Although the Djiboutian government includes in its constitution under Article 15 clear guarantees to freedom of expression and media freedom and has also ratified a number of relevant regional and international human rights instruments, it maintains a number of laws that are incoherent to these acceptable international human rights standards which severely restrict media freedom.

The Djiboutian human rights record was reviewed under the aegis of Human Rights Council’s first cycle of Universal Periodic Review on 2 February 2009. While the state delegation highlighted some of the challenges facing the media sector, it rejected most of the recommendations on the need to repeal and review some of the unduly restrictive media laws. Djibouti will be up for review again during the 16th session of the Human Rights Council in 2013. The overall purpose of the project is therefore to advocate for the enactment of progressive media laws in Djibouti through assessment of the critical media laws and engagement in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, training of media actors and policy makers and sharing comprehensive country media law analysis reports.