UNESCO is organizing an international conference for the decision makers of news organizations, especially the owners, publishers, and editor-in-chiefs and will provide them with a platform to discuss existing and new measures aimed to strengthen journalists’ safety worldwide and engage with Member States on these issues.
The conference is organized in partnership with the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and with the support of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) and the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC).

This event follows UNESCO Executive Board 196/Decision 31 which requests “the Director-General to convene a conference with high level representatives of news organizations from all regions, including community media and small media outlets, open to stakeholders, to be fully funded by extra-budgetary contributions, in order for them to share good practices on the safety of journalists and more proactively highlight the issue of journalist safety”.

It is to be guided by a number of international legal documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as UNGA Resolution on Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity (RES/68/163) and the Human Rights Council Resolutions 81/20015 and 21/2012 addressing the issues of Impunity and the Safety of Journalists. It will also look into how to harness the opportunities opened for the UN Plan of Action by the newly adopted the UN Security Council Resolution 2222 on safety of journalists.

UN had adopted a number of resolutions to strengthened safety of journalists. The UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, while recognizing that journalists safety needs a multi-stakeholder approach has identified the news organizations as one of the major stakeholders in the improving safety of journalists. Thus the event aims to raise awareness about the issue of journalists’ safety as well as to promote and share industry good practices to improve safety of journalists, to promote dialogue on the issue between media and Member States, and identify gaps for possible follow up.