On 25 April, ARTICLE 19’s Paulina Gutiérrez will be speaking at the Expert Seminar on Legal and Economic Threats to the Safety of Journalists hosted by the United Nations Human Rights Council, addressing the vital issue of how to tackle strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs), fast becoming a routine weapon for authorities, companies and powerful individuals to target and silence journalists and censor their work.
Paulina Gutiérrez will be speaking in Session IV: The way forward: what can be done to address legal and economic threats to the safety of journalists? at 16.15 – 17.45 CET
Read ARTICLE 19’s new global report How are courts responding to SLAPPs?
Across the globe, journalists face rising threats to their safety, including through legal and economic intimidation: authorities, companies and powerful individuals are using national security laws, criminal defamation, anti-terrorism, sedition, criminal defamation, and lèse-majesté laws, and legal actions such as strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) to criminalise journalists’ work and silence their reporting.
Civil society organisations and coalitions will join representatives from the media, academia and national human rights institutions,
States, and relevant United Nations bodies to discuss legal and economic threats to the safety of journalists, and what the international community can do to offer better protection for journalists. There will be a particular focus will be on the gender-dimension of the safety of journalists.