Correlations between Press Freedom and Human Development Demonstrated

With the new year, the UNESCO printing house has just come out with the copies of the paper “Press freedom and development: an analysis of correlations between freedom of the press and the different dimensions of development, poverty, governance and peace.”

It is satisfying to see brand-new books containing the study on which I’ve been working as part of a research project implemented by the Centre for Peace and Human Security (CPHS) at Sciences Po University, with UNESCO's support. And it is even more interesting to see some of the conclusions that the independent scholars reached in this research -- namely, that press freedom is positively correlated with good governance, human development, and democracy. This is, of course, one more argument to corroborate the theories on how a functioning public sphere contributes to peace-building and governance.

For me, the book completes a cycle of publications (also very relevant to the public sphere approach) in which I have been involved at various capacity while at UNESCO, including: “Freedom of Information and Sustainable Development”, “Media Law in Africa, a Comparative Legal Survey” by Guy Berger and others, and “Freedom of Information: A Comparative Legal Survey” by Toby Mendel.

After five years as staff at UNESCO, I’m putting a copy of each publication in my bag: a souvenir as well as a toolkit for my future endeavours.

Photo Credit: Flickr User saibotregeel