Human Rights Never Get Old

It was a hectic time for human rights last week here in Paris because of the many initiatives to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed on 10 December 1948 in this very town, at Palais de Chaillot. And it was hectic here at UNESCO’s HQ as well, which among many initiatives opened its doors to the last living witness of the Declaration’s drafting group, lawyer Stéphane Hessel awarded with the UNESCO/Bilbao Prize.
 
But working myself in the “Freedom of Expression, Democracy and Peace Division”, of course my focus was on the Declaration’s Article 19, the right of every individual to “freely seek, receive and impart information through any media and regardless of frontiers”. A perfect formulation by those wise drafters Mr Hessel was part of. And a forward-looking one if we think that the wording “through any media and regardless of frontiers” was conceived in the aftermath of WWII, but it is even more of appropriate nowadays in the age of the Internet. Let’s repeat it once again: “freely seek, receive and impart information” - that is to say the essential prerequisite for two-way flow of information among public sphere’s three sectors: the media, the civil society and the State.
 
Celebrating Article 19 here at the Communication and Information sector we had the honor of hosting for a day the 30 journalists winners of the “Every Human Has Rights” Media Awards organized by Internews and The Elders. They were selected by a professional international jury for their contribution to illustrating the Declaration with “powerful and eye-opening stories”.
 
It was a privilege meeting journalists from all continents who with their brave and professional investigative reporting made the difference for so many citizens. Mostly of them are young and from developing countries. Among them is Mary Fianko Akuffo from Ghana, awarded for the “Most courageous investigation”. She did an undercover investigative story unmasking a network of human traffickers in West Africa. Chapeau! A very concrete example of what a functioning public sphere can do for promoting human rights and good governance.
 
During the UNESCO meeting Mary invited the international community to create mechanisms supporting legal defense of journalists under trial for their investigations. Something is already done in this field by international NGOs, but for Mary Fianko it is not enough. Let’s propagate her appeal. With Mary there were many others, and I invite you to have a look at their blogs . I think this is what our mission of media development experts is about: “just” support the conditions for enabling persons like Mary Fianko and her colleagues to do their job. 

Photo Credit: Flickr user art makes me smile