • Privacy Policy
  • Bibliography
  • Home
  • Migration & Trafficking
    • Refugees, Asylum seekers & Migrants
    • Human Trafficking & Slavery
  • Security, Peace & Justice
    • Death Penalty, Arbitrary Detention and Torture
    • International Criminal Justice
    • Rule of Law
    • Humanitarian crises
    • Human Rights Defenders
  • Children's rights
  • Civil Rights & Liberties
  • Economic, social & cultural rights
    • Food & Water
    • Sanitation
    • Adequate housing
    • Health
  • Sexual and reproductive health
  • Discrimination
    • Women, Girls & Gender equality
    • Race and national origin
    • Religion
    • Indigenous People
    • LGBTQ
    • Health & Disability
  • Environment
  • Business & Tax
    • Tax Justice & illicit financial flows
    • Business & Human Rights
  • Take action!
  • Free courses
  • About us
    • About our press review
    • Privacy Policy
  • Bibliography
A WORLD OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Picture

Santos wants to improve Colombia’s press freedom ranking

9/7/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called for more protection for journalists and more efforts to combat impunity when it met Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos last week, while President Santos regretted that Colombia was ranked no better than 129th in RSF’s World Press Freedom Index.

The meeting between President Santos and RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire at the presidential palace in Bogotá on 31 August was marked by hope – a hope sustained by the recent peace accords with the FARC rebels ending half a century of civil war.

Deloire stressed the importance for Colombia of providing better protection for its journalists, who for decades have been the victims of rebel groups, drug traffickers, paramilitaries and sometimes government officials and politicians.


According to RSF’s tally, 58 journalists were murdered in Colombia from 2000 to 2015 in a clear or probable connection with their work, making Colombia one of the western hemisphere’s deadliest countries for media personnel. Around 90% of these murders went unpunished.

Nonetheless, it is important to note that no journalist has been murdered in Colombia since the start of 2016. The security situation is now satisfactory in the capital, Bogotá, but journalists continue to be exposed to terrible threats in many parts of the country, threats that prevent them from working properly.

One of the most emblematic cases of impunity in Colombia is that of Nelson Carvajal Carvajal, a Radio Sur journalist killed in April 1998 while investigating corruption. After 17 years of foot-dragging and irregularities, the Colombian judicial system has yet to identify and punish those responsible. The case was referred to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica, in 2015. Colombian government representatives testified to the court about the case in hearings held on 22 and 23 August. In a 28 August letter, the Bogotá-based Press Freedom Foundation (FLIP), an RSF partner organization, accused them of blaming the Carvajal family for the failure to convict anyone of his murder and of minimizing violence against the media and impunity.

“While President Santos now embodies peace, partly because of his Nobel peace prize, we think he should also embody freedom of the press,” Deloire said. “He seemed disturbed by the fact that Colombia is as low as 129th in the World Press Freedom Index. We believe that, in his final year as president, he should carry out major reforms that help combat impunity for murders of journalists and make the Unit for the Protection of Journalists more effective in the most difficult regions, so that Colombia can become a model for media freedom in Latin America.”

President Santos indicated his sympathy with the causes defended by RSF. He was a columnist and then deputy director of El Tiempo, Colombia’s leading daily newspaper, which was owned by his family. He also headed the Inter-American Press Association’s committee on freedom of the press.

Asked by RSF about combatting media ownership concentration, he expressed a neoliberal view. “The less regulation, the more freedom of the press,” he said. He also mentioned the “considerable” efforts made by Colombia to be a world leader in open data. Colombia is 4th in the OECD’s 2017 open data ranking (OURdata Index).

The RSF delegation also met interior minister Guillermo Rivera, who is responsible for implementing the “Public Policy on Freedom of Expression”, an ambitious accord that was the result of two years of consultation with national and local media and with civil society groups. Unveiled in May 2016, it includes judicial guarantees for journalists, guarantees of protection and guarantees of access to information. But nothing has so far been done to implement it. Rivera undertook to implement by the end of President Santos’s term in May 2018.

The peace accords include other media freedom provisions such as more openness to news gathering in regions affected by the conflict. However, in RSF’s view, community and public interest media need guarantees that they will be able to compete freely and guarantees (funding etc) that they will be viable in the long term. A 2014 access to information law has helped to break down a culture of secrecy and to make state-held information more transparent. But problems persist with regard to defence and security.

Colombia rose five places in the 2017 World Press Freedom Index but is still in the bottom third (129th out of 180 countries).

Published on Reporters Without Borders on September 6, 2017 (rsf.org/en/news/santos-wants-improve-colombias-press-freedom-ranking).

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture


    Tweets by aworldofhr

    A civil right is an enforceable right or privilege, which if interfered with by another gives rise to an action for injury. Examples of civil rights are freedom of speech, press, and assembly; the right to vote; freedom from involuntary servitude; and the right to equality in public places. Discrimination occurs when the civil rights of an individual are denied or interfered with because of their membership in a particular group or class. Various jurisdictions have enacted statutes to prevent discrimination based on a person's race, sex, religion, age, previous condition of servitude, physical limitation, national origin, and in some instances sexual orientation.
    Source: Cornell University Law School

    Categories

    All
    Access To Justice
    Anti-conspiracy
    Arbitrary Arrests
    Artistic Expression
    Austerity Measures
    Bahrain
    Bangladesh
    Belgium
    Biometric Data
    Blasphemy
    Boko Haram
    Brazil
    Burundi
    Cambodia
    Cambodian Center For Human Rights
    Canada
    Çayan Demirel
    Censorship
    Chad
    Chile
    China
    Colombia
    Corruption
    Council Of Europe
    Counterterrorism Law
    Cybercrime Laws
    Cyber-security
    Data Protection
    Defamation
    Digital Rights
    Discrimination
    Egypt
    Ertuğrul Mavioğlu
    European Court Of Justice
    Excessive Use Of Force
    Facebook
    Facial Recognition Scans
    Fair Trial
    False Information
    France
    Freedom Of Expression
    Freedom Of Religion
    Freedom Of The Media
    Free Media
    Free Speech
    Gag Orders
    Gauri Lankesh
    General Data Protection Regulation
    Health Care
    Hong Kong
    Human Rights Abuses
    Human Rights Defenders
    Human Rights Online
    Impunity
    India
    Indonesia
    Internet Freedom
    Internet Intermediaries
    Internet Service Providers
    Iran
    ISIS
    Japan
    Jehovah Witness
    Journalists
    Kazakhstan
    Kenya
    Kurdish Opposition
    Kyrgyzstan
    Lèse Majesté
    L.G.B.T.Q.
    Malaysia
    Mali
    Malta
    Microsoft
    Moldova
    Myanmar
    National Security
    Nigeria
    Peaceful Protest
    People With Disabilities
    Personal Data
    Phone Companies
    Police Abuse
    Press Freedom
    Privacy
    Propaganda
    Public Order
    Qatar
    Right Of Access To Court Records
    Right To A Fair Trial
    Right To Education
    Right To Freedom Of Assembly And Expression
    Right To Privacy
    Right To Protest
    Right To Receive Information
    Right To Vote
    Russia
    Saudi Arabia
    Sedition
    Senegal
    Social Media
    Sri Lanka
    Sudan
    Surveillance
    Tanzania
    Tech Companies
    Terrorism
    Thailand
    Torture And Ill Treatment
    Torture And Ill-treatment
    Tunisia
    Turkey
    Turkmenistan
    Uganda
    U.K.
    Ukraine
    U.N. High Commissioner For Human Rights
    United Arab Emirates
    United Nations Expert On The Rights Of People With Disabilities
    Unlawful Assembly
    Unlawful Detention
    Unnecessary And Excessive Force
    U.N. Special Rapporteur On Freedom Of Opinion And Expression
    U.S.
    Uzbekistan
    Visible Religious Symbols
    Voice Pattern Recognition Technology
    Voice Recognition Technology


    Archives

    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014


    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly